World Bank in Nepal’s education: three decades of neoliberal reform

This paper critically analyses key educational policy documents produced by the World Bank mainly from the mid-1980s to 2010 with regard to implementing major educational projects in Nepal. Using critical policy sociology as a methodological tool, the paper explores how a small Himalayan nation with per capita income of about US$730 (2014) plunged into neoliberal world order during the early 1980s. The paper argues that Bank’s educational policy recommendations are guided by some underlying assumptions of neoliberalism mainly marketisation, privatisation, and decentralisation. The paper concludes that neoliberal orientation in education has almost no potential in addressing Nepal’s development challenges.     

The contributions of Bernstein’s sociology to education development research

Global and national agendas to improve the ‘quality’ of Education For All have brought focus to pedagogic processes in developing country contexts. How can development research pay attention to the social and political significance of pedagogical projects and understand the micro-processes of classroom reform? This paper considers how Basil Bernstein’s sociological theories helped develop a nuanced account of pedagogic reform in a study of Indian primary education. I explore how the analysis encouraged by Bernstein’s concepts of recontextualisation and educational codes may contribute to current thinking on the role and significance of pedagogy in development research and evaluation activities. The paper also raises caution about the selectiveness and limits of efforts to capture, identify, measure or assess pedagogic processes and change. A Bernsteinian research approach is not immune from producing the kinds of reductionist accounts of pedagogy of which the analysis is wary.     

Developing a critical consciousness of race in place-based environmental education: Franco’s story

Environmental education (EE) has a history of support for critical place-based pedagogy as a means of learning through engagement in space, both cultural and biophysical. In this paper I tell the story of how Franco – a non-white, non-American undergraduate – engaged with local discourses in a watershed-focused EE program in the rural Midwestern US. I examine how the five tenets of critical race theory (CRT) can be used to interpret Franco’s experience, where he encountered multiple instances of racism and xenophobia. I argue that without a critical analysis of race in place-based EE programs, instructors may (a) privilege their own ways of knowing in local settings, (b) rely on ‘grit’ narratives as mechanisms for mediation of racism, and (c) send non-white students home having learned that they cannot effect meaningful change for sustainability. I conclude with recommendations for faculty in predominantly white institutions on how CRT might foster the development of critical consciousness of race in place-based EE programs.     

The role of parents in young people’s education—a critical review of the causal evidence

There is currently a considerable body of research suggesting that parental involvement is linked to young people’s attainment at school. It is also generally agreed that a number of factors such as parental background, attention, warmth and parenting style are associated with children’s later life outcomes. However, although widely assumed on the basis of these associations, the nature of this causal link has not yet been established. This paper summarises what would be needed to demonstrate that enhanced parental involvement produced better attainment and other outcomes, based on establishing an association, the correct sequence of events, sensitivity to intervention and an explanatory mechanism. It then reports on the findings of a systematic review of available and relevant studies, based on this approach. The search for evidence on the impact of attitudes, expectations and behaviour on attainment yielded 1,008 distinct reports. Of these, 77 were directly about the impact of parental involvement. These confirm that parental involvement and attainment are linked, and in the correct sequence for a causal model. There are several plausible mechanisms to explain why parental involvement might have an impact. And most crucially and unlike all other areas linking attitudes and behaviour to attainment, there is promising evidence that intervening to improve parental involvement could be effective.     

The Landless Workers Movement’s itinerant schools: occupying and transforming public education in Brazil

Abstract

This article explores how social movement co-governance of public education offers an alternative to neoliberal educational models. The Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) is one of the largest social movements in Latin America. We describe one of the many schools that the MST co-governs, the Itinerant School Paths of Knowledge (Caminhos do Saber), located in an occupied encampment in the state of Paraná. We analyze three of the most unique pedagogical innovations in the school: the teacher’s incorporation of ‘portions of reality’ into classroom teaching, the student work collectives, and the participatory student evaluation process. Although these pedagogies are seemingly mundane changes to everyday school practice, we argue that they represent a challenge to the neoliberal educational model being implemented globally. These movement pedagogies are likely to continue, despite recent conservative attacks, and they offer several concrete lessons for how to effectively contest neoliberal educational practices in other global contexts.     

Evaluation policy in education: the effects of international standards and performativity on Brazil’s postgraduate programmes of excellence

The educational reforms that began in the 1990s have changed Brazilian universities’ direction from welfare state institutions to market organisations. In postgraduate education, strategic alliances with international agencies, governments and corporations have become closer. At the same time, there has been a push for internationalisation of knowledge and more efficiency – with quality assurance and accountability systems. This study, based on the theory of ‘policy enactments’ proposed by Stephen Ball and collaborators, aims to analyse the interpretation and translation of Brazil’s postgraduate education programmes’ evaluation policy. The data are derived from interviews with co-ordinators of four Brazilian postgraduate programmes in education – all regarded by the Higher Education Co-ordination Agency, CAPES, as programmes of excellence and of international standard (during the assessment triennials of 2004, 2007 and 2010). The data analysis provided a critical understanding of the evaluation policy as policy enactment, and of the small margin for manoeuvre in decision-making in response to the policy and performativity’s effect on academic subjectivity and collective practice.     

