The concept of public goods,the state,and higher education finance: a view from the BRICs

Because higher education serves both public and private interests, the way it is conceived and financed is contested politically, appearing in different forms in different societies. What is public and private in education is a political–social construct, subject to various political forces, primarily interpreted through the prism of the state. Mediated through the state, this construct can change over time as the economic and social context of higher education changes. In this paper, we analyze through the state’s financing of higher education how it changes as a public/private good and the forces that impinge on states to influence such changes. To illustrate our arguments, we discuss trends in higher education financing in the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India, and China. We show that in addition to increased privatization of higher education financing, BRIC states are increasingly differentiating the financing of elite and non-elite institutions.     

Ethnic and Racial Disparities in Education: Psychology's Role in Understanding and Reducing Disparities

We review the scope and sources of ethnic and racial disparities in education with a focus on the the implications of psychological theory and research for understanding and redressing these disparities. We identify 3 sources of ethnic and racial disparities including (a) social class differences, (b) differential treatment based on ethnic and racial status, and (c) differential responses to educational practices from students across ethnic and racial status. For social class differences, we challenge the notion that ethnic and racial disparities only reflect social class differences and point out that social class disadvantage maintains ethnic and racial disparities. Next we describe the other 2 sources of educational disparities—differential treatment and responses—and provide examples of educational practices with these two sources that contribute to educational disparities. Finally, we identify some strategies, interventions, and practices based in psychological principles and theory that can be used to address educational disparities.     

Religious Identity and Cultural Refashioning: Educational Constraints for Migrant Muslim Hui University Students in China

This study discusses the educational constraints facing Muslim Hui students and the measures that should be pondered by the Chinese government to address these constraints. Three key research questions are addressed: (1) How does the mainstream Han, Confucian, or the state ideology interact with Hui students’ culture? (2) In what ways do ethnic boundaries and educational uniformity affect the engagement of ethnic minorities in education as well as the larger society? (3) What are the major educational constraints faced by Hui migrant students of Muslim background? Through the mixed-methods research design, I find that the yearning of Muslim Hui Chinese students to achieve educational success and social mobility is limited by social, cultural, and educational factors that regard them as the “other”; they still face issues of marginalization—educationally, socially, and culturally—that delay them from achieving higher educational success.     

Do I belong in my math class? The importance of perceived racial/ethnic context and math course sequence

As careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) continue to grow, so has attention to Algebra 1 enrollment timing that serves as a critical predictor of STEM success. The present study adds to the literature by examining if Algebra 1 enrollment timing from 8th to 9th grade is related to sense of belonging in math, and whether this association changes as a function of the students’ perceived school and math race/ethnic context. To capture the dynamic nature of these contexts, we examined racial/ethnic incongruence, or the difference in the perceived number of same-race/ethnic peers in math class and the school of Black, White, Latino, and Asian students. Mixed effects linear modeling analyses were conducted on a sample of 2,938 participants (46% males; 54% females) who attended 26 racially/ethnically diverse middle schools and who transitioned to 142 public high schools in California. The results showed that enrolling and successfully passing 8th Algebra was protective for sense of belonging but this association depended on students’ race/ethnicity and the racial/ethnic incongruence between the math class and school context. Findings have important implications for math education, teaching, and policy.     

Ethnicity,Religion, and Academic Preparedness: A Comparative Analysis of Chinese Supplementary Secular Schools and Nonsecular Church-Affiliated Schools

Little academic attention has been given to the supplementary education experience of immigrant students in the Canadian research literature, especially in a non-English speaking context such as Quebec. Yet these schools are important for understanding the influence of ethnicity as well as religion on the academic preparedness and social integration of immigrant/minority students in the public school system. From a comparative perspective, this study explores the role that secular Chinese language schools and nonsecular, church-affiliated schools play in responding to the educational needs of Chinese youth in the public schools. Data were collected through ethnographical observation in the two school contexts, as well as through in-depth interviews with Chinese immigrant students, their parents, school personnel, and church ministers. Through a Foucauldian analysis of discourse, the author found that attendance at Chinese supplementary schools benefitted these students’ academic preparedness in a variety of ways, such as the reinforcement and development of ethnic identity. In secular Chinese language schools, ethnicity seems to function through the interaction of cultural attributes and social ethnic structures, whereas in church-affiliated, nonsecular schools, the influence of ethnicity seems to shift to the impact of Christian discipleship. Through this process, church schools actually act as socializing agents that facilitate positive interpersonal relationships among peers and families.     

