The British Department for International Development and Knowledge-based Aid

A number of trends have led development cooperation agencies to embrace the idea of becoming 'knowledge agencies', more efficient and effective users of knowledge both internally and in their work with their recipients/partners. At the same time, agencies have become fascinated with the role that knowledge can play in national development strategies. This paper seeks to highlight some of the unresolved tensions that emerge from this new agency area of interest. In so doing, it will focus on the case of the Department for International Development (DFID), the British development cooperation agency. In common with many other agencies, DFID has been developing its own policy for better internal knowledge management. At the same time, through its research strategy and support to the Global Development Network, DFID is developing its own theory/practice of how it should support partner countries' knowledge generation and dissemination. Through an analysis of key DFID texts, supported by interviews and reflections on participation in virtual and real discussion forums, this paper suggests a number of challenges for DFID's knowledge strategy.     

Development as Discourse: What relevance to education?

Regarding 'development' as a constructed and contested concept can enable us working in international education to re-examine our assumptions and approaches as 'developers'. Given its theoretical origins in post-modern, post-colonial and feminist thought, the concept of development as discourse implies more than simply 'development speak' and can provide a way into analysing relationships around knowledge and power. Stressing that there are many overlapping discourses, rather than just one Development Discourse, I explore in this paper the insights gained, methods used and constraints faced when using this approach during fieldwork in Nepal. Practical situations like literacy classes or meetings, and texts such as funding proposals or students' writing, illustrate how analysis of development discourses can bring out new dimensions relevant to training and planning. Moving from this micro-level to a wider context, I argue that the ideological dimension of educational planning and policy needs to be recognized and analysed through a focus on discourse. Instead of suggesting that a certain policy succeeds or fails in 'technical' terms, policy makers can then begin to ask different questions which acknowledge the political agendas of the various development players and allow for a greater variety of voices to be heard.     

Banking on Knowledge: The new knowledge projects of the World Bank

The World Bank was the first cooperation agency seriously to explore the implications for itself and its clients of the heightened role of knowledge in economic and institutional development that had become increasingly evident in OECD countries. Beginning with its president's decision in 1996 to become 'the Knowledge Bank', different elements within the Bank went on to elaborate a knowledge discourse, most notably within the World Development Report on Knowledge for Development (1998), as well as a whole series of 'knowledge projects' and 'knowledge-based initiatives'. The article examines some of the tensions and debates that are at the very heart of the Bank's desire to become a knowledge agency. Amongst these, some of the more salient are the implications of the new knowledge discourse for the Bank's changing priorities towards education; the trade-off between knowledge sharing for the improved efficiency of Bank operations versus knowledge development by the Bank's clients; and the use of information and communications technology to create a global knowledge hypermarket, called the Development Gateway.     

Exploring Early Years educators' ownership of language and communication knowledge and skills: a review of key policy and initial reflections on Every Child a Talker and its implementation

This article examines four significant policy documents that have informed the Department for Children School and Families (DCSF)' s Every Child a Talker (ECaT). The analysis focuses on where the ownership of knowledge in relation to communication and language lies as part of policy implementation and training processes. The article then progresses to focus on ECaT, exploring whether it contributes anything new to promote a sustainable development of communication and language for educators and young children. It focuses on the development of educators' specialist knowledge and skills supported by critical reflection on relevant theory and research. In doing so, European perspectives on pedagogy are explored. The article concludes with discussion of possible implications for ECaT and its implementation.     

Classical Political Economy and the Role of Universities in the New Knowledge Economy

Higher education has become the new star ship in the policy fleet for governments around the world. The public policy focus on higher education, in part, reflects a growing consensus in macroeconomics of 'new growth' or 'endogenous growth' theory, based on the work of Solow, Lucas and Romer that argues that the driving force behind economic growth is technological change (i.e. improvements in knowledge about how we transform inputs into outputs in the production process). Knowledge about technology and levels of information flow are now considered critical for economic development and can account for differential growth patterns. In short, universities are seen to be a key driver towards the knowledge economy. Accordingly, higher education institutions have been encouraged to develop links with industry and business in a series of new venture partnerships. This emphasis in higher education policy also accords with initiatives to promote greater entrepreneurial skills and activity within so-called national systems of innovation. This paper focuses upon the economic importance of higher education as a key component of the knowledge economy. It discusses the genealogy and contributing strands to the newly emerging discourse and considers universities in the knowledge-driven economy by reference to the UK White Paper Our Competitive Future. It also considers the arguments advanced by Joseph Stiglitz (ex-Chief Economist of the World Bank) for the 'analytics of the knowledge economy' and discusses universities in terms of 'knowledge cultures'. Finally, the paper provides a critique of the policy discourse of the knowledge economy as a basis of the new challenges facing universities under knowledge capitalism.     

