Decolonization,educational language policy and nation building in plural societies: The development of Chinese education in Malaysia, 1950–1970

The two decades from 1950 to 1970 were a crucial period of educational reorganization in Malaysia that stemmed from the decolonization after the Second World War. This educational reorganization sought to address the perennial issue of nation building via educational language policy. The development of Chinese education was under severe threat as the British colonial government opted for a national school system that used English and Malay as the media of instruction in place of the segregated vernacular school system that had existed during the colonial period. Much to the relief of the Chinese, the national school system failed to materialize due to the lack of financial resources to reorganize the entire educational system. But the Chinese were unable to maintain the Chinese school system within the ambit of the national educational system advocated by the postcolonial Alliance government. The Alliance government had only allowed the Chinese to undergo Chinese education at the primary level. At the secondary level, it opted for a monolingual system of education based on Malay as the main medium of instruction in order to foster national integration through a common language. The Chinese had to switch to this medium of instruction if they wanted to remain in mainstream education. Such a system of transitional bilingual education was aimed at incorporating the Chinese into the nation building process.     

“It's not a simple thing,co-publishing”: Challenges of co-authorship between supervisors and students in South African higher educational contexts

Abstract

Knowledge production in South Africa remains framed by the legacies of apartheid. Developing emerging authors and local knowledges through co-authorship between supervisors and post graduate students is an important strategy aimed at challenging these legacies. This paper draws on in-depth interviews with students and supervisors to explore their experiences of co-authorship. Findings indicate that while insisting that co-authoring has value, several students also note their discomfort with elements of the process. While insisting students’ work be disseminated, and expressing willingness to engage in the mentoring that this requires, supervisors also articulate discomfort with processes offering opportunities for personal career development. Given increasing emphasis on co-authorship we suggest the power inequalities expressed through the supervisor/student relationship be made more transparent. Knowledge production through co-authorship is best served by collaborations between authors who are more equally empowered and who are more critically aware of the challenges such collaborations are likely to present.     

The radical transformations and deep continuities of a decade: Turkish educational policy, 1938–1950

Turkey witnessed many educational and cultural policy innovations between 1938 and 1950. Realising strictly secular practices against religion and traditional culture pre-1946, political elites of the time aimed to construct a humanistic culture unique to Turkey. Educational policies were considered the most efficient tools in reaching this ideal. Despite the adverse economic conditions of the time, western cultural institutions were adopted without reservation for modernisation. It was throughout the same time period that a number of other innovative projects such as the village institutes, western translations, new journals, Turkish encyclopaedism, and physical education for the entire public were undertaken. However, as these developments were devoid of a solid historical and sociological foundation, they were forced to change under the new world order post-1945. Despite the changing perspectives on religion, history and cultural life, the policies of the ?smet ?nönü era succeeded in carrying the heritage of the Kemalist era to our day. The true dynamics behind this success are the educational practices of the 1940s and their formal and hidden curricula and rituals.     

The British educational policy for the indigenous community in Malaya 1870–1957: Dualistic structure,colonial interests and Malay radical nationalism

This paper examines the educational policy implemented by the British for the Malays, the indigenous community of Malaya. Underpinned by the policy of divide and rule, the British implemented a dualistic system of education for the indigenous Malays: one for the Malay peasantry and another for the Malay nobility. The two systems of education served different purposes and needs of the British. The Malay peasantry was provided with a rural-based Malay education which only had limited value in terms of educational mobility. This rural-based education was to serve as a means of social control for the British by entrapping the Malays in the semi-subsistence economy. On the other hand, the British provided the Malay nobility with an elitist English education that was intended to co-opt the ruling Malay traditional elites into their fold. But contrary to the intention of the British, the Malay-educated intelligentsia, in particular those from the Sultan Idris Training College became radical nationalists who adopted an anti-British stand. Such an unintended development was the result of the role played by O.T. Dussek (the college principal), the infusion of nationalistic sentiment from neighboring Indonesia and the threat posed by the Chinese immigrants. However, the radical stand of the Malay-educated intelligentsia was neutralized by the Malay traditional elites who adopted a pro-British stand. It was the Malay traditional elites who eventually led the Malays toward the independence of Malaya.     

