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THE BLOOMSBURY HANDBOOK OF THEORY IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
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Also available from Bloomsbury Identities and Education Edited by Eleftherios Klerides and Stephen Carney Affect Theory and Comparative Education Discourse Edited by Irving Epstein Comparative and International Education Edited by David Phillips and Michele Schweisfurth
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THE BLOOMSBURY HANDBOOK OF
THEORY IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION Edited by Tavis D. Jules, Robin Shields and Matthew A.M. Thomas
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BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 Copyright © Tavis D. Jules, Robin Shields, Matthew A.M. Thomas and contributors, 2021 The Contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. ix constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Charlotte James Cover image © NiseriN / iStock All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Jules, Tavis Deryck, editor. | Shields, Robin, 1980– editor. | Thomas, Matthew A. M., editor. Title: The Bloomsbury handbook of theory in comparative and international education / edited by Tavis D. Jules, Robin Shields, and Matthew A.M. Thomas. Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020038981 (print) | LCCN 2020038982 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350078758 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350078765 (pdf) | ISBN 9781350078772 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Comparative education–Cross-cultural studies. | International education–Cross-cultural studies. Classification: LCC LB43 .B62 2021 (print) | LCC LB43 (ebook) | DDC 370.9—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038981 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038982 ISBN:
HB: ePDF: eBook:
978-1-3500-7875-8 978-1-3500-7876-5 978-1-3500-7877-2
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CONTENTS
L IST OF I LLUSTRATIONS
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A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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N OTES ON C ONTRIBUTORS
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P REFACE Introduction: New Directions in Comparative and International Education Tavis D. Jules
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Part One Foundational Theories 1
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Structural-Functionalism in Comparative and International Education: Antecedents, Developments, and Applications Marcelo Marques
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Imperialism, Colonialism, and Coloniality in Comparative and International Education: Conquest, Slavery, and Prejudice Tavis D. Jules, Syed Amir Shah, and Pravindharan Balakrishnan
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Marxism in Comparative and International Education: Foundational Political Economy Perspectives on Education Robin Shields and Kalyan Kumar Kameshwara
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Human Capital Theory in Comparative and International Education: Development, Application, and Problematics Donna C. Tonini
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Dependency Theory and World-Systems Analysis in Comparative and International Education: Critical Accounts of Education and Development Tom G. Griffiths
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Part Two Post-Foundational Theories 6
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Post-Colonialism in Comparative and International Education: Interrogating Power, Epistemologies, and Educational Practice Aizuddin Mohamed Anuar, Arzhia Habibi, and Olga Mun
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Post-Modernism and Post-Structuralism in Comparative and International Education: Examining Background Context, Application, and Perspective Edith Mukudi Omwami
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Post-Socialist Transformations in Comparative and International Education: Monuments, Movements, and Metamorphoses Iveta Silova, Zsuzsa Millei, Ketevan Chachkhiani, Garine Palandjian, and Mariia Vitrukh Gender in Comparative and International Education: Gender as Noun, Adjective, and Verb Laura Wangsness Willemsen and Payal Shah
10 Post-Foundational Approaches in Comparative and International Education: Uncertain Moves toward Unknown Horizons Jordan Corson and Susanne Ress
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Part Three Theoretical Adaptation and Revision 11 Neoliberalism in Comparative and International Education: Theory, Practice, Paradox Anthony Welch 12 Framing Comparative and International Education Through a Neo-Institutional Lens: The Discourse on Global Patterns and Shared Expectations Alexander W. Wiseman 13 Neo-Realism in Comparative and International Education: Power, Influence, and Priorities Tavis D. Jules, Syed Amir Shah, Pravindharan Balakrishnan, and Serene Ismail 14 Neo-Gramscian Theory in Comparative and International Education: Power, Ideas, and Institutions Tavis D. Jules, Richard Arnold, Pravindharan Balakrishnan, and Victoria Desimoni
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15 Regimes and Regionalism in Comparative and International Education: Cooperation and Competition Marcelo Parreira do Amaral
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16 Cultural Political Economy (CPE) in Comparative and International Education: Putting CPE to Work in Studying Globalization Susan L. Robertson and Roger Dale
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Part Four Theories of Policy and Practice 17 Constructivism and Learner-Centeredness in Comparative and International Education: Where Theories Meet Practice Matthew A. M. Thomas and Michele Schweisfurth
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18 Differentiation Theory and Externalization in Comparative and International Education: Understanding the Intersections of the Global and the Local Marcelo Parreira do Amaral and Marvin Erfurth
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19 Policy-Borrowing and Lending in Comparative and International Education: A Key Area of Research Gita Steiner-Khamsi
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20 Situating Peace Education Theories, Scholarship, and Practice in Comparative and International Education Maria Hantzopoulos, Zeena Zakharia, and Brooke Harris Garad
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21 Theories of Human Rights Education in Comparative and International Education: From Declarations to New Directions Monisha Bajaj and Nomsa Mabona
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Part Five Interdisciplinary and Emerging Approaches 22 Theorizing Race and Racism in Comparative and International Education Sharon Walker, Arathi Sriprakash, and Leon Tikly
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23 Queer Theory in Comparative and International Education: How Queer is CIE? Christian A. Bracho
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24 Transitologies in Comparative and International Education: Transformation and Metamorphisms Tavis D. Jules
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25 Actor-Network-Theory and Comparative and International Education: Addressing the Complexity of Socio-Material Foundations of Power in Education Jason Beech and Alejandro Artopoulos
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26 Social Network Theory and Analysis in Comparative and International Education: Connecting the Dots for Better Understanding of Education Oren Pizmony-Levy
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27 The Capabilities Approach in Comparative and International Education: A Justice-Enhancing Framework Joan DeJaeghere and Melanie Walker
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I NDEX
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ILLUSTRATIONS
17.1 Google NGram of key terms, 1965–2008.
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19.1 The global spread of quality assurance policy.
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19.2 The political translation of scientific expertise in the 2006 school reform.
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24.1 Visual representation of Cowen’s ideal-type models and transitologies.
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26.1 Social network of special interest groups in the Comparative and International Education Society.
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26.2 Growth of “social networks” in Peer-Reviewed Comparative and International Education Publications.
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26.3 Social network of education systems based on media reference in news stories about OECD PISA 2012 results.
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27.1 General diagram of the CA.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This volume would not have been made possible without the help of numerous people who we are indebted to. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers who received the proposal and provided great feedback to help us develop a book that is beneficial to students. We are deeply indebted to Mark Richardson and Bloomsbury Publishing for taking a huge risk on such a novel project. We are thankful for the work that Kim Bown has done on this project and keeping us on track. We are appreciative of our respective departments and programs for giving us the time to work on producing such a groundbreaking volume. We would like to thank our families, who were supportive during this journey. Finally, we would like to thank Victoria Desimoni for her tireless efforts in formatting this volume and responding to the authors’ comments.
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CONTRIBUTORS
Aizuddin Mohamed Anuar is a DPhil in Education candidate and Clarendon scholar at the University of Oxford. His DPhil study focuses on rural young people’s science education and aspirations related to development, contrasted against the state’s “science for development” agenda in Malaysia. His research interests include education and inter/ national development, post-colonialism, rural education, and cultural studies in science education. Richard Arnold is a Ph.D. student and graduate assistant and editor who conducts research in the area of cultural and educational policy studies at Loyola University Chicago. He is a former school teacher who has taught in numerous districts, and more recently conducted product field research for Google for Education. Alejandro Artopoulos teaches Technology and Educational Change in Universidad de San Andrés in Buenos Aires. He is a researcher of the Scientific Research Commission of the Province of Buenos Aires (CIC) and R&D Director at the Center for Pedagogic Innovation at Universidad de San Andrés. He has worked as a consultant at UNDP, UNESCO, IADB, and at national ministries. He is interested in the informational development in the global south and policies related to education and technology. Monisha Bajaj is a Professor of International and Multicultural Education at the University of San Francisco. She is also a Visiting Professor at Nelson Mandela University—Chair, Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation in South Africa. Dr. Bajaj is the editor and author of six books, including, most recently, Human Rights Education: Theory, Research, Praxis (University of Pennsylvania Press 2017), as well as numerous articles. She has also developed curriculum—particularly related to peace education, human rights, anti-bullying efforts and sustainability—for non-profit organizations and inter-governmental organizations, such as UNICEF and UNESCO. Pravindharan Balakrishnan is an MA student in the Cultural and Education Policy Studies in Loyola University Chicago as a Malaysian recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Foreign Student Program. Prior to pursuing his graduate studies in the United States, Pravin obtained a B.Ed. TESL from the University of Portsmouth with a scholarship from the Ministry of Education Malaysia. Pravin has a keen interest in Comparative and International Education, particularly in the influence of international large-scale assessments and non-state actors in education. Jason Beech teaches Comparative Education and Sociology of Education in Universidad de San Andrés in Buenos Aires. He is a researcher for the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research of Argentina (CONICET), and Director of the Ph.D. in Education at Universidad de San Andrés. He has taught in several universities in the Americas, Europe, and Australia. He is interested in the globalization of knowledge and policies x
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related to education and in exploring the link between cosmopolitanism, citizenship, and education. Christian Alejandro Bracho is an Associate Professor of Teacher Education in the LaFetra College of Education at the University of La Verne, where he co-directs the Center for Educational Equity and Intercultural Research (CEEIR). His research explores topics related to teacher identity, teacher education, LGBT communities, and nonviolence education. He has been recently published in Politics and Policy, Journal of Homosexuality, and Educational Studies, and co-edited a volume about teachers teaching nonviolence in the United States. Ketevan Chachkhiani is a Ph.D. student at the Educational Policy and Evaluation program at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Her professional and research interests focus on teacher-related policies in post-Soviet countries with an emphasis on educational change and teacher agency, teacher autonomy, and professional development. Jordan Corson is finishing a doctorate at Teachers College, Columbia University. Jordan’s scholarly engagements include anthropology and education, particularly with a focus on transnationalism, teacher education, and practices of equality. Roger Dale is Emeritus Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Bristol. Roger has written extensively on state transformation, education policy, governance, and the globalization of education. Roger was founding co-editor of Globalisation, Societies and Education. Joan DeJaeghere is Professor of Comparative and International Development Education in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development at the University of Minnesota (USA) and affiliate faculty of the Interdisciplinary Center for Global Change. Her scholarship is concerned with inequalities in education and how they affect youth’s future civic engagement, livelihoods, and wellbeing. Dr. DeJaeghere has published two books, including Educating Entrepreneurial Citizens: Neoliberalism and Youth Livelihoods in Tanzania (Routledge, 2017) and Education and Youth Agency (Springer, 2016), and numerous articles in journals. She has been the principal or co-principal investigator of several longitudinal research projects on youth livelihoods (East Africa), girls’ education (India), and women’s empowerment (Vietnam) in which she utilizes a capability approach. Victoria Desimoni is an MA student in the Cultural and Education Policy Studies program at Loyola University Chicago. She is also a graduate assistant who conducts research in the field of Comparative and International Education. Prior to enrolling in this program, Victoria obtained an MA in Liberal Studies from Duke University, and a Bachelor of arts in Religious Studies and Education from Pontifica Universidad Católica Argentina. Marvin Erfurth is currently Head of Research at the Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), while also being a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Münster, Germany. Marvin’s main research areas are Comparative and International Education, higher education, education policy, and economics of education, and his doctoral research project is an empirical study comparing education hub initiatives in Singapore and the UAE.
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Brooke Harris Garad is an Assistant Research Scientist at the Center on Education and Lifelong Learning at Indiana University-Bloomington. Her research interests within the field of teacher education relate to culturally relevant research methodologies and pedagogies. She is currently the Chair of the Committee on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community. Tom G. Griffiths is a Professor of International Education and Development at OsloMet University, Norway. His research is focused on the application of world-systems analysis as a framework for understanding the relationship between education and development, exploring the potentials for critical education to contribute to the transformation of the capitalist world-system and advance a non-capitalist alternative. Arzhia Habibi is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Oxford’s Department of Education. She uses Mandarin to conduct her research in the Chinese higher education context, with a specific focus on exploring the rooted and local expressions of global and world citizenship education. Prior to her studies at Oxford, Arzhia received a Bachelor’s degree in Contemporary Chinese Studies at The University of Nottingham, and a Master’s in International Communication in Taiwan at National Chengchi University. As a child, she also attended kindergarten in Fuzhou, Fujian province of China. Maria Hantzopoulos is an Associate Professor of Education and Participating Faculty in International Studies, Urban Studies, and Women’s Studies at Vassar College. She is also the Coordinator of Secondary Certification and the Faculty Director for Teaching Development. Her research and publications pay close attention to school culture, teacher well-being, assessment, and school reform, and broadly consider how schools structure in/equity in their contexts and beyond. She is the author of Restoring Dignity: Human Rights in Action (TC Press, 2016) and co-editor of Peace Education: International Perspectives (Bloomsbury, 2016). Serene Ismail, born in Khanewal, Pakistan, is a Fulbright Scholar, who graduated in M.A. Cultural and Educational Policy Studies from Loyola University, Chicago. She also did an MBA in Human Resource Management from Air University Islamabad, Pakistan, in 2013. She was a Graduate Student Representative for the School of Education at the Graduate Student Advisory Committee. Serene is the first Pakistani Fulbrighter to speak at The Graduate School’s Commencement Ceremony 2019 as a Student Speaker. She spent seven years in the education sector of Pakistan as a teacher and mentor at various grade levels. She is the Board Member for Fulbright Chicago Chapter. Serene lives in Herndon, VA with her husband and daughter. Tavis D. Jules is an Associate Professor of Cultural and Educational Policy Studies at Loyola University Chicago, specifically focusing on Comparative and International Education and International Higher Education. His vast professional and academic experiences have led to research and publications across the Caribbean and North Africa. He is President of the Caribbean Studies Association, Book Review Editor for the Caribbean Journal of International Relations, and an International Institute of Islamic Thought Fellow. His most recent books include: Educational Transitions in PostRevolutionary Spaces: Islam, Security and Social Movements in Tunisia (with Teresa Barton, Bloomsbury 2018); Re-Reading Education Policy and Practice in Small States: Issues of Size and Scale in the Emerging Intelligent Society and Economy (with Patrick
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Ressler, Peter Lang 2017); and The New Global Educational Policy Environment in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Gated, Regulated and Governed (Emerald 2016). Kalyan Kumar Kameshwara is an ESRC funded Ph.D. student at the Department of Education, University of Bath. His doctoral work focuses on the role of decentralization and accountability processes in education systems using international large-scale assessments. He has an MRes in Advanced Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences from the University of Bath, UK and an MA in Sociology from South Asian University, New Delhi. His research interests broadly include Sociological Theory, Social Statistics, Comparative and International Education and Political economy of education. Nomsa Mabona is a high school English teacher and a graduate of the Master’s program in Human Rights Education at the University of San Francisco. She co-headed her high school’s United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) group in Switzerland; she was and continues to be an advocate of human rights education. When she moved to the United States in 2015, she taught literacy and numeracy to women in a San Francisco county jail. Her studies focus on human rights education and curriculum development in South Africa, which is her second home country. Marcelo Marques, Ph.D. is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Institute of Education and Society at the University of Luxembourg. He is interested in the fields of Comparative and International Education, institutional theory, political sociology, and higher education and science. He has published in the International Journal of Lifelong Education, European Educational Research Journal, Research in Comparative and International Education, and Higher Education. His most recent book is European Educational Research (Re) Constructed: Institutional Change in Germany, the United Kingdom, Norway, and the European Union (Oxford Press 2018, with Mike Zapp, Justin Powell, Gerta Biesta, and Jo Helgetun). Zsuzsa Millei is a Professor at the Faculty of Education and Culture and Tampere University, Finland. She is interested in child politics in its broadest sense and post-socialist knowledge production. She employs comparisons of different places and times to help highlight—from childrens’ perspectives—how the taken for granted ways of everyday nationhood, Cold War divides, and ideologies operate. Olga Mun is pursuing her Ph.D. studies at the Department of Education, University of Oxford. Her research focuses on social epistemological analysis of internationalization of research practices in Kazakhstan. She holds an MA in Comparative and International Education from Lehigh University, USA. Currently she serves as a co-convenor of the Comparative and International Education Special Interest Group (SIG) at the British Education Research Association. Edith Mukudi Omwami is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of California, Los Angeles. She teaches courses in theories in comparative education, development education, social context of learners, and education research practice. Her research focus is on the attainment of sustainable development goals (SDGs) with respect to issues pertaining to education access, participation, education finance, gender and education, empowerment of women, and nutrition and cognition. Her research examines the context for marginalized and vulnerable populations that include
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children and youth, ethnic minority, women, and populations in rural areas and those in conflict-impacted spaces. She is also involved in development intervention in the areas of education and food security in Africa. Her most recent publications are on Comparative Perspectives on International Early Childhood Education in the Context of SDGs (United Kingdom: Emerald Publishing Limited) and Globalization, Nationalism, and Inclusive Education For All: A reflection on the ideological shifts in education reform (Dordrecht: Springer). Garine Palandjian is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Educational Policy and Evaluation program at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Through a decolonial lens, Garine’s research focuses on redefining education and identities through post-Soviet and post-socialist Armenian education transformations, and memories of bordering practices and experiences. Marcelo Parreira do Amaral is a Full Professor of Education at the Institute of Education of the University of Muenster, Germany. Parreira do Amaral teaches and researches in the field of Comparative and International Education, Education Policy Studies, Lifelong Learning and Education Institutions. His current research focuses on international educational policy and governance issues at various levels and scales. The focus of attention of his research lies in understanding how education institutions and systems are impacted by the relationships between the local, national, and international levels, with particular attention to issues of access to and equity in education. Recent publication: Researching the Global Education Industry—Commodification, the Market and Business Involvement (Palgrave 2019, edited volume together with Gita-Steiner-Khamsi and Christiane Thompson). Oren Pizmony-Levy is an Associate Professor of International and Comparative Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Trained as a sociologist, his research and teaching center on the role of global educational movements in educational and social change. Specifically, his scholarship focuses on three “cases”: international large-scale assessments, environmental and sustainability education, and LGBT+ education. His work has been published in Comparative Education Review, Globalisation, Societies and Education, International Journal of Educational Development, Oxford Review of Education, and Sociological Perspectives. Currently, Pizmony-Levy co-leads a research partnership with the New York City Department of Education to improve schools’ engagement with sustainability education. Susanne Ress is a postdoctoral scholar and program coordinator of the International Master of Quality Education (IMPEQ) at the Otto-Friedrich University of Bamberg. Her work has been published in Comparative Education Review and Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. Ress’ research brings together theories from critical development studies, Comparative and International Education, critical Black and ethnic studies, and post-foundational approaches to education research, examining educational policies as technologies of power and representation. She currently explores how policies concerning sustainability, globality, mobility, and employability shape young people’s lives in Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Susan L. Roberson is Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Cambridge. She has written extensively on globalization and education, and is currently Editor-in-
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Chief of Globalisation, Societies and Education. Susan’s recent books include Public Private Partnerships in Education (2012) and Global Regionalisms and Higher Education (2016). Michele Schweisfurth is Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Glasgow. Among her key publications in Comparative Education and in pedagogy are Learner-Centred Education in International Perspective: Whose pedagogy for whose development? (Routledge 2013) and Comparative and International Education: An introduction to theory, method, and practice (2nd Edition, Bloomsbury 2014, with David Phillips). In addition to a number of research projects on education in the Global South, she is currently an Education Senior Research Fellow at the UK Department for International Development, and a member of the Independent Evaluation Committee of the Global Partnership for Education. Payal Shah is an Associate Professor, University of South Carolina and conducts ethnographic research at the intersection of education, gender, culture, and society. She explores these themes by examining the socio-cultural context of female marginalization and the role of formal and non-formal educational initiatives in promoting gender equity in South Asia. She has been engaged with research and practice on educational issues in India for over 15 years. Payal teaches courses in Comparative Education, social foundations of education and qualitative research. She holds a Ph.D. in Education Policy Studies, an MA in International and Comparative Education, and an MA in Sociology, all from Indiana University. Syed Amir Shah teaches Political Science at the University of Balochistan, Pakistan. Currently, he is pursuing a Ph.D. on a Fulbright grant in the United States. He is enrolled in the Cultural and Education Policy Studies at Loyola University Chicago. His research interests are education and social inequalities, educational privatization, global education policies, and textbook analysis. Robin Shields is Professor of Education at the University of Bristol. His research interests focus on the globalization of education from a macro-sociological perspective, particularly on new applications of quantitative methods, such as social network analysis and multilevel modeling. Robin is co-editor of the Comparative Education Review and has served on the Executive Committee of the British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE). His research has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Higher Education Academy, and the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education. In 2013, he received the George Bereday Award from the Comparative and International Education Society for his application of social network analysis to international student mobility in higher education. Iveta Silova is a Professor at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on the study of globalization and the intersections of post-socialist, post-colonial, and decolonial perspectives in education. Arathi Sriprakash is a Professor of Education at the University of Bristol. Her recent work is centrally concerned with the relationship between epistemic and racial justice. She is author of Pedagogies of Development: the politics and practice of child centred education in India (2012) and The ‘Poor Child’: the cultural politics of education, childhood and
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international development (2016). She is currently completing a book with colleagues called Learning Whiteness: education and the settler colonial state. Gita Steiner-Khamsi, Ph.D., is a Professor of Comparative and International Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, and Director of NORRAG in Geneva. A past president of the Comparative and International Education Society, she published twelve books and numerous articles on topics related to comparative methodology, comparative policy studies, policy-borrowing and lending, globalization and education, and public–private partnerships. Matthew A. M. Thomas is a Senior Lecturer in Comparative Education and Sociology of Education at the Sydney School of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and an MA from Columbia University, Teachers College. Matthew has worked as a public-school teacher in the United States and as an educational researcher, educator, and consultant in Australia, Mali, Nigeria, Indonesia, Tanzania, and Zambia. His research examines educational policies, pedagogical practices, teachers’ lives, and the changing roles of higher and teacher education. Leon Tikly holds a UNESCO Chair in inclusive, good quality education at the University of Bristol. He has studied issues of race, racism and anti-racism extensively with a focus on South Africa and in the UK. His (2020) book on Education for Sustainable Development in the Postcolonial World: Towards a Transformative Agenda for Africa brings together many of his empirical and theoretical concerns. Donna C. Tonini is the Associate Director at the Center for Global Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and also is an Instructor in the Global Studies Graduate Minor Program. She holds an Ed.D. in International Educational Development with a Finance & Planning specialization from Teachers College, Columbia University. Her doctoral research in Tanzania identified barriers of entry to secondary school, and evaluated how educational policy in Tanzania addressed those barriers and impacted enrollment growth. Dr. Tonini has also worked on development projects in Uganda and the Caribbean, and conducted research on education in Singapore and the United States. Mariia Vitrukh is a Ph.D. student in Educational Policy and Evaluation Program at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Drawing from Art and Psychology, Mariia explores other ways of knowing and relating in the context of forced migration of people and nature. Melanie Walker is a distinguished professor at the University of the Free State, South Africa, and South African research chair in Higher Education & Human Development. Her research interests turn on higher education, capabilities expansion and justice in the Global South, with attention to development ethics, decoloniality, intersectional inequalities, and also participatory methodologies and knowledge ecologies. Sharon Walker is a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge researching issues of race equality and racism in UK higher education policy. She has co-authored on race and racism in education and international development. She also works with school leaders and teachers on anti-racist education initiatives.
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Laura Wangsness Willemsen’s teaching, research, and practice are aimed at ensuring schooling supports equity and well-being in both US and international contexts. Her work focuses on gender and development, ethnographic and narrative research methods, and education in East Africa. Her ethnographic, life history work in Tanzania examines how young women’s aspirations, well-being, and life trajectories are shaped by their secondary schooling as well as how young women take up, resist, or reshape various notions of female empowerment. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Doctoral Studies in Education at Concordia University, Saint Paul. Anthony Welch is Professor of Education, University of Sydney. His numerous publications address education reforms, principally within Australia and the Asia-Pacific. Widespread project experience includes East and SE Asia, particularly in higher education. His work has been translated into a dozen languages, and he has been Visiting Professor in the USA, UK, Germany, France, Japan, Malaysia, Turkey, China, and Hong Kong, China. A Fulbright New Century Scholar, Haiwai Mingshi, Tübitak and DAAD Scholar, recent books include The Professoriate: Profile of a Profession (Springer 2005), Education, Change and Society (Oxford, 4th Edition, 2018), ASEAN Industries and the Challenge from China (Palgrave 2011), and Higher Education in South East Asia (Routledge 2011). A consultant to the ADB project Higher Education in Dynamic Asia, he directed The Chinese Knowledge Diaspora project (with Yang, Rui). In 2018 he received a Visiting Foreign Expert award. Alexander W. Wiseman, Ph.D., is a Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy in the College of Education at Texas Tech University. Dr. Wiseman holds a dual-degree Ph.D. in Comparative and International Education and Educational Theory and Policy from Pennsylvania State University, an M.A. in International Comparative Education from Stanford University, an M.A. in Education from The University of Tulsa, and a B.A. in Letters from the University of Oklahoma. He serves as senior editor of the Journal FIRE: Forum for International Research in Education and editor of the Annual Review of Comparative and International Education (Emerald Publishing). Zeena Zakharia is an Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Education at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her publications examine the interplay of language, conflict, and peacebuilding in education and advance a critical approach to refugee studies in the Middle East. These scholarly commitments are grounded in over two decades of educational research and leadership in war-affected contexts.
PREFACE
This book was conceived from a need to provide students, practitioners, and researchers with an accessible introductory text that examines the role of theory and its application in comparative and international education (CIE). The goal of this book is to offer readers a clear overview of foundational theoretical paradigms that have influenced the development of CIE and vice versa. We hope that through this book, readers will feel more empowered to select, adapt, or create a framework as they undertake their own applications of theory to the field of CIE. The book explores a broad collection of social science theories that intersect along a range of different subfields. In each chapter, the authors include practical examples so that readers can see how theory or theories are initiated and enacted in practice. We have also incorporated additional sources at the end of each chapter that readers can consult for further erudition. This book invites CIE scholars, educators, practitioners, policymakers, and especially students at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels to explore key theoretical paradigms in CIE. The book is divided into five parts. The first section introduces foundational theories from social sciences that are central to disciplines upon which the field of CIE is based (e.g., sociology, political science). These theories tend to be broad and general in nature, using a set of concepts and relationships between them to try to explain as much about society as possible. They have been used in CIE research and development practice, as well as for informing the subsequent theories used in CIE. Theories addressed in this section include structural-functionalism; imperialism, colonialism, and coloniality; Marxism; human capital theory; and dependency theory; and world-systems analysis. The second section examines post-foundational theories developed largely in response to the dominant foundational theories outlined in the first section and to changing geopolitical contexts. This section explores post-colonialism, post-structuralism, postmodernism, post-socialist transformations, gender (including post-structuralist perspectives), and innovative post-foundational approaches in CIE. The third section locates the impact of globalization upon the theories of neoliberalism, neo-institutionalism, neo-realism, neo-Gramsci, regimes and regionalism, and cultural political economy. This section explores how these different theories have responded to and incorporated the global discourse of globalization and its subsequent impact upon national educational reforms. The fourth section focuses on the ways in which various theories have informed and explained both policy and practice. This section examines constructivism and learnercenteredness, differentiation and externalization, policy borrowing and lending, peace education, and human rights education, all within and beyond the context of CIE. The fifth section looks at how interdisciplinary theories from other fields have been incorporated into CIE (which is itself interdisciplinary). Theorization of race and sexual identity have constituted a glaring omission in the literature, and chapters on this topic look at how this gap is being addressed. Other perspectives in this section address transitologies, actor-network-theory, social network theory, and the capabilities approach. xviii
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Collectively these chapters further represent more new and emerging ways to analyze education. Producing a volume of this nature is inherently complex, though from the outset, we aimed to incorporate a diverse range of scholarly perspectives. Thus, the contributors to this volume represent scholars with varied personal and professional identities, areas of theoretical and geographical expertise, institutional affiliations, and at different career stages. We were not able to include all scholars (or theories) due to space limitations, of course, and in some cases, certain authors were unavailable or became unable to contribute. Yet, we are pleased with the results, and with the fact that more than 45 contributors from 27 institutions have been involved in a text of this scale. In sum, this book highlights a collection of core theories in comparative and international education as described by a diverse group of both eminent and emerging scholars in the field. While scholars do not always agree on how to define theory, what is clear is that we use theories models to guide our work and that these approaches influence the development of this exciting and interdisciplinary field. This book therefore surveys the theoretical landscapes and debates within CIE, and invites students, scholars, and practitioners to join these lively and ongoing discussions. Dr. Tavis D. Jules Dr. Robin Shields Dr. Matthew A. M. Thomas
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Introduction New Directions in Comparative and International Education TAVIS D. JULES
The future of comparative education rests, in a sense, upon easy accessibility to the centers where comparative education sources are housed and where comparative education is taught. On the quality of these facilities depends the success of introducing the subject to beginner students. That students in the field gain an impression of rigorous scholarship, excitement, and a conviction that their study is worthwhile is vital to the sound establishment of comparative education as a respected discipline. —Bereday, 1964, p. 171 In the almost 60 years since Bereday wrote the words in the epigraph above, a great deal of theorization by a wide range of scholars has advanced the “twin fields” (Wilson, 1994) of comparative and international education (CIE). New interpretations emerged, others were adapted, and some dissipated. Yet, at this vital moment in CIE, when various theoretical frameworks function across different scales and levels, critical consideration of theory is needed. The role of this handbook is to help introduce students, researchers, and practitioners to CIE, and more importantly, to equip them with a range of theoretical frameworks for research in the field. In short, this volume seeks to sketch out what it means to use theory in the field of CIE in a changing geopolitical landscape. But first, what is theory? While definitions of theory abound and are explored later in this chapter, in this volume we take the position that, following Anyon (2009), theory can be conceptualized as: an architecture of ideas—a coherent structure of interrelated concepts—whose contemplation and application (1) help us to understand and explain discursive and social phenomena and (2) provides a model of the way that discourse and social systems work and can be worked upon. —p. 3 These two components are vital, as theories enable us to both understand and apply actions in the real world. Moreover, we do not have the option to choose to use theory, on the one hand, or to ignore it, on the other. Rather, “theory is within every practice, whether evident and known, or not” (McCowan and Unterhalter, 2015, p. 33). Attaining a nuanced understanding of theories, and particularly those utilized in a diverse interdisciplinary community such as CIE, is therefore paramount. In addition, it may be beneficial to distinguish between theory and paradigm. These terms and concepts may feel as if they overlap, and indeed authors often use them in 1
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HANDBOOK OF THEORY IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
complementary ways. For our purposes, we generally consider a paradigm as encompassing (and broader than) theory. Popkewitz (1984) suggests this understanding: the idea of a paradigm directs attention to science as having constellations of commitments, questions, methods and procedures that underlie and give direction to scientific work . . . As people are trained in a research community, they learn ways in which to think, “see”, “feel”, and act toward the world . . . The assumptions [of a research community] are so deeply rooted in the personal reality of a researcher that they become ‘facts’ that structure the perceptions of the theorist and shape his/her subsequent theorizing. —pp. 33–34 In this understanding, the researcher’s paradigm or paradigmatic commitments help shape—and appear more significant than—the theories they employ. As noted in the preface and later throughout this volume, however, theories can operate at different levels as they aim to explain varying phenomena in the real world. In exploring the variety of theories within CIE and their usage, we aim to show how theoretical stances inform the changing social orders. Theories and their underlying paradigms inform everything that occurs in CIE, and both scholars and practitioners in the field use data, methods, and theories from numerous different disciplines, traditions, and educational practices. Our theoretical choices are usually informed by disciplinary traditions that are evident in the approaches our field takes, and so our field changes as the theories shift, morph, and evolve. Several scholars have argued that CIE draws from various disciplines because it rests on multiple theoretical perspectives (Jacob et al., 2011; Rust, 2004). McCowan and Unterhalter (2015), in writing about education and international development, suggest that there is no “single theoretical lexicon”—instead, it is “a polyvalent area, drawing on different disciplines, engaging with some of the complexities of [theoretical] application and attempting to dialogue with policymaking through posing questions and offering critical reflection” (p. 28). Theories, therefore, offer different truths depending on a range of approaches and paradigms (Marginson and Mollis, 2001). This theoretical landscape is very complex, with a long history in the social sciences as an explanation of the production of knowledge about human behavior and changes in social systems. Such a fluid theoretical journey is no easy task for researchers, let alone students who are new to the field, as Bereday (1964) suggests above. Yet, a theoretical framework is necessary to guide research projects, educational reforms, and new policy programs. Indeed, we work in a field that “applies historical, philosophical and social science methods and theory to the study of international problems in education” (Epstein, 1994a, p. 918). In short, CIE is an applied problemoriented field built upon intellectual, methodological, and theoretical foundations and traditions. Returning to the geopolitical landscape of CIE, since its inception, scholars in our field have used comparisons to help better understand the diffusion of educational theories. As Mills (1970) asserts, “comparisons are required in order to understand what may be the essential conditions of whatever we are trying to understand” (p. 163). Cox (1981) notes that “theory is always for someone and some for purpose” (p. 128, emphasis in original) and therefore in using comparisons, we should all be critical since “to be critical, to refuse to accept a theory at face value, to look at it and see where it comes from, what it was designed to achieve, the context in which it was developed” (Cox, 2012, p. 19) should be our goal. In this way, comparison should be situated within theories that permit us to
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choose the units of analysis to test that theory for its utility. In doing so, we recognize that theory is everywhere and in everything, and also dynamic in its explanations of changing phenomena. Given that CIE as a field is interdisciplinary, researchers may seek to engage with numerous theoretical paradigms to understand how and why ideological, structural, and programmatic changes occur in national educational systems. As Ball (2003) notes, “theories offer another language, a language of distance, of irony, of immigration” (p. 80). In this way, the work of the social scientist is “to examine a paradigm, or theoretical perspective, for its core values and philosophical roots in order to gain insight into the perspective” (as cited in Paulston, 1977, p. 374). A good theory provides social scientists with a roadmap of useful direction that helps them to interpret the meanings and limitations of their conclusions. In fact, Paulston (1993) was the first to compare and map paradigms and theories in CIE texts by creating what he called social cartography, which presented a heuristic taxonomy of knowledge perspectives in the field. The field also has a rich tapestry of the “hybrid academic-practitioner” (Wilson, 1994) relationship, which has informed the research debates being conducted in the field. Ever since its (formal) scientific formation with the work of Michael Sadler in the 1900s, CIE has aimed to examine “the imminent general forces upon which all systems are built” (Bereday, 1964, p. 23). As Bickmore et al. (2017) note, CIE “also challenges us to think broadly about the link between local practices and global issues and to explore the overlapping values and social systems that underpin the educational enterprise itself ” (p. 2). As students training in the field of CIE, it is important to note that an understating of the field’s hybridity is an “essential part of teacher training, theoretical work in education, and the practical tasks of policymaking and administration in education” (Noah, 1974, p. 341). In fact, it is the changes at the sub-national, national, regional, and global levels that shape our thinking about the complex relations that design and impact school systems. Thus, developing a strong grounding in various theories is even more important in recent decades as comparisons have become more widespread across counties, organizations, and scholars. Therefore, far from static, CIE as a field is a living organism, with the foundational philosophies, approaches, methodologies, and conceptualizations underpinning it being continuously questioned and probed. This handbook seeks to survey theoretical frameworks across the field of CIE. While the debates on the merits of the marriage of 1969 between comparative education and international education have been settled (see Wilson, 1994), the role of theory in CIE continues to elude an end. For example, prior to 1969, comparative education and international education were two separate fields of studies with comparative education being viewed as more theoretical in nature, and international education seen as practitioner-oriented. On the one hand, the question beckons whether theory should inform the practices of international education. On the other hand, should practices inform theory in comparative education. Rather than come down on either side in this bifurcated debate of theory and practice, this book hopes to bring together the different ways in which theory seeks to inform practice and vice versa. In fact, Arnove (2001) argues that “one major goal of comparative education has been to contribute to theory building and to the formulation of generalizable propositions about the workings of school systems and their interactions with their surrounding economies, polities, cultures, and social orders . . .” (p. 482). Similarly, Holmes (1971) asserts that “one aim of comparative education is theoretical. It is to improve our understanding of education as such; and in particular of our own national problems in education. Comparative education has a practical purpose too” (pp. x–xi). Yet, others have also argued that our field comes
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in part from a “lack of clarity about what it is we are studying and whose perspective we are studying it from and from a persistent refusal to address our study to educational processes. Some of these problems relate to theoretical approaches scholars have taken” (Kelly, 1987, p. 447). As Paulston (1977) maintains, the ideological tendencies that characterize the theoretical approach of the field are not necessarily incompatible. However, many comparativists have come to believe that “the convictions that constitute a person’s theory represent answers to a variety of questions about the nature of human development” (Thomas, 1986, p. 229). The field of CIE has always had a scientific dimension aimed at theory building. As Farrell (1979) poignantly asserts, all sciences are comparative. In focusing on the socio-economic and historical contexts of national educational systems, the aim of CIE should be to map the relationship between theories and social contexts to create a deeper understanding of multiple perspectives (Rust, 2000). In what follows, this introduction explains the rise of comparative and international education. This is followed by an explanation of how theory has been used in this field.