Learning from all? The World Bank,aid agencies and the construction of hegemony in education for development

This paper explores the nature and quality of the participation that characterises the Bank's consultations with external actors and examines the extent to which the Bank is responsive to such feedback when it comes to defining its policy preferences and strategies in the education domain. It draws on a case study of the participatory process that was organised around the definition of the last World Bank Education Strategy (WBES2020) and focuses on the participation of three European aid agencies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Department for International Development of the UK. This paper acknowledges that a significant effort was made to promote the inclusiveness and transparency of the participatory process, yet it concludes that the conditions for promoting quality participation and substantive policy change were not provided. Furthermore, the way international aid agencies produce and use knowledge limits their role and influence in the context of the Bank's consultations. Hence, by not contesting the Bank's policy ideas substantially, the agencies contribute inadvertently to reproducing the Bank's predominance in the education for development field.     

The Benefits of Learning Social Welfare: Lessons from Student Perspectives

It is widely assumed that most entering MSW students exhibit a primary interest in individual clinical practice but minimal understanding of or interest in welfare policy knowledge. However, this assumption is mostly based on attitudes before and at the beginning of encountering social welfare courses. Using a mixed-methods approach of both qualitative and quantitative methods, we studied the impact of a social welfare history and policy course on MSW students' perspectives and interests. We found that the course impacted students' understanding of and approach to their professional roles as well as to their own lives as citizens. These findings hold implications for social work education curriculum designs as well as for future research in social work teaching and education.     

The Other Canadian 'Mosaic'-'race' equity education in Ontario and British Columbia

While the influence of multicultural and anti-racist education has declined significantly in England and Wales since the late 1980s (as a result of the continuing impact of New Right thinking on education policy), this has not occurred in other countries. For example, in Canada successive federal administrations-irrespective of political hue-have remained firmly committed to Pierre Trudeau's (1971) pluralistic notion of the Canadian 'mosaic' and continued to endorse educational and social policies to promote 'race' and ethnic equality. Despite this, regional devolution has ensured that the responses to these federal initiatives at the provincial level have been varied and that developments in practice have been uneven. In this paper, we draw upon ethnographic data in an attempt to provide a sociological account of these regional differences. Focusing on the perspectives of a sample of 42 'active players' in the field of race equity education (i.e. teachers and youth workers, academics, university administrators, school board officials, equity officers, provincial government officials, consultants, grass-roots activists and representatives of various pressure groups), we compare and contrast the developments in theory, policy and practice in two Canadian provinces: Ontario and British Columbia. Throughout the paper, we underline the importance of grounded research, focusing on the part played by local political and historical conditions in both shaping and modifying the articulation and effects of federal policy.     

Are the MDGs enough? Donor perspectives and recipient visions of education and poverty reduction in Rwanda

Achieving the millennium development goals (MDGs) forms the central focus of many donor agencies’ policies, resulting in a renewed focus on basic education. This paper explores the different perspectives of donors and the Government of Rwanda (GoR) with regard to education and training. GoR discourse mirrors the international poverty reduction agenda, yet it is looking well beyond this goal. Striking a balance between providing basic education in line with the poverty reduction agenda and providing higher levels of education and training to attain broader socio-economic goals results in an internal struggle between different policy priorities and viewpoints, and an external struggle with donor agencies whose influence over policy processes is considerable. Nevertheless, a closer look at individual donors in Rwanda reveals that their actual activities demonstrate a less than clear focus on the MDGs, begging the question of just how pertinent the MDGs are.     

Reframing hostility

This paper comments on the Annette Hemmings's paper entitled, 'Youth culture of hostility: Discourses of money, respect and difference.' The paper briefly looks at Hemmings's findings, in particular those related to identity development. However, the major focus is on reframing methodological aspects of Hemmings's study. In particular, the paper examines challenges facing cultural outsiders doing research; the dynamic and multiple roles of the researcher in discourse analysis (i.e., participant, observer, and subject); and a theoretical rationale for including the researcher as subject in research, which is based on Foucault's notion of how discourse systems impact the construction of people's sense of social, political and cultural realities.     