Pedagogies of being with: Witnessing,testimonio, and critical love in everyday social movement

This conceptual article explores education and the relational in everyday social movement. I highlight a single, local community event—a Speak Out—and travel with scholarship on public pedagogy, witnessing, and Latina feminist theories of coalition to articulate pedagogies of ‘being with’ in community activism for racial justice. My interpretive vignettes of the Speak Out are part of a larger ethnographic study focusing on a segment of a rural/small city community that moved with intention to teach and learn racial justice. While larger concrete goals were crucial and at the center of the community’s curriculum for justice, the various sites and forms of race-conscious pedagogy in public life—community forums, vigils, celebrations, mural projects—were also enactments of a profound commitment to the relational, to finding common ground in difficult solidarities. With a focus on the testimonios of three women of Color participants in the Speak Out, I show how witnessing and testimonio were at the center of pedagogies of ‘being with.’ In this work of education, the women (1) redefined community, accountability, and ally work, (2) exposed the fissures in social justice organizing across difference, describing commitment to social action with rather than for those most affected by institutional violence, and (3) affirmed the knowledge, histories, and self-determination of people of Color while challenging self-defeating stereotypes. Critical love sustained an ethics of openness to difference and facilitated the intentional work of creating race-conscious learning communities.     

Fostering Community Life and Human Civility in Academic Departments Through Covenant Practice

Creating desirable academic departments for individuals’ well-being and quality scholarship is an important effort as well as a novel idea. The focus of this reflective article is twofold: (a) We present a social capital theory of social justice covenants as a product and process of community building, and (b) we share the multiple lived experiences of three scholars within the context of our department's covenant ideology and practice. We explore how faculty can promote community and civility by not only developing but also enacting an internally generated covenant while operating within a larger institutional context that produces tension. As related to our purposes, we examined the relevant literature on social capital, capacity building, workplace environments, and organizational covenants to frame our discussion of community-driven action in education. We include an extended application of a covenant that guides our departmental faculty's social outlook, interpersonal behavior, scholarly work, and communal activism. Although our focus is on change-oriented, grassroots activity within higher education, the public schooling context is considered.     

Educational decentralization, public spending, and social justice in Nigeria

This study situates the process of educational decentralization in the narrower context of social justice. Its main object, however, is to analyze the implications of decentralization for strategies of equity and social justice in Nigeria. It starts from the premise that the early optimism that supported decentralization as an efficient and effective educational reform tool has been disappointed. The author maintains that decentralization — on its own — cannot improve education service delivery, the capacities of subordinate governments, or the integration of social policy in broader development goals. If the desired goals are to be met, public spending must be increased, greater tax revenues must be secured, and macro-economic stabilization must be achieved without re-instituting the welfare state.     

Assessment discourse and constructions of social reality in infant classrooms

The 1968 structural reform of the education system in Israel was part both of a global process of democratization of education launched after the Second World War and of a larger modernization project in which the social sciences played a crucial role. This dynamic was an expression of a conjunction of interests, in which political forces used research on educational matters in order to advance their socio‐political agendas, while researchers used the state's interest in their work and in the ‘social problems’ they elaborated in order to receive public funding and to obtain state recognition of their scientific contribution. This article traces the reformist discourse structuration—the process of institutionalization of the different social science discourses in state institutions, such as universities and national institutes—in order to disclose the social sciences/politics linkage in Israel. It also puts forward the argument that in order to understand discourse structuration at a national level, it is essential to consider an additional factor: global education networks. Global networks adopted a discourse inspired by the American school model that tended to be adopted by scholars in different countries. The article focuses on the processes in Israel whereby knowledge producers elaborated the ‘inequality of opportunity’ and ‘ethnic gap’ social problems, and proffered the 1968 structural reform as the solution.     

Making Sense of Performance Management: official rhetoric and teachers’ reality

Performance management is one aspect of major reforms which have transformed the public sector workforce in Australia and other Western countries since the 1980s. Embedded in the discourse of managerialism, performance management represents an attempt by the state to make workers—in this case teachers—more efficient, more effective and more accountable. In this paper we want to explore and compare a number of perspectives on performance management. Firstly, we consider several evaluation studies which have been undertaken in various contexts over recent years. These studies tend to take for granted the assumptions behind performance management and to judge its effectiveness within the framework of managerial thinking itself. Secondly, we review the critical literature which locates performance management in a broader social and political context and considers the interests it might serve. Finally, we present the perspectives of a focus group of teachers who are currently ‘being performance managed’ and reflect on the relationship between their stories, the official rhetoric of their education system and the views expressed in the literature.     