Agent of global markets or agent of the poor? The World Bank’s education sector strategy paper

This article contrasts the official, largely silent, role of the World Bank as an agent of global markets with its professed role as agent of the poor. The failure to make explicit its role as global market advocate creates a policy environment that can be destructive of both global markets and the long-term survival of the world’s poor. The article examines the World Bank’s Education Sector Strategy in this light. The article begins by outlining the institutional, policy and education frameworks that emerge from the conflicts of the World Bank’s dual role in markets and poverty. It then shows that the implementation and outcome analyses in The Strategy grow out of these frameworks and are, therefore, limited in scope and effectiveness. An approach that explicitly acknowledges the market roles of the World Bank would have led to a more effective policy document.     

‘It’s a bit of a generalisation,but …’: participant perspectives on intercultural group assessment in higher education

This paper reports on domestic and international students’ perceptions of the influence of group diversity on communication, learning, task performance and assessment grades. The study’s methodology involved quantitative and qualitative analysis of surveys (N?=?312), focus group interviews of students (n?=?26) and individual staff interviews (N?=?7). More domestic (79%) than international (29%) students stated that they preferred working with students from a similar background. While a proportion of the sample of domestic students stated that intercultural group work raised their awareness of interaction styles in other cultures, others noted that the group experience was negatively affected by issues related to language proficiency and awareness of academic requirements. Qualitative analysis reveals that ‘othering’, a process by which members of an in group (Us) distance themselves from an outgroup (Them), was often used as a basis for these students avoiding intercultural group assessment. Finally, there was a clear pattern overall of higher achieving international and domestic students perceiving that their grades for group assignments were below what they would normally receive for individual assignments, and lower achieving students perceiving that their grades were higher for group assignments.     

Ages and ages: the multiplication of children’s ‘ages’ in early twentieth-century child psychology

This paper explores the trend, between 1905 and the late 1920s in UK and US child psychology, of ‘discovering’, labelling and calculating different ‘ages’ in children. Those new ‘ages’ – from mental to emotional, social, anatomical ages, and more – were understood as either replacing, or meaningfully related to, chronological age. The most famous, mental age, ‘invented’ by Alfred Binet in the first decade of the century, was instrumental in early intelligence testing. Anatomical age triggered great interest until the 1930s, with many psychologists suggesting that physical development provided a more reliable inkling of which grade children should be in than chronological age. Those ages were calculated with great precision, and educational recommendations began to be made on the basis of these. This article maps this psychological and educational trend, and suggests that it cultivated a vision of children as developmentally erratic, worthy of intense scientific attention, and enticingly puzzling for researchers.     

The little emperor: Chinese parents’ assessment of their own,their partner’s and their only child’s intelligence

This study set out to examine whether Chinese parents, more than people from other nations, over-estimate the intelligence of their son (little emperor) compared to their daughter. In this study, 155 pairs of married couples from mainland China estimated their own, their partner’s and their only child’s overall intelligence and 13 “multiple intelligences.” They also completed a short measure of the Big Five personality traits. Replicating previous studies, fathers rated themselves higher than mothers for almost all types of intelligence. Results revealed, however, no parental sex differences in the estimates of children’s multiple intelligences. Both parents attributed higher overall, verbal, and musical intelligence, but lower existential intelligence to their child than to themselves. Multiple regressions indicated that estimates of verbal, logical–mathematical, spatial and intrapersonal intelligence were the best predictors of estimates of overall intelligence. Participants’ openness and neuroticism were significant predictors of self-rated intelligence. The results were interpreted in relation to specific Chinese social and cultural influences, though there seemed to be no “little emperor” effect.     

Children’s acquisition of early literacy skills: examining family contributions

A study of 143 families and their preschool-age children was undertaken to examine the relationship between the family environment and children’s language and literacy skills. This research was guided by three models hypothesized by Snow, Barnes, Chandler, Goodman, and Hemphill (1991) to explain the family’s contribution to children’s acquisition of language and literacy. The three theoretical models examined in this study were: Family as Educator, Resilient Family, and Parent–Child Care Partnership. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling were used to estimate latent constructs and structural models, respectively. Results showed that only the Family as Educator model was significantly related to child language and literacy outcomes (i.e., book-related knowledge, receptive language skills, and expressive language skills). Implications for future researchers and educational practice are discussed.     

