Oil royalties and the provision of public education in Brazil

This paper examines how resource-based windfalls to Brazilian municipalities’ revenues affects their provision of education. Using within-municipality variation in per capita oil revenues transferred to municipalities, we find that receiving more oil royalties increases municipal education expenditures, which translates into more teachers, classrooms, and schools per capita. These effects are present only for municipally funded schools, implying that increased educational provision is due to better funding and not through increased demand for schooling. We also find, however, that some evidence that some types of school infrastructure and services may be affected by oil royalties, implying that this additional schooling coverage may be of lower quality. Interestingly, despite the increased provision of education student outcomes like the dropout rate worsen with higher oil royalties, although this may be due to changes in student composition.     

新型农民培养的公共政策供给研究

目前新型农民培养政策可以归纳为：与提高农民素质有关的法律法规类、规划纲要类和培训工程类三种类型。从供给的数量、质量、结构和环境看还不能满足新型农民培养对公共政策的现实需求,应尽快制订新型农民培养的法律法规,构建新型农民培养的支持保障体系,创新新型农民培养的运行机制,优化新型农民培养的公共政策环境。     

Networks in action: new actors and practices in education policy in Brazil

This paper focuses on the role of networks in the policy-making process in education and discusses the potential of network analysis as an analytical tool for education policy research. Drawing on publically available data from personal or institutional websites, this paper reports the findings from research carried out between 2005 and 2011. Through document analysis, we investigated the composition, activities and strategies adopted by an important policy network in Latin America and traced its developments in Brazil. We adopted the categories – texts, technical artefacts, human beings and money – proposed by Callon to identify the links between the main actors and organizations in that network and drew our conceptual framework from the work of Gramsci in order to analyse the struggle for hegemony and the role of business interests in education policy-making. The findings show that the expansion of networks does not replace the State in education, but rather the State constitutes a strategic node in these networks.     

A Counselling Experiment in Brazil: Difficulties and Opportunities

This paper compares the No Blame approach to bullying with the ecosystemic approach to changing problem behaviour. It suggests that there are several similarities between the two approaches: they are both applicable in particular kinds of situation; their success depends to a great extent on the people using the technique, in particular the degree to which they can bring the quality of genuineness to the situation; they are not directly concerned with punishment, truth or control; and they challenge the assumptions teachers make about children's problem behaviour. A key point is the need for teachers to recognize that bullying is a natural event (in so far that it is a regular one) and the need to suspend their own feelings of anger and repugnance. As the writer points out, ‘a process which fails to engage the bully and makes no attempt to enhance feelings of concern and understanding is unlikely to bring about any fundamental change in behaviour’. Though written at a fairly theoretical level, what the writer says has direct relevance to practice in schools.     

International education as a novel entity in a public education system: the establishment of a new public international school in Israel

Abstract

This study traces the founding process of Eastern Mediterranean International School (EMIS) by analysing the motivations and interests of different stakeholders involved in the establishment process. In this novel initiative students from Palestine, Israel, and other countries study within the Israeli public school system towards an International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with founders, educators, Ministry of Education officials, a parents’ survey, and content analysis of related documents, the authors show how the school was established and approved despite the supposedly contradicting hegemonic discourse of the official Israeli policy. They conclude by suggesting some implications for scholars and policy-makers.     

Legitimizing public schooling and innovative education policies in strict religious communities: the story of the new Haredi public education stream in Israel

The study explored how a group of private Haredi (ultra-Orthodox Jewish) schools legitimized an innovative non-mandatory reform. Specifically, it examined the circumstances that facilitated and hindered a coincidence of wants between the schools and the Ministry of Education, which resulted in signing agreements that changed the status of the schools from private to public. The study drew on interviews and on various documents, including contracts, summaries of meetings, and work plans. The conclusions portray the correspondence between the top-down and bottom-up processes that facilitated the reform. At their intersection, discursive interactions transpired between the Haredi inspectors at the Ministry of Education and school leaders, reflecting a mutual aspiration toward pragmatic legitimacy. The prominent barriers to the reform derived from the Ministry of Education’s strategic assumption that a quiet, unregulated reform would generate less resistance. However, this assumption led to actions that ultimately reduced the effectiveness of the discursive interactions and their ability to produce pragmatic legitimacy. We argue that to legitimize innovative non-mandatory educational reforms in strict religious groups, the State should speak in several voices: through discursive interactions led by cultural mediators, but also through official publications, regulations, and marketing campaigns that would strengthen the reform’s pragmatic legitimacy.     

Pluralist models of public sector collective bargaining: Proposals for public education

Current methods of public sector collective bargaining are modeled after private sector bilateral negotiations. Often they do not adequately reflect the pluralistic nature of the many publics affected by the results of such negotiations. In this study the authors examine the present methods of collective bargaining particularly as they relate to the public sector. The argument is made that in the public sector, particularly where public education is concerned, bilateral negotiations are not adequate nor desirable. They violate our democratic, pluralistic traditions. The legal and political issues involved in public bargaining are examined, as are current and suggested third party roles in the process. Four multilateral models for pluralist bargaining are then developed and discussed. The article concludes with a call for formalized public participation in public education collective bargaining.     