THE HISTORY OF THE FIELD Many scholars, including John Dewey (1859–1952), have internationally done comparative work without being labeled as a comparative and international education researcher (Wilson, 1994). Epstein (1994) articulates that: comparativists . . . are primarily scholars interested in explaining why educational systems and processes vary and how education relates to wider social factors and forces. . . International educators use findings derived from comparative education to understand better the educational processes they examine and thus to enhance their ability to make policy relating to programs such as those associated with international exchange and understanding. —p. 918 In the early days of CIE, the intellectual and ideological orientations of the academic field questioned whether this field should be applied or theoretical. In the end, much of the field evolved in the context of colonialism and self-determination, and the field has emerged as a hybrid of both theory and practice. Noah and Eckstein (1969) suggest the evolution of the field is composed of five stages, beginning with the tales of travelers based on broad descriptions of educational systems, institutions, and practices abroad. The second stage, in the nineteenth-century, was one of educational borrowing or learning through example, while the third stage was comprised primarily of encyclopedic work on foreign countries so as to accumulate information and promote international understanding, pioneered by Michael Sadler (1861–1943), Nicholas Hans (1888–1969), and Isaac Kandel (1881–1965). This “stressed explanation rather than description and sought that explanation in a study of the historical context and the influence of cultural forces” (Noah and Eckstein, 1969, p. 4). Noah and Eckstein (1969) suggest that in the twentieth-century, the final two stages emerged: firstly being concerned with understanding the national character as it focused on the forces and factors shaping educational systems; while the fifth and final stage, occurring after the First World War, engrossed itself with the empirical methods and the drive towards positivism. However, it was the work of Kelly and Altbach (1981) that advocated for a theory-driven comparison that frames studies through neo-colonialism, world-system analysis, and dependency theory
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lenses to understand how national school systems are influenced by the local and global. Based on this interpretation, Paulston (1993) argues that three different theoretical movements mark the field. The first one, following the Second World War, is called “orthodoxy,” while a second movement in the 1970s (described as “heterodoxy”) emerged. In the 1980s, the third and most recent movement, labeled “emergent heterogeneity” (Epstein, 1994b), began. These categorizations came to represent the contemporary intellectual communities rooted in different paradigms. In a similar manner, Kazamias (1961) makes a distinction between “old” and “new” approaches to the field where the former is viewed as being “descriptive and prescriptive,” the latter as being more analytical and “scientific.” Though the field began formally in the mid-nineteenth-century, it can be traced to the post-Enlightenment era with the works of Marc-Antoine Jullien de Paris. It was in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, in 1816–17, that Jullien de Paris launched his plan for what would become Comparative Education by requesting statistical information from governments concerning various facets of their education systems in order to “deduce true principles and determined routes so that education would be transformed into an almost positive science” (as cited in Watson, 1998, p. 10). Jullien’s (1817) Esquisse et vues Préliminaires d’un Ouvrage sur l’Éducation Comparée (Plan for a Work on Comparative Education) contained a series of questions that surveyors could use to describe the state of education, and it would become one of the foundational texts in the field. His main aim was to collate, compare, and analyze statistical information, which reflected the scientific preoccupation of the field at this time, and his research sought to use theory to understand “what works,” what “best practices” could be identified and transferred from elsewhere. These developments made comparative education more positivistic and began to institutionalize the field as a science. This would eventually lead to the creation of such global entities as the International Project for the Evaluation of Education Achievement (IEA). As Cowen (2006) asserts: there is still considerable political and ideological power in the long-running epistemological self-justifications of modern comparative education which was born with the Jullien version of “relevant research” and the aspiration to provide—by international questionnaire—“robust data.” —p. 564 While Jullien would lay the foundation for methodical international studies in education, others, such as Horace Mann (1796–1859), Calvin Stowe (1802–1886), William Torrey Harris (1835–1909), and Henry Barnard (1811–1900) in the United States, Victor Cousin (1792–1867) in France, and Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) in England are credited with the “proto-scientific and the reformist/meliorist administrative motif ” (Kaloyannaki and Kazamias, 2009, p. 8) of the field. In this way, Jullien’s work was nomothetic in that it isolated a few social factors to identify patterns and trends in national educational systems (Epstein, 1994a). Meanwhile, beyond comparative education, Sylvester (2002) has maintained that the term “international education” has been consistently used since the 1860s. As Butts (1971) notes, international education arose with the nation state and, therefore, the term connoted “educational relations among nation states from the sixteen century onwards” (p. 165). Some scholars argue that it was Cesar August Basset who started international education by trying to reform the French educational system through the observations of education outside of France. He called for education to be “free from national pedagogical
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principles” (as cited in Watson, 1998, p. 10). Bassett (1814) called for the appointment of a scholar “free from national and methodological prejudices” (as cited in Epstein, 1992, p. 10) to travel and observe educational systems outside of France. Others, such as Hill (2012), have traced the foundation of international education to John Comenius (1592– 1670), a Czech teacher who drew up numerous plans on international cooperation in education in the seventeenth-century. In 1833, Victor Cousin published Rapport sur l’etat de l’instruction publique de l’Allemagne (Report on the State of Public Education in Some Parts of Germany), which dealt with the public education in Germany, and would also be influential in shaping international education. Prior to the nineteenth-century, the term internationalism was unknown, and it was only throughout the nineteenth-century that several scholars traveled abroad and sought deeper insights on what was then called “education for international understanding” or “global education,” which was associated with the teaching and related activities of schooling in other countries, the studying of curriculum and educational institutions, formal education, and educational assistance (Sylvester, 2005). Husén (1994) notes that international education combines theory and practice in that it “refers to both the objectives and content of certain educational pursuits and the institutionalization of such activities” (p. 2972) and should aim “to increase the awareness of students and to promote reflection and research on global issues” (p. 2973). In the twentieth-century, as traveling became more accessible, educational observations were conducted more widely, and international education began to be applied to educational and cultural relations. During the first decades of the twentieth-century, several international schools (such as the Spring Grove School in Hounslow) were established as the first “institutional standard bearers” (Sylvester, 2002) of international education. First discussed in 1880 at a conference on Primary Teaching—but coming to life in 1912—the International Bureau of Education in Geneva would become a major player in shaping international education or “international understanding,” as it was called at that time. By 1923, the World Federation of Education Associations (WFEA) would be established, and they would sponsor several research projects around international education. However, it was Kandel’s (1937) essay on Intelligent Nationalism in the Curriculum that provided one of the modern definitions for international education or education for international understanding when he states that “there seems to have been a failure to understand that internationalism and international understanding are things that exist between nations and that nation must continue to exist” (p. 37), and therefore, “international understanding can only grow out of a proper teaching of nationalism” (p. 39). In 1931, the International Education Review was founded; it would later be hailed as a “new enterprise in international understanding” (as cited in Epstein, 1994, p. 920). By the close of the twentieth-century, international education continued to be described in imprecise terms and concepts such as “education for international understanding,” “global education,” “education for world citizenship,” and “world affairs education” were all used to describe what was viewed then as international education (Sylvestor, 2005). Returning to comparative education, it would be the rise of Prussia and then Germany that would lead to an interest in CIE by Michael Sadler. His oft-cited lecture at the Guildford Educational Conference in 1900 was titled, How far can we learn anything of practical value from the study of foreign systems of education? In fact, Sadler declared that “the practical value of studying in a right spirit and with scholarly accuracy, the working of foreign systems of education is that it will result in our being better fitted to study and understand our own” (as cited in Watson, 1998, p. 10). For Sadler, theory was to be used as a way to allow us to:
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wander at pleasure among the educational systems of the world, like a child strolling through a garden, and pick off a flower from one bush and some leaves from another, and then expect that if we stick what we have gathered into the soil at home we shall have a living plant. —Berdey, 1964, p. 310 During this time, theory was used to explain the benefits of studying foreign systems of education, and what we might glean from them. Sadler assumed that we need to account for context, and therefore theory was used as a way to “learn things of practical value” (as cited in Cowen, 2014, p. 4). During this period, Sadler would use theory to challenge “simplistic policy borrowing—or uncritical international policy transfer” (Crossley, 2014, p. 18) of policy prescriptions. In this way, Sadler argues that “the practical value of studying, in a right spirit and with scholarly accuracy, the working of foreign systems of education is that it will result in our being better fitted to study and to understand our own” (as cited in Higginson, 1979, p. 50). Sadler’s work was ideographic in that it analyzed the social and cultural conditions that distinguished schooling in one society from another in that genuine comparison yielded Verstehen (understanding) (Epstein, 1994a). The dawning of fascism and the need for democratic models would shape the work of Issac Kandel’s 1933 book Studies in Comparative Education, in which he argued that comparison should use fundamental principles and universal concepts and that we should study the endogenous and exogenous factors and forces of the school system. The nineteenth-century would see theory being used as a way to inform our epistemological and ideological “positivist vision of progress” (Cowen, 2006) as it sought to reform the agendas of governments based on what might be learned from the experiences of other countries. This would eventually give rise to the “factors and forces phase” (Wolhuter, 2019), where the focus on theory became understanding how social forces shaped educational systems. On the other hand, in international education, in the post-Second World War period, the development of international aid organizations and study abroad programs would shape the application of theory in the field. This would be translated into the approaches used to look at international development and the ways in which we accounted for the role of education during times of economic transformation. With the expansion of foreign aid during the post-colonial period, international education became linked to the promotion of cooperation through education, cultural exchanges, international student exchanges, mutual understanding through school instruction, and the “rehabilitation of backward cultural areas” (Brickman, 1950, p. 617). It should be noted that derogatory phrases, such as “rehabilitation of backward cultural areas,” epitomizes the cultural chauvinism of the day on research in international education. However, people like Kandel (1955), thought that international education should not be an outgrowth of internationalism but should stem from national systems of education. By 1950, UNESCO emerged as a global leader in international education with the launching of “education for international understanding,” which emphasizes education for a world society (Sylvester, 2003). The Comparative Education Society was born in 1956, and the next year its flagship journal, Comparative Education Review, launched. The society was integral to “contribut[ing] to an understanding of education through encouragement and promotion of comparative education and related areas of inquiry and activity” while the journal provided “up-to-date information and interpretative analysis of educational developments all over the world” (Kazamias and Schwartz, 1977, pp. 153–154). The creation of the
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HANDBOOK OF THEORY IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
Comparative Education Review became a “testing ground in which new ideas and concepts about comparative education were allowed to compete” (Campisano, 1988, p. 43), and “anyone who so desired could leap into the vacuum” (Brickman, 1973, p. 13). In 1969, the Comparative Education Society changed its name to the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) to better reflect the close links amongst fields. Soon, other societies would form across the globe. By the 1960s, entities such as the Peace Corps would bring masses of people into contact with others abroad, promoting further interest in international education. During this formative period, several study tours of foreign systems were organized, and numerous textbooks went into production. International education also emerged as an “all-embracing concept” that allowed nationals to “(a) learn and borrow from one another (b) influence and assist in the development of one another, and (c) respond educationally at home to actions and ideas emanating from outside their borders” (Butts, 1969, p. 9). In this way, international education is seen as being “particularly concerned with the study of the role of education as an international force in the modernization process” (Butts, 1971, p. 33). At this time, the intention was on finding a way to define international education, and as Leestma (1969) argues, international education “is any experience that reduced ethnocentrism” and aims “at developing an understanding of the values, perspectives and life spaces (the personal environment of the individual) of those who are different from ourselves—whoever ‘we’ may be” (p. 6). Here, attention was placed on using formal schooling for the acceptance and appreciation of so-called foreign cultures. Thus, international education became seen as the study of foreign societies and cultures and thus building a “ ‘we-they’ or ‘us-them’ dichotomy into the heart of the education enterprise” (Anderson and Becker, 1976, p. 3). Instead, Anderson and Becker (1976) call for international education to “demonstrate the role of the individual in ‘transnational processes, institutions and problems’ ” (as cited in Sylvester, 2005, p. 135). By the 1990s, what constituted international education “remains a complex and controversial matter” (Mattern, 1991, p. 209), given that “there is a contradictory variety of definition for international education” (Wilson, 1994, p. 480). The one thing that scholars somewhat agree upon is that international education has been applied practice, and this has meant that many of its activities have not been well documented. Today, one way of viewing international education “is [that it is] often associated with the related concepts of global, intercultural, multinational and multicultural education, and shares a great deal of conceptual territory with dimensions of comparative education” (Tompson, 2002, p. 5). It was the post-Second World War reconstructionism that saw the institutionalization of the field in universities in a changing organizational and intellectual context (Arnove, 2013). This brought with it a set of diverse intellectual and ideological perspectives and theoretical considerations. In focusing on the impact on national educational systems brought on by the changing geopolitical environment in the wake of the Second World War, the rise of self-determination, decolonizing, the feminist movements, and the reconstruction of Europe, CIE attempted to explain the “beginning of a new world order in Europe” (Watson, 1988, p. 6). This led to an interest by scholars in colonialism, neocolonialism, post-colonialism, world-systems, and dependency theory. During the 1950s and 1960s, theory played a significant role in explaining the role of education in changing traditional societies. Throughout this time (i.e., the “social science phase” (Wolhuter, 2019), the field experienced the “Method Wars” (Cowen, 2014) while the range of academic imaginations narrowed. At the same time, the field also sought to use theory to become more positivist through the employment of “methodologism” (Barber, 1972) or
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“methodological empiricism” (Kazamias and Schwartz, 1977) in the hope that an altruistic force, if fully adopted and rigorously implemented, would lead to more precise and scientific comparative education (Noah and Eckstein, 1969). Thus, theoretical and methodological openness would become central to the rise of the field’s scientific pursuit (Silova and Brehm, 2010). The movement for a society built on humanistic and philosophical foundations was tested when Noah (1969) argued that “systematic, controlled, empirical, and (wherever possible) quantitative investigation of explicitly stated hypotheses” should be the “modus operandi of best practice in the contemporary social sciences; we must hope that it will soon become the hallmark of those who would call themselves comparative educators, too” (p. 251). With this, the view toward rationalization of education becomes commonplace, and theory became viewed as aiding scientific discourse. This is echoed in the fact that structural-functionalism gave theoretical dominance to a major portion of the research in CIE, while positivism reigned methodologically. It was also during this time that the field got caught up in methodological nationalism, or locational comparisons and theory were used to support the centrality of nation-states in CIE. In this way, the focus of theory became understanding “juxtapositions,” “similarities and differences,” “contexts,” and eventually “learning from” other nations (Cowen, 2011; Kim, 2014). As Cowen (2006) argues, these views would eventually give way to a displaced theorization “(which had been about cultural context)” as the “‘theoretical problem’ of comparative education narrowed in the 1960s to method and technique” (p. 564). During this phrase, CIE evolved to focus on not only school systems but also the role of social and economic structures in influencing national educational policies. It was in the 1970s and 1980s that the theoretical heterodoxy of functionalism would be challenged by radical functionalist, humanist, and radical humanist paradigms. By the mid-1970s, during “a phase of heterodoxy (or paradigm wars)” (Wolhuter, 2019, p. 21), theory in the field sought to use other critical approaches, such as neo-Marxism to question the supremacy of positivism and functionalism. The 1980s saw theory being dominated by “a more humanistic Marxism and radical humanism” (Paulston 1994, p. 926) and accompanied by interpretive, ethnomethodological, and interactionist approaches to the field. Between the fall of communist regimes, the restructuring of South Africa, and the rise of global economic markets, there was a renewed focus on the role, scope, and function of CIE as scholars pondered the impact of political uncertainty, instability, and chaos. In the 1990s, the field witnessed the acceptant of “the complementarity of different paradigms” (Epstein, 1994b, p. 923). This era saw the phase of “heterogeneity (of increasing diversity of paradigms)” (Wolhuter, 2019, p. 21) as theories were employed to explain the rise of internationalism and globalization in the form of neoliberalism and the demise of the nation state. Theory was also used to explain why some countries remained underdeveloped while others thrived broadly and the role of “international knowledge banks” (Jones, 2004), and non-governmental organizations in education. Theory would also play a central role as international organizations re-emphasized the importance of education and human resource development in the form of the World Education Forum, which called for Educational For All in 1990, and later in the Dakar Framework in 2000. Linked to Education for All, this period also saw the institutionalizing of international influence of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and more recently, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Socio-economic development became co-entangled with the needs of national educational systems, and theory was used as a way to understand how international actors were shaping the
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geometries and trajectories of national educational systems. In this period, the mantra became that education, particularly at the primary level in the form of basic education, plays a vital role in the development of national systems, and constitutes a basic human right. To that end, this era also saw the rise of the use of different moments of comparison used as points of reference. Today, with the amount of attention commanded by large-scale quantitative initiatives such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) studies and International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), “theoretical and epistemological assumptions that increasingly legitimise metrics and ‘big science’ approaches to research across the social sciences” (Crossley, 2014, p. 16) is now en vogue. Moreover, the Bray and Thomas (1995) analytical cube has come to shape some of the theoretical thinking in the field; it differentiates between the following (geographical) levels in the field: Level 1, World regions/continents; Level 2, Countries; Level 3, States/ provinces; Level 4, Districts; Level 5, Schools; Level 6, Classrooms; and Level 7, Individuals. At the same time, one could argue that the proliferation of theories employed within CIE has never been broader, and considerations of theory are now both more common, more confusing, and more important. In an age of big science, theory today now has a central role to play in the big data movement. In fact, many of the epistemological assumptions and values that characterized the earlier work of Jullien are evident in the rapid growth of contemporary interest in the role of theory in cross-national comparisons. Several scholars have also warned that theory should not be used to decontextualize data for educational settings. Currently, we find ourselves in a scenario where theory is being used to support development alternatives to national development trajectories. Unlike the Washington Consensus model, which emphasized a focus on market reform as the approach for growth and development, the new models place weight on institutional reform, good governance, and enhanced social growth and welfare as mechanisms for sustainable development.
THEORY IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION As the field emerged, various theories were used to help scholars understand social forces shaping national educational systems. Evolutionary theories such as functionalism became dominant and implicit in the work of Sadler, Kandel, and Hans, and helped to consolidate meta-theorizing around the role of functionalism and the positivist orthodoxy in CIE. This theory was used to explain social and economic development. As Anderson (1994) notes, comparative education should follow a threefold strategy of “(a) integration with the functionalist social sciences; (b) the use of the natural sciences model of hypothesis testing and analysis of covariation; and (c) a commitment to theoretical explanation and generalization” (as cited in Epstein, 1994b, p. 923). This implies that the field should be viewed as a single-paradigm science (Paulston, 1993). Yet, this primary or sole reliance upon functionalism has decreased over time. However, as social scientists in CIE, using a systematic theory to guide research is important; without theoretical guidelines, we could fall prey to “blind empiricism” (Foucault, 1977) and “abstracted empiricism” (Mills, 1959). However, there is no general theory of education. Instead, we use several theoretical perspectives to explain the relationship between schooling and society. While our starting point is often a grand
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theory of comparative inquiry, Phillips and Schweisfurth (2014) remind us that “instead the comparativist is better served by an appreciation of ways in which a variety of theoretical perspectives might be drawn upon to elucidate particular issues/problems/ methodological approaches” (p. 37). As Phillips (2014) further argues, as we undertake a comparative inquiry, “theory should of course be used critically and on the basis of a thorough reading and interpretation of the original texts behind it” (p. 78). In short, the role of theory should be to provide explanations. We can think of theories of being either normative or sociological. Normative theories often come from educators and philosophers and are based “on conceptions of what constitutes a good education and focus on how to implement these conceptions in terms of structures, contents, and methods” (Khôi, 1986, p. 12). Sociological theories stem from the examination “of concrete situations and assess the changing meaning and role of education in the broader social context” (Khôi, 1986, p. 12). These two perspectives are not mutually exclusive, and frequently, the theories developed by people outside of education are also used to explain educational phenomena and educational change. One example is neo-realism, which comes from the international relations field but has been applied to education to examine the impact of multilateralism upon national educational systems. As Ball (2006) warns us, however: [t]heory can, and often does, function to provide comforting and apparently stable identities . . . [that] serve to conjure up its own anterior norms and lay its dead hand upon the creativity of the mind. Too often in educational studies, theory becomes no more than a mantric reaffirmation of belief rather than tool exploration and for thinking otherwise. —p. 6 In this way, the absence of theory has the ability to leave the social science researcher “prey to unexamined, unreflexive preconception and dangerously naïve ontological and epistemological . . . prioris” (Ball, 2003, p. 79). Theory, therefore, offers us modes of thought and a language that allows us to explore and articulate our research findings. As Jacob et al. (2011) observe, theory “can be systematic and conform to a set of rules, criteria, or principles in its attempt to describe social phenomena” (p. 69). Theory should, therefore, help us strengthen the research process by allowing us to focus on an explanation of both what is apparent and what lies beyond. In this way, theory and data should work in tandem with each other to unearth surprises or explain larger empirical content. Thus, raw empiricism must be connected with abstract theorizing for us to engage with the study of social phenomena successfully. We should, therefore, not employ theory for theory’s sake, and wherever possible, combine extant theories to surveys of social phenomena. But as we think about theory in CIE, we must also bear in mind the consequences of the “internationalization of education studies” (Tikly and Crossley, 2001, p. 577) and economic neoliberalism upon national educational systems. Therefore, in our work, accepting that no fact is theory-free, the application of theory should give us explanatory power in regard to social phenomena. In this way, theory helps understand and explain the patterns, themes, and encodes that we find in different datum and observable phenomena. Theoretical stances also enhance and empower our research and descriptions. Theory is central to the social science work of CIE because “without theory, our data on school experience or social phenomena do not go very far, and do not tell us very much that is not already obvious” (Anyon, 2009, p. 3). Our aim
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should not be to get involved in “theory by numbers” (Dale, 1992) or to be stuck in “descriptive theory” (Althusser, 1975). Moreover, the purpose of theory should not be problem-solving but to gain a critical analysis (Cox, 1980). In the former, theory takes the world as it finds it, “with the prevailing social and power relationships and the institutions into which they are organized, as the given framework for action” (Dale, 1992, p. 206). The aim of problem-solving theory is to make sense of the relationship between institutions and social and power relations while questioning particular problems. Critical theory, meanwhile, “stands apart from the prevailing order of the world and asks how that order came about” and by that nature is “directed to the social and political complex as a whole rather than to the separate parts” (Dale, 1992, p. 206). In CIE, we have generally adopted a critical, rather than problem-solving theoretical approach. Critical social theory employed in CIE can have profound results on the exploitation of educational research by extending its social, analytical, and critical trajectories. In this way, our theoretical stance is driven by the action of calling into question the changes that are occurring within institutions and social and power relationships. Therefore, critical social theory in CIE, in the words of Michael Sadler, should not be interested in keeping our eyes only on “brick and mortar institutions nor on the teachers and pupils, but we must also go outside into the streets and into the homes of people and try to find out what is the intangible, impalpable spiritual force . . . upholding the school system” (as cited in Bereday, 1964, p. 309). This acknowledges the hard work of theory since we need to master its “conceptual vocabulary and grammar of ideas” (Anyon, 2009, p. 6). In working with educational theory, our aim in CIE should be to place our findings in “a larger theoretical infrastructure that could provide them with increased explanatory, critical, or even liberatory power” (Anyon, 2009, p. 1). In other words, our goal should be to bring theory and data into conversation with each other rather than to separate our theory and research, as has been the orthodox approach. In the words of Epstein (1994b), when comparativists talk about theory, we are talking about “implicit knowledge perspectives that can be identified in the work of the field’s founding fathers” (p. 923), be it one that is steeped in colonial legacies. In this way, theory in the field is used as a way of providing an “interparadigmatic and intertheoretic borrowing and interaction of ideas” (Liebman, 2000, p. 335) to explain paradigmatic social phenomena. In other words, theory is used to show and organize the relationships between different paradigmatic positions. We can, therefore, use theory to connect paradigmatic positions; this is categorized as “metatheory”—theory about theory—or also as “microtheory” (Jacob et al., 2011). Metatheory “is an overarching theoretical paradigm that incorporates several theoretical perspectives” (Jacob and Cheng, 2005, p. 237) while in microtheories, the theoretical assertions are mutually consistent. Each theory has its own ontological, epistemological, metaphysical, methodological, axiological, and paradigmatic position that is drawn upon to make its core arguments. The role of theory in CIE becomes one of challenging ideologies, belief systems, and prevailing social relations that characterize societies. But in addition to challenging the status quo, critical theory in CIE should also be emancipatory, as it critiques paradigms of dominance and subservience. As such, we should develop an approach to use theory that is based on an analysis of exogeny that seeks to locate both the larger endogenous and exogenous social “context in which social forces of the object of study is embedded” (Anyon, 2009, p. 2). Theory, therefore, should suggest the ways in which we examine the systems and structures that exist within societies. It gives us a vocabulary to explain what we are seeing in educational spaces and settings. Theory allows us to comprehend our
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data and analysis by helping us to understand the relevant knowledge, proper units of analysis, research questions, and methodology. As social scientists, we choose theory because we believe that it will lead us to the unearthing of interesting explanations, and also to become agents of social change. The systematic codification of a body of theory in the field does not signal homogeneity and isomorphism, nor the best way to use theory in the field; instead, it speaks to the idea that the field is, and continues to be, a hotbed of diverse innovation exploring a range of topics across time and space. In this vein, we continue to employ the use of theory in the field under the “fundamental belief that education can be improved and can serve to bring about change for the better of all nations” (Arnove et al., 1992, p. 1). As the field has evolved into an interdisciplinary subfield of educational studies, scholars have continued to use multiple epistemological positionings and new meta-theorization in their scholarship. In fact, as Cowen (2006) reminds us, one of our primary aims is to “continue with theoretical comparative thinking” while another is to operate “as a social movement, as a set of possibilities for action-on-the-world, without the left-over vocabularies of colonialism, neo-colonialism, aid and development and so on” (p. 570). In this way, theory in CIE is not about fixing educational systems or being in the service of Ministries of Education, but should instead aim at addressing inequalities as well as shaping different epistemic principles and the vocabularies of politics. With the repositioning of CIE in the last three decades, theory then becomes a way of helping us to unpack paradigmatic complexities. In sum, since the formal institutionalization of CIE in the 1960s and onward through the constitution of various academic societies, significant shifts in paradigms and approaches have been evident. From structural-functionalism and modernization theory to neo-Marxism, world-systems theory, dependency theory, post-structuralism, postmodernism, post-colonialism, neo-colonialism, and neo-institutionalism (and more), a range of theories have shaped the geometries and trajectories of the field. Moreover, new theoretical developments—social movements, queer theory, social network analysis, critical race theory, and actor network theory, to name a few—have influenced and continue to (re)shape the field. We have aimed to provide a useful background of many of these theories in this volume. The field will need even newer theorization, however. With its transformation from focusing on micro phenomena of schooling and education to a shift on human agency and their interaction with social institutions, one could argue we are now witnessing a new meta-theorization about the datafication of the field brought about the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution—with cyber-physical systems that blur the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres—and the educational intelligent economy, which is premised on the exponential production of digital data to measure, analyze, and predict educational performance in comparative perspective. At the same time, recent political movements towards nationalism and populism have presented new series of questions about (sub-)national educational systems and the extent to which they could function independently, even if they wanted to. Ironically, the concept of globalization, which captured the attention of many CIE scholars in the last two decades, has assisted in both resisting and reproducing the rise of nationalism and continues to be a focus of new research avenues within CIE. Meanwhile, “ranking regimes” and “league tables” have come to influence and dominate knowledge production in many ways, and therefore require new forms of theorizing. Perhaps most recently, the global novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has raised critical questions about social interactions, educational
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inequality, governmentality, and at its most basic level, the ways that public health crises affect teaching, learning, and schooling. Thus, the future of CIE is not set, and novel theorization will be necessary. We believe this work will be most effective and useful when it is grounded in a deep understanding of related theories and their histories of development and application. We hope this volume lays a strong foundation upon which emerging scholars can build as they advance their own CIE research in new and exciting directions.
REFERENCES Althusser. L (1975). Lenin and philosophy and other essays. London: Verso Anderson, L. F., and Becker, J. M. (1976). The role of social studies in the international education of children and young people. Working Paper for the International Meeting of Experts on the Role of Social Studies in Education for Peace and Respect for Human Rights, UNESCO, Paris. Arnove, R., Altbach, P., and Kelly, G. (1992). Emergent issues in education: Comparative perspectives (SUNY series, frontiers in education). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Arnove, R. (2001). Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) facing the twenty first century: Challenges and contributions. Comparative Education Review, 45(4). Ball, S. (2006). Education policy and social class: The selected works of Stephen Ball. London, UK & New York, NY: Taylor and Francis. Ball, S. (1998). Educational studies, policy entrepreneurship, and social theory. In R. Slee, S. Tomlinson, and G. Weiner (Eds.), School effectiveness for whom? (pp. 70–83). Falmer Press. Barber, B. (1972). Science, salience and comparative education: Some reflections on social scientific inquiry. Comparative Education Review, 16(3), 424–436. Bereday, G. Z. F. (1964). Sir Michael Sadler’s “Study of foreign systems of education.” Comparative Education Review, 7(3), 307–314. Bickmore, K., Hayhoe, R., Manion, C., Mundy, K., and Read, R. (Eds.). (2017). Comparative and international education: Issues for teachers. (2nd Ed.). Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press. Bray, M. and Thomas, T. R. (1995). Levels of comparison in educational studies. Harvard Educational Review, 65(3), 472–490. Brickman, W. W. (1973). Comparative education: Concept, research, and application. Norwood, PA : Norwood Editions. Butts, R. F. (1969). America’s role in international education: A perspective on thirty years. In H. G. Shane (Ed.), The United States and international education—The sixty-eighth yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Butts, R. F. (1971). International education: Overview. In L. C. Deighton (Ed.), The encyclopedia of education (pp. 164–171). New York, NY: Macmillan. Campisano, C. J. (1988). Comparative Education Review: Thirty years of scholarship. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. Cowen, R. (2006). Acting comparatively upon the educational world: Puzzles and possibilities. Oxford Review of Education, 32(5), 561–573. Cowen, R. (2011). Edging closer to the hero, the barbarian, and the stranger. In D. D. Tröhler and R. Barbu (Eds.), Education systems in historical, cultural, and sociological perspectives. The Future of Education Research, 1, 21–36.
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Cowen, R. (2014). Comparative education: Stones, silences, and siren songs. Comparative Education, 50(1), 3–14. Cox, R. W. (1981). Social forces, states and world orders. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 10(2), 126–155. Cox, R. W. (2012). For someone and for some purpose: An interview with Robert W. Cox. In S. Brincat, L. Lima, and J. Nunes (Eds.), Critical theory in international relations and security studies: Interviews and reflections (pp. 15–34). London: Routledge. Crossley, M. (2014). Global league tables, big data and the international transfer of educational research modalities. Comparative Education, 50(1), 15–26. Dale, R. (1992). Recovering from a pyrrhic victory? Quality, relevance and impact in the sociology of education. In M. Arnot and L. Barton (Eds.), Voices concerns: Sociological perspectives on contemporary education reforms (pp. 201–217). Wallingford: Triangle Books. Epstein, E. H. (1994a). Comparative and international education: Overview and historical development. In T. Husén and T. N. Postlethwaite (Eds.), The international encyclopedia of education (2nd edition) (pp. 918–923). Oxford: Pergamon Press. Epstein, E. H. (1994b). Comparative and international education: Paradigms and theories. In T. Husén, and T. N. Postlethwaite (Eds.), The international encyclopedia of education (2nd edition) (pp. 923–931). Oxford: Pergamon Press. Hill, I. (2012). Evolution of education for international mindedness. Journal of Research in International Education, 11(3), 245–261. Holmes, B. (1971). Foreword. In Comparative education: Purpose and methods (pp. ix–xi). St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press. Farrell, J. P. (1979). The necessity of comparison in the study of education: The salience of science and the problem of comparability. Comparative Education Review, 1(23), 3–16. Foucault, M. (1977). Language, counter-memory, practice: Selected interviews and essays, edited by D. F. Bouchard. New York, NY: Cornell University Press. Higginson, J. H. (Ed.) (1979). Selections from Michael Sadler: Studies in world citizenship. Liverpool: Dejall & Meyorre. Husén, T. (1994). International Education. In T. Husén and T. N. Postlethwaite (Eds.), The international encyclopedia of education: Research and studies, volume 5 (pp. 2972–2978). Oxford: Pergamon Press. Jacob, W. J., Crandall, J. R., Hilton, J., and Northrop, L. (2011). Emerging theories in comparative, inter-national, and development education. In J. C. Weidman and W. J. Jacob (Eds.), Beyond the comparative (pp. 69–91). Boston, MA: Sense Publishers. Jones, P. W. (2004). Taking the credit: Financing and policy linkages in the education portfolio of the World Bank. In G. Steiner-Khamsi (Ed.), The global politics of educational borrowing and lending (pp. 188–200). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Kaloyannaki, P., and Kazamias, A. (2009). The modernist beginnings of comparative education: The proto-scientific and the reformist-meliorist administrative motif. In R. Cowen and A. M. Kazamias (Eds.), International handbook of comparative education (pp. 11–36). London: Springer. Kandel, I. L. (1937). Intelligent nationalism in the school curriculum. In I. L. Kandel and G. M. Whipple (Eds.), Thirty-sixth yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, committee on international understanding (Part II—International understanding through the public school curriculum) (pp. 35–42). Bloomington, IL : Public School Publishing Company. Kandel, I. L. (1955). National and international aspects of education. International Review of Education, 1, 5–15.
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Kazamias, A., and Schwartz, K. (1977). Intellectual and ideological perspectives in comparative education: An interpretation. Comparative Education Review, 21(2/3), 153–176. Kelly, G. (1987). Comparative education and the problem of change: An agenda for the 1980s. Comparative Education Review, 31(4), 477. Khôi, L. (1986). Toward a general theory of education. Comparative Education Review, 30(1), 12–29. Kim, T. (2014). The intellect, mobility and epistemic positioning in doing comparisons and comparative education. Comparative Education, 50(1), 58–72. Leestma, R. (1979). Education for a global age: What is involved? Vital Issues, 28(March), 1–6. Liebman, M. (2000). Social mapping: The art of representing intellectual perception. In R. G. Paulston (Ed.), Social cartography: Mapping ways of seeing social and educational change (pp. 327–340). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Book Center. Marginson, S., and Mollis, M. (2001). “The door opens and the tiger leaps”: Theory and method in comparative education in the global era. Comparative Education Review, 45(4), 581–615. Mattern, W. G. (1991). Random ruminations on the curriculum of the international school. In P. L. Jonietz and D. Harris (Eds.), World yearbook of education 1991: International schools and International Education (pp. 209–216). London: Kogan Page McCowan, T., and Unterhalter, E. (2015). Education and international development: An introduction. London, Bloomsbury Mills, C. W. (1959). The sociological imagination. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Mills, C. W. (1970). Sociological imagination. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Noah, H., and Eckstein, M. (1969). The development of comparative education. Toward a science of comparative education (pp. 3–84). London, UK: Macmillan. Noah, H. (1969) Editorial. Comparative Education Review, 13(3), 249–251. Noah, H. (1974). Fast-fish and loose-fish in comparative education. Comparative Education Review, 18(3), 341. Paulston, R. G. (1993). Mapping discourse in comparative education texts. Compare, 23(2), 101–114. Paulston, R. G. (1977). Social and educational change: Conceptual frameworks. Comparative Education Review, 21(2/3), 370–395. Phillips, D. (2014). ‘Comparatography,’ history and policy quotation: Some reflections. Comparative Education, 50(1), 73–83. Phillips, D., and Schweisfurth, M. (2014). Comparative and international education: An introduction to theory, method, and practice. 2nd ed. London: Bloomsbury. Popkewitz, T. (1984). Paradigm and ideology in educational research. London: Falmer Press. Sadler, M. (1964). How far can we learn anything of practical value from the study of foreign systems of education? Comparative Education Review, 7, 307–314. Silova, I., and Brehm, W. C. (2010). An American construction of European education space. European Educational Research Journal, 9(4), 457–469. Sylvester, R. (2002). Mapping international education. Journal of Research in International Education, 1(1), 90–125. Sylvester, R. (2003). Further mapping of the territory of international education in the twentieth century (1944–1969). Journal of Research in International Education, 2(2), 185–204. Sylvester, R. (2005). Framing the map of international education (1969–1998). Journal of Research in International Education, 4(2), 123–151. Thomas, R. (1986). Political rationales, human-development theories, and educational practice. Comparative Education Review, 30(3), 299.
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Thompson, J. (2002). International education: Towards a shared understanding. Journal of Research in International Education, 1(1), 5–8. Tikly, L., and Crossley, M. (2001). Teaching comparative and international education: A framework for analysis. Comparative Education Review, 45(4), 561–580. Watson, K. (1998). Memories, models and mapping: The impact of geopolitical changes on comparative studies in education. Compare, 1(28), 5–31. Wolhuter, C. (2019). Problematizing “glocal” as a catchword in comparative and international education. In I. Popov (Ed.), Glocal education in practice: Teaching, researching, and citizenship (pp. 19–24). Sofia: Bulgarian Comparative Education Society (BCES). Wilson, D. N. (1994). Comparative and international education: Fraternal or siamese twins? A preliminary genealogy of our twin fields. Comparative Education Review, 38(4), 449–486.