Parental contribution to child’s early language and interest in books

The relationships between parents’ age, education, literacy activities and shared reading with the child and children’s language skills and early interest in books were examined in a longitudinal study of 108 children. Parents reported on their children’s lexical and grammatical development by using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (the CDIs) at the ages of 14 and 24 months. The Bayley Scales of Infant Development were administered to the children in a laboratory setting at 24 months. Information on parental background variables was obtained through a questionnaire before the children’s birth. Book reading habits were inquired when the children were 2 years of age. Mothers’ education, literacy activities and shared reading with the child were shown to be more strongly associated with the 2-year-olds’ lexical and grammatical skills than were those of father. A corresponding association to parental background variables emerged regardless of whether parental report data or scores on the structured test were employed as the child language measure. Shared reading with the father was found to be linked to children’s early interest in books. The children who exhibited greater interest in books were likely to be read to by mothers and fathers more frequently than other children. These children also had larger vocabularies than did children with low interest in books. The role of endogenous and exogenous variables in explaining children’s language skills and early book reading interest are discussed.     

The impact of a statewide trauma-informed child welfare initiative on children’s permanency and maltreatment outcomes

This article presents findings of a state-wide trauma informed child-welfare initiative with the goal of improving well-being, permanency and maltreatment outcomes for traumatized children. The Massachuetts Child Trauma Project (MCTP), funded by the Administration of Children and Families, Children’s Bureau was a multi-year project implementing trauma-informed care into child welfare service delivery. The project’s implementation design included training and consultation for mental health providers in three evidence-based treatments and training of the child-welfare workforce in trauma-informed case work practice. The learning was integrated between child-welfare and mental health with Trauma Informed Leadership Teams which included leaders from both systems and the greater community. These teams developed incremental steps toward trauma-informed system improvement. This study evaluated whether MCTP was associated with reductions in child abuse and neglect, improvements in placement stability, and higher rates of permanency during the first year of implementation. Children in the intervention group had fewer total substantiated reports of maltreatment, including less physical abuse and neglect than the comparison group by the end of the intervention year. However, children in the intervention group had more maltreatment reports (substantiated or not) and total out-of-home placements than did their counterparts in the comparison group. Assignment to MCTP, however, was not associated with an increase in kinship care or adoption. Overall, the results are promising in reinforcing the importance of mobilizing communities toward improvements in child-welfare service delivery.     

Constructively aligning technologies with learning and assessment in a distance education master’s programme

This paper reports on an action research study investigating the use of online learning activities or “e-tivities” to enhance the learning and assessment experience of students on a distance master’s programme. The study suggests that to be successfully integrated in a programme, such activities need to be carefully aligned with learning outcomes and assessment practices, and their value needs to be clear both to students and staff. The paper describes how e-tivities were designed, adopting a constructive alignment approach, to introduce more flexible and innovative approaches to learning and assessment. The e-tivities used a range of technologies (e.g., voice-based discussion boards, podcasts, wikis and blogs) to carry out group-based reflective activities. The study provides some evidence that such e-tivities, particularly voice-based activities, can help provide earlier, more detailed formative assessment, stimulate a more collaborative approach to learning and motivate students to engage more broadly with course content.     

Mobile devices in early childhood education: teachers’ views on benefits and barriers

Mobile devices and, in particular, tablets have become increasingly popular in young children’s lives; however, there is limited empirical evidence regarding early childhood teachers’ perceptions on mobile technology-learning in early years. This study investigated teachers’ views on mobile devices’ usage in early childhood education classrooms, focusing on their perceived benefits, barriers and their concerns. A questionnaire with open ended questions was completed by 30 early childhood education teachers, in Greece. The primary perceived benefits regarded the facilitation of the educational process, the interactive learning environment and the support of children’s learning and development. Major perceived barriers were related to the lack of (or limited) resources/equipment, the limited teacher training opportunities and lack of funding, while key concerns regarded the constraint of hands-on experiences, children’s concentration, and cyber safety issues. Implications for pre-service and in-service teacher training, educational policy and practice, as well as links between home and school are discussed.

     

The role of education in Sudan’s civil war

This article addresses the role that education plays in conflict, with specific reference to the civil war in Sudan. It analyses the ideological basis of the Sudanese government (GoS) during the civil war, with special reference to the role of religion and ethnicity. It shows how the primary education system was based on the Islamist ideology of the GoS, with limited consideration of the country’s various cultural and religious groups. It then discusses the political discourse of the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) and the secular curriculum that SPLM’s Secretariat of Education produced during the war. It identifies differences between the Islamist and the secular educational discourses as one reason why many young people in the South took up arms against the Islamist government. With South Sudan now emerging as an independent nation, a dramatic improvement in the education sector is needed both to heal conflicts in South Sudan and to provide hope for the future to people in the South.