Search results

Most of the empirical literature on child labor considers work per se, independent of the nature or extent of work. This study fills this void by examining child work that directly conflicts with the schooling of children in Ghana. It finds evidence of a cultural bias in the way questions regarding working status are perceived. Additionally, the study addresses shortcomings of the empirical analyses of previous studies related to collapsibility, spatial heterogeneity and specification testing. While a substantial share of children who work rather than attend school are forced away from schooling by poverty, an alarmingly high share report that school is “useless” or “uninteresting.” This should be of concern to policymakers. Eradicating poverty is not enough to “send children back to school” – norms, traditions, and perceptions must be changed, as well.

The health consequences of child labor may take time to manifest themselves. This study examines whether children who began working at a young age experience increased incidence of illness or physical disability as adults. When child labor and schooling are treated as chosen without consideration of unobserved abilities or health endowments, child labor appears to have small adverse effects on a wide variety of health measures. Some adverse health consequences such as heart disease or hypertension seem unlikely to be caused by child labor. However, when we allow unobserved health and ability endowments to alter the age of labor market entry and years of schooling completed, the joint effects of child labor and schooling on health become larger while the less plausible health consequences lose significance. Results imply that delaying entry into child labor while increasing time in school significantly lowers the probability of early onset of physical ailments such as back problems, arthritis, or reduced strength or stamina. However, our methods are not able to distinguish between the health impacts of child labor from the impacts of reduced time in school.

Dewey argues throughout Democracy and Education that schooling plays a powerful role in forming how we are disposed towards democracy. Disposition underlies and determines both thinking and activity. A disposition which operates habitually tends to maintain the moral, social and intellectual status quo. A humane democracy demands a disposition which both challenges existing conditions and is concerned to change them for social well-being. A student’s experience at school would ideally need to be one which supports the motivation and skills to foster such a democracy. Dewey claims that we dispose ourselves to think in particular ways. If our mental processes are habitual then teaching and pastoral care may be done in a way that might impose rigidity of thought on students. If the intelligent concern for social well-being is missing from our thinking, the educational experience we offer provides neither model nor means for the development of a humane democracy. Using vignettes from our own experience as educators, together with our interpretation of Dewey’s thinking in Democracy and Education and How We Think, we consider how our own mental processes as educators and dispositions which underlie them might impact for good or for ill on students’ day-to-day experience. We argue that the main responsibility for conditions of experience falls on policymakers, school leadership, management and teachers, who, we conclude with Dewey, should aim to be aware of their disposition and its manifestation in thinking and activity in order to create conditions which make schooling a truly democratic experience.

Most social scientists believe that schools serving the disadvantaged provide considerably poorer learning environments than schools serving advantaged students. As a result, schools are thought to be an important source of social problems like inequality. However, an important subset of research employing seasonal comparisons (observing how achievement gaps change when school is in versus out) disputes this position. These studies note that socioeconomic-based gaps in skills grow faster when school is out versus in, suggesting that achievement gaps would be larger if not for schools. I discuss the advantages of seasonal comparison studies and how they provide a more contextual perspective for understanding several important questions, such as: (1) What is the distribution of school quality? (2) How does inequality outside of school condition the way schools matter? and (3) Which policies, school or non-school, most effectively reduce achievement gaps? I conclude that our understanding of how schools influence inequality would be improved by employing the more contextual perspective offered by seasonal comparisons. Seasonal comparison studies have not played a meaningful role in public discussions and so the public lacks a proper understanding of the extent to which social context shapes achievement gaps. This is unfortunate because we continue to try and address achievement gaps primarily through school reform when the real source of the problem lies in the inequalities outside of schools.

Research has already uncovered a great deal of evidence about the individual and organizational qualities that enhance effective teaching and the kinds of qualifications (attributes) that are associated with effective teaching and learning. From a research perspective, increased precision and specificity in the definition and refinement of specific concepts (e.g., pedagogical content knowledge) will increase academic knowledge about the relationship between teacher characteristics, working conditions, and the quality of instruction that takes place. This knowledge may have little effect on policy formation. From a policy perspective, a holistic or organic conception of teacher quality will be critical for effective policy formation and implementation. At some point, academic knowledge about different aspects of effective or “quality” teaching need to be connected to a general concept of a quality teacher in order to be effectively inserted into policy debates and the general media. Systematic use of academic knowledge is often hindered by either the narrow focus of the research, or by its limited application to actual teacher practice. In spite of these limitations in academic research, there are areas where academics, policymakers, and practitioners have achieved consensus or are converging on shared constructs of promise. In other areas, both academic and political debates seem locked into conflict over constructs related to teacher quality. Identifying these three broad categories of consensus, convergence, and conflict provides a broad framework to assess the kinds of research and the kinds of reform that need to be carried out in order to promote and sustain teachers’ development and implementation of their professional skills in the classroom.

The Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan was a signatory to the Jomtien Education for All agreement. Pursuing EFA in Bhutan presents a number of unique geographical, systemic, linguistic and other challenges, and the Royal Government of Bhutan has adopted multigrade school development as one major strategy in moving towards EFA. This adoption can be considered a form of policy borrowing. In this chapter we explore how multigrade schooling has been enhanced and expanded in Bhutan to achieve EFA goals, and in particular, the conditions under which multigrade teaching has become an accepted and important form of educational delivery in Bhutan. We trace the development of multigrade teaching to a set of partly planned and partly coincidental events and contexts. We review the geographical setting of Bhutan, local and global political events, teacher training issues, teacher upgrade programmes, contemporary discourses of education, development and modernization, and local initiatives to promote and strengthen multigrade teaching as a key strategy in providing access to school for children in remote areas. We also identify a number of challenges facing multigrade teaching, including the linguistic context, local reservations about the desirability of multigrade classes and resource issues.

The most recent development in the accountability movement occurred in January 2002 when the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was signed into law. Surprisingly little work has illuminated how teachers experience standards-based accountability policy. Using survey data and interviews, this chapter explores the impact of NCLB requirements, namely adequate yearly progress and needs improvement status, on teacher perceptions of working conditions, especially the use of time and empowerment. I show how the policy has led to restructuring of classroom time and increases in collaboration and yet, simultaneously, a decrease in teachers’ perceptions of empowerment.

Schooling in South Africa represents a history of gains and losses for sections of the society. The colonial, missionary, and apartheid political systems made schooling a weak instrument for mobility for the majority within society. Post-apartheid, although school reform has provided greater access to formal education, it continues to crystallize socioeconomic inequalities. A relatively small number of the previously disadvantaged receive education that facilitates economic and social mobility. The authors examine the new funding system and equity rhetoric that is employed to justify education access to different types of schools and argue that coupling the rhetoric of social transformation with the funding system for schools and thus class, continues the unequal historical education provision. School reform fails to compensate for the adverse effects of apartheid education and is largely reproductive rather than socially transformative. The conclusion is that unless South Africa overcomes the appeasing semantic trap in its policies, historical trends that make the constitutional ideal of equal rights unrealizable are likely to be entrenched.

This chapter analyzes 2011 survey data from a sample of Texas principals who were asked about their perceptions of their working conditions such as: support and facilities; salary; resources; autonomy to make decisions; testing and accountability pressures; and relationships with supervisors. Respondents were also asked about their intentions to stay or leave their particular school. Researchers and policymakers agree effective and stable school leadership is critical to school improvement efforts, but we know little about how various working conditions impact principal effectiveness and turnover. This work is important because in-depth knowledge of the causes of principal turnover in general and how principal working conditions impact turnover in particular is a pre-requisite to creating policies and support mechanisms to support principals in small and mid-sized districts.