Inequalities in educational opportunities in France: educational expansion,democratization or shifting barriers?

This paper is concerned with inequalities in educational opportunities in France and presents data collected from cohorts born between 1919 and 1973, a period characterized by educational expansion. Data from large-scale representative French surveys were compiled in such a way as to make accurate historical and international comparisons possible. The paper argues that there has been a shift in social inequalities, from entry into collège (lower secondary school) to entry into lycée (upper secondary school leading to the baccalauréat). Finally, policy implications have been drawn from international comparisons of data on the reduction of social inequality.     

Curriculum change and contextual realities in South African education: cui bono?

All planned change efforts imply a commitment to a certain view of reality, and acceptance of certain modes of realizing ends. Those assumptions constitute the conscious or unconscious bases for selecting specific courses of action and thus precede all tactical decisions. To the extent that change agents cannot identify those basic assumptions and their implications, they cannot explore the full range of effective strategies for change. (Crowfoot and Chesler 1974)     

Teacher unions’ participation in policy making: a South African case study

This article contends that teacher unions’ participation in policy making during South Africa’s political transition was characterised by assertion of ideological identity (unionism and professionalism) and the cultivation of policy networks and alliances. It is argued that, historically, while teacher unions were divided along political and ideological lines, they have demonstrated flexibility in contesting for influence in the policy arena. In this regard, teacher unions’ agency plays an important part and is reflected in changes in organisational strategies to ensure their independence or prevent marginalisation. The article highlights the threat of state co-optation for teacher unions and suggests that a framework for managing teacher union–state relations based on ‘professional unionism’ could potentially contribute to more effective education service provision. Comparisons with teacher unions’ experiences elsewhere in the world are also made, while recognising the specificity of the South African situation.     

Challenging educational injustice: ‘Grassroots’ privatisation in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa

The phenomenon of low-cost private schools ‘mushrooming’ in poor areas of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and elsewhere, is now well-documented. Findings from research by the author’s teams and others show that these schools are serving a majority (urban and peri-urban) or significant minority (rural) of the poor, including significant proportions of the poorest of the poor. Concerns are raised in the literature about their implications for social justice. In The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen asks us to rethink ideas about justice; instead of the quest for a Rawlsian ‘transcendental institutionalism’, he argues for a comparative approach, grounded in the practicalities of human behaviour. Linking Sen’s ideas on justice with the grassroots privatisation leads to the tentative conclusion that those concerned with promoting social justice could agree to help improve access to, and quality in, the low-cost private school sector, rather than focus on the public education sector. Paradoxically, this could be true even for those whose ideal is an egalitarian public education system.     

Much Ado: ‘manpower shortages’ and educational policy reform in South Africa

This paper reviews the historical context behind the ‘manpower shortages’ argument underpinning proposed educational reform in South Africa circa 1980. It seeks to explain how such an argument became a dominant theme and ideological rationale for reform, by examining its passage through liberal reformist discourse into official state‐appointed commission reports. The paper then considers why the ‘manpower shortages’ argument was taken up at that particular time, and argues that it was part of an overall “Total Strategy’ for commodifying black labour through education in the face of the manifest failure of Bantu Education to achieve this end. The paper concludes by discussing briefly the failure of this strategy, and the disappearance of the ‘manpower shortages’ theme from arguments for educational reform.     

Agentive role of government in African education: North Nyanza, 1890–1920

This paper examines the agentive role of the colonial administration in accessing formal education for Africans in North Nyanza, Kenya from 1890 to 1920. It demonstrates the complexities of the colonial experience in which the ultimate application of policy and practice was shaped by the overriding principle of protection of the economic and political interests of the immigrant settler community. Africans lacked institutional agency in government functioning in the racialised society in this period. The agentive role of the colonial administration in improving conditions for African populations faltered from its earliest conception. The colonial project ultimately fell short of its goal, as the governmental commitment to improving the education for African populations was compromised by the agenda to advance the commercial interest of the colonial empire and the dominant influence of the European settler class.     