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PART ONE
Foundational Theories The century following Auguste Comte’s (1865/2015) positivist vision for social sciences witnessed the emergence and consolidation of core social science disciplines—sociology, psychology, and anthropology—that each used a different focus and set of methods to understand social life. These disciplines were institutionalized in the structure of many universities, often organized as individual departments (or schools) within larger faculties or colleges of social science. Within these disciplines, scholars sought to develop a body of theory that would serve as a foundation for a research agenda. Following the model of the natural or physical sciences, these theories aimed to be parsimonious, using a minimal set of concepts and relationships to explain as much of the observed social world as possible. Furthermore, they sought to be generalized, applying to many or all social contexts and topics. In some cases, foundational theories offer a “grand narrative” (Lyotard, 1979/2004) that aims to explain most of human societies; Marxism and structural-functionalism are both examples of such an approach. Other foundational theories are more specific. For example, human capital theory offers an explanation of how education and skills relate to labor markets and national economic growth. However, even these more specific theories are foundational in the sense that they seek to explain a wide variety of phenomena from relatively simple principles. Chapters in this section discuss these foundational theories as they have been used and applied in the field of CIE. As an interdisciplinary field, CIE has drawn upon and combined these theories within the literature it has generated (see volume introduction). While inquiry in comparative education dates to the turn of the twentiethcentury or earlier, the application of these foundational theories to CIE lagged somewhat behind the disciplines in which they were developed (Altbach, 1991; Manzon, 2011). Moreover, while a definitive and exhaustive list of foundational theories in social science would never be beyond debate, this section discusses some of the most prominent theories in social science research, and those of particular import to the field of CIE, given its concerns with educational comparison, exchange, and development. The section begins with Marcelo Marques’ discussion of structural-functionalism and its view of social systems as an interconnected organism. As Marques noted, “structuralfunctionalism understands society as a whole that is composed of interrelated parts and analyses social phenomena in relation to its functions that maintain order and harmony 19
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and gradually evolves from simple to more complex forms in equilibrium” (p. 23). This theory is arguably one of the most widely applied perspectives in social research. It is not surprising, therefore, that scholars, practitioners, and policymakers have utilized this theory—implicitly or explicitly—to help frame their thinking about education and the broader society. In this chapter, Marques outlines core concepts relevant to structuralfunctionalism as well as some of its most influential thinkers and advocates (e.g., Spencer, Durkheim). The chapter also traces its applications in CIE back to among the earliest work in the field, Marc Antoine Jullien’s Esquisse et vues Préliminaires d’un Ouvrage sur l’Éducation Compare, an immensely important CIE text. The chapter concludes with a case study centered on the presumed correlational (or causal) role of education for preparing graduates for the workplace. Power over oppressed peoples has constituted another critical concern of research in the social sciences, and in Chapter 2 Tavis D. Jules, Syed Amir Shah, and Pravindharana Balakrishnan, discuss the intellectual origins of studies of imperialism and colonialism. They start from the premise that colonialization had diverse and uneven effects depending on the contexts in which it occurred. Thus, the chapter includes mention of various colonialisms and their impacts on educational processes. At its core, however, the subjugation of entire populations seeks to benefit those in power through systematic exploitation. Jules et al., therefore, show how schooling in colonized societies sought to maintain the power of imperial powers by changing the ways in which the oppressed perceived the nature and standards of knowledge. This chapter also sets the stage for a discussion of post-colonial theory (see Chapter 6), which has emerged as a core theoretical concept in more recent CIE scholarship and practice. Finally, the authors traverse the colonial history of Trinidad in a case study that shows how discriminatory policies resulted in an unequal system of education. Power is also an essential aspect of relations between workers and employers, and in their introduction to Marxism in CIE, Robin Shields and Kalyan Kameshwara show how it seeks to understand societies by looking at their means of material production, labor, and the accumulation of surplus. As the authors note, Marx’s collective body of work is massive and spans more than 40 years, but his later writings on social philosophy are most central to research in CIE and constitute a theory of political economy, an “explanation of how economic, social, and political forces interact with one another” (p. 53). Key concepts addressed in this chapter include historical materialism, value and surplus, competition, and ideology, among others. These concepts and the theories they support have been and continue to be utilized extensively in education and social sciences research. Marx’s work has also led to analyses of schooling that emphasize its reproductive tendencies and the ways in which pedagogy and the hidden curriculum can maintain hierarchies of power, even as they may aim to break these down. A case study on higher education marketization highlights the ways in which Marxist theories have played out in action, particularly as most universities have pursued additional means of revenue in order to grow their institutions amidst declining support from the public sector. In contrast to Marx’s largely societal perspective, Donna Tonini’s chapter on human capital theory looks at labor from the perspective of the individual in the labor market. Tonini shows how human capital theory expects returns to education in the form of better employment, but also that these returns do not always materialize in practice. Rooted in economic and sociological approaches, human capital theory “undergirds the policies and practices of many major international financial institutions that provide loans and grants to lower-income countries” (p. 70). For this reason, both the promotion and critique of
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human capital theory has been central in CIE scholarship. Chapter 4 also explains two related theories, signaling and screening, that seek to explain the value added to the workforce by an individual as the result of their educational, professional, and/or personal development. Current debates and critiques of human capital theory from within CIE are then explored, followed by a case study examining the shortcomings of human capital theory as it has been was applied to Tanzania since at least the 1980s. Finally, Tom Griffiths’ chapter introduces dependency theory and world-systems analysis, both of which extend Marx’s theory of political economy to account for relationships between nation-states and long-term processes of globalization. Chapter 5 takes modernization theory as a starting point, noting how dependency theory and worldsystems analysis provide alternative explanations for the dominant linear motifs of national development and advancement. Importantly, Griffiths also clearly distinguishes between dependency theory and world-systems analysis, which share some complementary elements but have different foci. Where dependency theory emphasized dependent relationships and structured inequality between countries and cultures, world-systems analysis extends to an arguably “more comprehensive and historical framework” (p. 91) that considers the whole world as involved in capitalist relations of power. Both theories have been employed extensively in CIE, and the chapter includes some specific examples from research across Africa, Europe, and Latin America. The chapter concludes with a case study on Cuba, where educational innovations can be interpreted through both theoretical perspectives in unique ways. The perspectives described in this chapter all provide detailed and compelling explanations of how society works, and they have all been applied extensively in CIE and other social science disciplines over several decades. In addition, a grounding in these theories is essential in understanding the post-foundational perspectives that follow them (see Part 2) as well as hybrid and revised theories that have emerged more recently (see Part 3).
REFERENCES Altbach, P. G. (1991). Trends in comparative education. Comparative Education Review, 35(3), 491–507. Manzon, M. (2011). Comparative education: The construction of a field. Dordrecht: Springera. Comte, A. (1865/2015). A general view of positivism. Translated by John H. Bridges. Abingdon: Routledge. Lyotard, J-F. (1979/2004). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge. Translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Norfolk: Biddles.
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CHAPTER ONE
Structural-Functionalism in Comparative and International Education Antecedents, Developments, and Applications MARCELO MARQUES
INTRODUCTION Every single system of the human body plays an essential function in the survival of the body. The function of the circulatory system is to circulate blood around the body and to deliver oxygen and nutrients to organs and cells via the heart, arteries, and veins. The function of the respiratory system is to bring air in and out of the body through the lungs and the trachea. The interrelationship between both systems is paramount for the survival of the body. Apply this rationale to society and you find one of the most used analogies to understand one of the most prominent paradigms in social sciences. Structuralfunctionalism understands society as a whole that is composed of interrelated parts and analyses social phenomena in relation to its functions that maintain order and harmony and gradually evolves from simple to more complex forms in equilibrium. What is the role of education, religion, or economy in society? What is the relationship between them? From a structural-functional perspective, one of the primary functions of education and religion is to “socialize” individuals into their future roles (education) or commonshared morals and norms (religion) to ensure social cohesion in society. Therefore, both parts of the system play a significant role in other parts, such as economy, since education prepares and allocates human resources, and religion shapes work ethics and promotes a certain set of values within society. These are the questions and ideas that many have attempted to answer and develop throughout the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth-century. This chapter provides an overview of the origins and elaborations of structural-functionalism, taking into consideration the leading scholars that contributed to its development. Such an overview is followed by the application of structuralfunctionalism to comparative education, conclusions, further reading and a mini case study with the application of this theory. 23
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OVERVIEW Structural-functionalism can be understood as a school of thought that understands society as a self-regulating system of interconnected elements with structured relationships and observed regularities (Adams and Sydie, 2001). Sometimes referred to as simply functionalism, structural-functionalism emerged in the mid-nineteenth-century, and it heavily influenced sociological and anthropological thinking throughout the first half of the twentieth-century, including comparative and international education. It is often considered one of the primary schools of modern sociological theory, among conflict theory and symbolic interactionism, and it has influenced many scholars to date. Despite being heavily criticized from the 1970s onwards and considered a conservative theory nowadays, many of the ideas presented in structural-functionalism still inspire and guide ways of thinking and analyzing social phenomena. According to Pope (1975), five different elements characterize structural-functionalism. The first one is related to the views that society is a whole composed of interrelated parts that form a system. A second idea that could be found in many works by different authors is that there is a tendency to understand society toward system equilibrium. The third dimension of functional analysis is concerned with the understanding of how society works and how social order is possible. A fourth characteristic sees structures in relation to their contributions to the perpetuation or evolutionary developments. A final one is related to the idea that social order is achieved through commonalities or consensus. The birth of structural-functionalism is connected to larger intellectual and philosophical movements, such as the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment, that gradually institutionalized modern science throughout the nineteenth-century. Perhaps one of the most important figures for the early development of structural-functionalism is the French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798–1857) and the ideas regarding the study of society and the positivistic method. The former encompasses the foundation of the fields of study of social statics, to understand the stability or the forces that shape society, and social dynamics, to understand the dynamism of social forces and what causes social change. Another important aspect is related to the development of the “law of three stages” in order to analyze historical sequences in society, more precisely in relation to the French society before and after the French Revolution. Therefore, a theological phase characterized French society before the French Revolution, where God assumed a causal explanation for the role of individuals in society. The metaphysical phase, immediately followed by the French Revolution in 1789, corresponds to the period where universal human rights became authoritative in the shaping of society, followed by a third phase—positive—that marks the beginning of a scientific phase where science could find solutions for common problems. Such a “law of three stages” was seen as a model that could be also applied to the study of the evolution of societies (Comte, 1974). The latter—the positivistic method—is concerned with the development of a system of positive philosophy that concludes that natural laws and the scientific method applied to natural sciences could be used to study society. A second influential figure was the British philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) and his application of the theory of natural selection to society. This evolutionary way of thinking understood society as a super-organic body that is confronted with both internal and external selection pressures as it evolves, which ultimately leads the social structure to internal adaptation and differentiation. Therefore, as the organism gets larger, the larger the complexity of the body it would be, which requires adaption and differentiation (Spencer, 1864).
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Inspired by Comtean and Spencerian ideas, structural-functionalism was born in the late nineteenth-century and beginning of the twentieth-century throughout the works of Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), Talcott Parsons (1902–1979), and Robert K. Merton (1910–2003), in sociology and Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942) and A. R. RadcliffeBrown (1881–1955), in anthropology. Durkheim is considered the father of sociology as a social science and one of the founders of structural-functionalism. Very much interested in studying French society, Durkheim’s works were concerned with social order, the stability of society, and how the function of social institutions contributed to it. Society is understood as a whole organism or unity composed of a system of interrelated parts where every part is dependent on the function(s) of other parts. At the presence of disequilibrium or disruption of order, the organism would adjust in order to accomplish order and stability. Durkheim (1982) understood social institutions as “all the beliefs and all the modes of conduct instituted by the collectivity” (p. 51), where the function relates to the correspondence between the social institutions and the fulfillment of the besoins (needs) of the social organism that ultimately leads to social integration. Such a rationale is present throughout Durkheim’s work. For instance, in his doctoral dissertation, The Division of Labor in Society, Durkheim’s (1933) aim was to understand the function of the division of labor and what social needs it fulfills. More than a pure economical function—reproductive capacity and skills of the workforce—the division of labor also has a moral function since it creates a sense of solidarity between two or more people who perform certain professional activities. In modern societies, characterized by a stratified division of labor, organic solidarity contributes to social integration because individuals need to cooperate and are dependent on another’s activities. This is opposed to mechanic solidarity presented in traditional societies, where members of a small society share a common system of values and beliefs. Another example can be seen in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, where Durkheim (1995) explores the function of religion in society. As an integrated part of human society, the function of religion is to provide social cohesion to sustain social solidarity through shared beliefs and rituals, to offer purpose and meaning to existence and, to exert social control by inflicting morals and norms. As a form of reaction to dominant theories of evolutionism and diffusionism,1 Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown were important figures in the development of the structural-functionalism in anthropology, although in different ways. Malinowksi (1946) departed from the assumption that individuals have physiological needs and society is organized to meet such needs. He employed the term “institution” to refer to: units of organized human activity which have a purpose in that they are directed towards the satisfaction of needs; which rest on a charter, that is, on some agreement on the set of values underlying the organization; and which imply a
The idea that culture evolves in a uniform and gradual way recognizes inspiration in Darwin’s theory of evolution and marked the anthropological thinking throughout the nineteenth-century. Thus, in the same way that species gradually evolve in complex forms, cultures also develop from simpler (primitive) to more complex stages (civilized). Such an idea became problematic when anthropologists were confronted with cultural variation and the incapacity to establish general laws that could explain the cultural evolution of different societies. For its turn, diffusionism was developed during the middle of the nineteenth-century and its aim was to explain culture origins and their diffusion among societies. Both theoretical perspectives were gradually replaced by structuralfunctionalism.
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“personnel” (the group so organized) and “norms” (acquired skill, habits, legal and ethical norms). —Malinowksi, 1946, p. 39 While Malinowksi’s (1946) starting point was individual needs to explain the organization of societies (biocultural functionalism), Radcliffe-Brown (1965) was more interested in analyzing the structure of societies. For him, inspired by the works of Durkheim and his studies of kinship and religion, functionalism aimed to understand social life as a whole, a functional unity (Radcliffe-Brown, 1965). Therefore, the main task would be to find general laws for human societies and understand that preservation of social structures is dependent on the continuity of a function. By placing the focus of analysis of society as a whole instead of the physiological needs of individuals, Radcliffe-Brown was one of the founders of structural-functionalism in anthropology. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, structural-functionalism would profit from two important figures in the American sociology, Parsons and Merton. Parsons (1951)—after reviewing the works of Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), Émile Durkheim, and Max Weber (1864–1929)—proposed a general theory of social action, defending that action as intentional, symbolic, and voluntary. Therefore, the systematization of action was composed of three interrelated aspects, the cultural system (symbols, values, and beliefs), the personality of the individuals, and the social system (Parsons, 1951). The structuralfunctional approach is seen in Parsons (1951) through the understanding that every individual, group, or society has four societal functions, aggregated in his AGIL scheme—A for adaptation since there is the need to adapt to the environment; G for goal attainment since it is necessary to define goals and accomplish them; I for integration, or the coordination of society as a cohesive whole; and L for latency since there is the need to keep and maintain the elements that allow integration. A Parsonian example of a structural-functional analysis can be seen in the study of the function of the family in what was then known as “traditional” and “modern” societies. While family, in traditional societies, constituted the base for social organization, in modern societies, family is seen as a subsystem in interaction with other subsystems, such as schools or peer-groups that contribute to the socialization of the individual (Parsons and Bales, 1956). Thus, the function of the family, in the intersection with other subsystems, is to contribute to the primary socialization of the child with the norms and values of society and to stabilize the adult personality (emotional security). In the same vein, elementary and secondary school classes can also be seen not only as an “agency of socialization” but also allocation. Thus, with respect to socialization, school class guarantees the transmission of values—“higher-level values”—for future citizens; while, at the same time, it provides the conditions to explore future role-performance “allocating” individuals within the structure of society (Parsons, 1959). Although Merton (1949) followed the writings of Parsons (1951; 1959), an important difference marked both American thinkers. While Parsons (1951; 1959) was very much concerned with the grand theorization of functional analysis, one might say that Merton (1949) was more interested in operationalizing functional analysis through methods and empirical testing, since he considered that functional thinking was too premature for grand theorization. Thus, one of the Mertonian legacies is the use of middle-range theory, the “delimited aspects of social phenomena” (Merton, 1949, p. 39) that could be empirically tested. Another significant distinction of structural-functionalism in Parsons (1951; 1959) and Merton (1949) is the understanding of functions and their contribution
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to social integration. While Parsons (1951) assumes that functions would contribute to social integration and the harmony of social life, Merton (1949) argues that social integration might not be accomplished and that certain aspects of society might be dysfunctional. Merton’s (1949) Social Theory and Social Structure, which became one of the most cited sociological works, provoked several critiques of the developments of functionalism. He raised the concern that functionalist analysis evolved more in “shred and patches rather than in depth” (Merton, 1949, p. 74), with many designations and theoretical developments that confused more than elucidated since function is employed to understand use, utility, motive, intention, aim, and consequences. Moreover, he affirms the lack of methods and empirical data that could strengthen functional analysis. According to him, there were five different forms of understanding of what a function is. A first usage is related to the understanding of function as a public gathering, festive occasion, or social event. A second one is related to function as an occupation in economic analysis to understand the distribution of occupations and their function in a group. A third development, mostly in political science, understands function as the “activities assigned to the incumbent of a social status” (Merton, 1949, p. 76), often disregarding that a function is not only performed but incorporates wider social processes, culture patterns, and belief systems. A fourth usage understands function in mathematical terms, as “a variable considered in relation to one or more other variables in terms of which it may be expressed or on the value of which its own value depends” (Merton, 1949, p. 76). Finally, the fifth definition of a function, that he claims to be central to functional analysis within sociology and anthropology is the understanding of function as “vital or organic processes considered in the respects in which they contribute to the maintenance of the organism” (Merton, 1949, p. 76). He then puts in evidence of three different postulates of functional analysis that he considers unfruitful for functional thinking and the advance of empirical studies, making explicit references to the work of Durkheim (1982), Malinowski (1946), and RadcliffeBrown (1965). The first one is related to the understanding that standardized social activities or cultural items are functional for the entire social or cultural system. Merton (1949) is skeptical about such an assumption since he claims that certain social activities or cultural items might be functional for certain groups while dysfunctional for others in the same society. While previous functional analysis, inspired by Durkheim (1982), has defended that “increased solidarity” leads to adaptive sentiments, Merton (1949) claims that to a certain degree, for instance, the “increased family pride” might lead to disrupting the solidarity of a local community. The second postulate is related to the accepted idea that all standardized social or cultural forms have positive functions. For Merton (1949), by looking at positive functions, functional analysis ignores non-functional aspects of existing cultural forms that deserve critical attention for the understanding of social structure. Finally, a third postulate criticized by the American sociologist is the assumption that every part of society plays a vital function, an indispensable function. For instance, while there was a common acceptance that religion played an indispensable function in society, Merton (1949) argues that what is indispensable is not the institution of religion but the functions which religions typically perform in society. Therefore, having a broader and multivariate understanding of functions and their role in the social structure, Merton (1949) distinguished manifest from latent functions, in order to distinguish motivations from functions and possible dysfunctions. Manifest functions are related to the “objective consequences for a specified unit which contribute
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to its adjustment or adaptations and were so intended,” while the second refers “to unintended and unrecognized consequences of the same order” (Merton, 1949, p. 117). Both manifest and latent functions can create beneficial, neutral, or dysfunctional consequences. Taking education as an example, one might say that a manifest function of education is to provide the political, societal, economic, and cultural knowledge for students, and to prepare them for the world of work. A dysfunctional manifest function might be considered school failure or grade repetition. A latent function that can be considered beneficial can include the formation of friendships or extracurricular interests while dropout or the stratification of occupations can be seen as harmful latent functions. Such distinction is fruitful not only to distinguish intended from unintended consequences but also to see both scenarios of harmony and conflict or disruption. After laying down the foundations for one of the most fundamental schools of thought for social sciences, structural-functionalism entered into decline throughout the 1970s until the present. Many critiques from different fronts were raised to structuralfunctionalism. One of the major critiques of structural-functionalism is related to the idea that society is a harmonious whole struggles to explain social change, contradictions and conflict within society, it is generally known as a “consensus theory” (Giddens, 2015; Holmwood, 2005). Conflict theorists have been very vocal about such issues since, by looking at order and equilibrium, structural-functionalism neglects relationships of conflict and power. Moreover, another criticism is related to the idea of needs (besoins) since social systems, different from living organisms, do not have needs to fulfill in order to survive. Instead, social systems dynamics are better explained by human action itself and its intended or unintended consequences that can persist and evolve (Giddens, 2015). Associated with the notion of needs, function appears as a problematic idea because it aims to understand the development of social institutions by looking at the effects that are attributed to them, which does not explain the phenomena (Giddens, 2015; Holmwood, 2005). At the beginning of this chapter, I named two other schools of sociological thought that are alternatives to the view of society as a whole system, namely conflict theory and symbolic interactionism, that developed alongside structural-functionalism. Conflict theory is a macro-level school of thought that recognizes its genesis in the work of the German philosopher and sociologist Karl Marx (1818–1883). On the contrary of emphasizing harmonization of the society as a whole as structural-functionalists do, it analyses relationships of power and unequal distribution of scarce resources as the sources of change in society. The central idea in Marx (1992) is that history is moved by an economic struggle between groups who control the means of production—at the time of his analysis the bourgeois in the capitalist system—and those who perform the work, the proletariat. Max Weber, a German economist and sociologist, not only looked at the class, but also at status and party (power) as resources and the role of the state along the economy to set up the conditions for conflict. Therefore, while Marx (1992) affirmed that the most prominent aspect of modern society was the structures of domination of the capitalist system, for Weber (1946) the central question was related to the process of rationalization of society, designated as the shift from traditional and value-based behaviors to more calculative, efficient, and rational ones, and its impact on individuals and society at large. For its turn, symbolic interactionism, a micro-level school of thought focused on the individual and how repeated interactions among people to sustain society evolved as a reaction to the top-down and positivistic perspective embodied in structural-functionalism. The founder of symbolic interactionism was Herbert Blumer (1900–1987), who received
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influences from the American philosopher George Herbert Mead (1863–1931). For both authors, society should be explained by looking at the interactive processes between humans and things, and how individuals negotiated and reinvented the meanings attributed to these things. In a more recent period, Alexander (1998) revived the work of Parsons and in integrating the contribution of conflict theory and symbolic interactionism, attempted to create what he designates as neo-functionalism (Alexander and Colomy, 1985). Thus, neo-functionalism attempts to combine both macro and micro-sociological perspectives, by looking at the importance of action (symbolic interactionism) to explain change, and at conflict theory to challenge the assumption that integration and order would be a natural evolutionary step in society, and the Parsonian positive perspective of modern society. Other proponents include Luhmann’s (1982) systems theory and the assumption that society emerges through functional differentiation at its core instead of an integrated and unified system. I now turn to the usage of structural-functionalism approach in comparative and international education.
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION The earlier developments of positivist thinking initiated in the nineteenth-century that marked the beginning of a functionalist analysis in sociology and anthropology also had an impact in the field of CIE. There have been several attempts in signaling theoretical and paradigmatic shifts throughout the history of CIE as a field of study (Epstein and Carroll, 2005; Epstein, 2008; Holmes, 1984; Kubow and Fossum, 2007; Morrow and Torres, 1995; Paulston, 1993). For instance, Paulston (1993) argues that three different theoretical movements marked the field of comparative education. The first one is called “orthodoxy” and follows World War II, a second one was designated as “heterodoxy” in the 1970s, and a third one towards the end of the 1980s is called “emergent heterogeneity.” For its turn, in the attempt to organize the cognitive development of CIE, Epstein (2008) pinpoints a positivist phase, a relativist phase, and a historical functionalist phase. Bearing in mind those distinctions, this section aims to provide some broad sketches on the use of structuralfunctionalism in CIE rather than a precise map of the evolution of the field. It is certainly without doubt within the CIE community in asserting that Marc-Antoine Jullien’s (1775–1848) Esquisse et vues Préliminaires d’ un Ouvrage sur l’Éducation Compare (1817) is one of the foundational texts that mark the genesis of the method of comparative education. Jullien’s (1817) ambition was to turn the science of comparative education into a “positive science” by collecting facts and observations organized in analytical tables to correlate and compare such facts and to achieve general laws about educational settings. Such rationale imprinted a positivistic view in the field of comparative education that influenced many other scholars and analysis, especially in its revival presented in the work of several scholars in the 1950s and 1960s, and in The Pilot Study (1959–1960), as well as in the First International Mathematics Study (FIMS) (1964) developed by the International Project for the Evaluation of Education Achievement (IEA) (Epstein, 2008). Functional analysis can also be found in the comparativists’ work at the turn of the twentieth-century, although with substantial differences from the main works developed in sociology and anthropology. One of the main critiques of structural-functionalism is
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often the lack of historical dimension in the analysis. Because functional analysts were mainly concerned with the understanding of society as a whole and the interrelationship between its parts, they often lack a historical evolution perspective. This is not entirely the case for comparative education since scholars who used a functional rationale in their studies took historical developments as central aspects in their analysis to explain variation and differences between educational systems. This orientation is called “historical functionalism” (Epstein and Carroll, 2005; Epstein, 2008; Kazamias and Massialas, 1982) and looks at educational settings as organisms in relation to other institutions that contribute to social stability and progress—functionalism—but considers the role of social context and historical developments in their analysis—relativism (Epstein and Carroll, 2005). This approach is found in the works of Isaac L. Kandel (1881–1965) and Nicolas Hans (1888–1969), among others. For instance, in Kandel’s (1930) History of Secondary, the author traces the historical emergence of secondary education in several European countries and the U.S. and analyzes its role in economic growth, social mobility, and national welfare. For its turn, Hans (1964), influenced by Malinowski (1946), states that comparative education is “based on history and should be dealt with functionally, which is another way of saying history” (p. 94). He defines functionalism in comparative education as “the comparison of functions of educational institutions as they were historically evolved in each country” (Hans, 1964, p. 94). Thus, Hans considers that functional analysis should look at the influence of educational institutions in answering the needs of their communities, taking into consideration the different national requirements of a given country. He then compares England, France, Japan, the U.S., the USSR, India, and China to provide an example of how different historical rooted educational institutions dealt differently with the common issue of the need for technical personnel to face the challenges of the industrial revolution. As we have seen, structuralfunctionalism was more concerned with the interrelationship between different parts of the system than a historical account of the developments of certain sub-units as in the case of educational institutions. With the dominance of Parsons (1951; 1959) in the American sociology, structuralfunctionalism strongly influenced the comparative education thought post-World War II until the 1970s, in the same period that comparative education was starting to be institutionalized as an academic field of study in the U.S. The influences of structuralfunctionalism in comparative education can be found within the developments of the strand of educational development in CIE through the modernization theory and human capital theory (see Chapter 4). Modernization theory developed post-WWII until the 1970s and it was influenced by the modernization paradigm very much brought up to date by Parsons (1951; 1959). As discussed earlier, Parsons (1951; 1959) looked at society as an evolving organism that undergoes several stages of development, such as primitive, intermediate, and modern. Such conception has a point of reference to the modernization of the Western countries and their transformation after the industrial revolution. With some variations between scholars, modernization theorists assumed that modernization is a social process intrinsically related to economic developments, and that process has a universal pattern (Bernstein, 1971). Thus, a popular categorization at the time is concerned in distinguishing first world countries, or the most advanced forms of modern societies, such as the U.S., Canada, or Western Europe; second world countries, related to the communist bloc of countries; and third world countries, such as African and South American developing countries after centuries of Western colonization. Education played
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a fundamental role since it would contribute to the adoption of modern attitudes and values to the individuals and, consequently, they would incite the modernization of society. Scholars, such as Alex Inkeles (1920–2010), Neil J. Smelser (1930–2017), Walt Rostow (1916–2003), James S. Coleman (1919–1985), among others, were proponents of Modernization theory and contributed extensively to a linear vision of the theory of development. For instance, Inkeles and Smith’s (1974) Becoming Modern surveyed 6,000 men in Argentina, Chile, East Pakistan, India, Nigeria, and Israel to analyze how modern individuals were in these contexts. For its turn, Smelser (1965), following Durkheim (1982) and Merton (1949) in the study of deviance in society, contributed to the understanding of social change by looking at how structural strain affects collective behavior. Structural strain can be seen as ambiguities, deprivations, conflicts, or discrepancies that trigger new forms of social integration (Smelser, 1965). Rostow (1959), an economic historian, created historical models of economic growth, claiming that modernization occurs in five stages—traditional, preconditions for take-off, take-off, maturity, and finally, high mass consumption. For its turn, based on their comparative study on political systems of “developing” countries, Coleman (2015) distinguished different types of “development” based on the level of competitiveness—competitive, semi-competitive, and authoritarian—and the degree of political modernity—modern, mixed, and traditional. Perhaps one of the most important works challenging the linearity of modernization theory in political science was the work of Huntington (1968), and his analysis of the relationship between political order and development. Following a structural-functionalist approach to understanding political systems, the modernization of social and economic structures of a given society would lead to stable democracies. However, what Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) showed was that modernization could also bring political decay, especially in intense phases of modernization, as noticed in “developing” countries (Huntington, 1968). Human capital theory, in line with modernization theory, looked at the role of education as a factor for national and economic development. Thus, the main idea associated with it was that investment in people would gain returns for economic development. Gary S. Becker (1930–2014) and Theodore W. Shultz (1902–1998) developed human capital theory and argued that investment in education would bring both individual and societal wealth. Therefore, following a structural-functionalistic perspective, there is a direct relationship between investment in education and economic development. A more substantial inheritance of structural-functionalism in comparative education that combines both modernization theory and human capital theory is found in the works of the sociologist C. Arnold Anderson (1907–1990) and Philip Foster (1927–2008) at the Comparative Education Centre of the University of Chicago, founded by C. Arnold Anderson in 1958 (Kazamias and Schwartz, 1977). In the attempt to bring the developments of social sciences into comparative education, Anderson (1961) identified two complementary approaches in the field. A first approach, concerned with the intraeducational analysis, marked the development of the field since its genesis, and it comprises analysis that looked at educational aspects as an autonomous social system. Here, the aim was to identify possible transferable practices from one educational setting to the other. A second approach, preferred by Anderson (1961), concerns the analysis of education in relation to society to examine the “functions of education.” For Anderson (1961), a functionalist comparative analysis was important to identify patterns of relationship and to distinguish stable relationships from erratic ones. The
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legacy of Anderson (1961) is related to the study of education in relation to economy and society and many of his works, including the edited volume in collaboration with Halsey and Floud (1962)—Education, Economy and Society—are examples of functional analysis where the role of education was discussed while taking into consideration its role for social mobility, social stratification, the factors of educational achievement, or the adaption of education to economic development. Another example can be found in the works developed by Bereday (1957) and Noah and Eckstein (1969) about measurements of educational achievement. All the mentioned scholars were strong advocates of creating universal variables of comparison for education measurement with the belief that education could function in similar ways in different contexts. Perhaps the most important example is the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA)’s studies in mathematics (1964), and the six subjects survey (science, reading comprehension, literature, English as a foreign language, French as a foreign language, and civic education) conducted by Anderson in 1970–1971. This study would be the genesis for the current Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). Several critiques could be found in modernization theory, including the ideological and cultural biases of Western development as the model to follow and the presumed causal relationship between individual attitudes and the advancement of modern societies. Moreover, the question of measurability in the causal relationship of investment of education and returns of such investment for development has been hard to prove and represents the major critic of human capital theory (Kubow and Fossum, 2007). Despite the many flagged criticisms of structural-functionalism, there are several important contributions to the field that are worth mentioning. One of the main contributions of structural-functionalism for the field is the understanding that society as a whole and the interrelationship between different institutions, such as education, health, economy, or religion. Moreover, historical functionalism provided important observations about the value that societies posit to education from a historical perspective and contributed to the understanding of national differentiation. Notwithstanding the strong confidence of positivistic methods; sometimes-uncritical use of quantitative statistics, indicators, taxonomies, classifications, etc.; the desire to establish general laws equated to biological laws; and the ethnocentrism in establishing hypothesis and interpretation of the data; structural-functionalism provided a collection of a substantial amount of data and empirical evidence that allowed the understanding of the structure of educational systems in several national contexts.
CONCLUSIONS In this chapter, I introduced the main developments of the structural-functionalism paradigm in sociology and anthropology and inferred about its use in the field of comparative and international education. Structural-functionalism had its origins in the nineteenth-century following the application of positivism and evolution thinking in biology in the analysis of society by Auguste Comte (1974) and Herbert Spencer (1864). In Europe, Émile Durkheim (1982) and Radcliffe-Brown (1965) were the main proponents in understanding society as a whole system that is composed of interrelated parts, whose aim is to identify the structures of society and how they function. Structural-functionalism recognized a new impulse in American sociology in the 1950s due to the work of Talcott Parsons (1951; 1959) and Robert K. Merton (1949).
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At the same time, CIE was being institutionalized as an academic field of study and received a considerable influence from structural-functionalism in sociology. Alongside positivism and historical functionalism throughout the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth-century, structural-functionalism can be found since the 1950s in studies related to educational development presented in modernization theory and human capital theory. The triad of looking at society as something stable, harmonious, and evolutionary, raised several criticisms, such as the incapacity in explaining conflict; the downplay of other important factors, such as race, gender, or class; by ignoring smallscale or micro-level analysis structural-functionalism disregards autonomy and agency of individuals; the lack of understanding of historical processes that could explain how structures arise in the first place, among others. Throughout the 1980s there was a revival of functionalist theory by the works of Jeffrey Alexander (1998), Neil Smelser (1956), and Niklas Luhmann (1982) in what has been known as neo-functionalism, where there is an attempt in combining ideas of conflict theories and microanalysis in relationship to structures. Although structural-functionalism lost its vigor as a theoretical perspective in analyzing society, one might say that its standpoints continue to be very much alive in informing policy processes and questions related to development. The idea that education plays a fundamental role in society to socialize individuals and to provide manpower to national economic developments keeps informing international and national political agendas across the world. The World Bank’s Human Capital Project, created in 2018, is a crystal example of the vivacity of structural-functionalism perspective: countries often underinvest in human capital, thereby missing an opportunity to create a virtuous cycle between physical and human capital and growth and poverty reduction. In response to the risks to stability and prosperity posed by this underinvestment, the World Bank Group has launched the Human Capital Project (HCP). It makes the case for investing in people through country engagement and analytical work while raising awareness of the costs of inaction and bolstering demand for interventions that will build human capital. —World Bank, 2018, p. 2
FURTHER READING 1. Durkheim, É. (1893/1984). The division of labour in society. New York, NY: Macmillan. 2. Durkheim, É. (1982). The rules of sociological method and selected texts on sociology and its method. Edited with an Introduction by Steven Lukes. New York, NY: The Free Press. 3. Parsons, T. (1937). The structure of social action. New York, NY: McGraw Hill. 4. Halsey, A. H., Floud, J., and Anderson, C. A. (1965). Education, economy and society. New York, NY: The Free Press of Glencoe. 5. Walker, D. A. (1976). The IEA six subject survey: An empirical study of education in twenty-one countries. Stockholm, Sweden: Almqvist and Wicksell.
MINI CASE STUDY The measurement of innovation in education is a topic that has been receiving considerable attention in recent years from international organizations, especially the Organization for
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Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). A possible case study under this topic inspired by structural-functionalism would question the role (function) of education in preparing graduates to innovate in their workplaces. The study would create several measures to survey employed graduates, the universities they went to (teachers, syllabus, and organization), and the workplace where they currently work. Admitting different stages of development in several countries in terms of innovation (Northern and Southern hemisphere countries, Western and Eastern European countries, African and Southern American countries, etc.), accordingly with the Global Innovation Index, the rationale for comparison would look at the innovation as a factor of economic development and question the function of (higher) education to achieve it. Thus, after surveying a representative sample of employed graduates in several fields of study and several economic sectors in different countries, one might assume a strong correlation between employed graduates and innovation in several economic sectors or vice versa. In those countries with a strong correlation, education would accomplish its “function” of providing innovation to the economic fabric. For those where this could not be confirmed, it would be possible to look at successful cases and see what kind of “factors” can explain such success. With a structural-functionalist’s lenses one might consider that certain fields of study are not contributing to innovation processes, and therefore higher education is not playing its function. Therefore, looking at cases where higher education is directly related to innovation, one would look at the factors of “success” and attempt to find what could be the causes that are preventing other fields of study from innovating (individual, organizational, and system level). This rationale serves the purposes of structuralfunctionalism since it considers that there is an order and harmony in these fields of study that are strongly correlated with innovation (higher education serves its purpose of providing innovation to the economic sector(s), and a perspective of evolution since if certain systems show a direct cause–effect between education and innovation, other systems could develop to that stage too.
REFERENCES Adams, B. N., and Sydie, R. A. (2001). Sociological theory. Thousand Oaks, CA : Pine Forge Press. Alexander, J. C., and Colomy. P. (1985). Toward neo-functionalism. Sociological Theory, 3(2), 11–23. Alexander, J. C. (1998). Neofunctionalism and after: Collected readings. Oxford & Malden, MA : Blackwell. Anderson, C. A. (1961). Methodology of Comparative Education. International Review of Education, 7(1), 1–23. Bereday, G. Z. F. (1957). Some discussions of methods in Comparative Education. Comparative Education Review, 1(1), 13–15. Bernstein, H. (1971). Modernization theory and the sociological study of development. The Journal of Development Studies, 7(2), 141–160. Coleman, J.S. (2015). Conclusion: The political systems of the developing areas. In G. A. Almond and J. S. Coleman (Eds.), The politics of the developing areas (pp. 532–576). Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press. Comte, A. (1974). The positive philosophy. New York, NY: AMS Press. Durkheim, E. (1933). The division of labour in society (G. Simpson, Trans.). Illinois: The Free Press of Glencoe.
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Durkheim, E. (1995). The elementary forms of religious life. Translated and with an Introduction by Karen E. Fields. New York, NY: The Free Press. Durkheim, E. (1982). The rules of sociological method and selected texts on sociology and its method. Edited with an Introduction by Steven Lukes. New York, NY: The Free Press. Epstein, E. H., and Carroll, K.T. (2005). Abusing ancestors: Historical functionalism and the postmodern deviation in Comparative Education. Comparative Education Review, 49(1), 61–88. Epstein, E. (2008). Setting the normative boundaries: Crucial epistemological benchmarks in Comparative Education. Comparative Education, 44(4), 373–386. Giddens, A. (2015). Studies in social and political theory. Abingdon: Routledge. Halsey, H. A., Floud, J., and Anderson, C. A. (1962). Education, economy and society. New York, NY: Free Press of Glencoe. Hans, N. (1964). Functionalism in Comparative Education. International Review of Education, 10(1), 94–97. Holmes, B. (1984). Paradigm shifts in Comparative Education. Comparative Education Review, 28(4), 584–604. Holmwood, J. (2005). Functionalism and its critics. In A. Harrington (Ed.), Modern social theory: An introduction (pp. 87–110). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Huntington, S. (1968). Political order in changing societies. Yale, CT: Yale University Press. Inkeles, A. and Smith, D. H. (1974). Becoming modern. Individual change in six developing countries. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. Kandel, I. L. (1930). History of secondary education: A study in the development of liberal education. Boston, MA : Houghton Mifflin. Kazamias, A., and Schwartz, K. (1977). Intellectual and ideological perspectives in Comparative Education: An interpretation. Comparative Education, 21(2/3), 153–176. Kazamias, A., and Massialas, B.G. (1982). Comparative Education. In H.E. Mitzel (Ed.), Encyclopedia of educational research (Vol. 1). New York, NY: The Free Press. Kubow, P. K., and Fossum, P. R. (2007). Comparative Education: Exploring issues in international context. New Jersey: Pearson Education. Luhmann, N. (1982). The differentiation of society. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Malinowski, B. (1946). The dynamics of culture change: An inquiry into race relations in Africa. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Marx, K. (1992). Capital: Volume 1: A critique of political economy. London, UK : Penguin Classics. Merton, R. K. (1949). Social theory and social structure. New York, NY: The Free Press. Morrow, R. A., and Torres, C. A. (1995). Social theory and education. A critique of theories of social and cultural reproduction. New York, NY: SUNY Press. Noah, H. J., and Eckstein, M. A. (1969). Toward a science of Comparative Education. New York, NY: The Macmillan Company. Parsons, T. (1951). The social system. New York, NY: The Free Press. Parsons, T. (1959). The school class as a social system: Some of its functions in American society. Harvard Educational Review, 29(4), 297–318. Parsons, T., and Bales, R. F. (1956/1998). Family socialization and interaction process. London, UK : Routledge. Paulston, R. G. (1993). Comparative education as an intellectual field: Mapping the theoretical landscape. Compare, 23(2), 101–114. Pope, W. (1975). Durkheim as a functionalist. The Sociological Quarter, 16(3), 361–379.
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Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. (1965). Structure and function in primitive societies: Essays and addresses. New York, NY: Free Press. Rostow, W. (1959). The stages of economic growth. The Economic History Review, XII (I), 1–16. Smelser, N. J. (1965). Theory of collective behavior. New York, NY: Free Press. Spencer, H. (1864). The principles of biology. Oxford, UK : Oxford University. Weber, M. (1946). From Max Weber: Essays in sociology (H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, Eds.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. World Bank (2018). The human capital project. Retrieved from https://openknowledge. worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/30498/33252.pdf?sequence=5&isAllowed=y.