Seeing and hearing: examining production workers' literacy and numeracy practices in a context of crisis

A policy consensus has emerged in Australia that there is a workforce literacy and numeracy crisis, similar to many other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries. The study informing this paper examined this framing of crisis by interviewing and observing production workers in three manufacturing companies. Each company was implementing new lean production methods, known as ‘competitive systems and practices', based on a visual workplace management system. In this paper, we look at what is visible and invisible in production workers' literacy and numeracy practices at Hearing Solutions, one of the companies in the study. We begin by considering the overarching policy discourse around workers' literacy and numeracy before exploring the underpinning rationale of the new expression of lean manufacturing, in particular, its implementation through the Visual Workplace Management System. Detailing an example of the literacies used in producing hearing aid shells, we discuss the under-valuing by workers and managers of the skills being used; and the hidden process of industrial relations, reward and remuneration. Using an ethnographic and social practices approach, what emerges is a better understanding of the complex range of vocational knowledge and social skills being used that go unrecognised by policy makers, lobbyists and managers, and even by the workers themselves.     

The applicability of social network analysis to the study of networked learning

In this study, the aim was to examine how small-group collaboration is shaped by individuals interacting in a virtual multiplayer game. The data were collected from a design experiment in which six randomly divided groups of four university students played a voice-enhanced game lasting about 1 h. The ‘eScape’ game was a social action adventure developed as a part of the study. In the analysis of the video data, students' discourse functions during the game were analysed with content analytic methods for studying the nature of their interaction. An effort was made to analyse the data on both group and individual levels, and therefore the participants' prior social ties and experience in gaming were studied as well. The results showed that the students' main discourse functions in their conversation were Question, Content Statement, Instruction or Order and Response. It was found that individual students, especially those with prior knowledge of gaming or prior social ties, can have a major impact on the social interaction and the outcome of collaboration. It can be concluded that the eScape game allowed the students to engage in true and constructive collaborative activity, and in the future multiplayer games could be used, for example, to promote group cohesion and development, when employed in a pedagogically meaningful manner.     

Do American and Korean education systems converge? Tracking school reform policies and outcomes in Korea and the USA

This study examines key school reform policies and outcomes of the USA and Korea over the past three decades from comparative perspectives. Since the two nations’ unique educational problems brought divergent educational reform paths—standardization versus differentiation, high-stakes testing versus individualized assessment, and centralization versus decentralization—the study tracks international policy benchmarking efforts and potential impact on educational convergence. The study employs mixed methods, including the content analysis of research and media documents and the trend analysis of TIMSS and PISA datasets. The results indicate that, despite significant changes in policy discourse, the gaps between Korea and the USA in student math achievement and school climates did not narrow. The policy lessons from these cases and the issues of international education benchmarking are discussed.     

A critical review on studies of relationship education in the gender equity education of Taiwan: 10 years and beyond

With discourse analyses, this paper attempts to review the research development of relationship education in Taiwan for nearly a decade after the Gender Equity Education Act was announced in 2004, including the research topics generated, the knowledge accumulated, and the results achieved. This paper focuses not only on how the power and impacts of the academic institutions evolves through the production process of knowledge from the research, but also on how the gender perspectives are placed or filled into the discourses. Tracking and reflecting on the discourses and the development of relationship education researches in Taiwan, this paper aims to examine the interwoven effects and influences that social cultures, structures, and institutional power play on the knowledge production and research development of relationship education. The trajectory of Taiwanese experience illustrates a good example for policy making and legislative initiatives in legislative procedures in regard to certain gender knowledge and subjects. It is essential to utilize and coordinate the national resources and academic institutions with further awareness for the direction and promotion of gender knowledge in order for the education and research to root, grow, and prosper.     

Ongoing inequality in a 'knowledge economy': Perceptions and actions

The concept of the 'knowledge economy' is increasingly used to underpin education policy in developed countries. In Australia, it has been applied to post-compulsory education policy, with efforts to increase retention in senior secondary education and reform of vocational education in the senior years. The article draws on two research projects with senior secondary schools. Many students (and their teachers and parents) perceived qualifications not so much as providing the knowledge considered necessary by government policy for the contemporary economy, but rather as a 'screen' used by employers to sort and select. Knowledge of opportunity structures and access to resources, while not only defined by social class, operated to create differential access to available choices in the educational market place. Despite ongoing inequality, the article argues that the hope many students expressed in relation to education can be fulfilled in practice.     

Building local research capacity in higher education: a conceptual model

Building local research capacity is an enduring challenge that confronts many higher education systems particularly when aspirations for a knowledge economy dominate policymaking. While research capacity has received tremendous attention among international development agencies and scholars, the discourse is largely oriented towards infrastructure, skills training and best practices. This study interrogates the concept of local research capacity building as a dynamic process. By contrasting the policy rhetoric with the lived experiences of academics based in Kazakhstan, we propose a conceptual model to illustrate the diverse levels of research capacity building: resources, locality, relevance, human capital and culture. This study examines research capacity building in the context of the internationalisation of higher education as researchers become increasingly mobile. We argue that investing in infrastructure and human capital are insufficient for capacity building. Rather, sustainable capacity building requires research that is relevant to the local context and a cultural environment that can nurture a vibrant research community.     