Race,Education, and Joblessness in the Inner City, 1970–1990

In When Work Disappears, William Julius Wilson argues that the difficulties black inner-city residents face in finding work has more to do with their failure to acquire the kinds of education, skills, and work habits required by changes in the urban labor market than with racial discrimination. In this essay, I argue that this notion tends both to obscure the substantial gains African-Americans have made in education and to discount the degree to which race continues to mediate the relationship between educational achievement and labor market outcomes. Although there is no question that the economic position of those with little education has deteriorated badly over the last two decades, absent policies that address the persistent racial disparities in employment, reforming education by itself will not substantially improve African-American employment opportunities or reduce black joblessness in the inner city.     

Managing Information and Communication Technology in South African Classrooms: Pre-Service Teachers’ Experiences

This article reports on a study that explored the management of information and communication technology (ICT) in teaching and learning. In particular it focuses on the use of ICT in the pre-service teacher’s classroom in the South African context. The study was interventionist in that pre-service teachers were trained how to use ICT in teaching and learning, and were then followed into the teaching practice classroom where they were observed as to how they used the technology and managed it. Data for the project was also collected through semi-structured interviews with the pre-service teachers and through the researchers’ reflection. The results showed that the pre-service teachers, who in this case were all digital natives, are willing to use ICT for teaching, but lack the skills to manage ICT in the classroom. The results further showed that the motivation to use and integrate ICT in the classroom may not be sufficient to ensure the effective integration thereof, that is, the teachers still require management. Further, the article recommends the importance of higher education institution lecturers as role models in the use and management of ICT.     

‘Luring the academic soul’: promoting academic engagement in South African universities

There is widespread pressure that universities should become more responsive and accountable to multiple demands in their local, national and global contexts. Academics grapple to identify appropriate organisational responses to the pressures of state steering and incentive programmes. The empirical focus of the paper is a survey of academics' community engagement activities, mapping their interaction with external partners at five South African universities. The paper addresses a basic question: Who are the academics that engage, and what are their main academic influences? We argue that engagement is more likely to ‘lure the academic soul’ when it is driven by substantive growth in a disciplinary field and enhances reputations. The analysis seeks to identify how disciplinary, institutional and positional attributes are correlated with engaged activities. ‘Luring the academic soul’ through an understanding of the influences on academics' propensity to engage can facilitate more effectively targeted incentives and policies.     

Students’ Perceptions of Code-Switching in Natural Sciences Classrooms: A South African Perspective

Although South Africa is a multilingual country with 11 official languages, English dominates as the language of teaching and instruction in almost all schools. In addition to this, the Natural Sciences teachers at the school of study were cautioned not to use code-switching because the school policy states that the medium of instruction should be exclusively English. Recently, students at this school complained about teachers who had been code-switching between one or more indigenous languages and English. The objectives of this investigation, therefore, were to explore the perceptions of Grade 8 students regarding code-switching in Natural Sciences classrooms, their perceptions of the effect of code-switching on their academic achievement and also how the use of this teaching strategy influenced their respect for their teacher. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire and the findings revealed that students believed that the use of code-switching confused many students, resulting in underachievement in Natural Sciences and that they respected teachers more when they taught in English only.     

Learning through South–South development: Cuban-African partnerships in sport and physical education

Since the 1990s, Cuba has offered scholarships to students from low-resource countries to attend the Escuela Internacional de Educación Física y Deporte (EIEFD) for a six-year degree in sport, physical education, and coaching. Drawing on the experiences of EIEFD graduates from four Southern African countries (Zambia, South Africa, Mozambique, and Lesotho) the authors discuss the meanings that this South–South cooperation through education holds for international students and for the self-sufficiency of sport and physical-education systems within partner countries. The authors also show that upon returning home, many EIEFD graduates are left to negotiate insular job markets and inconsistent domestic commitments to public sport and physical education. The implications for South–South development through international education, and the place of sport and physical education therein, are discussed.     