CHAPTER TWO
Imperialism, Colonialism, and Coloniality in Comparative and International Education Conquest, Slavery, and Prejudice TAVIS D. JULES , SYED AMIR SHAH , AND PRAVINDHARAN BALAKRISHNAN
INTRODUCTION Colonialism is not simply content to impose its rule upon the present and the future of a dominated country. Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverse logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts it, disfigures and destroys it. —Fanon, 1961 Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate. —Said, 2003 European colonialism is hardly a historical outlier, though its sheer scope demands special notice. The subjugation and colonization of one group of people by another group has been a recurrent feature of human history. Dominant powers like Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans conquered territories and established colonies (Kammerer, 2018). At its peak, the Roman Empire in the second century A.D. dominated territories stretching from Armenia to the Atlantic (Loomba, 2015). The Mongols of Central Asia controlled the Middle East and China during the thirteenth-century; the Aztec Empire was established in the valley of Mexico between the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries; and around the same period, the Incan Empire occupied parts of central and South America and was considered to be the largest pre-industrial state in the Americas (Moseley, 1992). In the modern era, however, these empires bound by continents gave way to global empires. The last of the Muslim empires under the Ottoman Turks, which stretched from 37
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Asia Minor to the Balkans, ended after the first World War. Modern European colonialism, starting in the sixteenth-century, had overtaken its predecessors. By the turn of the twentieth-century, the former colonies of European powers spread across all continents, covering 84.6 percent of the earth’s surface (Loomba, 2015). Only a few regions of the world—parts of Arabia, Persia, Afghanistan, China, Mongolia, Tibet, Japan, and Siam— never came under direct European colonial rule, occupation, or protectorate status (Fieldhouse, 1989). European colonization is understood as a distinct form of colonization different from its earlier kinds. This difference does not lie in technological and scientific advancement, and this difference cannot be explained in terms of more advanced techniques of warfare mastered by the European powers. Furthermore, like earlier forms of colonization, European colonialism1 was also implicated in the practices of extraction of taxes, wealth, and other kinds of goods from the conquered regions. However, in addition to exploitative policies, modern European colonialism also restructured the economies of their colonial “possessions.” The local economies were forced to produce raw material for the industries in European metropoles, the indigenous industrial base and artisan classes were destroyed, and the markets of colonies were opened to the vagaries of the global economy. It generated a multifaceted flow of human and natural resources between the colonizer and the colonized. The colonized were subjugated as “slaves, indentured labor, domestic servants, travelers and traders, and the colonial masters as administrators, soldiers, merchants, settlers, travelers, writers, domestic staff, missionaries, teachers and scientists” (Loomba, 2015, p. 22). The colonies provided the raw materials for European industries and consumption, but also served as captive markets of the finished European goods and industrial products. For example, raw cotton from India was transported to England, which after being manufactured into cloth, was then sent back to be sold in India. Similarly, slaves were transported from the African continent to the Americas and West Indies to work on sugarcane plantations. Sugarcane was then sent back to European metropolitan centers for refinement, sale, and consumption. In this multidirectional movement of human and natural resources, no matter the direction things moved, the profit always flowed to the colonial power. Thus, it can be said that colonialism served as the “midwife that assisted at the birth of European capitalism” (Loomba, 2015, p. 23). The effects of modern colonialism were also not confined to the mere economy, but spill over to all the aspects of colonial life, including culture, language, religion, caste, gender, and education, etc. The European colonial empires produced a vast amount of knowledge in order to better understand the cultures and languages of the people they had come to rule. This wealth of knowledge created by European scholars, referred to as Orientalism, is often accused of being a “facilitator” of colonial administration. The new knowledges created by the colonizers about the colonized people was essential for effective colonial administration and was part of colonial “governmentality.” During the colonial period, universities in Western Europe established separate departments to facilitate the knowledge production of the Eastern peoples and their cultures, languages, and religions, reminding us of Michel Foucault’s (1926–1984) contention that knowledge is deeply embedded in operations of power (Macfie, 2000). A brief introduction of colonial literature is warranted here. In his classic work Orientalism, Said (1978) offers an insightful analysis of the knowledge created by the
We can also count Japan and the USA in this category.
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Western scholars about the people and cultures of the Orient/East. Said (1978), through the application of post-structuralist thoughts by Foucault and Jacques Derrida (1930– 2004), contends that Orientalism has created a system of European thought which takes two ontologically different concepts—“Orient” and “Occident”—as the starting point of analysis. Said (1978) argues that the oriental literature, after creating mutually exclusive groups of people, accords essential qualities to these groups. Thus, “orient” is not described as a product of historical and social forces, but rather, it is understood as having “essential qualities” or “nature” which is radically different from the “nature” of Europe/the Occident. Said (1978) criticizes the images of the Eastern people created by the West as exotic, uncivilized, backward, sexually promiscuous, and oftentimes, dangerous people of the East. However, Said’s work has been criticized by Bhabha (1994) for being oversimplified and prone to binary explanation. While Said’s (1978) primary focus is on the ontological differences created by Orientalism, Bhabha (1994) focuses more on the ambivalence of identities and its relational construction. For Bhabha (1994), the identities of the colonizers and the colonized are constituted not in a mutually exclusive manner but are influenced by each other. Their relationship is not smooth and non-overlapping, yet very much ambivalent. He describes ambivalence as a “complex mix of attraction and repulsion that characterizes the relationship between colonizer and colonized” (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin, 1995, p. 12). Thus, for Bhabha (1994), ambivalence is at the center of the construction of both colonizer and the colonial subject. To elaborate his concept, Bhabha (1994) points to the contradictory desire of the colonizer to produce the colonized, in such a way that the colonized becomes equal to the colonizer and necessarily inferior at the same time. This ambivalence is also reflected in the behavior of the colonial subjects. Other scholars describe colonial discourse as “Eurocentrism” (Charkrabarty, 1995; Mignolo, 2000; Said, 1978; Spivak, 1999), which puts “Europe and (more recently) the West at the center of history, economic development, and political modernity, judges every other culture in reference to it” (Prasad, 2017, p. 303). However, it is important to remember that colonization did not yield uniform practices or set colonies on a singular historical trajectory. Colonialism constituted a diverse set of processes, depending on a wide range of historical factors, which: locked the original inhabitants and the newcomers into the most complex and traumatic relationships in human history. The process of “forming a community” in the new land necessarily meant un-forming or re-forming the communities that existed there already, and involved a wide range of practices including trade, plunder, negotiation, warfare, genocide, enslavement and rebellions. —Loomba, 2015, p. 8 The reasons for this multiplicity of colonial experiences have to do with “geographical diversity, the vastly differing types of non-European colonized cultures, the plurality of the colonial powers, and the distances and shifts between cores and margins” (Osterhammel, 2005, p. 28). It is rightly said that “there is no history of colonialism per se, just histories of individual colonialisms” (Osterhammel, 2005, p. 25). These varying practices and historical trajectories that colonization produced can further be elaborated as a way of looking at different historical phases of colonial development. This chapter approaches the issue of colonialism in a way that will advance the theoretical understanding of the topic, rather than providing merely a historical account of it. The theoretical context of colonialism is important because educational policies
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led to a colonial education system integrated within broader colonial structures. The first part of the chapter explores the theoretical underpinnings of imperialism, colonialism, and coloniality, and how these concepts help us understand the differences between various kinds of conquests, including particular examples from history. The second part of the chapter focuses on the educational institutions established by the colonial administration in various colonies by paying particular attention to the cases of British “adaptive” and French “assimilative” forms of colonialism, and how they shaped the colonial educational policies in their respective colonies. This part explores the role and function of the education system in the colonies and how these educational institutions were calibrated to align with the imperial interests of European powers. Finally, a case study of the dual education system, as a legacy of colonialism, is presented at the end of the chapter.
OVERVIEW Imperialism, Colonialism, and Coloniality Imperialism, a broader concept than colonialism, is often equated with the “strategies of political control over foreign lands that does not necessarily involve conquest, occupation, and durable rule by outside invaders” (Steinmetz, 2014, p. 79). It has both political and economic connotations because these strategies of expansion and ambitions to control foreign lands may be driven by economic motivations for controlling overseas markets, or as an “objectless disposition on the part of a state to unlimited forcible expansion” (Schumpeter, 1951, p. 6). Lenin (1947) defined imperialism as the highest stage of capitalist development, whereby the surplus produced by European countries could not be profitably invested in their own countries because of the scarcity of labor and raw material. To sustain growth, European capitalism needed to bring other non-industrialized countries into the folds of the capitalist market and exploit their human and natural resources. However, imperialism does not arise from economic imperatives alone but includes “all forces and activities contributing to the construction and the maintenance of transcolonial empires” (Osterhammel, 2005, p. 21). It is an international system in which “colonies are not just ends in themselves, but also pawns in global power games” (Osterhammel, 2005, p. 21). Thus, imperialism can be conceived as a global system, in which the “imperial country is the ‘metropole’ from which power flows, and the colony or neo-colony is the place which it penetrates and controls” (Loomba, 2015, p. 12) (see Chapter 5). As Carnoy (1975) denotes, imperial domination in education can be seen through the imposition of Western formal schooling in colonized countries. Suggesting that education is a dependent variable, Carnoy (1975), made the case that Western forms of education were developed in colonized countries based on the needs of the capitalist economic development of metropole societies. Thus, Carnoy (1975) contends schooling institutions in colonized countries were a form of cultural imperialism. Although some scholars have criticized the notion of schooling institutions furthering the agenda of the imperial project, Carnoy (1975) solidified his argument by providing examples such as Britain’s presence in India, in which education was developed to further their own capitalist development. The term “colonization” denotes a broader process of territorial acquisition and establishment of the rule of one group of people over another. Thus, colonialism is said to be the:
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relationship of domination between an indigenous (or forcibly imported) majority and a minority of foreign invaders. The fundamental decisions affecting the lives of the colonized people are made and implemented by the colonial rulers in pursuit of interests that are often defined in a distant metropolis. Rejecting cultural compromises with the colonized population, the colonizers are convinced of their own superiority and of their ordained mandate to rule. —Osterhammel, 2005, p. 16 Colonization creates an exclusive claim on the part of the colonizers over the territory occupied. Colony, on the other hand, is a “new political organization created by invasion (conquest and settlement colonization) but built on pre-colonial conditions” (Osterhammel, 2005, p. 10). Historically, it has manifested through various forms, resulting from largescale migration, empire building, state expansion, overseas settlement, and naval networks, among others. While the concept of “post-colonialism” (see Chapter 6) points to the continued legacies in the form of structural elements and relationships of inequality in the postcolonial states, the concept of “coloniality” is a broader concept, and takes into account the historical period of European modernity (Mignolo, 2011). Coloniality is created by invasion and strengthened by pre-colonial conditions given that “its alien rulers are in sustained dependence on a geographically remote ‘mother country’ or imperial center, which claims exclusive rights of ‘possession’ of the colony” (Osterhammel, 2005, p. 10). Consequently, coloniality is the “long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations” (Maldonado-Torres, 2007, p. 243). In fact, Quijano (2008) points to the two constitutive elements of what he calls coloniality of power, i.e., capitalism and racism, which are not only historically implicated in Western domination of the world but also construct the Western understanding of the rest of humanity. Quijano (2008) contends that: the codification of the differences between conquerors and conquered in the idea of “race”, a supposedly different biological structure that placed some in a natural situation of inferiority to the others. . . . The other process was the constitution of a new structure of control of labor and its resources and slavery, serfdom, small independent commodity production and reciprocity, together around and upon the basis of capital and the world market. —p. 182 Thus, the concept of coloniality takes into account, inter alia, intellectual edifice, knowledge system, and the human categories that Western colonialism has produced, and which persist and continues to shape relationships in the present world. One such element of the hegemony of Western knowledge system is the invalidation of epistemological stances of the colonized people, which is referred to as “epistemicide” or epistemic colonization (de Sousa Santos, 2015) where the aim is to create a “monoculture of the mind to maintain control over knowledge production” (Shahjahan, 2011, p. 189). Fanon (1968) problematizes the hegemonic Western method of doing science, particularly human sciences, arguing that the entire edifice of Western knowledge is premised on the assumption of the thinking subject, the object to be studied, and the method connecting both subject and the object. This is believed to produce “objective” scientific knowledge. As Escobar (2007) suggests, “there is no modernity without coloniality” (p. 185).
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HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT In this section, we show how the history of modern colonialism is more than merely a story of conquest, acquisition of territory, and flag-hoisting; rather, it is an all-encompassing phenomenon, which has altered the entire socio-political, economic, and cultural milieu of the colonized societies. As noted above, colonies vary according to the nature of the relationship developed between the colonial powers and the natives, and the resultant socio-economic and political structures it spawned in the colonies. However, three major types of colonies can be identified: exploitation colonies, maritime enclaves, and settlement colonies. In exploitation colonies, colonizers extracted the economic wealth of the colonies through practices of trade monopolies, the exportation of raw materials, exploitation of natural resources, and tax levies, etc. Exploitation colonies were characterized by the insignificant presence of colonizers, which were mostly comprised of administrators, military officials, traders, and businessmen. The British colonies of India and Egypt, French Indochina, U.S. Philippines, and Japanese Taiwan can be cited as examples of exploitation colonies. In contrast to exploitation colonies that were valued for their resources, Maritime enclaves constituted European naval networks that facilitated logistics relating to military activities, economic trade, and commerce. Examples of maritime colonies are British controlled Hong Kong, Singapore, and Aden; Portuguese Malacca; and Dutch Batavia. Finally, the nature of settlement colonies is also different in that settlement colonization was not merely confined to the practices of the utilization of cheap land and labor of the colonies for the benefit of the empire, but was accompanied by a “cultivation of forms of social, religious, and cultural life that are under pressure in the mother country” (Osterhammel, 2005, p. 11). In this form of colonization, planters and resident farmers move into the colony as colonizers. Historically, there have been three significant variants of settlement colonization. In the settlement cases of New England, Canada, and Australia, native groups of people were either displaced or massacred, and their way of life annihilated. In Africa, the settlers depended on the labor of the colonized, while in the Caribbean, there was an import of slaves from the African continent. In the next section, we outline various phases of historical colonialism. We must first note, however, that there are no sharp boundaries between different periods of colonialism. Furthermore, it is not to suggest in any way that one phase of colonialism was succeeded by another in chronological order. Neither do we suggest that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between various stages. The history of colonialism is very complex, and there is considerable overlap between different phases; these are not mutually exclusive categories of historical periods.
Sixteenth-century conquest of South America Modern European colonialism emerged during the sixteenth-century, launched by the armed trade and plunder of the South American continent. The Portuguese and Spanish conquest of these regions led to the radical changes of these societies; their displacement and genocide of the indigenous peoples and a massive influx of European settlers arrived in the new world. Following these conquests, new forms of bureaucratic governance mechanisms were instituted. These conquests, unlike earlier empires, extracted not only precious metals, such as gold and silver, but there were also efforts to create new plantation-based economies of “unfree” labor. These regions were cultivated as exporter producers and were brought into the structures of intercontinental trade,
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which was dominated by European naval powers. Consequently, these regions became one of the first “global peripheries” (see Chapter 5) to supply primary goods and raw materials for industries and consumption in the “core economies” of European countries (Wallerstein, 2011).
Establishment of plantation economies in the Caribbean Other European powers also challenged the monopoly of the Spanish and Portuguese in the New World, namely the British, Dutch, and French. These latter powers took control of the North American and Caribbean regions to share in the new riches. During the seventeenth-century, the experiment of the plantation economy was “perfected” in the Caribbean islands. The Caribbean sugar plantation produced an enormous amount of wealth for the so-called “mother countries” of Europe. By 1780, Jamaica and St. Domingue were the most profitable regions of the world, even exceeding the riches of all Latin American regions combined (Osterhammel, 2005). Until the end of the eighteenth-century, around 3.3 million Africans were brought as slaves to work on these plantations (Curtin, 1972). The Caribbean societies, “as traditionless and artificial new creations on depopulated land, were the most radical sociotechnical experiment of the age” (Osterhammel, 2005, p. 31), and historic centers of colonialism.
The territorial colonization of Asia The period between the late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century witnessed radical changes in the power structure in the wake of independence of many American countries, the slave revolution in St. Domingue in 1806, and the gradual decline of the Atlantic slave trade (Osterhammel, 2005). It heralded the end of the golden age of West Indian sugar interests, which also led to the shift of European interests towards Asia and later, Africa. The British East India Company, after securing the monopoly over trade in the Indian Ocean, established its trade routes from port cities of the Indian subcontinent. The company extracted enormous wealth through its trade of Indian spices, silk, and cotton to the European markets. After decades of successful trade in the first half of the eighteenth-century, the company found its commercial interests at odds with the ruler of the Bengal region. To pave the way for its territorial rule, the company resorted to a strategy of “divide and conquer” in the polycentric Indian society. After the “Sepoy mutiny” of 1857, or the “war of independence,” the British East Company was abolished, and India came under the direct control of Britain. An indirect form of government was established, where the Governor General of India enjoyed unlimited power in the colony, yet the British cabinet maintained responsibility. The second half of the century witnessed a massive expansion of bureaucratic apparatus aimed at facilitating tax collection, infrastructure development (railroads, telegraph, etc.), maintenance of law and order, and intervening in the indigenous society for England’s version of social and humanitarian reforms.
The colonization of Africa The radical shifts in global power structure during the nineteenth-century, the growing imperial rivalry between Russia and Great Britain, and the discovery of gold and diamond deposits had profound effects on European imperial policies towards Africa. Before 1870, only a few regions of the African continent were under the effective control of European
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powers.2 But amid these changes, the European powers “committed themselves to mutual recognition of colonies, protectorates, and spheres of influence . . . ‘Paper partition’ was only slowly and incompletely transformed into effective occupation, ‘partition on the ground’ ” (Osterhammel, 2005, p. 34). The borders drawn by colonial powers destroyed centuries-old bonds among the groups of people and disrupted traditional ways of living. The partitioning of the people of Africa was “a ruthless act of political amalgamation, whereby something of the order of ten thousand units was reduced to a mere forty” (Oliver, 1991, p. 184). The “scramble for Africa” had disastrous consequences for the people of Africa. Thus, indigenous societies were externally manipulated by the forces of colonization, and the historical development of the colonized societies was interrupted and transformed for the benefit of the colonizers. Aside from a few cases,3 there were hardly any processes of the cultural synthesis between colonizers and colonized, who remained isolated from each other. Embedded in the colonial structures of domination and racism, forms of knowledge formalized the differences between human groups into European subjects and non-European as objects of inquiry, which became instrumental in creating hierarchies of humanity with Manichean characteristics. Fanon (1968) writes: the Frenchman does not like the Jew, who does not like the Arab, who does not like the Negro . . . The Arab is told: “If you are poor, it is because the Jew has bled you and taken everything from you.” The Jew is told: “you are not the same class as the Arab because you are really white because you have Einstein and Bergson”. The Negro is told: “you are the best soldiers in the French Empire; the Arabs think they are better than you, but they are wrong.” —p. 103 European colonialism was accompanied by the idea, which garbed the exploitative systems and inhumane treatment of natives, that the White man’s burden to “civilize” the “barbarians” or to fulfill the divine mission of salvation of the pagan societies. These ideas were rooted in the belief of superior European culture and scientific knowledge.
APPLICATION OF COLONIAL EDUCATION IN CIE Before the age of colonization, most states that became colonies did not have formal systems of learning. Instead, education in these states was based on oral traditions and the passing along of tribal values. When colonialism took place, missionaries traveled through the continent, establishing educational systems based on Christianity, with the primary aim of converting people. At the height of colonialism, there were two main views of colonial policy in education—adaptive and assimilative. The adaptive colonial education policy is most closely associated with the British, while assimilative education policy is linked to the French. Kelly and Altbach (1984) note that “colonial schools . . . sought to extend foreign domination and economic exploitation of the colony” (p. 2), given that colonial education, is “directed at absorption into the metropole and not separate and dependent development of the colonized in their own society and culture” (p. 4). According to Amin (1975), colonial education had two fundamental objectives: the annihilation of 2 South Africa, Sierra Leone, and Lagos (British); Algeria and Senegal (French); Angola and Mozambique (Portuguese). 3 To a certain extent, the Portuguese empire in Brazil defied this characteristic.
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local culture and consciousness; and to train an elite class of subordinate servants. Both of these objectives resonate with the ideas surrounding colonialism, with assimilative colonialism assuming the former objectives, and adaptive colonialism representing the latter.
Adaptive colonialism in CIE The relationship between the colonizer and colonized is uni-dimensional, with the colonizer playing a dominant role in extracting raw materials and goods over the colonized. At its core, adaptive colonial education was a hands-off, decentralized, non-interventionist form of schooling in the colonies based on what missionaries thought of as the best form of schooling needed. In short, missionaries were allowed to choose the content, curriculum, and language of instruction for local schooling. In order to illustrate adaptive colonialism in CIE, below we look at two salient examples, which are India and Malaysia. The beginnings of adaptive colonial educational policies can be traced to the 1813 British colonial education policy in India, which had the goals of developing both the Oriental culture and Western science (Whitehead, 2005). In 1813, the East India Company was first responsible for education policy in India through the Charter Act of 1813 (Yousafzai and Khan, 2017). The Act enabled Christian missionaries to establish schools in India to preach the gospel. According to Whitehead (2005), there were three contrasting views of British education in India. First, the Orientalists feared that the inclusion of Western education in India would harm local knowledge. Second, the Christian missionaries felt that they had a duty to play in civilizing the Indians, whose society they deemed as backward. Finally, the Utilitarians valued Western education as a sign of development through science and material progress. The Muslim communities were highly critical of adaptive education, while the Hindus, mainly those from the elitist Brahmin caste, saw the economic and social benefits of embracing Western knowledge. First, the 1857 mutiny in northwest India brought the demise of the East Indian company and the arrival of direct British control over all aspects of the country. In attempting to improve living standards, the British enabled the Indian government to promote education for Indians. This led the Indian government to take a leadership role in education governance with the British at the helm (Whitehead, 2005). With education being under the purview of provincial governments, the British did not play an active role in determining the trajectory of the Indian education system. Nonetheless, the administration continued its hands-off approach to education by leaving its provision to provincial governments. This eventually resulted in vast educational disparities among the various regions in India as educational development was based on “market forces” (Whitehead, 2005). Whitehead (2005) notes that in Bengal, private enterprises played an influential role in providing education, especially at the secondary and college level. Meanwhile, in Bombay, the government played a more prominent role in dictating education. With colonial India being such a diverse country, the government did not have both the resources and the ideological commitment to provide a uniform education system throughout the pluralistic nation. It was not until 1910 that the Indian government established a separate education department. Before this, education administration was conducted under the Home Department. In time, the British lost control of the education policy in India. While one might argue that the educational policy in India was meant to conquer the country through the expansion of English-medium education culturally, this might not be entirely true. By
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tracing the colonial education policy of the British, it can be argued that the British had no interest or desire in developing India or its education system. The goal of the British colonial education policy in India was to train Indians for subordinate roles in the government (Somal, 2015). This could be seen in the rise of the Hindu Babu class: Indian men who were educated in English-medium schools and worked in white-collar jobs within the government in subservient roles (Whitehead, 2005). This demonstrates the trajectory of education in India, which had little unified direction, as well as neglect from the British colonizers. Second, another example of British adaptive education that was based on creating a class of local elites to manage the colonial bureaucratic apparatus is in Malaysia, previously known as Malaya, which was formally made a British colony in 1867. When the British took control of Malaya, it stimulated migration for economic purposes. With the expansion of the mining industry and plantations, the British brought Chinese and Indians as cheap labor (Hirschman, 1972). The British employed a divide and rule policy, which meant that these different communities were segregated according to economic activities. The British assumed the governing role, the Malays were responsible for cultivating the fields, the Chinese were to manage the mining industry and businesses, and the Indians would be confined to the rubber estates and plantations. This intentional segregation was further solidified when the British allowed each community to chart their educational endeavors, as there was no unified national educational strategy. The Malays developed a schooling system, which provided education only up to the primary level. However, these schools were under-enrolled, and skills, such as basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, did not make sense for livelihood in the village. The Chinese community managed their education by importing teachers and textbooks from China, which had a strong Chinese ideology. Meanwhile, Tamil-medium schools were kept in deplorable conditions, run by untrained teachers in run-down facilities. Finally, English-medium schools were reserved for the royals and elites, who would eventually join the government upon graduating. These multiple education systems under British rule had no coherence and cohesion, and they further exacerbated the division among the disparate communities. Essentially, the colonial education policy in Malaya explains how each community adapted their education system within its own environment under the British colonial rule. Once again, the British had little or no desire to develop the communities in Malaya or being the bridge in promoting racial unity in the country.
Assimilative colonialism in CIE Assimilative colonialism in education can be seen through policies brought by the French. Unlike the British imperial policy, the ideology underpinning the French and Portuguese colonial policy was based on assimilation through its “mission civilisatric” (civilizing mission). This means that education in the colonies was centralized, and all subjects, who were given access to education, were taught the colonial culture and language. In the case of France, the adoption of French culture and customs by these colonies meant that colonial subjects were viewed as citizens of France, which also meant they had the rights and duties of French citizens. In what follows, we explore the expansion of French colonial education in CIE by Algeria as an example. The conquest of Algeria by the French began in 1830, and its occupation took place in 1837. It was three years later in 1840 that the French declared the total conquest of Algeria (Heggoy, 1984). Education in Algeria before the French conquest was centralized
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along religious lines, and the state did not play a part in providing education. From the start of French colonization in Algeria, there was talk about establishing French schools for both the native Algerians and European settlers. According to Duc de Rovigo, the conquering general and the governor of Algeria from 1832 to 1833, “the propagation of teaching of our language [is] the most efficacious means to help the progress of our domination in this country” (as cited in Heggoy, 1984, p. 98). Although colonial schools were opened in 1831, these establishments were only meant for the European settlers and not for the native Algerians (Heggoy, 1984). In 1833, the first school was established in Algiers for Algerians and Europeans. Since the entire curriculum was based in French, the Algerians resisted enrolling their children in this school. Three years later, in 1836, the first Arab–French school was founded in Algiers, which included some Arabic courses. By 1850, one school in each of these cities was established—Algiers, Constantine, Oran, Bone, Blida, and Mostaganem. This was an attempt to systematize the Arab–French school system (Heggoy, 1984). From 1850 to 1870, an additional 36 schools were built. However, these did not bear much fruit in terms of results and enrollment, and by 1880, only 16 schools were left. This failure was primarily due to the fact that local authorities were unwilling to fund the “Arabs.” After the French took control, the state started to play an active role in providing education (Heggoy, 1984). Algeria’s distrust of French education was further exacerbated by colonial policies related to land. To build establishments for colonial settlements, the French sequestered Algerian properties mainly by destroying hobous, which were built to support educational activities (Heggoy, 1984). The French also felt it was unnecessary to pay the wages of Islamic teachers. These reasons, along with the lack of financial support, eventually led to the closing of schools. Although the French established three madaris (Arab schools), in Medea, Tlemcen, and Constantine in 1850 that taught Arabic, this came at a price to the Algerians. France controlled these schools, which led to the inclusion of the French language in the curriculum. In 1876, after the French civil servants replaced the French soldier administrators, the French still had a tight grip over Arabic schools in Algeria and continued the administration of madaris. France dominated every aspect of the education system. In 1895, the French authorities stated that only mudarrisun trained from official madaris could “teach in classes that prepared students to enter these schools” (Heggoy, 1984, p. 100). French authorities then took responsibility for the appointment of imams. French teaching was strengthened through the passing of that 1895 law, and all the Muslim officials, including imams, qudahs, and mudarrisun were required to communicate in French with their European supervisors. Algerians felt they were being attacked as their children were no longer required to learn Arabic, the liturgical language of Islam. As the demand for education grew, two contesting opinions of Algerians receiving French education began to surface. The goal of this education policy was “clearly aimed at gaining native allies for the French administration” (Heggoy, 1984, p. 98). While this education policy failed, the French could not understand why the Algerians were distrustful of the superior education that was being made available for their citizens. This is mainly because of how education was viewed by the colonizer (France) and the colonized (Algeria). For France, the church and education were separate entities, while for Algerians, it was impossible to view education as mutually exclusive from religion. For Algerians, religion played a central role in teaching students to read, write, as well as to engage in religious discourse as education was based on the Islamic holy book, the Qu’ran. On the one hand, the European settlers believed that by Algerians having access to
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education, this would threaten French domination. On the other hand, some Frenchmen believed that there was a great need for local elites to receive education as they would be intermediaries between the European powers and the uneducated Algerian population (Heggoy, 1984). Some Europeans felt that assimilative colonial education would transform the Algerian Muslim population into authentic Frenchmen. This was specifically true with the emergence of the Third Republic in France after 1870. Nonetheless, colonial education is also a two-way street as young native Algerians from the elite class received their education from French schools in Paris. Since these families of the Algerian ruling class lacked power, they were “forced” to allow their children to receive education in a foreign country. France’s decision to physically remove children to study in Paris was viewed as an attempt to convert young Muslims to Christianity (Heggoy, 1984). With the dawning of the First World War, the French decided to draft young Algerians into the army, which was against the leadership of European settlers. This is because Algeria would gain political rights, which would threaten the European control of the colony. The First World War had a profound impact on the changing attitudes of Algerians, which consists of Arabs and Berbers, over French education in Algeria. As Heggoy (1984) states, Algerian soldiers and workers realized the benefits of modern education while working in France during the First World War. They understood that by reading French, this gave access to better jobs. Hence, when they returned home, they demanded access to French schools for their sons. Suddenly, French education became a necessity. The mass immigration of Algerians for work purposes during and after the Great War greatly enriched the Algerian minds. As the migrant workers provided labor in France, they brought home new ideas. Nonetheless, the progress of education for Algerians remained very slow as only 30,000 of 500,000 young school-aged Algerians were actually in schools (Heggoy, 1984). Colonial education aimed at civilizing Algerians was centralized with France dictating the content, curriculum, and language of instruction. The need for French education was essential in gaining access to colonial bureaucracy. As Heggoy (1984) notes, employment in colonial institutions required potential employees to pass French tests. Similarly, due to economic demands, French schools started to grow in Algeria, and by 1954 over 300,000 young Muslims were enrolled in French primary schools. Indeed, assimilative educational policies gave birth to Algerians, who were so well-versed in French that they produced books. However, this highlights one of the tragic effects of colonial education as these authors felt they were neither “Muslims” in a cultural sense nor Europeans according to European standards. This created a class of assimilated Algerians who were known as the evolues, which eased the minds of the French as they felt they were responsible for civilizing Algerians. To turn Algerians into Frenchmen, the French suppressed any Islamic teachings, which also meant the learning of Arabic. This resulted in a generation of Algerians who had a foot planted in contrasting worlds. The years of Algeria’s resistance to assimilating in French schools left the country with an illiteracy rate of 90 percent in 1962. Upon achieving independence in 1962, Algeria started to chart their education system, which still had remnants of a modified French education system. Both of these examples of adaptive and assimilative colonialism illustrate how colonial education impacted the education systems of these countries. As it has been shown, in adaptive colonial education, the British had little desire in developing both the Indian and Malaysian education system. Meanwhile, in assimilative colonial education, the French developed the Algerian education system according to French culture and language and even considered Algerians to be French citizens.
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CONCLUSIONS The long and complicated human history, mired in domination and control, can make the understanding of colonialism a daunting task. Colonialism is often defined as the conquest and subjugation of other people’s land and goods. Above, we have approached the issue of colonialism more from a theoretical viewpoint rather than merely providing a historical account of it. The theoretical underpinning of colonialism is critical because educational policies are situated in their historical contexts, and the colonial educational system is nested within the larger colonial policies and structures. To be clear, imperialism, colonialism, and coloniality are not things of the past relegated to textbooks. Colonialism is still in existence, and several former colonies (Britain, France, and the Netherlands) and new occupiers (the United States) have colonies (e.g., New Caledonia, Puerto Rico, the Dutch West Indies). However, today these colonies are called protectorates, overseas departments, possessions, and strategic military installations. Colonial education aims to “assist in the consolidation of foreign rule” (Kelly and Altbach, 1984, p. 1). While today’s myriad forms of colonial occupation are not only about raw material extraction, the education systems of the colonies still fall along the more complicated lines of adaptive and assimilative education. Colonialism in education today continues to exist through external examination processes in Commonwealth countries, where examiners from the Global North assess Global South students’ performances in the General Certificate of Education: Ordinary Level (O-Level) and Advanced Level (A-Level) examinations administered by the Cambridge International Examinations. This is an important vestige of colonialism as readers from Global North are seen as gatekeepers of knowledge. Going back to Quijano’s coloniality of power, colonized countries align themselves to a Eurocentric paradigm as it is deemed modern and superior. Similarly, engaging with foreign advisors in planning and implementing educational policies and frameworks often neglects local needs and culture. In fact, Altbach (1971) contends that “much of the technical advice given is irrelevant, and possibly even dangerous to the recipient” (p. 550). Altbach (1971) adds that the recruitment of foreign advisors is an intriguing aspect of neocolonialism as “many of the individuals who engage in advisory and technical assistance work are not of the highest caliber” (p. 551). Similarly, Altbach (1971) also comments that many top professors are unwilling to take a couple of years off from their home and see consulting work as insignificant. In sum, the main goal of adaptive education, which eventually created a dual education system (see below), was to develop a cadre of literate subjects who would assist the colonizer in ruling the country. Assimilative education aims to create citizens in the image of the homeland. Assimilative colonialism focused on conforming subjects to the cultures and traditions of the colonizers. While colonial education today is not rigid and falls along a continuum, the role of education in shaping national development trajectories is still evident. Ultimately, colonial education was about gaining “mental” control over subjects to ensure that bureaucratic apparatuses functioned to serve the colonial masters.
FURTHER READING 1. Heggoy, A. A. (1984). Colonial education in Algeria: Assimilation and reaction. Education and the colonial experience (pp. 97–116). New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2. Memmi, A. (1965). The colonizer and the colonized. Boston, MA: Bacon Press.
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3. Quijano, A. (2008). Coloniality of power, Eurocentricism, and social classification. In M. Morana, E. Dussel, and C. Jauregui, Coloniality at large: Latin America and the postcolonial debate (pp. 181–224). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 4. White, B. W. (1996). Talk about school: Education and the colonial project in French and British Africa (1860–1960). Comparative Education, 32(1), 9–25. 5. Whitehead, C. (2005a). The historiography of British imperial education policy, Part I: India. History of Education, 34(3), 315–329. 6. Whitehead, C. (2005b). The historiography of British imperial education policy, Part II: Africa and the rest of the colonial empire. History of Education, 34(4), 441–454.
MINI CASE STUDY As noted above both forms of colonialism aimed at extracting raw materials for the colonies while making the metropoles wealthy. While both types of colonialism had different approaches to education in their territories (adaptive and assimilative), the type of educational system that emerged and continued was based on a dualistic model. As Gordon (1962) notes in explaining Trinidad’s post-colonial educational infrastructure, “a dual education system was introduced by which the Government would provide some schools and the religious bodies would be assisted in the provision of others” (p. 16). Across the Caribbean, religiously affiliated private schools provided education for a specific segment of the population (i.e., elite Caucasians, gifted Blacks, and East Indians), while government schools provided education for other parts (usually poor Blacks). This dualistic model or dual educational system was based on the fact that the colonies had two different types of colonial educational structures and bureaucracies that were separate and unequal. On the one hand, missionaries and other religious bodies were given free rein over the educational systems at the beginning of colonialization, and the government did not intervene as the aim of education was to create a cadre of workers who acted as liaisons between the colonizer and the colonized. On the other hand, when local governments did choose to provide access education, with the aid of the colonizers, the education was substandard and lacked resources, or a few elite schools got most of the resources. Thus, with time, two types of educational systems, a dual system, emerged in the colonies and the immediate post-colonial period. This dual system consisted of statesponsored education and missionary education. In using Trinidad as a case study, Williams (2019) argues that time went on, the government schools became increasingly underfunded and lower achieving, while the religious schools became “prestige” schools. He further adds that “epistemicide” claimed traditional educational practices, while Anglocentric values permeate the school’s teaching materials. As many countries gained independence, they sought to integrate the religious and state schools into one school system. In some places, this worked, but in many other places, the religious denomination schools persevered while in a subset of locations, these former religious denomination schools became “prestigious” government schools (thus creating a dual state sponsored system). Ultimately in most places, the dual education configuration persists, and the colonial bureaucratic structures and apparatuses were kept in place, and the post-independence educational systems were built upon the colonial structures. For example, across the Caribbean government-run public secondary schools in the post-independence period continued to prepare students for the external UK-based end of secondary schooling examinations (O-levels and A-levels) so that students could secure good grades to gain entrance to attend elite British Universities, such as Oxford and Cambridge.
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Such explicit policies led to the emergence of an unequal system, whereas new postcolonial bureaucracies were added to the existing structures and thus further stratifying education. Williams (2019) provides yet another example of this pattern by arguing that in post-colonial Trinidad, as the new government sought to expand access to education by creating junior and senior secondary schools, these too became part of the dual system as the new schools were not able to produce the same educational outcomes. More importantly, the dualist colonial educational system still informs much of the content, curriculum, and teaching methods in that preference is still given to rote instruction (in the form of teaching to the test) over student center learning. As Lewis and Lewis (1995) argue, “this colonial model of education has proved remarkably resilient, difficult to dislodge even today” (p. 159). Thus, today the old/pre-colonial schools or grammar-type schools continue to outperform the post-colonial government schools, which are often plagued with resource challenges and standardized examinations.
REFERENCES Altbach, P. G. (1971). Education and neocolonialism: A note. Comparative Education Review, 15(2), 237–239. Amin, S. (1975). What education for what development? Prospects, 5(1), 48–52. Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. London, UK : Routledge. Carnoy, M. (1975). Education as cultural imperialism: A reply. Comparative Education Review, 2(19), 286–289. Charkrabarty, D. (1995). Radical histories and question of enlightenment rationalism. Economicand Political Weekly, 751–759. Curtin, P. D. (1972). The Atlantic slave trade: A census. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. de Sousa Santos, B. (2015). Epistemologies of the south: Justice against the epistemicide. Abingdon: Routledge. Escobar, A. (2007). “Post-development” as concept and social practice. In Exploring postdevelopment (pp. 28–42). London: Routledge. Fanon, F. (1968). Black skin, white masks. New York, NY: Grove Press. Fieldhouse, D. K. (1989). The colonial empires. London, UK: Macmillan. Gordon, S. (1962). The Keenan Report, 1869 Part I: The elementary school system in Trinidad. Caribbean Quarterly, 8(4), 3–16. Heggoy, A. A. (1984). Colonial education in Algeria: Assimilation and reaction. Education and the Colonial Experience (pp. 97–116). New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. Hirschman, C. (1972). Educational patterns in colonial Malaya. Comparative Education Review, 16(3), 486–502. Hobson, J. A. (1965). Imperialism: A study 1902. Ann Arbor, MI : University of Michigan Press. Kammerer, J. A. (2018). Colonialism. In Max Planck encyclopedia of public international law. Kelly, G. P., and Altbach, P. G. (1984). Introduction: “The four faces of colonialism.” In Education and the colonial experience (pp. 1–5). New Brunswick, Canada: Transaction. Lenin, V. I. (1947). Imperialism: The highest stage of capitalism. Moscow, Russia: Foreign Languages Publishing House. Lewis, T., and Lewis, M. (1985). Vocational education in the Commonwealth Caribbean and the United States. Comparative Education, 21(2), 157–171. Loomba, A. (2015). Colonialism/postcolonialism. London, UK: Routledge. Macfie, A. L. (2000). Orientalism: A reader. New York, NY: New York University Press.