Curriculum-making in South Africa: promoting gender equality and empowering women (?)

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (2000?2015) are clearly embedded in South Africa's education policy documents. However, they are not adequately infused into the curriculum. This article focuses specifically on the third Millennium Development Goal (MDG) ? promoting gender equality and empowering women ? and the need to place this curriculum content at the centre and not on the periphery, to achieve its goal. Qualitative document research was used to explore the extent to which South Africa's curriculum-making has promoted gender equality and the empowerment of women during the promotion of the 2000–2015 MDGs. The findings of this research show potential intersections of poverty, age and worldviews with gender; a stronger focus on human rights values; and concrete strategies to combat unhealthy sexual behaviour. However, the curriculum continues to be saturated with negative perspectives and binary perceptions of gender. There is also a lack of attention to the world of work. The assumption underlying this seems to be that gender equality and the empowerment of women are unattainable or that they are unimportant. This article concludes by underlining the need for the curriculum to be a genuine agent of change, which necessitates a new gender discourse in curriculum-making.     

Camila,the earth,and the sun: Constructing an idea as shared intellectual property

Recent research has challenged traditional assumptions that scientific practice and knowledge are essentially individual accomplishments, highlighting instead the social nature of scientific practices, and the co‐construction of scientific knowledge. Similarly, new research paradigms for studying learning go beyond focusing on what is “in the head” of individual students, to study collective practices, distributed cognition, and emergent understandings of groups. These developments require new tools for assessing what it means to learn to “think like a scientist.” Toward this goal, the present case study analyzes the discourse of a 6th‐grade class discussing one student's explanation for seasonal variations in daylight hours. The analysis identifies discourse moves that map to disciplinary practices of the social construction of science knowledge, including (1) beginning an explanation by reviewing the community's shared assumptions; (2) referencing peers' work as warrants for an argument; and (3) building from isolated ideas, attributed to individuals, toward a coherent situation model, attributed to the community. The study then identifies discourse moves through which the proposed explanation was taken up and developed by the group, including (4) using multiple shared representations; (5) leveraging peers' language to clarify ideas; and (6) negotiating language and representations for new, shared explanations. Implications of this case for rethinking instruction, assessment, and classroom research are explored. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47:619–642, 2010     

Closing the Circle: Action research partnerships towards better learning and teaching in schools

This paper addresses the call for evidence-based practice by describing an initiative in school-university partnership that has led to the establishment of a community of teacher researchers whose investigations provide the evidence upon which they make decisions to improve their teaching. This is a new way of approaching the idea of evidence-based practice, where the evidence comes through personal testimony that 'rings true'. In this mode of research the processes of research are shared so that the outcomes of the research may be disseminated through 'transferability' rather than 'generalisability'. The first part describes the partnership, which involved the adaptation of existing structures in the school (staff development) and the university (accreditation) to create a new more democratic, more productive relationship. The second part of the paper describes the work of one teacher who applied the principles from her own learning within the teacher group to her management of her students' learning in such a way that the excitement of independent learning that had been a feature of the teacher group was transferred to the students. The third part of the paper addresses the politics of such research and makes a case for including teachers' and students' knowledge of their own practice as evidence to inform policy development.     

The literacy myth continues: adapting Graff’s thesis to contemporary policy discourses on adult ‘foundation skills’ in Australia

Harvey Graff in his 1979 study of literacy taught in common schools in mid-nineteenth century Canada, demonstrated that beliefs in the acquisition of literacy for upward mobility and economic success were a myth. Moreover, literacy instruction was promoted by educational reformers and manufacturers as a means of controlling the working class masses and instilling in them the traits, including thrift, order, and punctuality required for employment in factories. In this paper, we consider how this thesis can be adapted to describe contemporary national adult literacy policy discourse in Australia. The main drivers of Australia’s national policy are peak industry associations and skills agencies, and the human capital rationale for their promotion of literacy is derived largely from the powerful influence of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). We critique this discourse on literacy through reference to studies which conceptualise literacy as social practices, including one recent Australian study of three manufacturing companies. We reinforce the claim that the literacy myth in relation to economic development continues in contemporary adult literacy policy, and we explain how the social control function of adult literacy education continues in the interests of industry elites and the capitalist relations of production.