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1 – 10 of over 10000Kate Darian-Smith and Nikki Henningham
The purpose of this paper is to examine the development of vocational education for girls, focusing on how curriculum and pedagogy developed to accommodate changing expectations…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the development of vocational education for girls, focusing on how curriculum and pedagogy developed to accommodate changing expectations of the role of women in the workplace and the home in mid-twentieth century Australia. As well as describing how pedagogical changes were implemented through curriculum, it examines the way a modern approach to girls’ education was reflected in the built environment of the school site and through its interactions with its changing community.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper takes a case study approach, focusing on the example of the J.H. Boyd Domestic College which functioned as a single-sex school for girls from 1932 until its closure in 1985. Oral history testimony, private archives, photographs and government school records provide the material from which an understanding of the school is reconstructed.
Findings
This detailed examination of the history of J.H. Boyd Domestic College highlights the highly integrated nature of the school's environment with the surrounding community, which strengthened links between the girls and their community. It also demonstrates how important the school's buildings and facilities were to contemporary ideas about the teaching of girls in a vocational setting.
Originality/value
This is the first history of J.H. Boyd Domestic College to examine the intersections of gendered, classed ideas about pedagogy with ideas about the appropriate built environment for the teaching of domestic science. The contextualized approach sheds new light on domestic science education in Victoria and the unusually high quality of the learning spaces available for girls’ education.
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Jennifer L. Roberts and Mary M. Chittooran
There has been an increase in the number of non-government organization (NGO) schools in India’s disadvantaged communities. Since these schools often serve the most marginalized…
Abstract
Purpose
There has been an increase in the number of non-government organization (NGO) schools in India’s disadvantaged communities. Since these schools often serve the most marginalized populations, it is important to understand their role in addressing educational inequities. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of an NGO school in Uttar Pradesh, India in improving girls’ education.
Design/methodology/approach
A case study methodology was utilized to identify barriers to girls’ education and ways in which the NGO school is working to minimize educational inequities.
Findings
The barriers to girls’ education in this study are traditional values, lack of economic opportunities, and safety concerns. The school works to minimize these inequities by providing a rigorous curriculum, teaching the students how to be good citizens, improving school facilities, and providing free school supplies. Implications – it is through better understanding the role of the NGO sector that a more complete understanding of the status of girls’ education will develop.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the literature on girls’ education, but expands the conversation to include NGO schools.
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Quality education can be provided to underprivileged section in developing economies by the collaborative effort of private-paid schools. The purpose of this paper is to explore…
Abstract
Purpose
Quality education can be provided to underprivileged section in developing economies by the collaborative effort of private-paid schools. The purpose of this paper is to explore and highlight the model which can be adopted by a private school in imparting education to girls coming from lower income strata. It also highlights how synergies could be attained by sharing of resources in terms of infrastructure and utilities.
Design/methodology/approach
Data are gathered through multiple sources via literature and interviews with variety of people including CEO, principal and students. Data on profile of students were provided by the school.
Findings
Achieving quality education for girls of low-income strata is possible by efficiently utilizing the resources of a private-paid school. The school operates in second shift when the infrastructure is lying idle without any use. The mammoth cost of building a school can be saved and funds can be diverted for running it. Successful experiments like Prerna shows very distinctively how well-defined intervention strategies and innovation to methodologies using existing infrastructure can provide meaningful access to education not only to girls but to all.
Research limitations/implications
Can the model be adopted by government of developing economies by making it compulsory for every private-paid school.
Practical implications
Findings confirm that quality education to underprivileged girls is a reality at a minimum possible cost.
Social implications
A learned and well-informed girl is in a better position to take life decisions. In a country like India, where cost act as a deterrent to girl child education this model provides a solution to an extent, bringing relevance of education in their lives by right empowerment approach through focused discussions in the form of critical dialogues on sensitive issues related to marriage, sexual abuse, domestic violence, health and others.
Originality/value
This paper provides case-based evidence of how a successful private-paid school can participate in bringing a paradigm shift in providing quality education to underprivileged girls. It helps in understanding dynamics of sustaining such project.
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Over the years, efforts to ensure equal participation of girls in school in Nigeria have been met with some setbacks, amidst significant progress in mobilising communities for…
Abstract
Purpose
Over the years, efforts to ensure equal participation of girls in school in Nigeria have been met with some setbacks, amidst significant progress in mobilising communities for gender equality and mainstreaming. The purpose of this paper is to explore a number of features associated with sexual maturation that affect girls’ non-enrolment, limited attendance, performance at school and gender inequality in primary and secondary education in Nigeria.