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Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). On the coloniality of being: Contributions to the development of a concept. Cultural Studies, 240–270. Mignolo, W. (2000). Local histories/global designs: Essays on the coloniality of power, subaltern knowledges and border thinking. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press. Mignolo, W. D. (2011). Darker side of modernity: Global futures, decolonial options. Durham, NC : Duke University Press. Moseley, M. E. (1992). The Incas and their ancestors: The archaeology of Peru. London, UK: Thames and Hudson. Oliver, R. A. (1991). The African experience. London, UK: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Osterhammel, J. (2005). Colonialism. Bonn, Germany: Markus Wiener Publishers. Prasad, P. (2017). Crafting qualitative research: Beyond positivist traditions. New York, NY: Routledge. Quijano, A. (2008). Coloniality of power, Eurocentricism, and social classification. In M. Morana, E. Dussel, and C. Jauregui (Eds.), Coloniality at large: Latin America and the post-colonial debate (pp. 181–224). Durham, NC : Duke University Press. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Said, E. W. (2003). Orientalism. With a new preface by the author. New York, NY: Vintage. Schumpeter, J. A. (1951). Imperialism and social classes 1919. (H. Norden, Trans.) New York, NY: Augustus M. Kelly. Shahjahan, R. (2011). Decolonizing the evidence-based education and policy movement: Revealing the colonial vestiges in educational policy, research, and neoliberal reform. Journal of Education Policy, 26(2), 181–206. Somal, B (2015). India on sale—Part 1. New Delhi, India: Roshi Bharat. Spivak, G. C. (1999). Can the subaltern speak. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. Steinmetz, G. (2014). The sociology of empires, colonies, and postcolonialism. Annual Review of Sociology, 77–103. Wallerstein, I. (2011). The modern world-system: Capitalist agriculture and the origins of European world-economy in the sixteenth century. Berkeley, CA : University of California Press. Whitehead, C. (2005). The historiography of British imperial education policy, Part II: Africa and the rest of the colonial empire. History of Education, 34(4), 441–454. Williams, H. M. A. (2019). A neocolonial warp of outmoded hierarchies, curricula and disciplinary technologies in Trinidad’s educational system. Critical Studies in Education, 60(1), 93–112. Yousafzai, G. J., and Khan, A. (2017). The British education policy and colonial discourse: A case study of “passage to India” by EM Forster. PUTAJ-Humanities and Social Sciences, 24(2), 139–139.
CHAPTER THREE
Marxism in Comparative and International Education Foundational Political Economy Perspectives on Education ROBIN SHIELDS AND KALYAN KUMAR KAMESHWARA
INTRODUCTION Few social theorists can claim as much influence on the development of social theory and the course of political history as Karl Marx (1818–1883). He was born in 1818 to a middle-class family in what was then the Kingdom of Prussia. As a student at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin, Marx became increasingly politically active and subsequently pursued a career in journalism, writing and editing for newspapers that were highly critical of the government. To escape state censorship and political persecution, he moved from Prussia to Paris, where he met his lifelong friend, collaborator, and co-author Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), before settling in London in 1850 where he remained until his death in 1883. Marx is best known for his theory of political economy, a theoretical explanation of how economic, social, and political forces interact with one another. His account of political economy was considerably more critical than the neoclassical theories of Adam Smith (1723–1790) and David Ricardo (1772–1823). Marx’s work focuses on the exploitation and the distribution of surplus in society. By including these aspects of political economy, Marx’s theory of political economy provides a better explanation of many contemporary trends he observed: the continued impoverishment of the working class despite increasing productivity and economic growth, the expansion of capitalist trade throughout much of the world, and its connection to the liberal values of the Enlightenment. Marx’s work has been the subject of much debate and critique in both academic and political circles. Subsequent academic theorists criticized his account of cultural and human agency (Giddens, 1979), and the failure of communist states in the 1980s and 1990s was seen as evidence that his ideas were fatally flawed (Lipset and Bence, 1994). However, subsequent crises in capitalist societies, for example the financial crisis of 2008, and rising inequality in many countries throughout the world, have brought new relevance to and interest in Marx’s work. Piketty’s (2014) acclaimed book, Capital in the TwentyFirst Century, in many senses, continues Marx’s investigation into the consequences and outcomes of the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. 53
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This chapter introduces Marx’s social philosophy as it relates to comparative and international education (CIE). It begins by introducing key aspects of his theory of political economy and exploring how these ideas have been and can be applied in educational research. It then identifies the relevance of Marx’s ideas to CIE research, and concludes with a case study that uses Marxist concepts of political economy to analyze marketization in higher education.
OVERVIEW Key aspects of Marx’s political economy Marx’s intellectual career spanned over 40 years and produced more than 20 books and publications. While outside of the academy Marx (1848/2015; 1978) is best known for his call in the Communist Manifesto to “centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state” (p. 26), the analysis and discussion here focuses more on his later works that describe his social philosophy: The German Ideology (1846/2004), Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844/2004), and, most significantly, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (1876/1990). These theoretical works are far more systematic, insightful, and useful in explaining the social relations studied and used in CIE. Taken together, these works describe a theory of political economy, an explanation of how economic, social, and political forces interact with one another. Marx’s (1978) theory of political economy is particularly concerned with the dynamics of capitalism (i.e., societies characterized by the free exchange of goods and wage labor). Marx was deeply interested in the work of the earlier neoclassical economists, in particular, Smith and Ricardo. Marx’s (1978) theory of capitalist political economy takes their ideas as a starting point, but then provides a more complex account of the flow and accumulation of capital and focuses on the exploitative aspects of wage labor. This theory can be best understood through the explanation of several key ideas and concepts, specifically: 1. historical materialism: the means of production and relationships of production together determine the cultural and intellectual conditions of society. 2. labor and value: the primary basis of value is labor-time. In other words, the value of any commodity is determined by the time it took to produce it. 3. competition and the decline of surplus: market competition results in a tendency for profit (surplus) to decline over time, creating downward pressure on workers’ pay and a continual impetus for economic growth. 4. ideology: the values and beliefs that make the extraction of surplus legitimate and thereby enable the exploitation of the laborers.
Historical materialism Marx (1859/1970) viewed the material world as driving the conditions of social life, including culture and even ideas and thoughts. In this respect, he departed from the school of Hegelian philosophy, which viewed ideas as shaping the world. Thus, in Marxist analysis, “life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life” (Marx and Engels, 1846/2004, p. 47). Therefore, if scholars want to understand how a society works, they must start by focusing on the material subsistence and continuity of the society, how its members feed, clothe, house, and otherwise sustain themselves.
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Marx (1876/1990) calls the ways in which a society produces the material requirements of its existence, the “mode of production” (part one, chapter 1, p. 175). This materialism is “historical” in that Marx (1876/1990) analyzes changes in the modes of production over time: he points out that ancient societies (i.e., Greece and Rome) used exploitative slave labor in key areas of production, such as agriculture and manufacturing. Subsequently, feudal societies in Europe relied on a system of bonded serfdom and land ownership. Serfs were tied to a particular plot of land and were required to work for the nobility who owned it by cultivating crops; they were allowed to retain a share of crops for their own subsistence but paid a heavy share to landowners. He contrasts these historical modes of production with his contemporary capitalism, in which workers were ostensibly free to sell their labor as they wished. Unlike in the past, workers in Marx’s (1876/1990) contemporary society could not be forced to work against their will and could sell their work to whoever agreed to buy it. However, Marx (1876/1990) argues that most workers are in a position that requires them to sell their labor: they do not own the means of production that would enable them to independently secure their livelihood (e.g., land or property), and therefore they are required to sell their labor to someone who would pay them for their work.
Value and surplus Marx (1876/1990) was also particularly concerned with the notion of surplus; in any mode of production, some workers produce more than they consume themselves, resulting in a surplus. In both the ancient and feudal modes of productions, slaves and serfs were forced to produce a surplus that was retained for profits by the slave owners and nobility, respectively. In the capitalist mode of production, capital owners accumulate the surplus of workers’ labor in their profits. Marx (1876/1990) specifically describes a Money-CommodityMoney (MCM) cycle. In this cycle, a capital owner will take an initial stock of money (M) and invest in raw materials and workers’ labor-time to create a commodity (C). For example, a factory owner would buy materials, such as cotton and thread, then hire factory workers to produce commodities, such as shirts and trousers. In more contemporary times, a cafe owner might pursue an MCM cycle as follows: 1. the cafe owner starts with $200 in capital (M). 2. the owner invests $70 in coffee beans, $30 in milk, and $100 in barista labor to create 200 cups of coffee, which are the commodity (C). Each cup of coffee, therefore, cost $1 to produce. 3. the cups are sold for $2 each, creating a total income of $400 and a surplus (i.e., a profit) of $200 (M). At the end of the day, the owner would have turned $200 into $400. Thus, the capital owner seeks to retain a surplus by selling the finished commodity for more money than they originally invested in raw materials and labor-time; in other words, they would seek to make a profit. In contrast, the workers produce the full value of all the coffee sold, adding $300 to the initial $100 in raw materials. However, they are unable to claim the surplus of $200 as their own because they do not own the means of production, and they retain only their salary of $100. In Marx’s (1884/2004) language, they become alienated from their work, meaning they do have command or own the
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fruits of their labor, or control the processes that produce it. With each iteration of this MCM process, profit accrues in the hands of the cafe owner, and therefore one outcome of capitalist production is growing inequality, or “the accumulation of capital in a few hands” (Marx, 1844/2004, p. 61). In recent decades, discussions about the wealthy one percent serve as a prime example of capital accumulation.
Competition and the decline of surplus The free exchange of labor and payment that characterizes the capitalist mode of production also creates competition, both between workers and between capital owners. Marx (1876/1990; 1894/1981) extends the work of neoclassical theorists on the benefits of competition by arguing that competition also results in a tendency for surplus to decline over time. To return to the example of the cafe owner above, the high profits obtained by the cafe owner ($200) would likely attract other capital owners to start similar cafes. In order to attract customers, these new cafes would eventually need to sell their coffee at lower prices, perhaps $1.75 or $1.50 per cup, and the original owner may need to drop prices to match them. Thus, for all cafe owners, the rate of profit would decline over time. To the coffee consumer, the “invisible hand” of competition would seemingly lower the price of coffee close to its actual cost of production, or the total sum of labor and materials ($1 per cup). However, capital owners would see decreasing returns on their investment. According to Marx (1894/1981) they would, therefore, seek to counteract this decline through a variety of mechanisms: 1. “increasing intensity:” labor could become more efficient through new technology or management, for example new machinery or a streamlined process. Thus, the same amount of capital could yield 250 or 300 cups of coffee, which would increase profits. 2. “depression of wages:” workers’ pay could be reduced, or new workers could be found who would work for less money. Marx notes that there is usually a surplus of labor relative to the demand of capital owners, meaning that laborers are dependent upon capital owners for employment and their livelihoods. An “unemployed reserve army of workers” (Engels, 1844/2008, p. 84) is thus an essential characteristic of the capitalist system. 3. “foreign trade:” the cafe owners could open new locations in areas with less competition, and obtain a higher rate of profit, or they could source materials from areas with lower cost. Over time, this geographic expansion could encompass much of the world. This phenomenon of expansion has been further analyzed by Marxist thinker Rosa Luxemburg (2015). In her seminal work The Accumulation of Capital, she theorized that the capitalist logic expands itself into non-capitalist spaces in the form of colonialism or imperialism to sustain the surplus accumulation process. Her thinking has paved way to development of dependency theory (Frank, 1979) and world-systems analysis (Wallerstein, 1974; see Chapter 5). Marxism, therefore, contains an account of economic globalization that would be developed by later scholars, but one he recognized in claiming “the modern history of capital dates from the creation in the 16th century of a world-embracing commerce and a world embracing market” (Marx, 1876/1990, p. 219).
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Thus, this decline in the rate of surplus caused by market competition creates a need for capitalism to grow continually, both geographically and in the efficiency of its production methods. If growth stops (or even becomes negative as in a recession), capital owners will seek to reduce salaries and the condition of workers will quickly deteriorate. Continual economic growth is, therefore, a necessary condition for capitalist societies, sometimes described as the spinning wheels that keep the bicycle of capitalism upright (Nuwer, 2017). While this growth has many benefits, ecological Marxists also point out that it is unsustainable and involves a continual acceleration in the depletion of environmental resources (Foster, 1997; O’Connor, 1998), prompting Jameson (2003) to point out that it is now “easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism” (p. 76).
Ideology In Marx’s time, the proletariat (i.e., the working class) comprised most of the population, in contrast to a relatively small number of “bourgeoisie,” the capital owners who are not required to work but rather own the means of production (land, factories, etc.). This imbalance raised a difficult question of how capital owners continued to retain profit when they were both outnumbered and dependent upon the producers. For Marx (1846/2004), the answer to this question lay in the idea of ideology, a set of beliefs and values that enabled the extraction of surplus to seem legitimate. Just as the bourgeoisie factory owners controlled the physical means of production, they also controlled the production of ideas and ideals. Marx and Engels (1846/2004) refer to those producers or thinkers as “active, conceptive ideologists who make the perfecting of the illusion of the class about itself their chief source of livelihood” (p. 65). In the case of capitalism, these ideals are those of Enlightenment liberalism: individualism, freedom, and the “natural” law of property (Hochstrasser, 2000; Waldron, 1987). These contrast to those of feudal times, which asserted the “divine right” of monarchs and enshrined the hierarchy of feudal society in religion. Thus, the true sign of bourgeoisie power is not only to exploit the working class, but to establish and maintain a set of beliefs in which the working class accepts this arrangement as fair, natural, and legitimate. Marx (1846/2004) also noted how each new mode of production developed an increasingly abstract ideology. In feudal societies, most production required to sustain the population took place within the confines of a lord’s estate, and the ideology of feudal society; therefore, this emphasized the legitimacy of the feudal hierarchy and its basis in religious doctrine. In contrast, capitalist nation-states that emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries included more elaborate forms of production, which involved complex chains of raw material production and industrial manufacturing that spread over a wider geographic territory. As part of their day-to-day lives, people produced and consumed commodities that involved labor and materials from distant areas with which they had no personal connection. This larger geographic basis necessitated a new and more abstract notion of national identity, in which workers who would never meet faceto-face would share a sense of belong to the same “imagined community” (Anderson, 1983). As the means of production came to encompass not only nation-states but their colonial conquests, this ideology again adapted to focus on membership in a common empire based on universal notions of progress. Marx and Engels (1846/2004) thus describe the process through which universal values emerge:
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if now in considering the course of history we . . . will necessarily come up against the phenomenon that increasingly abstract ideas hold sway, i.e., ideas which increasingly take on the form of universality. For each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aims, to represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society, that is, expressed in ideal form: it has to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones. —p. 66 Thus, Marx’s (1876/1990; 1894/1981; 1978) political economy provides an account of how a few key drivers—namely the extraction of surplus value by capital holders, the declining rate of surplus, and the consequent impetus for growth and expansion—explain many aspects of social and political life. These insights can be applied well beyond Marx’s context of nineteenth-century Europe, including contemporary societies and specialized fields, such as comparative and international education.
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION Education is important in several aspects of Marx’s work. In the Communist Manifesto, he makes one of the earliest arguments for universal education, explicitly demanding: “free and equal education for all children in public schools” (Marx and Engels, 1848/2015, p. 28). This ideal would go on to be adopted in many national policies, in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in the Education for All movement (United Nations, 1948; UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2018; World Conference on Education for All, 1990). Marx and Engels (1848/2015) do not discuss education at length in any of their works, but he nevertheless considers it important in empowering the proletariat to resist exploitation by the bourgeoisie: “the bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie” (p. 12). However, Marx and Engels (1848/2015) also acknowledge that education is determined by social conditions, serving, and reproducing the ruling class. Marx and Engels (1848/2015), therefore, call on the proletariat to “rescue education from the influence of the ruling class” (p. 13). Thus, Marx and Engels (1848/2015) ascribe dual roles to education: it is both a process that sustains and reproduces the capitalist system of exploitation, but also as a means to create a more egalitarian society. Subsequent theorists and researchers have applied Marx’s concepts and ideas to many aspects of educational research. Three overarching themes in this literature are the relationship between education and ideology, education and critical pedagogy, and the role of education in capitalist labor markets. In this section, we discuss how each of these themes has been investigated in educational research generally and make specific links to comparative and international education research.
Education, social reproduction, and ideology One of the first and most well-known applications of Marxism in the educational literature is Bowles and Gintis’ 1976 book Schooling in Capitalist America, in which the authors
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argue that schooling mirrors the structure of capitalist societies. In their analysis, the main purpose of schooling is not learning or cognitive development but rather the “hidden curriculum,” which prepares children for life in a capitalist society. Aspects of schooling, such as the hierarchical relationships between teachers and students, the emphasis on strict timetables and limited freedom over one’s time, and individualized notions of achievement and reward all prepare students for work environments that share these characteristics, such as factories. To support this social reproduction, schools maintain the ideology of meritocracy; claiming that inequalities in society are legitimate because they are based on intellectual achievement rather than by birth. However, Bowles and Gintis (1976) argue that the achievement in education is mainly a form of social reproduction, showing that parents’ income and education are better predictors of students’ educational achievement than factors such as their intellectual abilities (measured through IQ). Just one year later, Willis (1977/2017) made similar arguments in his ethnographic study Learning to Labor: How working class kids get working class jobs. Willis (1977/2017) conducted fieldwork at a boys’ secondary school in England, through which he developed an analysis of how students associated with two cultures within the school. While the dominant culture accepted the hierarchical and disciplinarian nature of the schooling system and the need to invest in educational achievement, the other rejected the legitimacy of academic achievement and instead focused on the authenticity of manual work. Willis (1977/2017) theorized that by rejecting academic achievement, this “counterculture” socialized young men into working class occupations, and schooling, therefore, reproduced class structures by disenfranchising the working class from education. In the same decade, Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) eloquently theorize education as a means of reproducing class inequalities. Their work argues that an education system involving tools, such as examinations, pedagogy, curricula, and extracurricular activities favors students from the dominant or privileged classes (Dalal, 2016), and it thus excludes, alienates, and disenfranchises students from dominated classes. Bourdieu (1990) argues that an individual’s class position shapes his or her habitus (disposition)—which is constituted by their habits, mannerisms, behavior, personality, accent, body language, style, etc. The education system is portrayed as a rational and neutral institution and the factors and prejudices that go into defining merit are, what Bourdieu (1990) refers to as “misrecognized.”1 Thus, the education system acts as a system of cultural reproduction through which marginalized students accept the legitimacy of their class position. From this perspective, the role of education in capitalist societies is twofold. Firstly, it produces labor-power to sustain the production processes controlled by the capitalist class and thereby facilitate the accumulation process through surplus production and appropriation. Alongside this, education also plays a key role as centers of ideological apparatuses (Althusser, 2014) to strengthen, what Marxists such as Lukács (1971) and Marcuse (1966) refer to as the “false consciousness.” This consciousness of the working classes that enable the reproduction of the conditions of production (Althusser, 1971), that withhold the prevailing class structures and legitimize the ongoing appropriation and exploitation processes. Ideological apparatuses act as centers of consensus building not only to legitimize the status quo but also to diffuse any potential resistances against the exploitation and
Something similar to what Marx refers to as appearance or false consciousness (Gaventa, 2003).
1
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distribution of surplus or inequality. These ideological processes are implemented by developing compliance through the hidden curriculum, increasing the cost of access, burdening debts/loans, and emphasizing skill-based education and vocational training over critical thinking. University spaces in the neoliberal era can be observed to severely discourage student activism or teacher/worker unionism and facilitate shrinkage of spaces for critical discourse and radical politics (Furedi, 2016). In the field of CIE, the direct application of Marxist theory peaked shortly after these key education texts, particularly in the 1980s. For example, Ginsburg and Arias-Godínez (1984) studied social reproduction in non-formal education in Mexico, asking whether non-formal radio education actually transformed social inequalities or simply served to reproduce them. Bullivant (1983) makes a similar argument in Fiji, where he argues that the emergence of schooling as an institution has contributed to a form of hegemony of the educated. The field of CIE also offered a unique opportunity to study education systems that were nominally based on Marxist political theory—i.e., China, Cuba, and the USSR—often pointing to the ways in which class segmentation persisted through ethnicity and language in countries that espoused a classless ideology (Bilinsky, 1964; Hawkins, 1978). More recently, Marxist concepts remain pertinent in the analysis of social class and the division of labor; for example, Phillips (2013) argues that education in rural Tanzania facilitates a division of labor between the less educated manual laborers and the more educated elites. In addition to Marxist analyses, his critique of political economy is influential as an underpinning to other theories of political economy, for example Wallerstein’s world-systems analysis (see Chapter 5), neo-Marxism or cultural political economy (see Chapter 16).
Critical pedagogy The connection between Marxism and critical pedagogy traces its roots to Freire’s (1970) notion of conscientização (or conscientization), the dialogic process by which peasant workers became aware of the exploitative nature of their labor. Freire (1970) draws upon Marx’s analysis of surplus extraction and the dependency of laborers on capital owners, identifying the ways in which education supported this oppression, and imagining how education could instead be used to transform society and liberate the oppressed. Freire (1970) argues that most modern education is “banking education;” it focuses on the depositing of facts on information (as one transfers money into a bank) that accepts the logic of the status quo. For Freire (1970), a truly liberating and humanizing education enables the learner to critically understand their world, to identify relationships of exploitation and oppression, and to transform them. He quotes Marx’s (1845) assertion that “the educator himself needs educating” (point 3) to call for an end to the practice of banking education and the development of critical pedagogies that enable critical consciousness. Since Freire’s (1970) work, the concept of critical pedagogy has been applied and developed by many other scholars and represents an important field of educational research (see Chapter 21). For example, McLaren (2005) and Giroux (2011) have both developed arguments for critical pedagogy strongly rooted in Marxist and Freirian perspectives, examining the exploitative processes of global capitalism and neoliberal policies and describing how they prevent social justice. In contrast, Hooks (1994) takes an intersectional approach to critical pedagogy that combines Marxist elements of class
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struggle with analyses of race and gender, arguing that critical pedagogy requires approaches that transcend these boundaries as well as those between the student and teacher, resulting in a pedagogy that centers on the dialog. In the field of CIE, Freirian critical pedagogy has been and remains an important perspective in much research. For example, Bartlett (2005) studies the application of Freirian principles in non-formal literacy education in Brazil. Reflecting a critical and nuanced approach to the topic, Bartlett (2005) identified many principles of Freirian philosophy but also argues “Freire’s dichotomous notion of knowledge suffers from an early Marxist theory of power as binary and repressive” (p. 360); in other words, it could do more to focus on the multiple and competing forms of power that coexist in any social situation, rather than a simple distinction between the oppressed and the oppressors. More recently, Khoja-Mooli (2017) has applied a Freirian approach to teachers’ professional development, showing how the notion of “conscientization” can also be applied to the oppressive relationships and ideologies of former colonial relationships. Her approach also combines theoretical perspectives; while it draws upon Freire’s Marxist origins it is equally concerned with theories of post-colonialism (see Chapter 6).
The political economy of education and labor markets In capital, Marx (1990) analyzes education as part of the overall production process, arguing, in “order to modify the human organism, so that it may acquire skill and handiness in a given branch of industry, and become labor-power of a special kind, a special education or training is requisite . . . The expenses of this education (excessively small in the case of ordinary labor-power), enter pro tanto into the total value spent in its production” (Marx, 1876/1990, p. 229). In the mid-twentieth-century, neoclassical economists Jacob Mincer (1922–2006) and Gary Becker (1930–2014) would describe this role of education in their theory of human capital, which sought to apply the concepts of returns on capital investment to education (Becker, 1964; Mincer, 1958). In subsequent years, studies of “human capital” sought to establish the rates of economic return to education in contexts around the world (Kapur, Lewis, and Webb, 1997). While recognizing the economic value of education and skills, a Marxist perspective also analyzes how competition in the labor market can result in a decreasing return to skills over time. That is, as more workers in the labor force gain skills, the salary “premium” these skills command decreases. These skills also increasingly dawn on the nature of being more and more specialized. Alongside an “absolute” return to specialized education, education also becomes about “positional competition,” meaning that workers acquire skills to differentiate themselves from other competitors in the labor market (Hirsch, 1976). In the worst case, some have argued that education becomes a form of credentialism, meaning that it is a barrier to entry into high paid work, but one that adds little value to productivity (Collins, 1979; Dore, 1976). Some studies from CIE highlight the declining skills premium due to the emergence of high-skills, low wage labor markets. For example, in their book The Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs, and Incomes, Brown, Lauder, and Ashton (2010) argue that competition from new high-skill, low-wage economies (e.g., India and China) will result in a decline in the salary premium of high-skilled jobs in the Global North. The result is that “middle-class families . . . are having to run faster, for longer, just to stand still” (Brown, 2003, p. 6); in other words, the declining surplus associated with education
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means that families must devote increasing time, resources, and social pressure to education so that their children maintain high-paying employment.
CONCLUSIONS This chapter has introduced Marx’s theory of political economy, focusing on the concepts of historical materialism, labor, and value, and surplus and the decline of surplus, and ideology. It has shown how this analysis has been applied to education research generally, and comparative education in particular. Although Marx’s work has its share of critics, it has inspired subsequent theorists and informed research across many social science disciplines. As global capitalist societies continue to engender conflict and crisis, Marxism remains a relevant and insightful theoretical perspective in comparative and international education.
FURTHER READING 1. Bowles, S., and Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life. New York, NY: Basic Books. 2. Giroux, H. (2011). On critical pedagogy. New York, NY: Continuum Books. 3. Hooks, B. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York, NY: Routledge. 4. Marx, K., and Engels, F. (1978). The Marx-Engels reader (2nd edn), edited by Robert Tucker. New York, NY: Norton. 5. McLaren, P. (2005). Capitalists and conquerors: A critical pedagogy against empire. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield. 6. Willis, P. (1977/2017). Learning to labour: How working class kids get working class jobs. London, UK: Routledge.
MINI CASE STUDY Many national policies in the 1980s saw new methods of funding higher education that more closely resembled markets: core state funding for universities was reduced in many countries and replaced with higher tuition fees and per-student funding models (Portnoi, Bagley, and Rust, 2010; Shields, 2013a). Universities were therefore required to compete to attract students, creating a form of higher education market. While this higher education market was quite different from the capitalist labor markets analyzed by Marx (1978; 1876/1990), many of his insights on the behavior of markets nevertheless apply. Indeed, a key feature of marketized higher education is the commodification of education, with university degrees produced through an MCM cycle just like any other commodity (Machingambi, 2014; Naidoo, 2003; Naidoo and Jamieson, 2005; Shumar, 2013). The commodification of higher education is supported in policies, such as the World Trade Organization’s General Agreement in Trade on Services (GATS), which regulates international trade in higher education in a manner similar to other service industries (Robertson, Bonal, and Dale, 2002). Furthermore, the growth of competition has led to the decline in surplus described by Marx: while established universities previously enjoyed predictable state funding, the growth in for-profit institutions and competition from other institutions has led to financial pressure and continued pressure for growth. Universities have undertaken
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significant and noticeable changes to offset the decline in revenues, which closely resemble those described by Marx (1984/1981): increasing intensity and efficiency, depression of wages and labor costs, and international trade. Increasing intensity is evident in many aspects of higher education. For example, universities make increasing use of technology to improve the efficiency of their teaching and operations. Not only does e-learning allow universities to reach more students, but universities now employ technology to manage all aspects of their work, from student records, to finances, to storing and organizing research outputs (Noble, 1998; Siemens and Long, 2011). Additionally, a large body of literature now describes the application of new public management techniques to higher education, which aim to make universities more efficient by increasing accountability and linking pay to performance (Bleiklie, 1998; Deem and Brehony, 2005). Hand-in-hand with this drive for efficiency is a downward pressure on pay and squeezing of the labor force. These forces are evident casualization of the academic profession, with many permanent and tenured positions replaced by adjunct faculty who are paid on an hourly or per-course basis. Even permanent positions face a squeeze, as salaries often do not keep up with inflation, and retirement benefits are cut (Ginsberg, 2011). Universities’ international activities are perhaps the most noticeable change associated with marketized higher education: the past twenty years have witnessed dramatic changes in universities’ international activities. To make up for declining public funding, universities have enrolled increasing numbers of international students, who often pay higher tuition fees than domestic students (Shields, 2013b; Shin, Welch, and Bagnall, 1999); this trend is evident in the growing number of students who go abroad for higher education, which increased from 1.4 million in 1999 to 4.8 million in 2016 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2018). It is not only students who go abroad; universities themselves have expanded internationally by establishing overseas branch campuses, which deliver degree programs from the home campus to students residing in another country. International branch campuses have expanded in number from 15 in 1995 to 250 in 2017 (Cross-Border Educational Research Team, 2017). Universities seek to generate a financial surplus in these campuses, which can be used to subsidize the home country institution. Thus, a Marxist analysis captures and explains many prominent trends in contemporary higher education, focusing on how the market forces entail a set of dynamics that create a drive for efficiency, a downward pressure on salaries, and an impetus for growth. Like capitalism more generally, growth is an essential feature of market-based higher education: few universities are content to maintain the status quo, but instead seek new ways to grow in terms of revenues and students, if for no other reason than to mitigate against future risk and possible further funding cuts (Varghese, 2009). Even elite universities with highly selective admissions (e.g., the Ivy Leagues and “Oxbridge”) find ways to grow through short-term certificate programs and endowment investments. These trends are generally most evident in countries with very marketized higher education systems, such as the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Many universities in these countries operate international branch campuses to increase revenues; for example, both the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom and Monash University in Australia operate international campuses in Malaysia and China, while Georgetown University, based in Washington, D.C., operates a branch campus in Doha, Qatar. In the United States, downward pressure on salaries is most evident in the casualization of academic work: well-paid and secure tenured positions are replaced with lowly paid, flexible adjunct roles at many institutions (Rees, 2015), while
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in the United Kingdom pay has not kept up with inflation since the 2008 credit crisis (The Guardian, 2017). To be sure, a Marxist analysis does not capture the entirety of trends in higher education. For example, trends such as global labor market mobility and intercultural exchange, have also driven the internationalization of higher education. Furthermore, Marginson (2013) points out the ways in which higher education is not a “true” market but rather a kind of “pseudo-market” or “quasi-market.” Nevertheless, Marx’s (1990) theory of capital provides the tools for a coherent analysis of this important development in educational policy and practice.
REFERENCES Altbach, P. G., Reisberg, L., and Rumbley, L. (2010). Trends in global higher education: Tracking an academic revolution. Paris, France: UNESCO. Althusser, L. (1971). Lenin and philosophy and other essays. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press. Althusser, L. (2014). On the reproduction of capitalism: Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. London, UK : Verso. Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London, UK : Verso. Bartlett, L. (2005). Dialogue, knowledge, and teacher-student relations: Freirean pedagogy in theory and practice. Comparative Education Review, 49(3), 344–364. Becker, G. (1964). Human capital: A theoretical and empirical analysis, with special reference to education. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Bilinsky, Y. (1964). Education of the non-Russian peoples in the Soviet Union. Comparative Education Review, 8(1), 78–89. Bleiklie, I. (1998). Justifying the evaluative state: New public management ideals in higher education. Journal of Public Affairs Education, 4(2), 87–100. Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Redwood City, CA : Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, P., and Passeron, J.-C. (1977). Reproduction in education, society, and culture (R. Nice, Trans.). London, UK : SAGE Publications. (Reprint in 1990 by SAGE Publications with a new preface by Bourdieu.) Bowles, S., and Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life. New York, NY: Basic Books. Brown, P. (2003). The opportunity trap: Education and employment in a global economy. European Educational Research Journal, 2(1), 141–179. Brown, P., Lauder, H., and Ashton, D. (2010). The global auction: The broken promises of education, jobs, and incomes. Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press. Bullivant, B. M. (1983). Cultural teproduction in Fiji: Who controls knowledge/power? Comparative Education Review, 27(2), 227–245. Collins, R. (1979). The credential society: An historical sociology of education and stratification. New York, NY: Academic Press. Cross-Border Education Research Team (2017). C-BERT branch campus listing. [Data originally collected by Kevin Kinser and Jason E. Lane]. Retrieved from http://cbert.org/ branchcampuses.phd. Dalal, J. (2016). Pierre Bourdieu: The sociologist of education. Contemporary Education Dialogue, 13(2), 231–250. Deem, R., and Brehony, K. J. (2005). Management as ideology: The case of “new managerialism” in higher education. Oxford Review of Education, 31(2), 217–235.
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Dore, R. (1976). The diploma disease. Education, qualification and development. Berkeley, CA : University of California Press. Edwards, R., and Edwards, J. (2001). Internationalization of education: A business perspective. Australian Journal of Education, 45(1), 76–89. Engels, F. (2008). The condition of the working class in England in 1844. New York, NY: Cosimo. (Original work published 1844.) Foster, J.B. (1997). The age of planetary crisis: The unsustainable development of capitalism. Review of Radical Political Economics, 29(4), 113–142. Frank, A. G. (1979). Dependent accumulation and underdevelopment. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum. Furedi, F. (2016). What’s happened to the university?: A sociological exploration of its infantilisation. New York, NY: Routledge. Gaventa, J. (2003). Power after Lukes: An overview of theories of power since Lukes and their application to development. Brighton: Participation Group, Institute of Development Studies. Giddens, A. (1979). Central problems in social theory: Action, structure and contradiction in social analysis. Berkeley, CA : University of California Press. Ginsberg, M. B., and Arias-Godínez, B. (1984). Nonformal education and social reproduction/ transformation: Educational radio in Mexico. Comparative Education Review, 28(1), 116–127. Ginsberg, B. (2011). The fall of the faculty. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Giroux, H. (2011). On critical pedagogy. New York, NY: Continuum Books. Hawkins, J.N. (1978). National-minority education in the People’s Republic of China. Comparative Education Review, 22(1), 147–162. Heinrich, M., and Locascio, A. (2012). An introduction to the three volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press. Hirsch, F. (1976). Social limits to growth. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. Hochstrasser, T. J. (2000). Natural law theories in the early Enlightenment. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press. Hooks, B. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York, NY: Routledge. Jameson, F. (2003). Future city. New Left Review, 21 (May–June), 65–79. Kapur, D., Lewis, J. P., and Webb R. C. (1997). The World Bank: Its first half-century (Volume 1). Washington DC : The Brookings Institution. Khoja-Mooli, S. (2017). Pedagogical (re)encounters: Enacting a decolonial praxis in teacher professional development in Pakistan. Comparative Education Review, 61(S1), S146–S170. Lipset, S. M., and Bence, G. (1994). Anticipations of the failure of communism. Theory and Society, 23(2), 169–210. Lukács, G., and Lukács, G. (1971). History and class consciousness: Studies in Marxist dialectics (Vol. 215). Cambridge, UK : MIT Press. Luxemburg, R. (2015). The accumulation of capital. New York, NY: Routledge. Machingambi, S. (2014). The impact of globalisation on higher education: A Marxist critique. Journal of Sociology and Social Anthropology, 5(2), 207–215. Marcuse, H. (1966). Eros and civilization (1955). Boston, MA: Beacon. Marginson, S. (2013). The impossibility of capitalist markets in higher education. Journal of Education Policy, 28(3), 353–370. Marx, K. (1845). Theses on Feuerbach. Retrieved from www.marxists.org/archive/marx/ works/1845/theses/index.htm
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Marx, K. (1970). A contribution to the critique of political economy. Moscow, Russia: Progress Publishers. (Original work published 1859.) Marx, K., and Engels, F. (1978). The Marx-Engels reader (2nd ed.) (R. Tucker, Ed.). New York, NY: Norton. Marx, K. (1981). Capital, volume III . New York, NY: Vintage. (Original work published 1894.) Marx, K. (1990). Capital: A critique of political economy. London, UK : Penguin Books. (Original work published 1876.) Marx, K., and Engels, F. (2001). Critique of the Gotha programme. London: Electric Book Co. Marx, K. (2004). Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844 (M. Milligan, Trans.). Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. (Original work published 1844.) Marx, K., and Engels, F. (2004). The German ideology. New York, NY: International Publishers. (Original work published 1846.) Marx, K., and Engels, F. (2015). The Communist Manifesto. New York, NY: Penguin Classics. (Original work published 1848.) McLaren, P. (2005). Capitalists and conquerors: A critical pedagogy against empire. Boulder, CO : Rowman and Littlefield. Mincer, J. (1958). Investment in human capital and personal income distribution. Journal of Political Economy, 66, 281–382. Naidoo, R. (2003). Repositioning higher education as a global commodity: Opportunities and challenges for future sociology of education work. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 24(2), 249–259. Naidoo, R., and Jamieson, I. (2005). Knowledge in the marketplace: The global commodification of teaching and learning in higher education. In P. Ninnes and M. Hellstén (Eds.), Internationalizing higher education (pp. 37–51). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Noble, D. F. (1998). Digital diploma mills: The automation of higher education. Science as Culture, 7(3), 355–368. Nuwer, R. (2017). How western civilization could collapse. BBC News. Retrieved from www. bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse. O’Connor, J. R. (Ed.). (1998). Natural causes: Essays in ecological Marxism. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Patnaik, P. (2007). Alternative perspectives on higher education in the context of globalization. Journal of Educational Planning and Administration, 21(4), 305–314. Phillips, K. D. (2013). Dividing the labor of development: Education and participation in rural Tanzania. Comparative Education Review, 57(4), 637–661. Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. Portnoi, L. M., Bagley, S. S., and Rust, V. D. (2010). Mapping the terrain: The global competition phenomenon in higher education. In V. D. Rust, L. M. Portnoi, and S. S. Bagley (Eds.), Higher education, policy, and the global competition phenomenon (pp. 1–13). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, Rees, J. (2015, March 20). Tenure is on life support. Retrieved from https://chroniclevitae.com/ news/947-tenure-is-on-life-support. Robertson, S. L., Bonal, X., and Dale, R. (2002). GATS and the education service industry: The politics of scale and global reterritorialization. Comparative Education Review, 46(4), 472–496. Shields, R. (2013a). Globalization and international education. London, UK : Bloomsbury. Shields, R. (2013b). Globalization and international student mobility: A network analysis. Comparative Education Review, 57(4), 609–636.