Justice through higher education: Revisiting White Paper 3 of 1997

Interrogating the White Paper 3 of 1997 which upholds academic freedom, institutional autonomy and public accountability, I make the case for justice through higher education using public accountability. I argue that the higher education system in South Africa is capable of fulfilling such a role in the context of extreme injustices but not without a critical engagement of the extent and causes of these injustices and an understanding of their implications for academic curricula, practices and deeply embedded conceptions of knowledge. A redefinition of higher education institutions' public accountability in terms of responsibility to their ‘institutional locale’ or community (the populations whose needs they should be meeting) can be an effective ‘proactive tool’ with which higher education can redress social injustices. This requires an interrogation of the social, political and economic conditions of possibility that either inhibit or aid educational desire and attainment. An investigation of this nature entails a rigorous reappraisal of all three of the key principles within which higher education systems operate—academic freedom, institutional autonomy and public accountability—if they are to guard against the continued perpetuation of epistemic and social injustices.     

Neoliberal narratives and the logic of abstinence only education: why are we still having this conversation?

Given the lack of citizen or medical support for abstinence-only education, we ask how abstinence-education maintains such a stronghold in America and other Western democracies’ public policy and consciousness. Our response has three parts. In the first, we outline the disproportionately negative health outcomes of sex education experienced by female, impoverished, ethnic and racial minorities, and LGBT youth. Next we address prominent narratives in sex education. We use the work of Pierre Bourdieu as a frame to understand neoliberal narratives and the accrual of cultural capital. Next we address two specific narratives in sex education, both of which align with broad tenets of neoliberal thought: the first of these is a focus on individual responsibility at the expense of understanding broader social structures. The second questions the role of education in a democratic nation that privileges the private over the overall health of the citizenry. In closing, we highlight comprehensive alternatives to sex education that can better prepare healthy individuals and democracy.     

Closing the Racial/Ethnic Gap Between Students of Color and Their Teachers: An Elusive Goal

This article examines minority teacher recruitment policies and programs of the past two decades and explores their influence on the racial/ethnic makeup of the teaching force in elementary and secondary public schools. The results show that while important progress has been made toward increasing the overall number and proportion of minority teachers in the public schools, those gains have been eclipsed by the rapid growth of the minority student population. As a result, the racial/ethnic gap between students of color and their teachers has actually increased over the years. The authors provide an overview of current minority teacher recruitment state policies and introduce the Teacher-Student Parity Index, a new metric for comparing the proportions of teachers and students from different racial/ethnic groups to gain a more textured understanding of the demographic reality of today's schools than is presently found in the literature. The authors conclude with recommendations for policy and research.     

Ethnic Minority Experience in Higher Education

It appears that institutions of higher education in Britain are far behind the schools and colleges of further education in assessing the experience and success of ethnic minorities, and in developing and monitoring equal opportunity policies. The article starts with a review' of currently available evidence from the literature on the participation rate of various ethnic groups in higher education. This is followed by a brief discussion of some key factors influencing their entry into higher education institutions. The information available to date indicates an uneven distribution of ethnic minorities between these institutions and the subjects they offer. The article contains the preliminary findings, from a research project, on the performance of students f om ethnic minority groups at Bradford & Ilkley Community College and four other institutions of higher education in the North of England. There is a brief discussion of some important issues, including racial discrimination and racial harassment, acting as barriers to the success of ethnic minorities in higher education. It is suggested that further research in this area is urgently needed to ensure that students from ethnic minority communities benefit equally from the higher education provision in Britain.     

Cultural stereotypes and professional self-socialisation in the transition from education to work

A key insight from studies of gender segregation is that the allocation of different groups to different positions in the labour market is strongly related to ascribed status. Shared gendered cultural beliefs generally portray men as more competent and of a higher status than women, and position some workers as more suited than others to perform different types of work and tasks. Yet, although much work has been done on status and gender segregation, this research tends to overlook the intersections of gender, race, and ethnicity. This study contributes to the literature by examining how skills and competence are valued in traditionally gender- segregated professions that have seen an increased influx of immigrants and ethnic minorities. Drawing on 66 qualitative interviews with Norwegian students, the study analyses, first, how gender, racial, and ethnic stereotyping of tasks and competencies affect the students’ aspirations in transition from education to work, and second, how the intersection between race, ethnicity, and gender plays out quite differently in different professions. Theoretically, I develop the concept of ‘professional self-socialisation’, which points to the process whereby individuals adapt and redefine their aspirations to the gendered, ethnic, and racial hierarchy of suitability within their profession.     