Design/methodology/approach
The analytical engagement with the capability approach draws out elements of inequalities and demonstrates that issues of sexual maturation do not just constitute personal health challenge for adolescent girls, but bring up wider issues of socio-cultural, community and institutional deprivation and injustice.
Findings
Though laudable initiatives have been in place to improve girls’ participation and attainment in education, there is a dire need for appropriate policy and actions to address the supply and demand barriers to meeting girls’ needs, including making schools more girl-friendly and safe, providing school-based health programmes, sex education and sanitation facilities, train teachers against gender-stereotype, flexible school schedules and enforce re-admission policy. But beyond school policy and environment, there is also the need to respond to opportunity costs of schooling and leverage collective capabilities.
Originality/value
This paper argues that cultural and socioeconomic factors surrounding sexual maturation are implicated in gender differentials in participation and performance of girls and gender inequality in education. It suggests the need for the application of collective capabilities for action towards addressing girls’ sexual maturation issues and education in the society.
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Margaret Miles, one of the country's most prominent head‐mistresses suggests that one way of removing the problem is to abolish girls' schools.
The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the significance of the incidence of female principals in the urban sector of Eretz Israel, against the background of growing…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the significance of the incidence of female principals in the urban sector of Eretz Israel, against the background of growing Jewish society, through the prism of which we can view the development of modern Hebrew education during the waning Ottoman rule.
Design/methodology/approach
In addition to the archival material, contemporary newspapers provided an important source, as did memoirs of prominent people that, to some extent, filled in the “gaps”, more on the running of the schools and less on the activities of the four principals.
Findings
A survey of the archival material reveals that the four women share biographical elements, their talents, personalities and education obtained abroad, style of school leadership and organization, not to mention their moral contribution to the education of girls in Eretz Israel.
Practical implications
One may point to other fields in which women began to play a more prominent role, based on European training and experience. For instance, in medicine and a modern approach to midwifery, From 1900, modern trained female doctors, nurses and midwives began to be employed in hospitals and private practices around the country, helping to radically reduce childbirth fatalities and allowing women to consult a woman practitioner where before they had been unwilling to expose themselves to men. Although a direct link between the earlier presence of female educational administrators and the entry of women doctors may be difficult to establish, the atmosphere had certainly begun to change.
Social implications
From that period on, during the British Mandate, and after the creation of the State of Israel, immense changes have been instituted. One can view the seeds of these changes as, at least in part, having been planted by the pioneering work of our four women. There were far reaching developments in the conception of female management from the time of the Ottoman rule through the period of the British Mandate.
Originality/value
This research shines a light on a forgotten world and pursues a phenomenon not yet revealed in Zionist historiography − the running of girls’ schools by women in the Jewish community, under the dying Ottoman regime. The study allows us a deeper insight into the historical educational processes that fashioned the profession of head teachers, via pioneering female principals. Female administration in a patriarchal society, with a hegemonic male orientation that placed man at the centre and woman as secondary, faced these problems, obstacles and opposition. Women who were appointed to run schools had to justify their position by imitating the “masculine” style of management and to carry out their work − both pedagogical and administrative − without organizational, social or emotional support. They suffered opposition, internal (their male teaching staff) and external (from patrons and the religious community) and the need to respond to their criticism.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore female teachers and vice principal’s leadership on girls attendance and learning, safety and security issues in rural girls’ schools…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore female teachers and vice principal’s leadership on girls attendance and learning, safety and security issues in rural girls’ schools experiencing Boko Haram insurgencies. The secondary purpose is to recommend innovative educational policy initiatives at the school, community and state levels, so as to ameliorate girls and teachers’ challenges, and to sustain girls in schools.
Design/methodology/approach
Qualitative educational research orientation and an ethnographic-narrative research design were used for the study. Purposeful sampling procedure was adopted through the selection of female teachers and a vice principal. Soft qualitative oral data (SQOD) were collected from structured interviews and focus groups and participant observation data. Data analysis engaged hand data analysis (HAD) for transcription, while the coding and theming process involved qualitative computer software data analysis (CSDA) of NVivo 8.0. The measures of validity involved the qualitative process of member checking, while ethical issues of anonymity with participants were addressed in the process of data collection, and reporting.