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Shin, C., Welch, A., and Bagnall, N. (1999). Culture of competition? Comparing international student policy in the United States and Australia. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 23(1), 81–99. Shumar, W. (2013). College for sale: A critique of the commodification of higher education. London & Washington DC : The Falmer Press. Siemens, G., and Long, P. (2011). Penetrating the fog: Analytics in learning and education. EDUCAUSE Review, 46(5), 30. The Guardian (2017, Sept. 22). Vice-chancellors may be winning big from tuition fees—but academics aren’t. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/higher-educationnetwork/2017/sep/22/vice-chancellors-pay-scandal-tuition-fees-academics-universitiy-salary. UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2018). Data center: Student mobility country of origin, 1999–2016. UNESCO.org. Retrieved from http://data.uis.unesco.org/. United Nations. (1948). The universal declaration of human rights. New York, NY: Author. Varghese, N. V. (2009). Globalization, economic crisis and national strategies for higher education development. In international institute for educational planning (IIEP) research paper, UNESCO. Paris, France: IIEP. Waldron, J. (1987). Theoretical foundations of liberalism. The Philosophical Quarterly, 37(147), 127–150. Wallerstein, I. (1974). The modern world-system I: Capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century. New York, NY: Academic Press. Willis, P. (1977/2017). Learning to labour: How working class kids get working class jobs. London, UK : Routledge. World Conference on Education for All (1990). World declaration on Education for All and framework to meet basic learning needs. Paris, France.
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CHAPTER FOUR
Human Capital Theory in Comparative and International Education Development, Application, and Problematics DONNA C. TONINI
INTRODUCTION Manyara is a beautiful and lush region of Tanzania, known for its breathtaking savannas, lovely lakes, and tropical flora and fauna, much of which is located in its world-famous game parks of Lake Manyara and Tarangire. However, the seemingly rich abundance of natural resources belies Tanzania’s circumstances as one of Africa’s economically poorest countries, with one of the biggest challenges being its limited ability to finance secondary education at a level that provides equal access to schooling for all children (Tonini, 2010). This issue was all too apparent during a secondary school research project conducted in Mbulu, a rural town that serves as the administrative seat for the Mbulu District in Manyara. Normally quiet and peaceful, Mbulu town in the late afternoon on one particular Friday was bustling and lively, gearing up for a celebratory football match in conjunction with a local holiday the next day. Meandering along the market square, I popped into a local shop, in search of educational books and resources to give as gifts to the school administrators who had been my hosts for the past several weeks. I was surprised to see that the woman running the store was a teacher at the secondary school where I had conducted group interviews that day. As a fairly vocal and strong proponent of the need for additional resources at the school, I was surprised and disappointed that she had not been present during the day’s meetings. I greeted her warmly and complimented her on her shop, presenting the items I wished to purchase. “I missed your voice today,” I commented, searching for a non-judgmental way to express that her absence was noted. “Ah, you missed me because I was here. This is my business and I have to look after it, as my customers need me open for the holiday.” Seeing the puzzled look on my face, she went on to explain that despite being a full-time teacher at the secondary school, she ran this business on the side, because as a teacher, her wages were not high enough to support her family. Having interviewed dozens of teachers, this admission was not new 69
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to me—many teachers earned extra money as farmers, craftspeople, and merchants. What did surprise me, however, was the fact that she made more money working at her shop than being a secondary school teacher—meaning there were days she chose to be in the shop rather than teaching the schoolchildren. This was a worrisome revelation. Not only did this mean reduced teaching time for teachers and learning time for students, but it also meant that one of the theories supporting the pursuit of additional education— human capital theory (HTC)—did not hold up under this scenario. Human capital theory, which correlates the educational attainment of an individual with not only his or her own financial advancement but also the economic progress of a nation, is an idea that undergirds the policies and practices of many major international financial institutions that provide loans and grants to lower-income countries like Tanzania. Following its 1999 designation as a “Highly Indebted Poor Country,” Tanzania sought assistance from the World Bank, leading to its 2001 “Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper,” a document that links human capital to poverty alleviation (Tonini, 2012). For the next twenty years, Tanzania’s education policy would be underwritten by the World Bank, embedding the Bank’s economic ideology in Tanzania’s approach to education finance and access (Tonini, 2012). Although the World Bank and the IMF frequently credit education as an engine of economic growth, the policies undertaken by these institutions do not account for the disparities present in the predicament presented by the store owner. As a teacher, she was required to have postsecondary education to qualify for her profession, yet she could make more money in a trade where a degree was not necessary. Her teaching degree allowed her to obtain a government job with a salary, but wages were not always paid in a timely manner, and even when they were, it was not a wage upon which she could support her family. In addition, the underpayment of teachers signaled to the labor market that further education in the teaching field was not monetarily rewarded, making it more difficult to find secondary school graduates willing to enter the profession, resulting in teacher shortages. Finally, in the teacher’s efforts to bridge the gap between her income and expenses, she contributed to the growing trend of teacher absenteeism, which undermined the quality of the education delivered, and caused the students to fall behind. This was not the growth scenario envisioned by HTC. Educational policy has often been driven by the ideology that the more education an individual has, the better their job prospects are, translating into uplift to the economy (World Bank, 2018b). Yet, the results of these policies have been mixed because the theory upon which these policies have their roots, HTC, is fraught with its own inconsistencies and problems. International Financial Institutions make loans for educational development to low-income countries with little recognition of the impact the attached loan conditionalities have on other aspects of the economy. Governments design education policies without taking into consideration the wide range of needs of their diverse populations. Education Ministries implement policies but then do not fund the elements necessary so that all benefit equitably. This chapter explores HCT in these settings and examines its roots, history, problems, and critiques. It will also look at its relevance to the fields of comparative and international education (CIE) and International Education Development (IED) and offer a few examples where HCT has been employed and the results. Finally, it will review how HCT is being complicated in Tanzania and subsequently undermined in its implementation, demonstrating both the theory and the critiques of the theory, and the implications in the education and health sectors as well as the economy as a whole.
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OVERVIEW Human Capital Theory and education development: history The roots of HCT stem from the writings of eighteenth-century economist Adam Smith (1723–1790), author of the classic work Wealth of Nations, which is an expository on the productivity of labor and its effects on national markets. Smith (1776/1977) referred to the skills of the workforce as “fixed capital,” which aside from property, plant, and equipment, included “the acquired and useful abilities of all the inhabitants or members of the society. The acquisition of such talents, by the maintenance of the acquirer during his education, study, or apprenticeship, always costs a real expense [sic], which is a capital fixed and realized, as it were, in his person” (pp. 265–266). According to Smith (1776/1977), the degree of investment in this “fixed capital” accounted for the differences in the wages of labor and also led to the stratification of remuneration between physical laborers (blacksmiths, farmers, and tanners) and what was then considered professional people (artists, lawyers, and physicians) whose education was more “tedious and expensive” than that of the poor man (Spengler, 1977). Building on this theory was the pioneering work of Jacob Mincer (1922–2006), whose research centered on reconciling the normal distribution of the abilities of the labor force with the sharply skewed distribution of incomes. Mincer (1958) developed an economic model that demonstrated that the annual earnings of workers correspond to various levels of training not in an additive manner, but in multiplicative amounts. In other words, differences in training help explain differential earnings among occupations (Mincer, 1958). Mincer (1958) and fellow economist Gary S. Becker (1930–2014) further developed this idea, coined “human capital” to include the education, training, and other personal investments of workers, as being the prime determinant of personal income difference between individuals in the workforce. According to Becker (1994): schooling, a computer training course, expenditures on medical care, and lectures on the virtues of punctuality and honesty are capital too in the sense that they improve health [and] raise earnings . . . Consequently, it is fully in keeping with the capital concept as traditionally defined to say that expenditures on education, training, medical care, etc., are investments in capital. —pp. 15–16 Mincer (1958) and Becker (1994) further developed this idea of educational investments into actual rates of return to education. By turning additional increments of education into measurable numeric outcomes, Mincer (1958) and Becker (1994) provided a more standardized scale on which to compare and contrast educational outputs in various nations. The evolution of educational standardized testing grew out of these numeric ideals and resulted in comparative measurement methodologies employed by many institutions, ranging from the World Bank to individual school districts (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos, 2004). Claiming that the skills and knowledge obtained by workers had grown at a faster rate than physical capital, Theodore Schultz (1902–1998), an economist and fellow collaborator of Becker and Mincer, posited that investments in human capital were the primary driver for increases in a nation’s productive output and a distinctive feature of Western economies. Schultz (1961) supported the idea that human capital went beyond education to also include the health and well-being of workers, and theorized that these
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investments enhanced the migratory capacity of workers. Schultz (1961) postured that as national economies were modernizing and needed more highly skilled workers in order to compete in the global marketplace, that not only was the free movement of physical capital necessary, but also that the free and unbounded movement of human capital was key to development and survival. The more educated the workforce, the theory argued, the more economically productive and viable was the nation. Besides economics, HCT also links to modernization theory, which explains the processes of development necessary for societies to progress from “traditional” to “modern,” and establishes the industrialization and economic development of nations as a positive outcome. In 1960, influenced by the spread of Marxist thought when it was perceived as a threat to U.S. security, economist Walt Whitman Rostow (1916–2003) developed his classic text, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, which presented five phases through which all countries progress to be considered developed. Rostow (1960) identified these economic dimensions as: (1) traditional society, (2) preconditions to take-off, (3) take-off, (4) drive to maturity, and (5) age of high mass consumption. Although not addressed on a micro-level, human capital considerations flow within Rostow’s (1960) explanation of “Take-Off,” where political, social, and institutional frameworks emerge to support the expansion of the nation. Sociologist Alex Inkeles (1920–2010) contributed to the idea of education fueling modernization in his seminal piece Making Men Modern, where he conducted research on men from six developing countries to determine the factors that impact individuals as a nation undergoes processes of modernization. Inkeles (1969) concluded that “education is the most powerful factor in making men modern” (p. 208), and identified additional elements that contributed to a man’s modernity, including occupational training, being well-read, having an openness to change, and having thoughts about the future. All of these “modern” fixtures pointed towards education and its institutions as a way to accomplish modernization and growth of the individual, which would also lead to modernization and growth of the nation. The concept of HCT also has some basis in structural functionalism, a theory originating from nineteenth-century sociologist Augustus Comte (1798–1857), who viewed society as analogous to a biological organism that can be analyzed as the sum of its parts. Functionalism culminated in the work of Talcott Parsons (1902–1979), who conceptualized these parts as four “functional requisites” that all social systems need for successful development (1) adaptation (securing resources to promote economic development), (2) goal attainment (mobilizing resources to meet collective aims), (3) integration (coordination of the system through laws and government), and (4) maintenance (using institutions, such as schools and churches to uphold societal values) (Parsons and Turner, 1951). For Parsons and Turner (1951), educational institutions, and the systems that supported schooling were necessary to maintain the social order required for a society to thrive. Also present in HCT are elements of structuralism, the sociological and anthropological methodology developed by early twentieth-century thinkers, such as Claude Levi-Strauss (1908–2009), who in his examination of society deemed that elements of human culture must be understood as part of, or in relation to, a broader system or overarching structure (Blackburn, 2008). This approach to societal analysis argues that structural features need to be examined in order to understand the economic and social foundations of a society. Together, these theories provide insight into how contributions from improvements in physical capital and institutions were seen to be necessary elements in keeping society progressing and advancing and operating at a more optimal level.
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Yet, despite the underpinnings of these sociological theories, HCT departs from the primary tenets of these views in that the investment in humans—including their health and their education—is the best way to develop the inhabitants of a society. This shift from physical capital to human capital would have policy implications in countries of the Global West,1 especially in the U.S. where the impacts resonated both in domestic economic and educational policy, and international relations and development. These social and economic development ideas arrived at a time well after the last vestiges of the reconstructionist Marshall Plan had been implemented, providing influence on the U.S.’s economic approach to development in lower-income countries, in the form of the “developmentalist paradigm.” This new development model launched large-scale economic and social projects to help “develop” “third world” countries by offering financial assistance (McMichael, 1996) and military aid, including architecting the policy in Vietnam (Frank, 1967). Underscoring that assistance was the societal need of countries in the Global West, such as the U.S. and those in Europe, to keep communism and socialism at bay, and to increase Western influence throughout the world. Economically, keeping the developing world dependent on “first world” imports, financial aid, and foreign currency was one way to assure the primacy of Western influence. Socially, in line with structural functionalism and structuralism, the spread of Westernized educational and governmental institutions was seen as a way to instill Western values and norms, and underpinned by human capital theory, the resulting investment policies that were implemented assured what the countries of the Global West deemed as societal progress.
Human capital theory and education development institutions The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were created at the Bretton Woods Monetary Conference in 1944 for the initial purpose of rebuilding European countries devastated by the Second World War (World Bank, n.d.). Currently, these institutions provide large-scale loans and resources for capital projects in developing countries. Both the World Bank and the IMF have their roots in Keynesian monetary economics, realizing British economist John Maynard Keynes’ (1883–1946) vision of a strong central banking system to fuel aggregate demand and influence monetary supply. According to Keynes, a central banking system would function not only as a regulatory system of monetary control but also hold a “developmental role as an agency to promote financial intermediation in an emergent economy” (Chandavarkar, 1985, p. 283). The World Bank’s role is largely seen now as doing more of the latter, rather than the former. Originally channeling funds into large infrastructure projects, the World Bank redirected its attention to poverty eradication in the 1970s, and further increased its focus on societal issues in the 1980s by expanding its purview to educational development (World Bank, n.d.). Both the World Bank and the IMF give great credence to the idea of education as a cure for a nation’s economic ills, crediting education with helping the people to acquire the requisite skills necessary to help modernize their country. Drawing on the theory of human capital, these institutions support the idea of education being an investment in people, as reflected in the recent push of the World Bank to eliminate poverty by “Investing in People” (2018a). The World Bank has long linked education to economic development,
The terms West and Global West denotes country groupings based on levels of economic development, as commonly identified by the literature. The author recognizes the usage of these terms thusly and uses it in the same manner to maintain consistency with the literature.
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providing the tools and skills necessary “to compete and thrive in a rapidly changing environment” (2018a, para. 2), and it promotes policies that increase access to educational services to allow people to enhance their own wellbeing. According to the World Bank (2018a), “ ‘human capital’—the potential of individuals—is going to be the most important long-term investment any country can make for its people’s future prosperity and quality of life” (para. 2). This approach follows Schultz (1971), who ties additional education to increased overall economic productivity. Schultz (1971) emphasized that an individual’s education is one of the main factors differentiating the earnings level between workers, and highlighted that laborers have become aware that their knowledge and skills command an economic value in the employment marketplace. Inkeles (1998) also sees economic growth per capita driving societal development as a whole, linking the capacity for individuals to improve their standard of living with a nation’s overall economic advancement. Identifying the qualities that make a nation modern, Inkeles (1998) suggests that one of the most powerful characteristics of a modern civilization is its ability to create, share, and use knowledge. The strength of a society’s education system, Inkeles (1998) posits, is one of the keys to its overall development and modernity. Following these theoretical leanings, the World Bank encourages countries to prioritize human capital, acknowledging that “jobs and skilled workers are key to national progress in countries at all income levels” (2018a, para. 6).
Alternatives to human capital theory Although HCT is considered foundational to theories of human resource development, it is not the only explanation for skills acquisition and wage differentials in the labor market. Two additional and closely related theories, signaling and screening, offer competing perspectives. Posited by economists Spence (1973) and Stiglitz (1975), these approaches reposition the unit of analysis from a sole focus on the individual to include organizations and institutions that perform hiring activities as part of the equation (Cooper and Davis, 2017). This is a shift from the neoclassical approach of HCT, which relieds on the “invisible hand of the market” (Smith, 1776) to determine supply and demand, to institutional economics, which acknowledges the role of firms as part of the complex interactions between states and society to determine market outcomes. In both models, education is seen to be an essential “screen” or “signal” to the labor market or the firm regarding a worker’s productivity (Cooper and Davis, 2017). According to these theories, what higher education levels signal to the marketplace is the ability and propensity for a worker to take on more difficult and higher-level tasks. Centering the firm’s or organization’s needs to hire a workforce to maximize productivity, the theory posits that education plays a critical role as a marker to classify workers and screen capabilities. In this manner, degrees and diplomas help signal worker production potential prior to hiring and completion of education and training programs inform promotions and other personnel decisions. Collins’ (1979) work on credentialism further highlights the role that these certificates, degrees and diplomas play not only as cultural signifiers of attainment, but also as gatekeepers to occupations, allowing credentials to act as a sorting mechanism for entry into prestigious jobs. Collins (1979) argues that educational institutions have worked with employers such as government and industry to create this additional layer of credentialing, which further stratifies equitable access to occupations. In this sense, Collins (1979) posits that the trend of educational credentialing can actually exacerbate
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social stratification, countering the premise of HCT, which can be observed through the processes of screening and signaling. According to Stiglitz and Weiss (1990), the difference between signaling and screening is demonstrated by informed individual agency. In the signaling model of education, the individual, who knows his or her abilities, chooses a level of schooling that signals productivity. The “informed” worker moves first, choosing an education level commensurate with his or her assumptions of how the market views the amount of productivity that aligns with that education. The “uninformed” market—the firm or organization—then responds based on the education “signal” the worker provides, and structures wages based on market forces. In the screening model, the “uninformed participants”—a category which includes firms and organizations—move first. Stiglitz and Weiss (1990) explain this concept via an example whereby “uninformed firms offer wage contracts—a wage conditional on an education level—and informed individuals react to those wage contracts by choosing the education level that maximizes their utility” (p. 3). Thus, the models in which the uninformed move first are screening models, as the resulting contracts are designed to screen the more desirable workers from the less desirable ones (Stiglitz and Weiss, 1990). In sum, workers use education to signal their qualities to the market, and the market and the employers within it, set minimum education requirements for workers to screen applicants. “Through the signaling and screening process, education serves to sort laborers according to their unobserved characteristics” (as cited in Cooper and Davis, 2017, p. 70). While all three theories posit that education, training, and personal development add to the value of individuals’ labor on the market, they differ on what mechanism controls the definition and determination of that value. HCT relies on demand and supply of the labor market to “determine the distribution of wages that drive education decisions” (as cited in Cooper and Davis, 2017, p. 71). Sorting models, employing signaling or screening, highlight the role of organizations to “focus on the ways in which schooling serves as either a signal or filter for productivity differences that firms cannot reward directly” and “sort workers according to their unobserved abilities” (Weiss, 1995, p. 134). Together, these models offer a complex set of endogenous and exogenous variables to consider regarding how an individual determines the level of education one should acquire and how that level may be economically interpreted in the marketplace.
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION The advent of HCT, which sees investment in education as a positive influence on economic growth, has changed the way that scholars in the fields of comparative education and International Educational Development have employed research methodology in their respective disciplines. Dedicated to “increasing the understanding of educational issues, trends, and policies through comparative, intercultural, and international perspective” (CIES, n.d.) CIE scholars and practitioners explore issues and institutions that impact education. As a pillar of education economics, HCT undergirds many policy problems and institutional issues CIE scholars and practitioners research. In addition, the philosophy has also fueled a whole new realm of critical theory, such as post-modernization, which reflects on the limitations of HCT, and points to flaws in economic rationale. Building on the previously developed concept
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of HCT and the socio-historical context in which it was developed, this section briefly reviews how HCT has been used in the fields of Comparative Education and International Educational Development.
Contributions of human capital theory to comparative international education Schultz’s (1971) concept of HCT places human development into a Smithian economic model. Smith (1776), who wrote the Wealth of Nations, promoted the idea of “laissez faire” free markets (also known as “the invisible hand”), allowing the laws of supply and demand to fulfill the needs of the economy. Coupled with eighteenth-century scholar Jeremy Bentham’s (1748–1832) theory of utility (1789), which was based on the premise that humans would maximize their utility when making economic choices, HCT extends those behaviors to people when making decisions regarding the optimal level of education they need to maximize their economic position. Becker (1994) stated that people weigh the benefits of education, which “include cultural and other non-monetary gains along with improvement in earnings and occupations” (p. 9). Furthermore, the benefits of education gained by individuals have a cumulative effect on the productivity of a society. This theory suggests that investments in people led to economic benefits for society, and fueled the advent of the field of economics of education. In CIE, this field is broadened to studies involving the economics and financing of education, which is concerned with topics such as education finance, poverty reduction, equity in resource allocation, and international aid policy, to name but a few categories where HCT has had influence. For this reason, Fitzsimons (2015) calls HCT “the most influential economic theory of Western education, setting the framework of government policies since the early 1960s” (p. 1). HCT also is foundational to another field of research within CIE—the study of largescale, cross-national assessment methods and results, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS), which measure the schooling achievements of students around the world. The work of economists, such as Schultz (1961; 1971), Becker (1994), and Mincer (1958) paved the way for the development of rates of return on education, allowing for the development of tests, such as PISA and TIMMS, the results of which have implications for both national educational policy as well as policies developed by international financial institutions, such as the World Bank. Paired with the widespread growth of capitalism as a dominant economic system, HCT became the driving force behind educational development policies worldwide, having enormous implications for lower-income countries with fewer resources for schooling. Although HCT is relevant in the field of CIE as it is the foundation of many economic and financial education policies worldwide developed over the last four decades, it is also important because of the many contributions made by CIE scholars to point out HCT’s inadequacies, especially when interpreting educational trends and phenomena. Regarding widening income disparities, traditional HCT would point to the educational investment in humans as one way to equip the poor with the means to transcend their poverty. Schultz (1961; 1971), Becker (1994), and Mincer (1958) would expect individuals to make a rational choice to acquire the education necessary to elevate themselves from their poverty. However, Todoro (1989) questions the acquisition of education as a guaranteed path to better paying jobs, citing the dearth of work opportunities for more highly educated individuals in developing countries. In addition, the rate of return on the
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investment in higher education in lower-income countries is not as high as the rate of return in richer countries, as the prospects for remunerative employment commensurate with degrees earned are much lower (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos, 2004). This trend runs counter to the Keynesian theory of economics, which posits that supply creates its own demand (Peet and Hartwick, 1999). With the supply of labor outpacing the demand, Todoro (1989) comments that the socially ingrained promise of education is greatly distorting the career aspirations of the students in school systems, especially those in lower-income countries. HCT, not considering the societal differences between nations, does not take these factors into account. Scholars in CIE also problematize another tenet of HCT—migration. Schultz (1971) postulated that migration was a key factor in widening wage differentials between workers. The more mobility a worker had to relocate to urban centers, the higher the probability of that worker increasing his or her salary. Schultz (1971) also attributed some of the improvement in economic progress to these trends of internal migration. Todoro (1989) complicates the idea of urban migration adding to the economic growth of a society. As the percentage of youth with higher levels of schooling attainment grows, the ability of smaller towns and rural areas to accommodate these graduates declines. No longer inclined to do the manual labor traditionally found in these areas, these school leavers migrate to the urban areas in order to find better paying work. This internal migration can cause great decline in agricultural areas, as workers shift to industrial production. This migratory problem is further compounded if unemployment is high in the urban areas, forcing more educated workers to take menial jobs normally reserved for those with less education. This employment situation can lead to the underdevelopment of a nation. Furthermore, Foster (2002) cautions in his essay on development planning that societies must take into consideration the employment perceptions of their students, the needs of local industry and employers, and the changing socio-technical landscape when making educational investments. Otherwise, as in the case of vocational education in Ghana, a country may find itself investing in fields where demand for skilled labor is low, producing an oversupply of graduates in one area but a dearth of talent in another. Seeing education as one of many important factors impacting economic development, Foster (2002) argues that “education is not the ‘prime mover’ in economic change but it is a powerful accelerator given an appropriate structural and institutional environment” (p. 28). As HCT does not account for all these externalities, CIE-rooted critiques are valuable in understanding why HCT approaches can be harmful if not adapted to the unique context of the country where the policies are being applied. Regarding HCT and its role in modernization, one of the problems with that philosophy is that it was developed using the West as its societal model, without taking the historical and cultural contexts of different societies into consideration (Peet and Hartwick, 1999). As such, the ideas of progress and development are Western constructs and discount the roles colonialism, exploitation, and domination play in undermining a country’s ability to develop. In addition, although education was seen by some as the pathway to this Western notion of modernity, the schooling systems that were developed using this model did not necessarily prepare the youth for the jobs that were available to them. Seeing modernism as too linear in its approach to development, the postmodern theoretical approach takes into account a larger multitude of societal, cultural, and historical factors that account for a country’s state of economic development, or
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underdevelopment. A post-modern view of economic development states that the benefits of economic growth should spread out to all people, starting with the poorest (Peet and Hartwick, 1999). With HCT focusing primarily on education as a measurable by which to determine economic growth, other processes, such as the development of democratic governance and establishment of legal systems, which are also important measures of economic growth, are left out of the empirical analysis (Sweetland, 1996). Thus, a full accounting of the inequities present within measures of economic growth using HCT is inevitably skewed. Carnoy et al. (1980) have written about current economic support of HCT, analyzing how education has been linked to productivity. They found that some studies on education and agricultural production did indicate that the more educated the worker, the more productive the agricultural business in which the worker was involved. Carnoy’s (2006) research on educational achievement in Cuba also found that human capital factors are relevant when conducting comparative studies of education across countries. However, in that same study, Carnoy (2006) also found that “the most important explainer of differences in student performance between Cuba and the six other countries analyzed is the social context of the schools in each country, in particular, certain types of social capital” (slide 5). Carnoy (2006) concluded that despite wide support in the economic community that education leads to economic growth, more studies need to be done in regard to developing more inclusive measurements and methodologies, and contextualized to the locations in which the research is conducted. As previously stated, HCT also impacted development studies within the field of CIE. First of all, with new investments pouring into the education sector as a result of shifting World Bank policy, mass education became more widespread, with new loans and projects accompanied by conditions that mandated Western-influenced ideals, such as universal primary education and gender parity in schooling. Second, fueled by the human capitalfounded theory that education equaled economic growth, the international financial institution poured money into education projects all over the world, spreading Westernized models, ideals, and morals regarding education, from curriculum development to pedagogy and schooling content. Third, as mentioned earlier, the way the educational field was measured and evaluated also changed, with the use of Rates of Return (RORs) in education, benchmarking, and standardized testing being implemented as new measurement methodologies in the field. Fourth, this new focus on education created a perpetual need for the development project, and the scores of “experts” who would trumpet out their expertise and advice as part of the aid conditionality package (Parpart, 1995). All of these new changes in development, advanced by HCT, brought about a new set of criticisms that saw HCT’s view of development as linear, universal, ahistorical, and lacking in cultural context. These critiques would fall under the new paradigm of post-modern, poststructural, and post-feminist theories, which would arm scholars of CIE with a host of reasons and explanations as to why HCT was not universally applicable in all settings. It is these critiques that we turn to next.
Current debates and critiques Critiques of HCT are numerous, as briefly alluded to in the previous sections. Blau and Duncan (1967), credited with conducting the first research study on the concept of status attainment, present one such study that considers factors aside from schooling on occupational success. In their path analysis of social mobility, Blau and Duncan
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(1967) examined not only the impact of a father’s educational status, but also his occupational status, on his son’s educational and occupational attainment, finding a direct positive relationship between them. Although Blau and Duncan (1967) did not directly engage with HCT in their seminal study, the idea of status transmission through one’s father’s occupation is an important factor to assess, yet is not captured in HCT. Relatedly, Macionis and Plummer (2012) call attention to Collins’ (1979) work on credentialism, likening credentialing to a sorting mechanism for employers. According to Macionis and Plummer (2012), “credentialing operates much like family background as a gatekeeping strategy that restricts prestigious occupations to a small segment of the population” (p. 662). Thus, these theorists highlight factors that intersect with educational systems in ways that restrict access to schooling and thus limit opportunity, undermining the premise of HCT. Another early critique originates from economists Bowles and Gintis (1975), who criticized HCT’s elimination of class as a central economic tenet regarding production. Bowles and Gintis (1975) posited that while schooling, training and healthcare were important functions for production, “they are also essential to the perpetuation of the entire economic and social order . . . [and] cannot be understood without reference to the social requirements for the reproduction from period to period of the capitalist class structure” (p. 75). Thus, these scholars argue that theories of production and social reproduction were equally important, but that HCT was misleading for failing to account for social relations. Blaug (1976) followed by questioning how demand for schooling was derived, seeing how “‘social’ rates of return to investment in education frequently produced quite different conclusions about the optimal educational strategy” (p. 831) for a nation. Sobol (1978) agreed, critiquing HCT’s “assumption that the demand for education, especially higher education, is rationally determined by the expectations of economic benefits which can be established by computing the rate of return or the present value of lifetime” (p. 294). Especially in developing economies, Sobol (1978) argued, governments were not able to make the level of investments necessary in faculty and facilities to keep up with demand, and HCT did not adequately account for the costs of reallocating the resources of another sector, such as health, to make up for funding shortfalls in education. Continuing with the economic canon, Block (1990) offers an interesting sociological critique by stating that the field of economics is notorious for separating its scientific approach from the cultural and political realities of the national or local situation. In addition, he problematizes the fact that humans are always thought to maximize their utility. Utility maximization makes a lot more sense in a world dominated by individuallyminded people, than it does in a world where people are driven by collectivist thought. As stated before, the universality of economic theory does not take such differentiation into account. McMichael (1996) also highlights problems with the way HCT is employed in development policy, citing increased dependency on the Western world to provide educational assistance and funding, the adoption of Western-driven ideals despite alternative country contexts, and the further economic stratification of people into those who can afford education versus those who cannot. Todoro (1989) also points out another flaw with HCT. In his analysis of mass education in developing nations, he has found that often the economy is not developed enough to absorb all of the graduates that the education system produces, forcing over-educated people to take lower-skilled jobs, and forcing the least-educated out of the job market. Following this, Todoro (1989) problematizes the idea of Rates of Return (ROR) in
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education, as Mincer (1958) and Becker (1994) had developed their premise based on the idea that there would be job growth in the economy to accommodate economic growth. As Todoro (1989) points out, that scenario is not always the case, and unfortunately in some countries, people with more education often end up with lesser jobs, such as driving taxis and street market sales. Klees (2016), while acknowledging that HCT is widely accepted as foundational in educational planning, policymaking, and evaluation, also finds ROR estimates: . . . fundamentally flawed for at least four reasons: the concept of economic efficiency that underlies them is unsound; earnings do not reflect productivity . . . earnings, at best, is a partial and misleading measure of social benefits; and . . . our ability to estimate the empirical effect of education on earnings is abysmal. —p. 647 The economic efficiency to which Klees (2016) refers is the fundamental assumption underlying wage theory, which is “that the perfect competition prevailing in labor markets ensures that greater earnings reflect greater productivity” (Karabel and Halsey, 1977, p. 14). However, imperfect information and imperfect competition in the markets challenges this notion of equity in the value of capital investment decisions, indicating that HCT also discounts the influence of another major determinant of economic and educational policy—the role of the state. Acknowledging that analyses of education rooted in HCT “typically assume a direct relation between the system of production and the operations of the schools,” and that correlations between workplaces and schools are “traced within a framework of reproduction of capitalist labor” (Carnoy and Levin, 1986, p. 35), Carnoy and Levin (1986) assert that such theories do not take into consideration that the state typically sponsors schooling. Using “common good” theories of the state, Carnoy and Levin (1986) posit that although the state is thought to operate for the common good, schools may serve to help construct an elite class that is better positioned to obtain positions of power, leaving the rest of society in the position of future electorate. The school’s role as class divider can also be seen in the distribution of educational resources. As more wealthy classes have a larger tax base and more monetary and political resources to dedicate towards education, their schools tend to be of higher quality and prestige, leading to wider access to the better colleges and universities, which in turn leads to positions of power. Poorer areas where the income tax base is lower (or almost non-existent in many “developing” countries) and resources and political power are scarce may be too economically strapped to devote the money necessary to build up quality schooling with equitable access. With less quality schooling available, the chances of getting into a prestigious university are lessened, reducing the chances that a person from the lower class will be deemed suitable and acceptable to hold an office of political power. Thus, as the wealthy classes are continually elected into office due to both an expanded resource base and the indoctrinated view that political leaders must have certain qualifications, such as a college education, the lower classes are left behind to follow, less able to engage in societal change as they may lack the awareness of political power needed to do so. The state, therefore, plays a major role in exacerbating inequalities between the classes by reproducing systems that maintain the power of the wealthy and the elite, and diminishing the role education can play in providing pathways out of poverty and into positions of economic prosperity and power. Another area where HCT falters in positioning education as the great equalizer is the phenomenon of the “Brain Drain,” which refers to the migration of educated people from
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a country that cannot provide enough high-skilled jobs. As educated citizens of these countries have skills that are sought after worldwide, they leave their home countries to build a better life elsewhere, but often their home country will share little of their economic prosperity. This trend fueled studies highlighting the migration of workers from Africa to Asia to Westernized countries, and the resulting impacts on their home countries. Pires, Kassimir, and Brhane (1999) studied how educated African professionals made decisions to stay in the U.S., highlighting the large percentage that chose to remain in their host country rather than head home. Gueye (2002) conducted similar research on African doctorates in the social sciences and humanities, noting how the lack of professional and educational opportunities in their home countries fueled their decisions to emigrate. Similarly, Colclough, Rose, and Tembon (1998) observe how the loss of educated talent in Africa weakened the economic base for many of these countries to support educational development, and that girls’ education has been hit hardest, as many families choose to send their boys to school rather than their girls if school fees are a consideration. In the Philippines, a former U.S. colony with a highly skilled medical workforce, many skilled workers left the country as doctors and nurses underpaid in the Philippines, went to the U.S. and elsewhere where their skills were more highly remunerated. This trend had left the Philippines drained of medical workers to the point where it declared a shortage, forcing the Philippines to ration its healthcare (Conde, 2004). As such, the over-education of workers in the Philippines, compounded with the dearth of opportunities in that country, led to human capital flight, rather than resulting in economic benefits for the nation (Remollino, 2005). Like the other critiques, the phenomenon of “brain drain” counters the view that HCT is always a positive, progressive force in development. Issues such as the brain drain lend credence to the counterpoint that the field of economics views all countries as the same, developing on the same linear route, and in the same manner. More research is necessary to determine just how economics can more creatively account for cultural, political, and sociological differences in countries, and the fields of International Educational Development and comparative education can help provide the analytical tools that are much needed to help further the cause of both science and humanity.
CONCLUSIONS Reflecting on the situation in Tanzania, Todoro (1989) agrees that education can be potentially stratifying: within a fee-for-service system, only those who can pay for education can receive the benefits, leaving the poor behind. However, although these elite individuals receive more education, they graduate into a society that still experiences overwhelming poverty as a prime hindrance to overall development. As such, these educated people cannot find jobs that require their higher educational levels and are therefore forced to take lower-skilled jobs. Doing so further drives the lesser-educated into unemployment, and also creates an artificially high level of education necessary to do menial jobs. Criticizing HCT for creating over-educated elite, Todoro (1989) blamed the phenomenon of “brain drain” on this educational stratification. As a very poor nation, Tanzania can ill-afford to see its top talent migrate into the very core countries whose colonial presence helped to create the country’s impoverishment. The extrapolation of human talent takes the idea of surplus extraction to a new level and counters the founding tenets of HCT of investing in educating people to serve the country in which the
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educational investment occurred, not the host country to which the educated worker migrates. HCT is foundational to the economic and educational policies of many nations, and to the development and financing approaches of the world’s major international financial institutions. In theory, the education of a person is a possible pathway to a broader array of economic opportunities for that individual, and the education of the multitudes can lead to the stronger economic development of a nation. But not all nations face the same economic realities or social conditions that enable the application of a human capital approach to produce similar results. As we have read in the critiques and seen in the case study, developing policies based on HCT can contribute to the underdevelopment, rather than the development, of a nation. When the promise of education as the great equalizer is unrealized, it diminishes the potential of what education can achieve in the larger context of national socioeconomic and financial development.
FURTHER READING 1. Becker, G. S. (1994). Human capital: A theoretical and empirical analysis with special reference to education (3rd Edition). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. 2. Mincer, J. (1958). Investment in human capital and personal income distribution. Journal of Political Economy, 66, 281–302. 3. Schultz, T. (1971). Investment in human capital. New York, NY: The Free Press. 4. Stiglitz, J., and Weiss, A. (1990). Sorting out the differences between signaling and screening models. National Bureau of Economic Research Paper Series, 93, 1–41. Retrieved from www. nber.org/papers/t0093.pdf 5. Todoro, M. P. (1989). Economic development in the Third World (4th Edition). New York, NY: Longman.
MINI CASE STUDY The case of Tanzania appears to echo many of these theoretical departures, with many extenuating factors leading to conditions that ran counter to the tenets posed in human capital theory. Firstly, human capital notions are present within the educational development policies espoused and implemented under the auspices of the international financial institutions of the World Bank and the IMF. During the late 1980s, Keynesian economics and expanded state involvement in educational provision was dropped in favor of the Washington Consensus, which promoted less government involvement and fee-for-service approaches to education and service delivery. Tanzania, which had just taken on its first structural adjustment loan, was forced to overhaul its formerly “free” education system in favor of a cost-sharing arrangement. The resulting rise in educational fees prompted a corresponding drop in enrollment, creating a divide between those who could more easily afford education and those who could not (Tonini, 2010). As such, this system economically stratified the poor and the more elite classes, as education was no longer equitably distributed amongst the masses. Thus, despite the World Bank’s vision of building the human capital of a nation to help modernize economic development, the stringent financial conditionings levied on Tanzania prevented the government from investing in educational development, negating the human capital theory premise of education as an equalizer.
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Secondly, counter to HCT, in Tanzania, more education still does not necessarily lead to higher pay, as exemplified by the teacher moonlighting as a shopkeeper in Mbulu. For example, despite many students attaining higher levels of primary and secondary education, these graduates enter an economic system that is not ready to provide employment opportunities commensurate with their level of education, forcing many school leavers to focus on lower-level skills to earn money (Tonini, 2010). Investing in lower-level skills to raise income runs contrary to the tenets of human capital theory, which posits that higher education allows people to move into higher income brackets. Thirdly, due to governmental financial hardship, the health system of Tanzania is in crisis, because although health professionals are being educated, the lack of funding for hospitals prevents these highly skilled individuals from being absorbed into the public health system (DeJong, 2017). Thus, contradicting the premise of HCT that connects worker mobility to higher pay as talent moves to a nation’s urban centers, Tanzania’s migration of its health care workforce has not been limited to internal movement, and it has found itself in the unenviable position of losing many of its most talented workers to higher-income countries. As such, these workers contribute to the economic development of these more developed nations, and not necessarily their home country. Although an argument can be made for remittances as helping to bolster the Tanzanian economy, these resources are more directed towards families and individuals, rather than the national economy (Remollino, 2005), and less likely to be channeled into domestic investments or economic development, resulting in less overall job creation, perpetuating the cycle. In regards to modernity, with the economic promise of education dwindling, as discussed, Tanzania is experiencing a labor shortage of skilled workers, especially in the field of healthcare. As nursing and doctoring does not pay well unless one expatriates, there is less demand for medical training, and fewer skilled medical professionals remaining in the country. This trend is pushing Tanzania’s health care system towards collapse, moving the country further from the Western concept of modernity. The declining capacity of the health care system caused by the labor migration of highly skilled staff underscores yet again the problems with the universality imposed by modernism, and its non-transformative nature (Peet and Hartwick, 1999).