Targeting educational disadvantage by area: continuity and change in urban areas in England, 1968–2014

Focusing on data and policies from England, trends in educational disadvantage by area are traced from the late 1960s when the first pilot projects were established in the UK, to the present. The origins of these developments and the subsequent rises and falls of such area-based policies in England are reviewed. Specially collected data for the pilot areas from the 1960s and national data for England from 2000 are used to draw out some striking patterns of changes over the period. Though many of the areas remain highly disadvantaged, educational measures at age 16 and at entry to higher education (HE) indicate some important changes. Thus the settled, white working-class pilot area in the 1960s with just below average results had fallen back very substantially by 2013, particularly in entry to HE. By contrast the newly settled Asian immigrant area in Birmingham where educational performance was exceptionally poor in the 1960s had moved above average despite remaining highly disadvantaged. Analysis of the national results since 2000 using local area data showed that these trends were widespread across England. Disadvantaged ‘multicultural urban areas’ were doing markedly better than the disadvantaged white working-class urban areas, where in many cases traditional industries had closed. This was especially marked at entry to HE where multicultural areas had rates close to the national average of 40% while white working-class urban areas had rates of entry to HE of between 10% and 15% of the age group and this gap has widened rapidly in recent years. These trends are likely to be the source of major resentment, with one group finding itself increasingly excluded from higher level employment opportunities, and the other failing to find opportunities that match their expectations once they leave education.     

South–South cooperation in education and development: The ¡Yo,Sí Puedo! literacy method

This article addresses two tendencies within the international education and South–South cooperation literatures: the omission of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Peoples’ Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP) from discussions of South–South cooperation generally, and of the ALBA-TCP promoted ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! literacy method in particular. Central features of ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! are discussed, while the case of ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! in Nicaragua illustrates the main argument developed: ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! should not be regarded as ‘best practice transfer’ but as integral to South–South cooperation as Third World emancipation and transformation towards a socially just and democratic world order.     

Crossing borders in educational innovation: Framing foreign examples in discussing comprehensive education in the Netherlands, 1969–1979

In the Netherlands, crossing borders to study comprehensive schools was an important strategy in the 1970s, a decisive period for the start and the end of the innovation. According to policy-borrowing theory, actors that engage in debating educational issues are framing foreign examples of comprehensive schooling to convince their audiences. Framing therefore became the leading concept behind our study of the intellectual debate, examined through the leading Dutch scientific journal Pedagogische Studiën (Educational Studies), and the public debate, examined through recordings of television programmes. Assuming that those debates were influential in the political middle school process, our analyses show that foreign examples indeed functioned as a framing device in the form of legitimisation, glorification, sensationalisation and caution. However, the impact of framing differed. In the phase of cross-national attraction, the reform-minded perspective in the scholarly debate had a stimulating effect on the development of the plans, but little influence on the governmental decision-making process. This contrasts with the frames that were brought forward by television programmes. Although the negative frames, such as “a factory-made sausage”, were rejected by the programmes, such frames could linger in people’s minds as a means to interpret ideas about middle schools. At the end of the 1970s, the middle school was reduced to a minor feature of educational policy and, eventually, the middle school experiments were brought to a close. As a result, the foreign solution of introducing comprehensive education was never transferred to the Netherlands.     

Critical Response to “The Leadership of Transition: Correction,Conciliation and Change in South African Education”

Today’s media is filled with stories of man’s inhumanity toward man. Education journals are replete with assessments of educators as failing to meet the demands of the modern world. Jansen offers stories of hope to counterbalance the bombardment of negative stories. His research “explores the character of leadership in transition societies”. He draws portraits of three educators, in leadership roles, whose lives provide a moment for us to catch our breath and remember that leaders have choices about how they will live out their roles in ways that are grounded in social justice

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