Findings
Major findings revealed a symbiotic relationship between female teacher’s moral leadership and the application of law of tort in the girls’ school; teachers’ adopted spiritual leadership and moral decision making process on girls’ safety, and learning motivation; and improved school community collaboration for security and safety of the girls and effective communication.
Practical implications
Educational policy options are prescribed. They include the training of teachers and girls on fire safety and conflict crisis; recruitment of female school counsellors; housing incentives for female teachers; support grassroot initiatives on school security; and sustaining school-community/parents involvement.
Originality/value
Boko Haram’s impact on teacher and school leadership in girls’ school(s) has not been studied so far. The paper is the first, thereby filling the gap of the literature on girls’ rural education and terrorism.
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Ellen Eardley and Jessica Manvell
The purpose of this article is to document the extent of girls' under‐representation in nontraditional high school career and technical education courses, examine the role of sex…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to document the extent of girls' under‐representation in nontraditional high school career and technical education courses, examine the role of sex discrimination in these disparities, and identify legal remedies for addressing the problem.
Design/methodology/approach
This article uses high school CTE enrollment data from 12 states to document female students' under‐representation in nontraditional courses and uses wage data to show the negative implications for girls' future earnings. Drawing on the experiences of female students, this study explains how sex discrimination contributes to their low rates of participation in nontraditional training. The study then discusses how laws and regulations at the federal and state levels may provide means to address such discrimination.
Findings
Finds high levels of sex segregation in CTE course enrollment, with female students making up on average 15 percent of students in nontraditional courses and 87 percent in traditionally female fields. Substantial evidence of sex discrimination in CTE makes a strong case for its role in contributing to girls' low enrollment in nontraditional courses. Varied state laws can be utilized to address this underlying cause.
Originality/value
While much research has looked at girls in math and science, less attention has been paid to their participation in nontraditional CTE. This paper offers quantitative evidence of girls' under‐representation in such courses and qualitative evidence of the role sex discrimination plays. Offers a unique solution by showing how state laws can be used to address such discrimination and increase girls' participation in nontraditional training.
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The purpose of this monograph is to present the first English translation of a unique French colonial report on women living under colonial rule in West Africa.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this monograph is to present the first English translation of a unique French colonial report on women living under colonial rule in West Africa.
Design/methodology/approach
The issue begins with a discussion of the contribution this report makes to the history of social development policy in Africa, and how it serves the on‐going critique of colonisation. This is followed by the English translation of the original report held in the National Archives of Senegal. The translation is accompanied by explanatory notes, translator’s comments, a glossary of African and technical terms, and a bibliography.
Findings
The discussion highlights contemporary social development policies and practices which featured in identical or similar forms in French colonial social policy.
Practical implications
As the report demonstrates, access to basic education and improving maternal/infant health care have dominated the social development agenda for women in sub‐Saharan Africa for over a century, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future in the Millennium Development Goals which define the international community’s agenda for social development to 2015. The parallels between colonial and post‐colonial social policies in Africa raise questions about the philosophical and cultural foundations of contemporary social development policy in Africa and the direction policy is following in the 21st century.
Originality/value
Though the discussion adopts a consciously postcolonial perspective, the report that follows presents a consciously colonial view of the “Other”. Given the parallels identified here between contemporary and colonial policy‐making, this can only add to the value of the document in exploring the values that underpin contemporary social development practice.
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Toseef Azid and Rana Ejaz Ali Khan
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the demand side determinants of schooling of Pakistani urban children and the factors affecting boys and girls' schooling separately.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the demand side determinants of schooling of Pakistani urban children and the factors affecting boys and girls' schooling separately.
Design/methodology/approach
This is an empirical study using the non‐linear maximum likelihood probability (probit) function on primary data.
Findings
Besides other variables it has been observed that the poverty remains an important determinant of school participation. Poor households keep their children out of school due to their inability to afford the cost of schooling.
Research limitations/implications
On the basis of this study a socio‐economic policy can be formulated for a developing country like Pakistan.
Practical implications
A development policy can be formulated on the basis of this research for the enhancement of human resource development for a developing and an orthodox economy like Pakistan.
Originality/value
The paper is beneficial to the researchers, policy makers, and social scientists for the enhancement of the level of social welfare through its findings.
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