REFERENCES Becker, G. S. (1994). Human capital: A theoretical and empirical analysis with special reference to education (3rd Edition). Chicago, IL : The University of Chicago Press. Bentham, J. (1789). An introduction to the principles of morals and legislation. London, UK : T. Payne and Son. Blackburn, S. (2008). Oxford dictionary of philosophy, 2nd Edition revised. Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press. Blau, P. M., and Duncan, O. D. (1967). The American occupational structure. New York, NY: Wiley. Blaug, M. (1976). The empirical status of human capital theory: A slightly jaundiced survey. Journal of Economic Literature, 14(3), 827–855. Block, F. (1990). Postindustrial possibilities: A critique of economic discourse. Berkeley, CA : University of California Press.
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Bowles, S., and Gintis, H. (1975). The problem with human capital theory: A Marxian critique. The American Economic Review, 65(2), 74–82. Papers and Proceedings of the Eightyseventh Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association. Carnoy, M., et al. (1980). Education, work and employment. Paris, France: UNESCO, IIEP. Carnoy, M., and Levin, H. M. (1985). Schooling and work in the democratic state. Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press. Carnoy, M., and Levin, H. M. (1986). Educational reform and class conflict. Journal of Education, 168(1), 35–46. Carnoy, M. (2006). Why do Cuban students score so much higher on tests? A comparison among Latin American countries. [PowerPoint slides]. New York, NY: Teachers College, Columbia University. Chandavarkar, A. G. (1985). Keynes and central banking. Indian Economic Review New Series, 20(2), 283–297. CIES . (n.d.). Our mission. Retrieved from www.cies.us/page/About Colclough, C., Rose, P., and Tembon, M. (1998). Gender inequalities in primary schooling: The roles of poverty and adverse cultural practice (IDS Working Paper 78). Brighton, UK : Institute for Development Studies, University of Sussex. Collins, R. (1979). The credential society: An historical sociology of education and stratification. New York, NY: Academic Press. Conde, C. H. (2004). Special report: A sick health care system. Bulatlat, 4(37). Retrieved from www.bulatlat.com/news/4-37/4-37-sick.html Cooper, J., and Davis, L. (2017). Exploring comparative economic theories: Human capital formation theory vs. screening theory. Journal of Applied Business and Economics, 19(6), 68–73. Retrieved from www.na-businesspress.com/JABE/CooperJ_19_6_.pdf DeJong, R. (2017, June 22). A Tanzanian view on the health workforce crisis. Wemos. Retrieved from www.wemos.nl/en/a-tanzanian-view-on-the-health-workforce-crisis/ Fitzsimons P. (2015). Human capital theory and education. In M. A. Peters (Ed.), Encyclopedia of educational philosophy and theory (pp. 1–4). Singapore: Springer. Foster, P. J. (2002). The vocational school fallacy revisited: Education, aspiration and work in Ghana 1959–2000. International Journal of Educational Development, 22(1), 27–28. Frank, A. G. (1967). Rostow’s stages of economic growth through escalation to nuclear destruction. In A. G. Frank (Ed.), Rostow’s stages of economic growth (pp. 1–8). Ann Arbor, MI : Radical Education Project. Retrieved from http://asp6new.alexanderstreet.com.proxy2. library.illinois.edu/tinyurl/tinyurl.resolver.aspx?tinyurl=1MSGI Gueye, A. (2002). Dark side of the African brain drain: Experiences of Africans holding doctoral degrees in social sciences and humanities living in France. African Issues, 30(1), 62–65. Inkeles, A. (1969). Making men modern: On the causes and consequences of individual change in six developing countries. American Journal of Sociology, 75(2), 208–225. Inkeles, A. (1998). One world emerging? Convergence and divergence in industrial societies. Boulder, CO : Westview Press. Karabel, J., and Halsey, A. H. (1977). Power and ideology in education. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Klees, S. J. (2016). Human capital and rates of return: Brilliant ideas or ideological dead ends? Comparative Education Review, 60(4), 644–672. Macionis, J., and Plummer, K. (2012). Sociology: A global introduction. 4th Edition. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education. McMichael, P. (1996). Globalization: Myths and realities. Rural Sociology, 61(1), 25–55.
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Mincer, J. (1958). Investment in human capital and personal income distribution. Journal of Political Economy, 66, 281–302. Parpart, J. L. (1995). Deconstructing the development “expert”: Gender, development and the “vulnerable groups.” In M. H. Marchand and J. L. Parpart (Eds.), Feminism/postmodernism/ development (pp. 221–243). London, UK : Routledge. Parsons, T., and Turner, B. S. (1951). The social system. London, UK : Routledge & Keagan Paul Ltd. Peet, R. and E. Hartwick. (1999). Theories of development. New York, NY: The Guilford Press. Pires, M., Kassimir, R., and Brhane, M. (1999). Investing in return: Rates of return of African PhDs trained in North America. New York, NY: SSRC . Psacharopoulos, G., and Patrinos, H. A. (2004). Returns to investment in education: A further update. Education Economics, 12(2), 111–134. Remollino, A. M. (2005). Increase in remittances due to more OFW deployments. Crisis, dwindling opportunities driving more Filipinos abroad—Migrante. Bulatlat, 5(39). Retrieved from www.bulatlat.com/news/5-39/5-39-ofw.htm Rostow, W. W. (1960). The stages of economic growth: A non-communist manifesto. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Schultz, T. W. (1961). Investment in human capital. The American Economic Review, 51(1), 1–17. Schultz, T. W. (1971). Investment in human capital. New York, NY: The Free Press. Smith, A. (1776). An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations (E. Cannan, Ed.). London, UK : Methuen. Smith, A. (1977). An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1776.) Sobol, I. (1978). The human capital revolution in economic development: Its current history and status. Comparative Education Review, 22(2), 278–308. Spence, A. M. (1973). Job market signaling. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 87(3), 355–374. Spengler, J. J. (1977). The invisible hand and other matters: Adam Smith on human capital. The American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings of the Eighty-ninth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, 67(1), 32–36. Stiglitz, J. (1975). Theory of screening, education and distribution of income. American Economic Review, 65, 283–300. Stiglitz, J., and Weiss, A. (1990). Sorting out the differences between signaling and screening models. National Bureau of Economic Research Paper Series, 93, 1–41. Retrieved from www. nber.org/papers/t0093.pdf Sweetland, S. R. (1996). Human capital theory: Foundations of a field of inquiry. Review of Educational Research, 66(3), 341–359. Todoro, M. P. (1989). Economic development in the Third World (4th Edition). New York, NY: Longman. Tonini, D. C. (2010). The wide divide between policies and impacts: Examining government influence over parental educational choice in Tanzania. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation.) Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY. Tonini, D. C. (2012). Increasing the flow of students, washing out quality: World Bank policy effects in Tanzanian secondary schools. In C. A Collins and A. W. Wiseman (Eds.), Education strategy in the developing world: Understanding the World Bank’s education policy revision (Volume 16, International Perspectives on Education and Society Series). Bingley, UK : Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
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Weiss, A. (1995). Human capital vs. signaling explanations of wages. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 9(4), 133–154. Retrieved from https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/ jep.9.4.133 World Bank (2018a, August 3). Investing in people to build human capital. WorldBank.org. Retrieved from: www.worldbank.org/en/news/immersive-story/2018/08/03/investing-inpeople-to-build-human-capital World Bank (2018b, November 5). The human capital project in sub-Saharan Africa: Stories of progress. Retrieved from: www.worldbank.org/en/region/afr/publication/the-human-capitalproject-in-sub-saharan-africa-stories-of-progress World Bank (n.d.). History. World Bank archives. WorldBank.org. Retrieved from: www. worldbank.org/en/about/archives/history
CHAPTER FIVE
Dependency Theory and World-Systems Analysis in Comparative and International Education Critical Accounts of Education and Development TOM G. GRIFFITHS
INTRODUCTION In 2015 the United Nations adopted its program of seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which replaced the partially achieved Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Like the MDGs, these set out an aspirational agenda to universalize key markers of development, including: ending poverty and hunger; providing decent housing with adequate and clean water, sanitation, ecologically sustainable electricity supplies; reduced inequalities; peace with justice (United Nations, 2017). In the forward to a 2017 report, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres succinctly articulates the program’s aspiration to “free humanity from poverty, secure a healthy planet for future generations, and build peaceful, inclusive societies as a foundation for ensuring lives of dignity for all” (United Nations, 2017, p. 2). Concerning education, Guterres added that “if all children in low-income countries completed upper secondary school by 2030, per capita income would increase by 75 percent by 2050, and we could advance the fight to eliminate poverty by a full decade” (United Nations, 2017, p. 2). Almost 60 years ago, in December 1961, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 1710 (XVI), declaring “the current decade as the United Nations Development Decade” (United Nations General Assembly, 1961, p. 17). This was an acknowledgment of “far from adequate” levels of economic and social development in “less developed” countries, and a call to arrest growing inequality between them and “economically developed” countries, in part to create conditions for “international peace and security” (United Nations General Assembly, 1961, p. 17). Concerning education, Resolution 1710 called for measures “for further promoting education in general and vocational and technical training in the developing countries” (United Nations General Assembly, 1961, p. 18). This was the first of four consecutive, designated, “UN Development Decades 87
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(1971–1980, 1981–1990, and 1991–2000),” followed in turn by the MDGs (2001– 2015) and now the SDGs with a projected timeline of 2015–2030 (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2017, p. 3). What is immediately apparent here is the persistence of the national development project, explicitly promoted by the United Nations for some sixty years. For Wallerstein (2005) and others (Hickel, 2017), this focus can be characterized as the post-World War II “ideology of developmentalism” (Wallerstein, 2005). With the right political will and national policy decisions, including the further extension of the correct types of mass education, supported by the international community, the promise of national development leading to universal well-being, peace, security, and personal dignity, seemingly remains entrenched. Current initiatives like the SDGs are symptomatic of the systemic reality of ongoing “underdevelopment.” As the international community completes its sixth “decade of development,” with all of the accompanying efforts to overcome extreme poverty and human misery, to universalize basic healthcare, to end deaths from preventable illnesses, to reign in rising inequality, etc., we have failed for sixty years to deliver the national development promise in large parts of the world. This chapter examines dependency theory and world-systems analysis as important critical perspectives on, and responses to, the failures of the development promise. It elaborates these major challenges to modernization theory, and its universal developmentalist logic, setting out their critical counter-arguments that the global system requires the “underdevelopment” of some countries, or areas, and so is structurally incapable of realizing development for all. Within this critical paradigm, while efforts to increase and improve educational participation in developing countries are welcome, the contribution of formal education to national development, and individual upward social mobility, via the education and training of human capital, is similarly constrained. The challenge of these theoretical frameworks, then, is part of the challenge to methodological nationalism in comparative and international education (CIE), insisting that local educational development be located within the dynamics of the capitalist world-system. The chapter concludes by reflecting on questions this critique raises about the functions and purposes of mass education, and its potential to contribute to projects of systemic, social, and economic change that current crises require.
OVERVIEW Dependency theory Any consideration of dependency theory, and world-systems analysis, has to begin by making clear that these approaches were grounded in, and in part defined by, a sharp and sustained critique of modernization theory. They were part of an intellectual protest movement against modernization theory’s universalist assumptions and elaborated a “radical challenge” (Wallerstein, 2000b) to its portrayal of national development and underdevelopment. Foster-Carter’s (1976) analysis of dependency theory’s emergence characterized it as an attempted break from the modernization paradigm, a paradigmatic shift to dependency theory. With heavy reference to Frank’s (1966) essay on the development of underdevelopment in Latin America, Foster-Carter (1976) concluded that adherents of the old paradigm had largely ignored the then emerging dependency theory paradigm, such that the conventional paradigm change with respect to understanding “development” and “modernization” had not taken hold.
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The radical challenge of dependency theory has several dimensions. One of these questioned the Eurocentrism, or European universalism, of modernization theory. The proclaimed universal stages of economic development that Rostow (1959) had put forward, as part of his “non-communist manifesto for national economic development,” worked to construct all nations along a single, pathway or continuum of “development,” moving toward the linear (utopian) endpoint of “high mass consumption” or material abundance, provided that the necessary policy decisions and “patterns of choice” (p. 15) were made. Rostow’s (1959) model presented these stages of economic development as universally realizable, but contingent on the “choices made by men” (p. 15). On the cusp of the United Nations General Assembly Declaration #1514 (XV) of December 1960 calling for the granting of independence and self-determination for colonized countries and peoples, and an end to “the subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation” (United Nations, 1960, p.67), Rostow’s (1959) work included what can be read as an apology for, or justification of, imperial intervention and domination. This was done under the benevolent guise of external, enlightened intervention to ensure that the “correct” choices or decisions were made to facilitate a country’s development along the universal trajectory. As expressed by Rostow (1959), “without the affront to human and national dignity caused by the intrusion of more advanced powers, the rate of modernization of traditional societies over the past century-and-a-half would have been much slower than, in fact, it has been” (p. 6). Of course, aside from the failure of the “affront to human and national dignity” (Rostow, 1959, p.6) to deliver modernization, the whole endeavor was based on a logic of universal development that invoked a hierarchy of nation’s progress along the development continuum through identified universal stages. The problematic nature of this sort of universalized, Western or Eurocentric, model of development was thoroughly critiqued almost half a century ago by Dos Santos (1970), who noted that “attempts to analyze backwardness as a failure to assimilate more advanced models of production or to modernize are nothing more than ideology disguised as science” (p. 235). Similarly, Escobar (1999) identified how the construction of “underdeveloped” nations as being inferior to the developed, Western counterparts, and as being responsible themselves for failing to overcome their backwardness and adopt the necessary development prescriptions, shored up a world view that effectively endorsed ongoing discrimination against the underdeveloped nations: development assures a teleology to the extent that it proposes that the “natives” will sooner or later be reformed. At the same time, however, it reproduces endlessly the separation between reformers and those to be reformed by keeping alive the premise of the third world as different and inferior, as having a limited humanity in relation to the accomplished Europeans. Development relies on this perpetual recognition and disavowal of difference, a feature inherent to discrimination. —p. 386 These cultural prejudices and the world view of which they were a part, justified, at least from the perspective of the so-called “developed” or “advanced” nations, what dependency theory sees as a question of structural inequality beyond the control of individual nationstates located within the global system. It is this structured inequality that is the primary feature of dependency theory, and its radical challenge to modernization theory, drawing attention to the systemic functioning of capitalism as a global system. Dependency theory argued that rather than being merely
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a question of a country’s stage of development along the universal continuum, a country’s development was shaped and constrained by the nature of its dependent relationship on “developed” capitalist economies. The result was that the operation of the global economy functioned to keep some countries in a permanent state of “underdevelopment.” In other words, the normal operation of the global system and world-economy meant that, for some countries, rather than facilitating development along Rostow’s (1959) universal stages, it worked to produce, maintain, and reproduce an impoverished form of dependent development, or underdevelopment. Dos Santos (1970) articulates this contradiction by observing that: we can understand what is happening in the underdeveloped countries only when we see that they develop within the framework of a process of dependent production and reproduction . . . the development of dependent capitalism reproduces the factors that prevent it from reaching a nationally and internationally advantageous situation; and it thus reproduces backwardness, misery, and social marginalization within its borders. —p. 235 Dependency theory thus calls into question the foundational premise of conventional or mainstream development theory, that all nation-states could (and probably would, sooner or later) pass through a linear, staged, process of national economic development and modernization. Frank’s (1966) essay succinctly set out the critical argument that relations between countries located in the metropolis of the center, and those identified as satellite countries, were inherently unequal and exploitative. Their status in the metropolis–satellite relationship impedes the development project itself in satellite states given that “historical research demonstrates that contemporary underdevelopment is in large part the historical product of past and continuing economic and other relations between the satellite underdeveloped, and the now developed metropolitan countries” (Frank, 1966, p. 18). This counter or alternative paradigm for understanding “underdevelopment” calls on researchers to investigate why and how the “world capitalist structure” continued in the post-colonial period to “lead to the development of the metropolis and the underdevelopment of the satellite,” the latter finding “their economic development is at best limited or underdeveloped development” (Frank, 1966, p. 21). Frank’s (1966) work identified three interconnected hypotheses, grounded in the paradigmatic view that “underdevelopment was and still is generated by the very same historical process which also generated economic development: the development of capitalism itself ” (p. 23). The hypotheses were (1) that the development of a satellite state is limited by this status, (2) that possibilities for and actual development in satellite states is greatest when links to the metropolis are weakest, and so weakest (and underdevelopment perpetuated) when those links are strengthened, and (3) the most underdevelopment and “feudal-seeming” regions at the time of writing were those with “the closest ties to the metropolis in the past” (Frank, 1966, p. 27). Frank’s (1966) critique drew from the work of Argentinian economist Raul Prebisch (1901–1986), who was executive director of the “Economic Commission for Latin America” in the 1950s. Prebisch (1962) had set out the “Prebisch-Singer hypothesis” that rejected the then dominant thinking of comparative advantage to explain differential levels of development, and argued that the prices of primary commodities (exported by peripheral states) tended to fall relative to the price of value added manufactured goods (exported by core states) over time, thus structurally impoverishing the periphery through
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international trade (for a concise summary, see Smith, 2016). The dependency theory critique necessarily provoked questions of how satellite or peripheral states should respond. Responses can be categorized in terms of those seeking pathways to development within capitalism, representing “the interests of domestic capitalists seeking to enrich themselves while modernizing their countries” (Smith, 2016, p. 209), and more radical responses advocating systemic change, beyond capitalism. The latter was inspired by “anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles involving hundreds of millions of people, and from the socialist revolutions they spawned” (Smith, 2016, p. 209). This was the context for development strategies like Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) to break from dependency and pursue a more independent path of development within capitalism, contrasted with explicitly socialist approaches like Cuba which sought national development through participation in the socialist bloc. In Cuba’s case, this included explicit efforts to establish trade relations that broke from the unequal exchange of trade between core and peripheral countries under capitalism, replaced by agreements in which “the relative prices of goods exchanged between Comecon and Cuba were to be fixed so as to equalize the quantity of labor expended by each country in the production of exchanged goods” (Smith, 2016, p. 211). Unequal exchange remains a key mechanism for the massive transfer of surplus from peripheral to semi-peripheral and core states. Hickel (2017), for example, reports how: “in the 1960s developing countries were losing $161 billion (in 2015 dollars) each year through what economists call ‘unequal exchange,’ the difference between the real value of the goods that a developing country exports and the market prices that it gets for those goods” (p. 175).
World-systems analysis World-systems analysis (WSA) shares some core premises of dependency theory, extending the approach and theorizing to what is arguably a more comprehensive and historical framework. WSA includes a detailed account of the historical rise and geographical spread of the single, capitalist world-economy (as opposed to world empires) incorporating multiple polities through an interstate system (Wallerstein, 1974; 1980; 1989); the hierarchical structure of the world-system and its unequal distribution of surplus; and more broadly the cultural and intellectual architecture, and structures of knowledge, that have supported this exploitative and unequal system (Wallerstein, 2004; 2011b). Immanuel Wallerstein (1930–2019) continues to be a key figure in the emergence and ongoing development of world-systems analysis. In his preface of the (new) 2011 edition of Volume I of the current four-volume series, The Modern World-System, which first appeared in 1974, he unapologetically affirmed that world-systems analysis continues to seek to present an “alternative master narrative . . . [to] . . . the orthodox Marxist and modernization master narratives,” declaring that “we refused to throw out the baby with the bathwater” (Wallerstein, 2011a, p. xxiii). Like dependency theory, WSA argues that the economic structures of so-called underdeveloped countries should not be understood as being in the early stages of a linear and universal transition to industrialization and development, but rather as “the result of being involved in the world-economy as a peripheral, raw material producing area” (Wallerstein, 1979, p. 7). Underdevelopment is firmly understood as a direct consequence of participation in a world-system, the historical, capitalist world-system, via the structural location of the “underdeveloped” state in question within the hierarchical structure of the capitalist world-economy. As stressed by Wallerstein (2005), when exploring the hypothetical question of whether all nation-states could one day be like Denmark:
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I personally can see no way in which, within the framework of a capitalist worldeconomy, we can approach a general equalization of the distribution of wealth in the world, and even less an equalization that would have everyone consume at the level of the model Danish consumer. I say this, taking into account all possible technological advances as well as increases in that elusive concept, productivity. —p. 1268 In this sense, Babones and Chase-Dunn (2012) argue that Wallerstein (2005), alongside his colleagues and collaborators like Samir Amin (1931–2018), Giovanni Arrighi (1937– 2009), Andre Gunder-Frank (1929–2005), and Terrence Hopkins (1928–1997), were engaged in a “single intellectual project” of reinterpreting modern nation-states in the capitalist world-system, and should collectively be seen as “the founders of world-systems analysis” (Babones and Chase-Dunn, 2012, p. 2). A fundamental principle here is the insistence that it is the world-system itself, its operation and historical trajectory, that ought to be the primary unit of analysis for understanding social reality. This unashamed macro-perspective further extended dependency theory’s account of metropolitan and satellite states, detailing a three-level “core-semiperiphery-periphery” structure of economic zones, often but not necessarily equated with nation-states. This structure of the single, capitalist world-economy accounted for the nature of the exploitative relationship between these zones and how surplus value is transferred from the periphery to semi-periphery to core zones. Critically, WSA claims this world-system came to incorporate the entire geographical world and accommodate the multiple political systems and their particular social and cultural realities. This was done while maintaining the underlying logic and operation of capitalism at the global level, maximizing the accumulation of capital in the center and extraction of surplus value across the world-economy. As Wallerstein (1974) writes: the economic factors operate within an arena larger than that which any political entity can totally control. This gives capitalists a freedom of maneuver that is structurally based. It has made possible the constant economic expansion of the worldsystem, albeit a very skewed distribution of its rewards. —p. 348 Wallerstein’s (1979) early work identifies the semi-periphery as one of three important mechanisms that have facilitated political stability, in terms of “systemic survival,” of the world-system. The argument here is that the intermediary role played by the semiperiphery mediates levels of absolute polarization across the world-system, and so functions to divide what might otherwise be a unified opposition of all non-core sectors. In a similar way to capital in core areas providing a relatively greater share of their accumulated profits to workers in order to contain or buy-off systemic opposition within core states, Wallerstein (1979) argues that the semi-periphery acted as a pressure valve for the overall system, by virtue of it being tied to nation-states’ strategies for national development and relocation within the hierarchy of the world-economy. The primary mechanism for the transfers of surplus value across the world-economy, maintaining the structural inequalities, inequitable development of geographical areas within the world-economy, and the endless accumulation of capital, is identified as “unequal exchange.” This phenomenon, as described above, is presented as operating through transnational commodity chains, whereby the price of goods sold from peripheral to semi-peripheral or core zones contained greater real input (labor value) than goods
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imported from those zones for the same dollar price, resulting in a transfer of profit or surplus value from one zone to another (Wallerstein, 1998a). The structural configuration and operation of the world-economy thus compromises or limits, to a significant degree, efforts for development in some zones of world-economy: to be very concrete, it is not possible theoretically for all states to “develop” simultaneously. The so-called “widening gap” is not an anomaly but a continuing basic mechanism of the operation of the world economy. Of course, some countries can “develop.” But the some that rise are at the expense of others that decline. —Wallerstein, 2000b, p. 145 WSA theorizing is unambiguous on this crucial point. The capitalist world-system is, by definition and by virtue of its normal operation, incapable of delivering the sort of universal levels of development that modernization theory, and what Wallerstein (2011b) describes as centrist liberalism as a dominant cultural framework of the system since the late nineteenth-century, promised. Another import dimension of WSA involves theorizing about this identifiable social and cultural framework of “centrist liberalism,” described as “a set of ideas, values, and norms that were widely accepted throughout the system and that constrained social action thereafter” (Wallerstein, 2011b, p. xvi). In the core of the system, this included a commitment to intelligent reform by the state that would simultaneously advance economic growth (or rather the accumulation of capital) and tame the dangerous classes (by incorporating them into the citizenry and offering them a part, albeit a small part, of the imperial economic pie) (Wallerstein, 2011b). In brief, Wallerstein (2011b) argues that a shared cultural framework emerged out of the experience and response to the French Revolution, with centrist liberalism emerging over time as triumphant over conservatism and radicalism. The model of the liberal state managing national development (and modernization) through the harnessing of scientific and technological revolutions, led by rational policymakers, underpinned this shared framework. WSA also involves what Wallerstein (2004) describes as a “knowledge movement,” a protest against established disciplinary boundaries in the social sciences, and a protest against the accompanying dominant two cultures of nomothetic and idiographic epistemology that were consolidated by the rise of the natural sciences in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and which “began to assert that the search for truth could not depend on the proclamations of either theologians or philosophers but had to be located in the concrete world of empirical observations” (Wallerstein, 2011b, p. 222). WSA explored how the social sciences emerged and came to be split across the nomothetic and idiographic divide (Wallerstein, 1996; 2003; Wallerstein, 2006). Critically, Wallerstein (2006) theorizes that the epistemological division of knowledge in search of nomothetic scientific truth, and particular, idiographic good or beauty, has worked to justify and help maintain the inequalities of capitalism, reifying the binary distinctions between universalism which were mandated by the dominant powers, and particularism which was attributed to those under domination. This underpinned critique calls for the opening, and rethinking, or “unthinking,” of the social sciences, seeking explicitly to reunify the binary epistemologies under the banner of “unidisciplinarity” or “multidisplinarity” (Wallerstein, 1999, p. 196). This was not a call to reject any/all universal claims, nor to abandon the intellectual pursuit of the truth in favor of absolute relativism, but an argument for a knowledge project that could
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both critique existing European universalism and generate “new syntheses that are then of course instantly called into question,” building an epistemology in which we “universalise our particulars and particularise our universals simultaneously” (Wallerstein, 2006, p. 49). A further and central feature of WSA of particular relevance for CIE is its historical analysis of capitalism as a world-system, and the argument is that as an historical system, it has a finite life, and is in fact in an extended period of systemic crisis, moving toward an uncertain alternative, replacement system. The principal arguments here center on a series of systemic contradictions, which impinge on capitalism’s central logic of maximizing the endless accumulation of capital. These contradictions include pressures on nations to simultaneously reduce income from taxes on capital and wages, and increase spending, producing untenable situations for national governments. A long-standing tendency is pressure from capital on the state to provide the publicly-funded infrastructure that supports its activity and profit-making, coupled with the pressure to reduce corporate/ company taxation to further subsidize profits. The pressure to increase spending extends to public spending on core social services like education, health care, transport, housing, and security. This systemic contradiction centers on the wage costs of production and efforts to minimize this cost to maximize profits. Aside from the balance whereby wages need to maintain a certain level to support increased rates of consumption, we have seen capital relocate to low-wage areas, including “semi-proletarianized” (Wallerstein, 1983) labor, to maintain rates of surplus value extraction and profits. The limit in this respect is the geographical limitation of low-wage areas, meaning this strategy will eventually run out of steam. Similarly, the historical trend of the State paying for the environmental costs of production, and thus subsidizing profits and supporting capital accumulation, faces extreme pressure as the world confronts global warming. Governments are pressured to take action, and/or impose taxes and other mechanisms for capital to internalize these costs. From a world-systems analysis perspective, an outcome here is that national governments find themselves locked into what appears to be an irresolvable tension— dealing with pressures to simultaneously reduce taxes on capital, increase spending for capital’s profitable operation, and increase spending on social services for populations whose electoral support is required to remain in power. This is compounded by pressures to also reduce the tax on wages, particularly for high-income earners, and a dominant neoliberal logic that presents lower taxes on wages as inherently good, supposedly returning power to individuals to select and purchase once publicly funded goods and services themselves. World-systems analysis is open to critiques of the crisis and transformation paradigm, which suggests that rather than being exhausted or reaching systemic limits, identified contradictions may well continue for the foreseeable future. Smith’s (2016) work illustrates, for example, the capacity of big capital to continue to extract super-profits by relocating production to low-wage areas, whether through direct foreign investment or indirect means like contracting work to local companies, with the majority of the value added being received by the center despite the work being done in the peripheral or semiperipheral, low-wage area. This practice, identified by Wallerstein (2005) as a set of strategies from capital to maintain profits but is “running out of new zones in which to relocate” (p. 1270), continues. Moreover, as argued below, while demonstrably in crisis in terms of failed delivery/achievement for much of the globe, the liberal promise of
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national development for all, supported or driven by education, shows remarkable resilience in terms of dominant policy logic and discourse.
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION Dependency theory and world-systems analysis are major macro-theoretical approaches to understanding the functioning of historical, social reality. As is evident, they are critical perspectives on the operation of capitalist society as a global or international system and its local consequences in different parts of what is a hierarchical and unequal worldsystem. As broad theoretical perspectives, themselves subject to internal debate and ongoing (re)invention, their application in comparative and international education (CIE) is understandably varied. This section draws on some critical examples across what can be seen as a continuum or spread of dependency theory/WSA applications. This spread reflects the major theoretical tenets of the perspectives and how they are “operationalized” in the CIE research. In broad terms, Little (2000) articulates the connection between this theorizing, the influence of modernization and development, and education’s intended contribution to human capital formation. She notes that “poor countries are conditioned by their economic relationships with rich economies to occupy a subordinate and dependent role that inhibits development by expropriating investible surplus,” adding the colonial/post-colonial problem of “indigenous elites, firmly wedded to the international capitalist system and rewarded handsomely by it, have no interest in giving up these rewards” (Little, 2000, p. 287). Little’s (2000) review acknowledges the impact of these macro-theoretical perspectives on researchers, shifting the unit of analysis away from the nation-state, or national society, to “the nature of relations between economies, states and societies” (p. 319). As is common, Carnoy’s (1974) work is cited for its focus on the imposition of dominant cultural forms, practices, and associated institutions, on dependent or peripheral nation-states, and the associated efforts of colonial powers to educate local elites through colonial systems, in the language of the colonizing power, who would, in turn, manage things in the colonial power’s interests. For Little (2000), Carnoy’s (1974) work: focused attention on the analysis of the constraints on development, on stasis and decline in economy and society. It focused on the role of education for domination rather than for development. It provided answers to the question: How does education impede the process of development? It focused on the “negatives” of development. —p. 288 A central feature of the theoretical perspectives is the premise that levels of national “development,” conventionally defined, and of the relationship between national systems of education and development, are located in and constrained by the functioning of the global capitalist system. Building on this central feature, applications in CIE include explicit acknowledgments and investigation of the differential levels of development in countries under investigation through these theoretical perspectives. The “application” of the theory begins (and in some cases, ends) with reference to its explanatory potential for (usually) identifiable levels of relative “underdevelopment” of the country(ies) in question, before turning to some educational phenomenon under investigation presented in this context.
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An exemplar of this sort of work, also discussed by Griffiths and Knezevic (2010), is Prokou’s (2006) comparative analysis of higher education in France, Germany, and Greece. Her analysis begins with a focus on Greece’s structural location in the semi-periphery of the world-economy, characterizing Greece’s “kind of peripheral, underdeveloped capitalism” as “radically different from and much less autonomous than that of the West” (Prokou, 2006, p. 212). This particular type of dependent development, in turn, provided crucial explanatory power for identified differences in higher education policies and reforms. Another illustration, basing its investigation and analysis in WSA, is Tabulawa’s (2003) case study of a “Primary Education Improvement Project (PEIP)” in Botswana, funded by USAID. This work investigates how a particular, global, educational reform package, “learner-centered pedagogy” (Tabulawa, 2003, p. 7), or student-centered learning, operates to transmit and support a particular ideological agenda into a post-colonial and post-Cold War peripheral country. Acknowledging the progressive roots of “learnercenteredness” and the associated concepts of social constructivism, Tabulawa (2003) argues that from a world-systems perspective: the interest of aid agencies in the pedagogy is part of a wider design on the part of aid institutions to facilitate the penetration of capitalist ideology in periphery states, this being done under the guise of democratization. The hidden agenda, I argue, is to alter the “modes of thought” and practices of those in periphery states so that they look at reality in the same way(s) as those in core states. —p. 10 In brief, Tabulawa (2003) critiques learner-centered pedagogy as a vehicle for promoting (multi-party) liberal democratic models, and associated modes of thinking, grounded in the dominant discourse that equates “free market capitalism and liberal democracy” as “two sides of the same coin” (p. 17). The WSA inspired argument here connects with work in the critical education/critical pedagogy field, highlighting the role of a particular educational practice in the legitimation and functioning of capitalism as a global system, and in turn its presentation as the only viable framework for national development. Cho (2013) is one of few researchers in the critical education field elaborating on the application of world-systems analysis as a perspective for critical education research. Beyond particular case studies, applications of WSA and dependency theorizing to CIE extends to broader, critical accounts of the spread, or direct imposition, of educational policies and reforms on countries located outside of the core, in terms of their ideological function. Moutsios (2009), for instance, examines the roles of international institutions like the World Bank and IMF in making global educational policies to serve the interests of the capitalist world economy. He concludes that an identifiable “common education policy agenda . . . defines education primarily in terms of its economic value and learners as human resources, required by the global production system,” resulting in “the subjugation of education to the mandates of the global economy” (Moutsios, 2009, p. 479). This sort of work builds on extensive theorizing about the rise of human capital theory as part of conventional or mainstream orthodoxies about development and education’s role in development, and critiques of this thinking in terms of both its viability across the world-system, and its narrowing of the purpose of education. A further, major application of dependency and WSA theorizing in CIE rests in the area of CIE theory-building/development. Theorizing about a global or world-system,
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and particularly the historical, capitalist world-system, situates the study of the educational phenomenon within and/or between the national case-study(ies). But in terms of broader CIE theory, world-systems analysis in particular stresses that “the appropriate unit of analysis is a world-system,” meaning “something other than the modern nation-state, something larger than this nation-state, and something that was defined by the boundaries of an effective, ongoing division of labour” (Wallerstein, 2000a, p. 149). Arnove’s (1980) paper marks a significant intervention in this respect, calling for WSA inspired/based research in CIE that in turn embodied a global perspective, and in so doing would “capture the position of a country within the international system” (p. 50). Subsequent work by Dale (1987; 2000), Clayton (1998; 2004) and Ginsburg et al. (1990), further advanced the case for world-systems theorizing. The work of these scholars demanded researchers move beyond methodological nationalism in CIE research, to consider the broader geopolitical context of global capitalism, and its economic, social, and cultural scaffolding, as an explanatory framework for the emergence, structure, content, and purposes of mass education systems. One feature of this work has been theorizing about identifiable global trends in educational policy and practice. A well-established branch of this work has involved theorizing an identifiable “world culture” of education, spread across the world through nation-states participation in international organizations, to account for global convergence in educational policy (Meyer et al. 1997). Ensuing debate about “world culture theory” frequently invoked local (policy and practice) differences, emanating from diverse local cultural, social, and historical conditions, that the world culture approach and claimed policy convergence did not adequately account for (Anderson-Levitt, 2003). The world culture approach in CIE, however, rejects frameworks like world-systems analysis (e.g., Boli, Ramirez, and Meyer, 1985), in favor of an emphasis on what is described by Baker (2014) as a “quiet revolution” (p. 1)—a “culture of education” that underpinned the ongoing spread of mass education and universal progress toward/development of knowledge societies. Within this debate, we argued that world-systems analysis provided a more comprehensive approach that incorporated culture and economics, consensus and conflict, hegemonic institutional power, and the dialectics of global–local interactions across all dimensions of social reality (Griffiths and Arnove, 2015). We noted that worldsystems analysis: simultaneously includes a focus on global economic systems and developments, the hegemonic roles of international agencies in maintaining the differential power of States and transnational corporations operating within the global economy, and the geoculture at work supranationally and within nation states. —Griffiths and Arnove, 2015, p. 100 This alternative approach is grounded in theorizing an understanding of mass education, and its identified spread across the world, in terms of the development and operation of the capitalist world-economy, and the structural inequalities within and between nationstates that this world-economy requires. This approach considers the culture of schooling, but in terms of the cultural framework of the capitalist world-economy and its operation as outlined above. The cultural framework includes the systemic promise of national development for all, and in turn the upward social mobility of individuals within nations, through the attainment of educational credentials (Griffiths, 2013). This application of WSA draws on its analysis of diverse political systems in sovereign nation-states pursuing national development projects within the single capitalist world-
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economy, shaped in part by a shared cultural framework about the nature and possibility of such development. In previous work I have argued, for example, that socialist Cuba’s focus on differentiated human capital formation, and preparing students with a love of work/labor for national economic development, can be directly linked to the capitalist world-system’s logic of linear, endless, science and technology-based, economic growth and development (Griffiths, 2009). In the CIE field, this theorizing argues for a degree of world-system level causation of identified education policy convergence globally, across cultures and political systems. A further extension of this work draws on WSA’s argument that the capitalist wordsystem is in an extended phase of transition toward an uncertain alternative system. Here the theorizing grounds investigations of the failures of the world-system to deliver on its development promises in and through education. For example, Carnoy’s research, building on his ground-breaking critique of formal education systems as sites of cultural imperialism (Carnoy, 1974), argued for an alternative education that can contribute to the broader struggle to overcome the inequalities and injustices of life under capitalism (Carnoy, 1982). That work was part critique of the structural incapacity of schooling under capitalism to fulfill its promises for individuals: increased schooling mediates present injustices by inducing the poor to consume hope for the future—hope that their children will do better by going to school. But in a restricted, transnational development process, the “skills” learned in school cannot be absorbed at a level that matches the aspirations raised; the hope generated cannot be realized. —Carnoy, 1982, p. 173 Carnoy’s (1982) critique is qualified by support, nonetheless, for the expansion of formal education which “could be a force for radical change, particularly if set in the context of political struggles elsewhere in society” (p. 173).