Community universities in the South of Brazil: prospects and challenges of a model of non-state public higher education

In recent years, higher education institutions have been encouraged to engage more strongly with their local communities, and address their historically weak links with their surrounding populations. In the latter part of the twentieth century, a number of community universities were established in the South of Brazil, characterised by democratic local community involvement, expansion of access in non-metropolitan regions, and close ties with local industry. This article analyses these innovative institutions in relation to the complex demands of the so-called knowledge economy and multifaceted relationships between public and private, exploring the ways in which the public good role of universities manifests itself in relation to the local. Given their hybrid nature – independent from the state but with a public good mission – these institutions can be seen to represent a new model of non-state public higher education. Implications are drawn out for the potential role of these institutions in the current policy context of Brazil, and internationally, in light of their context-specificity and the significant challenges from the highly commercialised for-profit sector.     

Parent involvement in early childhood special education: Opportunities for school psychologists

Increased opportunities for assessment and intervention, consultation, and program evaluation in early childhood education are suggested as roles that the school psychologist should develop to facilitate effective parent involvement in a child's education. A review of the literature on parent involvement in early childhood special education is provided. The current federal guidelines, rationale, definitions of parent involvement, and strategies for evaluating parent involvement are reviewed.     

Problematizing religious truth: Implications for public education

The question motivating this paper is whether or not there can be standards governing the evaluation of truth claims in religion. In other areas of study — such as physics, math, history, and even value‐laden realms like morality — there is some widespread agreement as to what constitutes good thinking. If such a standard existed in religion, then our approach to teaching religion would need to change. This paper, however, is a prelude to examining such a question. In it, we briefly explore whether or not religion should even be included in public education. After concluding that it should be, we then look at whether we should pursue questions of truth in discussing religion or whether truth should be bracketed. If matters of truth are bracketed, what is lost? If questions of truth are pursued in our public school classrooms, what standards of evaluation should be applied to them?     

Brazil: Opportunity and crisis in higher education

The current situation in Brazilian higher education is discussed in the context of (i) its historical background; (ii) the 1968 reform and its unintended consequences; (iii) the recommendations of the 1985 Presidential Commission on higher education. The implications of these recommendations in terms of the introduction of inter-institution differentiation and greater autonomy are explored with particular reference to the part played in the eventual shelving of the proposals by pressure groups in the Brazilian system. Though pressure groups may block radical changes, continuing debate on the issues raised can form the background to piecemeal and incremental changes in the desirable direction.This article was written while the author was a fellow at the Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley.     

The impact of new public management instruments on PhD education

New public governance emphasises less state, more market and more hierarchy as the cornerstones for effective steering of higher education institutions. Based on an explorative analysis of qualitative and quantitative data of fourteen German and European economics departments, we investigate the steering effects of six new public management instruments in the years 2001 and 2002 on subsequent placement success of PhD graduates. Using crisp set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to analyse the data, our results deliver strong support for the positive effects of competition for resources and the varying effects of hierarchy on PhD education. Governance of successful departments is characterised by two solutions: transparency over academic achievements as one single success factor in each solution or a combination of additional funding based on national competitive performance with either no public policy regulations for departments or no university regulations for departments. Governance of unsuccessful departments is characterised by one solution: university regulations for departments or a combination of no additional funding based on national competitive performance and no transparency over academic achievements. Our results strengthen the strong impact of selected competitive mechanisms as an effective governance instrument and the partially detrimental effects of state regulations. University regulations turn out to be successful if they increase transparency over academic achievements by faculty members. Success is unlikely if those rules intervene into PhD education.     

教育宏观管理的目标：构建公共教育管理与服务体系

教育具有公共产品的性质决定教育事业的本质是社会公益事业。转变政府职能,完善公共教育管理与服务体系是社会主义市场经济体制的迫切要求。政府应通过立法和政策调控、建立公共教育财政体制、实施分层决策管理以及提供优质的信息服务等方面完善公共教育管理与服务体系。     

Environmental education research in Brazil

Abstract

This Editorial to the current collection provides a brief historical, cultural, regional and contemporary picture of environmental education research in Brazil. Its main purpose is to offer readers a short background and orientation to the collection, and in so doing, illustrate how its contributions relate to some wider tendencies, trends and issues in environmental education, as well as to different locales of research and knowledge generation in the country. Of particular note for environmental education in Brazil are: the effects of social and political backdrops and issues, the unique environments on which environmental education is grounded, and how environmental education research, in turn, may echo or influence particular educational and public policies.     

The internship component of a teacher education program: Opportunities for learning

Abstract

Many preservice teacher education programs in recent years have increased the amount of time student teachers spend in field placements by adding an “internship “ component. An internship is typically longer than a practice teaching session and is designed as a bridge between being a student teacher and having full teaching responsibilities. This study explored the effect of an internship that had three key features: the interns were free to choose the nature of their field experience, no formal evaluation was involved, and the interns were attached to the school (or other institution) as a whole rather than a particular staff member. Under these conditions, the interns could (a) go more deeply into a specific teaching area; (b) gain greater knowledge of school culture; (c) become more familiar with school‐wide programs and activities; and (d) learn more about their distinctive interests and abilities as teachers.     

Donor financing of basic education: Opportunities and constraints

Much progress has been made in improving access to basic education in recent years, but international support has been less than promised and the ‘funding gap’ to achieve universal primary education remains stubbornly present. This article identifies six interrelated factors that constrain such donor financing. Prioritization of basic education, evidence and advocacy, and aid architecture present the biggest challenges, followed by donor capacity, partner absorptive capacity and demand. We conclude that future success in attracting external financing for basic education will depend on the sector's ability to raise its political profile, make an evidence-based case for support, tap into new donors and improve its aid effectiveness.