Educational leadership: an Islamic perspective

Ethnocentric concepts, theories and practices in education, predominantly embedded in western philosophy and values, tend to ignore the growing multicultural nature of educational institutions. This article draws attention to the knowledge gap in mainstream literature regarding diverse perspectives of educational leadership—an issue which is foreseen as gaining higher significance with the fast‐changing societal structures in Britain. Having worked as a Muslim woman educational leader/manager in higher education in an Islamic state for more than two decades, and now working at a British university, positioned as a non‐White woman Muslim, the author endorses the need to move beyond ethnocentrisms and to work towards developing complex theoretical constructs to reconceptualise educational leadership, drawing from perspectives held by diverse ethnic groups—students and communities. How learners from diverse philosophical and ethnic backgrounds conceive and perceive educational leadership, and how they receive it, is bound to interact with their learning experience and performance. This article briefly introduces leadership as a concept formulated in context. It presents philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of these conceptualisations from an Islamic perspective, and highlights the interplay between knowledge and leadership. The article deliberates how these discourses interact to formulate ‘educational leadership’ in Muslim societies, and explores the implications of these constructions with a focus on the British context, where Muslims are in a minority, pointing to the significance of understanding philosophical diversity for embracing population diversity.     

The Southern Manifesto: Massive Resistance,Growth Liberalism,and the Interpretation of Brown II

ABSTRACT

The United States Congress’ Southern Congressional Delegation promulgated the Declaration of Constitutional Principles, popularly known as the Southern Manifesto, on March 12, 1956. The Southern Manifesto was the South’s primary means to effectively delay implementation of public school desegregation as ordered by the United States Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Topeka, Kansas (1954; as cited in Day, 2014). This essay places the desegregation of American public school system within the larger context of the time period in which it transpired, and explains how racial disparity in public education was perpetuated after the Jim Crow caste system was dismantled in the 1960s. Ironically, while de jure desegregation of American public schools was effectively accomplished by the early 1970s under the administration of President Richard M. Nixon, government spending during the era after World War II, perpetuated racial and economic disparity in America’s public schools that prevails up to the present day.     

African American Students in Private, Independent Schools: Parents and School Influences on Racial Identity Development

Although much research has focused on the public school experiences of African American students, few studies exist that explore their race-related experiences within an independent, private school context. Studies have suggested that, while private, independent schools may elevate the quality of African American students’ education, many of these students experience social isolation from their peers. Using a qualitative methodology, the current study explores the experiences of African American students attending a private, independent school. Moreover, this investigation explores how schools as well as parental contexts contribute to racial identity development. Results indicated the importance of parents, schools and other significant institutions as racial socialization agents as well as their influence on specific identity-related processes. Educational implications for findings are also discussed.     

Funding and Focus: Resource Dependence in Public Higher Education

Utilizing resource dependence theory, this study investigates the relationship between institutional reliance on net tuition dollars as a source of revenue and institutional expenditures for education and related activities at public, four-year institutions of higher education in the United States. Drawing on an 11-year panel of university-level data and utilizing an instrumental variables approach which acknowledges the potential endogeneity of institutional revenue structure, I find that institutional expenditures are quite responsive to changes in revenue patterns. This is a finding that is discussed within the context of the longstanding trend of decreased state support for public higher education, as well as the increasing popularity of market-oriented approaches to the management of public higher education systems observed in the United States and abroad.     

Who's in STEM? An Exploration of Race,Ethnicity, and Citizenship Reporting in a Federal Education Dataset

As the United States becomes more racially and ethnically diverse and draws more students from across the globe, more representative data are needed to understand at-risk and underrepresented populations in higher education, particularly in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The authors argue that the current reporting standards for the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) result in the misrepresentation of racial and ethnic populations in STEM by forcing non-U.S. students into a “master status” category regardless of their racial or ethnic group membership. This study uses data from IPEDS and the American Community Survey to estimate the possible misrepresentation of reported bachelor degree completions by racial and ethnic group and citizenship status in the biological and biomedical sciences and engineering. We found that nearly all of the racial and ethnic groups in IPEDS may be significantly misreported because of the reporting standards for U.S. citizenship. With these findings, various implications are discussed, including higher education decision-making policies; interpretation of academic and social experiences of diverse peoples (race, ethnicity, and nationality); and creation of effective structures for academic success, particularly for students of color, regardless of citizenship.