Global Trends in Educational Policy: Volume 6

The role of policy in the development of education is crucial. So much rests on the decisions, support, and most of all resources that policymakers either give or withhold in any given situation. This volume of International Perspectives on Education and Society highlights the valuable role that educational policy plays in the development of education and society around the world.

Conventional wisdom has it that policymakers rationally approach an ongoing or potential problem, carefully consider the reasons for the problem, and then sensibly debate the information and research on this problem. The final stage of this ideal vision of the educational policymaking process is that the policymakers decide how to solve specific problems based on their consideration of all of the relevant data and possible options (Vickers, 1994). This is rarely, if ever, the case.

The reports seem contradictory. With about three billion dollars per year in new loan commitments, the World Bank has become the single largest source of development capital in the field of international education. These resources help expand educational opportunities for young women in South Asia and rebuild primary schools following civil conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. They support textbooks, school meals, new curriculum, and teacher training in thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of locations in over 100 countries in six regions.

Most comparative education research has included investigation of dimensions of educational reform but not all research in the field has focused concertedly on reform in relation to the realities in practice. In the latter half of the 20th century comparativists underscored the need to investigate implementation issues, not just reform policies, as had often been the case in earlier comparative research, since time had shown that political processes did not always equate with educational outcomes. Reforms can be thwarted altogether, significantly modified or mediated in practice, embraced with qualification, or differentially implemented across regions or levels within a given country. Reform implementation might produce intended and unintended change (for better or for worse); or no change at all might be the outcome; or change might occur ahead of reform. Some of the most fascinating findings in comparative research are dichotomous considerations of change such as policy versus practice, ideal versus real, de facto change versus de jure change, intended and unintended outcomes of reform, grass-roots (bottom–up) versus centralized (top–down) reforms, and de facto change legitimized-after-the-fact through reform or new policy.

Over the past decade most central governments across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have begun to decentralize some fiscal, political, and administrative responsibilities to lower-levels of government, local institutions, and the private sector in pursuit of greater accountability and more efficient service delivery, often in an attempt to solve broader political, social, or economic problems (SARA, 1997). Education, in particular, has been fertile ground for such decentralization efforts. From Ethiopia to South Africa, SSA countries have engaged in some form of education decentralization, though the pace has been quite uneven. Ethiopia, Uganda, Senegal, and South Africa, for example, are proceeding fast, while Ghana, Mali, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe are under way more slowly. Guinea, Niger, Zambia, and Nigeria are at the other end of the continuum. Decentralization of social services, including education appears to be embedded in the political changes occurring in the region. In almost all SSA countries the introduction of decentralized systems are accompanied by popular elections for local councils as part of the general trend of the introduction of or return to democratization.

Malawi's FPE policy is grounded in the history of governance, education, Christianity, and international aid in Malawi. It also is centered in and draws from the global EFA movement.

WID emerged in reaction to the failure of the modernization development policy based on the notion that every individual has equal access to opportunities for achieving goals and objectives deemed reasonable by society. It sought to provide a more comprehensive framework within which the goals of better living conditions, wages, and education could be achieved by all individuals.¹ Specifically, given the fact that females in emerging countries lag behind males in terms of economic prosperity and education, WID addressed their advancement through development projects and programs.

The study of Education, as it traverses the borders of national states, has predominantly been framed in the field of Comparative Education. That discipline, its role producing knowledge, and the policy designs and decision-making it informs, is not estranged from global forces that continue to shape it (Arnove & Torres, 1999).

The global expansion of primary and secondary education is accompanied by globalization of stigma of a type that did not exist before in the areas reached by the modern, rational, and secular education during the past decades. International organizations and national governments have established the number of years, age, grade conditions, and the level of knowledge that should be acquired for each stage. Often, children are classified in dichotomous categories such as enrolled–non-enrolled, completed–not completed, successful–not successful, wastage–not wastage, and so forth. As a result of this, children who leave primary school before they have finished the stipulated grades/number of years run the risk to be defined as “not fully competent” culturally and economically, not only from the “modern” perspective but from the “traditional” perspective and to be labeled and stigmatized. With the massive expansion of primary and secondary education, the number of “failing” students is increasing, especially in very academically oriented and selective education systems such as that in Senegal.

A number of theoretical paradigms provide a networking space for the trio and complementary fields of comparative, international, and development educational (CIDE) research. Critics periodically attribute the field's lack of a sound theoretical base or commitment to one area of scientific research or another as a primary weakness in the field.¹ Espoused theoretical paradigms often provide the knowledge debate arena in which academic fields interact and build together. In an alternative perspective from this criticism, we argue that the strength of the CIDE field resides in its ability to combine multiple theoretical perspectives that offer researchers a variety of potentially fruitful metatheoretical analyses. Thus, we do not view this lack of theoretical specification as a weakness; it is the very fabric that enables CIDE educationists to study and represent increasingly complex global and local education systems.

“Global education involves (1) the study of problems and issues which cut across national boundaries and the interconnectedness of cultural, environmental, economic, political, and technological systems and (2) the cultivation of cross-cultural understanding, which includes development of the skill of “perspective-taking,” that is, being able to see life from someone else's point of view. Global perspectives are important at every grade level, in every curricular subject area, and for all children and adults.(Tye & Tye, 1992)The literature generally suggests that the best way to infuse global perspectives into teacher education programs is by modeling pedagogy through the use of not just readings and lectures, but role plays, case studies, and collaborative investigation of useful resources among colleagues. Merryfield (1997) sets out methods for pedagogy for global perspectives that include exploration of self-knowledge, cross-cultural experiences and skills, perspective consciousness, values analysis, and authentic learning. Given the wide range and capacities for educating large numbers of new teachers in many countries, infusing global perspectives into otherwise technically oriented training programs is often poorly managed.

This chapter reports on a project undertaken during the author's two-term tenure as President of The World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES) to document the history of this organization. The WCCES was founded at the First World Congress of Comparative Education, held in Ottawa, Canada in 1970. The author attended that First World Congress as a young academic and has subsequently attended five of the eleven World Congresses held to date. The two-volume Proceedings of the First World Congress of Comparative Education Societies was helpful in commencing this project.

David P. Baker is Professor of Education and Sociology at The Pennsylvania State University. He studies the role of education in the social construction of modern society. He publishes widely on the comparative and historical analysis of schooling and higher education. He frequently assists in the planning of large cross-national studies of academic achievement for multi-national agencies and individual national governments.