CONCLUSIONS In the current context, arguments about local educational policy and practice being influenced by global or international forces are largely unquestioned. Studies abound of globalization, the global spread, and enactment of neoliberal policy, the nature and impacts of international rankings of school systems’ performance, the roles of global and regional organizations prescribing educational policy, the influence of large corporations publishing textbooks, to name a few. Sachsenmaier (2006), for example, characterized dependency theory as “one of the earliest internationally influential critiques of the dominance of western paradigms, which had its origins outside the west,” emphasizing its non-Western origins in Latin America and subsequent spread or “global evolution” (p. 456) to other parts of the world. Dependency theory in this sense is a significant part of a larger movement challenging Eurocentric visions of the globe in favor of alternative world views. Perhaps the paradigmatic break that Foster-Carter (1976) explores has succeeded in this respect. As Bagnall (2000) notes: “the problems associated with involvement in a global economy, however, are felt by all participants, to a greater or lesser extent” (p. 460). Perhaps more assertively, Cowen (2000) highlights how the early aspirations to construct a distinctive, disciplinary science of comparative education failed to materialize, arguing that the methodological debates/paradigm wars of the 1960s distracted comparativists from the construction of a good comparative education:
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“reading the world,” where this means to offer an interpretation of the political, economic, and historical worlds in which we variously live and in which education takes place. From that “reading” of the world, a substantive perspective can be constructed for the interpretation of educational processes and systems. —p. 334 Acknowledging the multiple readings of the world, from early liberal notions of convergence and modernity, to work reading the world as a “system” understood in neoMarxist terms, the underlying point is the necessity of such readings in comparative and international education. There is a credible argument, however, that systems of mass education continue to be presented in policy as a panacea for multiple local problems, including national development and associated well-being of national populations. This occurs in the face of overwhelming evidence of the failure of the universal, linear, national development model, and its emphasis on the formation of human capital through education to underpin the national development project, for the majority of the world’s population (Smith, 2016; Wallerstein et al., 2013). Such prescriptions then increasingly struggle for legitimacy in many parts of the world, including peripheral and in de-industrialized core zones. As Fagotto (2014) reports in the case of Nepalese youth leaving home to work (and to tragically die) in Qatar, “remaining in Nepal is not an option. ‘In this country it doesn’t matter how much you study, you will never get a job’ he says” (p. 10). In these sorts of realities, the relevance and scope for critical structuralist theorizing like that of dependency theory and world-systems analysis have increased over time. From this perspective, the persistence of the liberal or modernization paradigm at work in much official policy, and in comparative work advocating for more and improved education, is fundamentally questioned. Programs for national economic growth and development, supported by more (and higher quality) education for all, cannot succeed in a world based on structural exploitation, capital accumulation, and underdevelopment. Where does this leave CIE research informed by these perspectives? We could argue that the CIE field itself simply has little room for the sorts of work that would build on these perspectives, which in turn are more suited to the field of critical pedagogy/critical education. Lines of work here may focus on critiquing the ways in which educational systems work to maintain and justify inequalities within and between countries. Dale’s (1997) work set out three core problems confronting the capitalist state and its institutions like education—the need to support the process of capital accumulation, to provide the conditions for its ongoing expansion, and legitimize the process of capital accumulation under capitalism (p. 274). These problems extend to the operation of the world-system. Moreover, work in this field may be more likely to elaborate and advocate potential interventions by critical and radical educators, within and outside of formal education systems, aimed at contributing to the transformation of the existing system and structures that maintain inequalities. There is, however, ample scope for critical comparative research grounded on such premises. In particular, there is rich ground for comparative work informed by contemporary dependency theorizing (e.g., Higginbottom, 2013; Smith, 2016) and WSA (Wallerstein, 2013), as platforms for examining particular interventions, policy reform efforts, social movements, seeking to simultaneously read the world, and based on that reading to transform society. The actual and potential roles of education in and for such social transformations are an important component of CIE research. Smith’s (2016) work
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is contributing to current debate about dependency theory, and the ways in which its current manifestations can be understand as a form of twenty-first-century imperialism, via multinational corporations shifting production (whether through direct foreign investment or indirectly through local capital) to low-wage sectors of the world economy to support the ongoing transfer of value toward the core (Harvey, 2018; Smith, 2018). This is cutting-edge research about how to read the world today, in which the object of our comparative study, education, is located. Accepting the importance of this theorizing for reading the world means accepting the consequences for our comparative international research into the actual and potential role of education, and role of educators, within the turmoil of current and future social reality. This is well in keeping with a major CIE tradition focused on education’s capacity to ameliorate social ills (Kaloyannaki and Kazamias, 2009). Dependency and worldsystems analysis theorizing maintain hope for human agency to act on and transform reality in the direction of more equal, just, democratic, and peaceful futures. As articulated by Wallerstein (1998b): we can transform the world sometimes, at the “right” moment. It is precisely when structures move very far from equilibrium, when they are on the edge of bifurcation, that small pushes in one direction or another can have an enormous impact, and can in fact determine the shape of the replacement historical system that will come into existence. —pp. 81–82 CIE research has and will continue to contribute to this politically engaged project of social change and transformation, and human liberation, grounded in critical readings of the world.
FURTHER READING 1. Carnoy, M., and Samoff, J. (1990). Education and social transition in the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2. Dos Santos, T. (1970). The structure of dependence. American Economic Review, 60(2), 231–236. 3. Frank, A. G. (1966). The development of underdevelopment. Monthly Review, 18(7), 17–31. 4. Rostow, W. W. (1959). The stages of economic growth. The Economic History Review, 12(1), 1–16. 5. Schultz, T. W. (1961). Investment in human capital. The American Economic Review, 51(1), 1–17.
MINI CASE STUDY Applying these theoretical perspectives to CIE research, and particularly to local or national case studies, presents some immediate challenges. First and foremost, the theoretical perspectives explicitly argue for a macro- or global point of reference, rather than the nation-state as was characteristic of the “methodological nationalism” which scholars like Dale (1987) argued was characteristic of much CIE research, and was something that needed to be overcome. As noted above, world-systems analysis, in
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particular, insists that the capitalist world-system ought to be the primary unit of analysis, underpinning the push within CIE to move beyond national case studies. Case studies in CIE grounded in these theoretical approaches then, typically (Griffiths and Knezevic, 2010), seek to locate the educational phenomenon under investigation, at the local or national level, within the wider context and historical trajectory of the capitalist world-system. For example, the Cuban Revolution, from its triumph in 1959, has been characterized by a consistent policy of expanding publicly funded education, from early childcare through to primary and secondary schooling and university education, and to parallel vocational and other sub-systems. Long before the more current international emphases on achieving universal primary schooling as articulated in the Millennium Development Goals, for example, socialist Cuba rapidly and systematically achieved and exceeded such targets. The Cuban case can be interpreted through a dependency theory and world-systems analysis lens, in several key ways. First, the educational expansion was driven to a significant extent by a project of rapid, catch-up, national economic, and social development, under a socialist framework, seeking to produce skilled human capital required for a modernist, development project (Griffiths, 2009). The theoretical grounding of this phenomenon rests in Cuba’s historical “underdevelopment,” tied to its location in the periphery of the capitalist world-economy. The resulting political imperative for rapid economic development can similarly be understood as reflecting what Wallerstein (2011b) describes as the shared “liberal centrist” cultural framework of the capitalist world-system, across diverse political systems, promising growth and development, and a future of material abundance. This account emphasizes the explicit and consistent emphasis on education for human capital formation in Cuba, linked to its socialist development project. The specialized nature of upper secondary schooling, including highly selective academic tracks, reflect the intent to maximize the use of the available human potential for the country’s development. This account does not deny the socialist political commitments to the universal right to education also at work. These extended to efforts to educate students about Cuba’s historical “underdevelopment” as a former colony and dependent capitalist state, and the potential to surpass these legacies through the socialist development project. Thirty years into the post-Soviet period, the Cuban case confronts tensions and contradictions evident across much of the world, and exacerbated in the Global South, including ongoing and new forms of dependency, and migration of skilled labor as educational credentials (and the educational project more broadly) fail to deliver the liberal promise of national growth and development, and individual socio-economic wellbeing. Here too we find the value of world-systems analysis highlighting the limited ability for education to deliver its promises without more radical, systemic change.
REFERENCES Anderson-Levitt, K. (Ed.) (2003). Local meanings, global schooling: Anthropology and world culture theory. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Arnove, R. F. (1980). Comparative education and world-systems analysis. Comparative Education Review, 24(1), 48–62. Babones, S. J., and Chase-Dunn, C. (2012). Introduction. In S. J. Babones and C. Chase-Dunn (Eds.), Routledge handbook of world-systems analysis (pp. 1–5). London, UK : Routledge.
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Bagnall, N. F. (2000). The balance between vocational secondary and general secondary schooling in France and Australia. Comparative Education, 36(4), 459–475. Baker, D. (2014). The schooled society: The educational transformation of global culture. Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press. Boli, J., Ramirez, F., and Meyer, J. (1985). Explaining the origins and expansion of mass education. Comparative Education Review, 29(2), 145–170. Carnoy, M. (1974). Education as cultural imperialism. New York, NY: David McKay Company. Carnoy, M. (1982). Education for alternative development. Comparative Education Review, 26(2), 160–177. Cho, S. (2013). Critical pedagogy and social change: Critical analysis on the language of possibility. New York, NY: Routledge. Clayton, T. (1998). Beyond mystification: Reconnecting world-system theory for Comparative Education. Comparative Education Review, 42(4), 479–496. Clayton, T. (2004). “Competing conceptions of globalization” revisited: Relocating the tension between world-systems analysis and globalization analysis. Comparative Education Review, 48(3), 274–294. Retrieved from http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=694376691&Fmt= 7&clientId=29744&RQT=309&VName=PQD Cowen, R. (2000). Comparing futures or comparing pasts? Comparative Education, 36(3), 333–342. Dale, R. (1987). Nation state and international system: The world-system perspective. In G. McLennan, D. Held, and S. Hall (Eds.), The idea of the modern state (pp. 183–207). Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press. Dale, R. (1997). The state and the governance of education: An analysis of the restructuring of the state-education relationship. In A. H. Halsey, H. Lauder, P. Brown, and A. Stuart Wells (Eds.), Education: Culture, economy, and society (pp. 273–282). Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press. Dale, R. (2000). Globalization and education: Demonstrating a “common world educational culture” or locating a “globally structured educational agenda”? Educational Theory, 50(4), 427–448. Dos Santos, T. (1970). The structure of dependence. American Economic Review, 60(2), 231–236. Escobar, A. (1999). The invention of development. Current History, 98(631), 382–386. Fagotto, M. (2014, July 19, 2014). Soccer’s slave labour deaths. The Saturday Paper, 1 & 10–11. Foster-Carter, A. (1976). From Rostow to Gunder Frank: Conflicting paradigms in the analysis of underdevelopment. World Development, 4(3), 167–180. Frank, A. G. (1966). The development of underdevelopment. Monthly Review, 18(7), 17–31. Ginsburg, M. B., Cooper, S., Raghu, R., and Zegarra, H. (1990). National and world-system explanations of educational reform. Comparative Education Review, 34(4), 474–499. Griffiths, T. G. (2009). 50 years of socialist education in revolutionary Cuba: A world-systems perspective. Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 15(2), 45–64. Griffiths, T. G., and Knezevic, L. (2010). Wallerstein’s world-systems analysis in Comparative Education: A case study. Prospects, 40(4), 447–463. Griffiths, T. G. (2013). Mass education and human capital in the capitalist world-system. In T. G. Griffiths, and R. Imre (Eds.), Mass education, global capital, and the world: The theoretical lenses of István Mészáros and Immanuel Wallerstein (pp. 41–66). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Griffiths, T. G., and Arnove, R. F. (2015). World culture in the capitalist world-system in transition. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 13(1), 88–108. Harvey, D. (2018). David Harvey’s response to John Smith on imperialism. Retrieved from https://urpe.wordpress.com/2018/02/23/david-harveys-response-to-john-smith-on-imperialism/ Hickel, J. (2017). The divide: A brief guide to global inequality and its solutions. London, UK : Windmill Books. Higginbottom, A. (2013). The political economy of foreign investment in Latin America dependency revisited. Latin American Perspectives. Retrieved from http://lap.sagepub.com/ cgi/content/abstract/0094582X13479304v1. Kaloyannaki, P., and Kazamias, A. M. (2009). The modernist beginnings of Comparative Education: The proto-scientific and the reformist-meliorist administrative motif. In R. Cowen and A. M. Kazamias (Eds.), International handbook of Comparative Education, Vol. I (pp. 11–36). New York, NY: Springer. Little, A. (2000). Development studies and Comparative Education: Context, content, comparison and contributors. Comparative Education, 36(3), 279–296. Retrieved from http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0305-0068%28200008%2936%3A3%3C279%3ADSACEC %3E2.0.CO%3B2-6 Meyer, J. W., Boli, J., Thomas, G. M., and Ramirez, F. O. (1997). World society and the nation state. American Journal of Sociology, 103(1), 144–181. Moutsios, S. (2009). International organisations and transnational education policy. Compare, 39(4), 469. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/206746140?accountid=10499 Prebisch, R. (1962). The economic development of Latin America and its principal problems. Economic Bulletin for Latin America, II (1), 1–22. Prokou, E. (2006). Nonuniversity higher education reform in France, Germany, and Greece: A comparison of core and semiperiphery societies. Comparative Education Review, 50(2), 196–216. Rostow, W. W. (1959). The stages of economic growth. The Economic History Review, 12(1), 1–16. Sachsenmaier, D. (2006). Global history and critiques of western perspectives. Comparative Education, 42(3), 451–470. Smith, J. (2016). Imperialism in the twenty-first century: Globalization, super-exploitation, and capitalism’s final crisis. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press. Smith, J. (2018). A critique of David Harvey on imperialism. Word Press. Retrieved from https://urpe.wordpress.com/2018/01/11/a-critique-of-david-harvey-on-imperialism/ Tabulawa, R. (2003). International aid agencies, learner-centred pedagogy and political democratisation: A critique. Comparative Education, 39(1), 7–26. Retrieved from www. jstor.org/stable/3099628 United Nations (1960). Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples: Adopted by general assembly resolution 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960. Retrieved from www.un.org/en/decolonization/declaration.shtml United Nations (2017). The sustainable development goals report 2017. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2017). UN-DESA policy brief #52: The Marshall Plan, IMF and first UN Development decade in the golden age of capitalism: lessons for our time. In Vol. [Online], www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/ wp-content/uploads/sites/45/publication/WESS2017-PB52.pdf. United Nations General Assembly (1961). United Nations development decade. A program for international economic cooperation. In Vol. [Online]. 1710 (XVI), www.un.org/en/ga/ search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/1710%20(XVI ).
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Wallerstein, I. (1974). The modern world-system I: Capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century. New York, NY: Academic Press. Wallerstein, I. (1979). The capitalist world-economy. Cambridge, MA : Cambridge University Press. Wallerstein, I. (1980). The modern world-system II: Mercantilism and the consolidation of the European world-economy, 1600–1750. New York, NY: Academic Press. Wallerstein, I. (1983). Historical capitalism. London, UK : Verso. Wallerstein, I. (1989). The modern world-system III: The second era of great expansion of the capitalist world-economy, 1730–1840s. San Diego, CA : Academic Press, Inc. Wallerstein, I. (1996). Open the social sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian commission on the restructuring of the social sciences. Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press. Wallerstein, I. (1998a). Historical capitalism with capitalist civilization (7th edition). London, UK : Verso. Wallerstein, I. (1998b). The time of space and the space of time: The future of social science. Political Geography, 17(1), 71–82. Wallerstein, I. (1999). The end of the world as we know it: Social science for the twenty-first century. Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota Press. Wallerstein, I. (2000a). Hold the tiller firm: On method and the unit of analysis. In The essential Wallerstein (pp. 149–159). New York, NY: The New Press. Wallerstein, I. (2000b). Three paths of upward mobility within the capitalist world-economy. In S. K. Sanderson (Ed.), Sociological worlds: Comparative and historical readings on society (pp. 142–154). Chicago, IL : Fitzroy Dearbon Publishers. Wallerstein, I. (2003). Anthropology, sociology, and other dubious disciplines. Current Anthropology, 44(4), 453–465. Wallerstein, I. (2004). The uncertainties of knowledge. Philadelphia, PA : Temple University Press. Wallerstein, I. (2005). After developmentalism and globalization, what? Social Forces, 83(3), 1263–1278. Wallerstein, I. (2006). European universalism: The rhetoric of power. New York, NY: The New Press. Wallerstein, I. (2011a). The modern world system I: Capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century. Berkeley, CA : University of California Press. Wallerstein, I. (2011b). The modern world-system IV: Centrist liberalism triumphant, 1789– 1914. Berkeley, CA : University of California Press. Wallerstein, I. (2013). Structural crisis, or why capitalists may no longer find capitalism rewarding. In I. Wallerstein, R. Collins, M. Mann, G. Derlugian, and C. Calhoun (Eds.), Does capitalism have a future? (pp. 9–35). Oxford, UK & New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Wallerstein, I., Collins, R., Mann, M., Derlugian, G., and Calhoun, C. (2013). Does capitalism have a future? Oxford, UK & New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
PART TWO
Post-Foundational Theories The theories explored in the following section, while diverse in scope and focus, are united through their positionings in response to foundational theories and the historical status quo, more generally. Four of the five chapters in this section explicitly utilize the term “post” in their titles, a signal that their stances are distanced in some way from the concepts to which they respond. For example, post-colonialism, post-structuralism, and post-modernism—arguably among the most common “posts”—emerged as new theoretical directions that aimed to deconstruct, alter, or eliminate barriers and structures established in previous epochs. Their respective starting points were, in many ways, the leading theoretical treatises of the time, or at least those privileged by the Western hierarchical canon. In short, scholars working with(in) the “posts” aimed to question the limits, utility, and dangers of these previously promoted ideas and values. In an attempt to categorize theories, drawing boundaries is challenging. Perhaps ironically, post-foundational theories are often concerned with boundaries themselves and aim to push back against categories and boundaries perceived to be too limiting, binary, exclusive, etc. As Anuar, Habibi, and Munn note in Chapter 6, Marx pushed back on capitalism and in doing so responded to the existing approaches and systems consistent with capitalist thought and political orientation. Yet, arguably Marxist approaches have now become so commonplace that it is reasonable to consider his work (and that of related scholars) to be foundational. Thus, it is necessary to recognize that placing firm lines around particular theories is a fraught exercise and that those theories once thought to be novel (and therefore post-) may soon become a natural part of the theoretical fabric (i.e., foundational). Corson and Ress wrestle with this very notion in their chapter, which concludes Part 2 with a consideration of where post-foundational theories fit within comparative and international education (CIE). They note that even as post-foundational theories have become increasingly woven into the fabric of CIE, arguably some more than others: “this stability, or a place in the foundations is exactly what post-foundational ideas resist . . . remaining unsettled and pushing toward new, known, and unknowable places remains a prominent desire within post-foundational approaches” (p. 192). Nonetheless, the theories highlighted in this section have played pivotal roles in the development of CIE and therefore demand attention and deep engagement.
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The first chapter in this section—authored by Aizuddin Mohammed Annuar, Arzhia Habibi, and Olga Mun—focuses on post-colonial theory and complements Chapter 2 on imperialism, colonialism, and coloniality. Chapter 6 first outlines some of the core tenets of post-colonial theory and introduces readers to the work of its prominent scholars, including Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Homi Bhabha. The chapter’s authors suggest that while definitions of post-colonial theory vary, a common and vitally important conceptualization includes acknowledgment of both the lingering effects of colonialism (i.e., post- does not imply its end) and newer, often more subtle, forms of colonialism (i.e., neo-colonialism). In both instances, post-colonial theory has utility in CIE and beyond in what it offers for understanding and critiquing systems and modes of oppression and exploitation. The chapter includes several fascinating examples of postcolonial theory as applied to two case studies on global citizenship and education in Malaysia, as well as more broadly within post-socialist communities and the field of CIE itself. In Chapter 7, Edith Omwami explores the theoretical perspectives of post-modernism and post-structuralism. Omwami outlines how these approaches emerged in contrast to modernism and aspects of linear and rationalist thought as well as national social and educational planning and policymaking. She notes, “the rejection of the totalizing nature of metanarratives and grand narratives inherent in modernism and linguistic structuralism were at the core of post-modernism, post-structuralism, and deconstruction” (p. 132). Omwami further explains how post-structuralism is often considered an element under the broader umbrella of post-modernism. The chapter then reports findings from a review of CIE journals aiming to uncover both the prominence and use of these theories within contemporary CIE scholarship. In particular, the chapter questions the extent to which these theories should be applied to non-Western contexts given their intellectual roots in European discourses, and how difference and diversity are addressed in CIE scholarship, even as other theoretical perspectives have proliferated. Curricular innovations in the U.S. and beyond serve as a case study for examining the effects of these theories. Notably, these theoretical movements of the 1960–1990s contributed to the increasing critique of “dominant Eurocentric narratives, and the standardization of White racial experience as the norm in the representation of a people’s experiences” (p. 138). As Omwami suggests, the curricular developments supported theoretically by post-modernism and poststructuralism have led to some significant achievements and advancements, though the development is uneven and has at times been contested. Thus, CIE has the potential to play a pivotal role in reconsidering how curriculum innovations are theorized and applied. The next chapter artfully draws on an extended metaphor of socialist statues to provide an introduction to post-socialist theory and its utility in CIE. In Chapter 8, Iveta Silova, Zsuzsa Millei, Ketevan Chachkhiani, Garine Palandjian, and Mariia Vitrukh suggest that these statues, and their movements, symbolize specific moments in socio-political (and educational) systems as well as narratives that are told and storied, often on behalf of others. Thus, this chapter aims to problematize narratives that are perceived as monolithic by various “sides” of the Cold War. Drawing on a unique blend of theoretical concepts, international development projects, and first-hand experience with post-socialist transformations, the authors further align themselves with post-colonial scholars (see Chapter 6) who aim to highlight the particularities of theories and movements espoused to be universal, as a means to challenge hegemonic ideas and provide additional nuance to the field of CIE.
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Chapter 9 provides a broad overview of theoretical and programmatic developments related to gender in the last 75 years of research and practice in CIE. Laura Wangsness Willemsen and Payal Shah use Unterhalter’s (2007) framework of gender as noun, adjective and verb to guide their systematic descriptions of gender theories and their applications to CIE. They begin with Women in Development (WID) and its connections to modernization and capitalist modes of production and note the continued presence of WID amongst many international development practitioners. The chapter then briefly outlines the bridging theory of Women and Development (WAD), which had roots in socialist and feminist perspectives, before discussing Gender and Development (GAD) as a more recent development within the field. Willemsen and Shah suggest GAD has, in many ways, helped shift emphases within CIE from counting women and girls (e.g., WID) to considering power imbalances and social constructions of gender as well as the means through which empowerment can be achieved. Finally, the chapter explores the post-structuralist (see Chapter 7) territory of gender as a verb, wherein scholars emphasize interrelated issues of intersectionality, coloniality, representation, and beyond. The final chapter of this section outlines the broad and unique contributions of postfoundational theories to social science theory and knowledge production as well as to the field of CIE, specifically. Jordan Corson and Susanne Ress tactfully paint a picture of post-foundational theories as loosely coupled stances or perspectives that “defy any rigid definition; yet, they share the goal to act as disruptive forces in the pursuit of big questions concerning social realities” (p. 183). They further highlight the contingent, messy, and non-positivist essence of post-foundational theories, which generally seek to broaden rather than constrict, to deconstruct rather than construct, and to particularize rather than universalize. The chapter also clearly foregrounds several examples where postfoundational theories have been employed within CIE as well as moments in the history of CIE where post-foundational theories surfaced as overarching themes, particularly within the U.S. Comparative and International Education Society. As noted above, the authors conclude by questioning what happens when post-foundational theories are centered in CIE scholarship. Might they lose their power to decenter?
REFERENCES Unterhalter, E. (2007). Gender, schooling and global social justice. New York, NY: Routledge.
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CHAPTER SIX
Post-Colonialism in Comparative and International Education Interrogating Power, Epistemologies, and Educational Practice AIZUDDIN MOHAMED ANUAR , ARZHIA HABIBI , AND OLGA MUN
INTRODUCTION The necessity of engaging critically with contemporary policy and practice in education requires theoretical lenses that shed light on issues of marginalization and identify whose voice is centered in knowledge production. The presence, rise, and indeed critique of post-colonial theory serves as an intellectual resource for scholars committed to such critical engagement. Indeed, post-colonial theory has generated insights into the legacies and workings of colonialism and domination in institutions, consciousness, language, and discourse in fields as diverse as literary critique, political systems, culture, and education. A useful starting point for developing an understanding of post-colonialism is breaking down the term into its two components of “post” and “colonialism.” With reference to the European conquest into Africa, Asia, and the Americas, Loomba (2014) defines “colonialism” as occurring “in the colonies as a consequence of imperial domination, [where] the imperial country is the ‘metropole’ from which power flows, and the colony or neo-colony is the place which it penetrates and controls” (pp. 37–38). For more extensive discussions on colonialism and racism in CIE, see Chapters 2 and 22. Meanwhile, the use of “post” as a prefix to “colonialism” can suggest a temporal dimension in relation to the period after colonialism. It can also indicate a challenge, problematization or criticism of the domination of discourses as well as legacies associated with colonialism (Andreotti, 2010; Loomba, 2014; McEwan, 2009). Many scholars consider the latter definition of “post” to be more representative and in line with the theory’s critical potential, arguing that there is no clean break from colonialism. Instead, post-colonialism should be perceived as constituting a continuous exercise of decoupling from the experience of colonialism over time, while acknowledging that globalization has ushered in more subtle forms of colonialism (Crossley and Tikly, 2004; Tikly, 1999). Nevertheless, 109
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post-colonialism can still be thought of in a temporal sense in relation to colonialism, as a kind of aftermath, a consequence of “being worked over by colonialism” (Prakash, 1994, p. 1475). This chapter introduces post-colonialism as a theory and illustrates its applicability in comparative and international education (CIE). What follows is an overview of the theoretical core of post-colonial theory through the work of its key scholars, followed by a review of the theory’s application in CIE. We conclude with two case studies that demonstrate the application of post-colonial theory to critique the theoretical discourses in a cosmopolitan approach to global citizenship, followed by an analysis of equity in education within the post-colonial context of Malaysia.
OVERVIEW Key aspects of post-colonialism Key scholars in post-colonial theory have been influenced by and draw upon other major social theories, in particular Marxism and post-structuralism (see Chapters 3 and 7). Following Marxists’ critique of capitalism, post-colonialism highlights and problematizes modern colonialism as a vehicle of capitalist expansion through the exploitation of the colonies, coupled with an ideological rhetoric of modernity and progress (Bhambra, 2014; Sinha and Varma, 2017). Post-colonialism is also closely linked to post-structuralist traditions, evident in its emphasis on fluidity and hybridity in identity, history, and categories. Examples can be found in literary studies, wherein the “notion of the double, or divided, or fluid identity . . . is characteristic of the post-colonial writer” (Barry, 2009, p. 189), as well as in historiography, where the reclamation of historical narratives by the colonized to displace the overarching history espoused by colonizers is only possible “by insisting that there is no single history but a multiplicity of histories” (Loomba, 2014, p. 46). Through a review of the works of key thinkers in post-colonialism, such as Edward Said (1935–2003), Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak, and subsequently scholars who build on their thoughts, a number of key ideas related to the theory are presented below. Power and knowledge production A discussion on post-colonialism and its adoption to interrogate cultural and political systems and discourses is not complete without first considering the ways in which knowledge is produced, as well as who dictates which knowledge is valid and universalized. In Orientalism, Said (1978) introduces the concept of positional superiority, whereby the Western colonizer holds the power to dictate the terms of representation and knowledge production regarding the “other,” in this case, the Orient. The Maori scholar Smith subsequently observes that as the colonizers expand their empire, “knowledge was also there to be discovered, extracted, appropriated and distributed” (1999, p. 58). As such, a post-colonial perspective recognizes that colonization involves not only the extraction of material resources and the overpowering of peoples, but also the hegemony of Western representations of knowledge as somehow being universal, necessarily superior to, and thereby justified in marginalizing local sources and manifestations (Bhambra, 2014; Prakash, 1994). The adoption of post-colonial theory therefore involves a conscious questioning of dominant and taken-for-granted categories of analysis espoused through Western knowledge in concert with the wielding of colonial power (McEwan, 2009). Equally
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important is the subversion of such dominant knowledge production paradigms through the act of reaffirming and foregrounding of local knowledge. These dual aims of postcolonial theory illustrate its critical and emancipatory potential in the analysis of systems and discourses affected by colonialism. Positionality In the influential post-colonial essay Can the Subaltern Speak? Spivak (1988)—through the ritual of sati (widow sacrifice) in colonial India—contends that the voice of the subaltern woman is lost under the layers of privileged hegemonic voices that attempt to speak on her behalf. She observes that the criminalization of sati by the British helps to paint them as the savior that establishes order in society, through the benevolent protection of women from the men in their own community (Spivak, 1988). Hinted in this essay and expounded in successive works, Spivak insists on the need to recognize one’s positionality in the course of adopting post-colonial theorization and analysis. As such, Spivak (1993) and subsequently Dirlik (1994) recommend a hyper self-reflexivity that involves looking inwards to the ways in which one inhabits as well as profits from imperialist knowledge production schemes, in order to then be critical of its contours while also imagining the potential of subverting the dominant discourses from within. This need for reflexivity indicates that in the course of adopting post-colonialism as a theoretical lens, one cannot do so without a certain degree of self-consciousness. Instead, it requires what Spivak (1988) terms as “unlearning,” the acknowledgment “that one’s race, ethnicity, class, gender, and nationality create relative privilege, which conditions certain prejudices and learned responses, limiting knowledge by preventing access to other knowledges” (McEwan, 2009, p. 330). Hybridity Post-colonialism also emphasizes the concept of hybridity, particularly with respect to the identity of the colonizers and colonized, as well as the location of its associated discourses. In his seminal work The Location of Culture, Bhabha (1994) describes this hybridity by arguing that: post-colonial critique bears witness to those countries and communities—in the North and the South, urban and rural—constituted, if I may coin a phrase, “otherwise than modernity.” Such cultures of a post-colonial contra-modernity may be contingent to modernity, discontinuous or in contention with it, resistant to its oppressive, assimilationist technologies; but they also deploy the cultural hybridity of their borderline conditions to “translate,” and therefore reinscribe, the social imaginary of both metropolis and modernity. —p. 9 Subsequently, Bhabha (1994) introduces the concepts of ambivalence and mimicry to depict the complex and nuanced nature of colonial relations beyond simple binaries. Influenced by post-structuralist thought, ambivalence suggests that the way colonizers regard the colonized, and vice versa, occurs in a state of constant flux, multiplicity, and contradiction. Bhabha (1994) describes such ambivalence as “curiously mixed and split, polymorphous and perverse, an articulation of multiple belief. The black is both savage (cannibal) and yet the most obedient and dignified of servants (the bearer of food)” (p. 118). Such ambivalence also motivates a kind of mimicry that enables continual domination and maintenance of power through colonialism. Bhabha (1994) demonstrates this maneuver, for example, through the manner in which nineteenth-century British historian Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) describes the colonial education of
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“a class of interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern—a class of persons Indian in blood and color, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect” (Macaulay, 1834/1958, p. 49). Such hybridizations necessitate that the post-colonial critique moves beyond simplistic dichotomies in identities and epochs while analyzing colonial relations and their implications. In other words, there are no clear boundaries in the dynamics of the colonizer and the colonized, between pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial times; each informs, acts on, and shapes the other while being represented from various points of views, resulting in a complex and multi-layered hybrid. Historical analysis of colonialism and neo-colonialism Adopting a post-colonial lens involves interrogating the historical legacy of colonialism, by placing on “centre stage the continuing implications of Europe’s expansion into Africa, Asia, Australasia, and the Americas from the fifteenth-century onwards, not only as a means to understand the subsequent histories of these parts of the world but as a defining moment in European history and of modernity itself ” (Crossley and Tikly, 2004, pp. 147–148). The problematization of a Eurocentric version of history and the discourses it perpetuates is a key component of the post-colonial critique. Chakrabarty (1992)—a historian and member of the Subaltern Studies Group alongside Gayatri Spivak—argues that the grand narrative of history has often placed other histories in the periphery, referential to the master canon originating from Europe. He, therefore, suggests the necessity of flipping the narrative through the “provincialization of Europe,” a post-colonial project that questions the normative discourse of modernity that continues to plague and repress the “third world:” to attempt to provincialize this “Europe” is to see the modern as inevitably contested, to write over the given and privileged narratives of citizenship other narratives of human connections that draw sustenance from dreamt-up pasts and futures where collectivities are defined neither by the rituals of citizenship nor by the nightmare of “tradition” that “modernity” creates. —Chakrabarty, 1992, pp. 353–354 Additionally, given that post-colonialism is a continuous process, the concept of neocolonialism is also an integral aspect of the theory. Neo-colonialism refers to the exploitation and relationships of dependence that continues to prevail through a different set of actors post-independence, either directly within the boundaries of nation-state or indirectly through the dynamics of international politics and economics (Enslin, 2017; McEwan, 2009). For example, Munro’s (2013) ethnography of local Papuan highlanders in Indonesia explored how “indigenous men and women interpret, and experience, the value of education in relation to political conditions they view as ongoing colonialism” (pp. 26–27). This is reflective of the multi-layered project of colonialism and domination that persists in multiple contexts and forms over time. Therefore, post-colonialism is not necessarily restricted in its utility for a historical analysis of colonialism; it is a useful theory to shed light on the persistent specter of the colonial enterprise in contemporary societies. As mentioned above, post-colonialism has also been the subject of some critique. One such critique is that it is subsumed within and blinded by the colonial ways of knowing that it seeks to critique through its origins and foundations in Marxism and poststructuralism, both of which originate from the West. Thus, post-colonialism could reinforce hegemony by privileging Western knowledge over indigenous alternatives
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(Chilisa, 2012; Crossley and Tikly, 2004). Furthermore, in confronting colonial legacies, a post-colonial perspective can easily morph into a pathologizing approach that “looks to historical exploitation, domination, and colonization to explain contemporary brokenness, such as poverty, poor health and low literacy” (Tuck, 2009, p. 413). In the face of this critique, it is important to practice hyper self-reflexivity as advocated by Spivak (1988), as well as to recognize the presence of agency of the marginalized in the course of postcolonial analysis. Ultimately, as a critical theory, post-colonialism is concerned with social justice and resistance to Western and Eurocentric hegemony; its historic origins are drawn “from a fundamentally tricontinental, third-world, subaltern perspective and its priorities always remain there” (Young, 2003, p. 114). As such, Young (2003) also suggests that post-colonialism is often employed in tandem with counterparts in the critical tradition, such as feminist theory in order to offer a more holistic, intersectional, and nuanced analysis of power structures, oppression, and inequalities within the aforementioned spaces.
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION Despite poignant arguments that CIE is inherently part of the modernity project (Cowen, 1996), arguably, applications of post-colonialism in the field can be traced back to Tikly (1999). Subsequent works have built upon this foundation, evident in the numerous publications in the field and discussions in academic societies. For example, a special issue on “Post-colonialism and Comparative Education” was published in the journal Comparative Education in 2004, while a chapter on post-colonial theory (Ninnes and Burnett, 2004) was included in Re-Imagining Comparative Education: Postfoundational Ideas and Applications for Critical Times. In 2008, the Comparative Education Society of Hong Kong published a special issue on “Education and Development in Post-Colonial Societies.” More recently, the birth of the journal Post-colonial Directions in Education in 2012 and the special issue “Contesting Coloniality: Rethinking Knowledge Production and Circulation in Comparative and International Education” in the journal Comparative Education Review in 2017 reflect the unmistakable presence of post-colonialism within the theoretical toolkit of CIE. While this list is not exhaustive, these publications demonstrate the importance of post-colonialism across a wide range of research domains within CIE, which include multicultural education (Hickling-Hudson, 2003), language policy (Tikly, 2016), globalization and education policy (Rizvi, 2007), science education (Zembylas and Avraamidou, 2008), gender and education (Gerrard and Sriprakash, 2015), global citizenship education (Jefferess, 2011), as well as indigenous education (Chilisa, 2012). It is, indeed, important to highlight that we do not assume that the field was developing or “progressing” in a simplistic unidirectional linear fashion. However, for the purposes of this chapter, we are providing an outline of the emergence of the post-colonial CIE literature in broad strokes. In this section, we expand on four such research domains, namely the adoption of post-colonialism to problematize the knowledge base of CIE itself, as well as its utility in the analysis of post-socialist education spaces, global citizenship education as well as indigenous education and epistemologies. Before continuing with this discussion, it is important to acknowledge that, the following outline and critique of the theory represents what is happening within the English domain of CIE. In line with Crossley and Tikly’s
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(2004) arguments, our discussion reflects the main linguistic and epistemic spaces within which discourses in CIE are conducted, including their limitations, biases, and historical positions.
Problematizing the knowledge base of CIE CIE as a field is a vibrant living organism, meaning that the foundational ideas, methodologies, philosophies, and conceptualizations that underpin research in the field are continuously contested and interrogated. Given that the field has a long and rich academic history that arguably spans the last 150 years, it is only very recently that a few critical scholars have seriously interrogated its epistemic and ontological engagements, embedded orientalism, and the way “difference” and “the Other” are understood and conceptualized by the CIE community (Cowen, 1996; Ninnes and Burnett, 2004; Takayama 2008; Takayama et al., 2017; Tikly, 1999). Broadly speaking, colonial roots can be identified in the field’s historical foundations, for example, the work of Isaac L. Kandel (1881–1965), and its ongoing intellectual projects and practices. In relation to post-colonial theory, Takayama et al. (2017) conclude that some of the field’s intellectual foundations are entangled with colonial projects, since they are based on the writings of scholars whose views could be considered as such: when such influential figures as Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, and more contemporary scholars such as Luhmann, Foucault, Bourdieu, Giddens, and Beck, are shown to lack an understanding of coloniality and thus have a flawed and parochial understanding of modernity, the scholarship in CIE that has used their theories is also called into question. When social-scientific models of globalization are seen to be Eurocentric, and when it is recognized that flawed and parochial understandings of modernity have been projected upon the rest of the world, a moment of deep reflection seems warranted for our field. —p. S4 In addition, Takayama et al. (2017) provide a critical review of CIE textbooks and maintain that “the field is unquestioningly assumed to be interchangeable with the CIE scholarship of North America and select European countries” (p. S6). As a case in point, George Bereday (1920–1983), William Brickman (1913–1986), William Johnson (1715– 1774), George Counts (1889–1974), Marc-Antoine Jullien de Paris (1775–1848), Konstantin D. Ushinsky (1823–1871), and Friedrich Schneider, who are considered to be founding figures of CIE (Chankseliani, 2017; Manzon, 2018a), were mostly based in the West. Takayama et al. (2017) also provide an extensive critique of the colonial views of one of the founding fathers, Kandel. When thinking about some works by the “founding fathers,” Manzon (2018b) poses a critical question: “How did they acquire the status of becoming landmarks in the first place and for what end” (p. 1)? This is an important question yet to be answered by new scholarship. However, this is not to say that the Western-centric knowledge base of the field was not criticized in earlier work. In fact, Takayama et al. (2017) highlighted that in the last 40 years, scholars, such as Gail P. Kelly, and subsequently Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) presidents Philip Altbach in 1991 and Robert Arnove in 2001, have observed the hegemony of English language scholarship in the field. Similarly, world culture theory (WCT), the widely used neo-institutionalist framework for understanding global processes in education, is being criticized for its Eurocentric,
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universalist foundations based on Weberian sociology and normative prescriptions that focus on “breadth rather than the depth” (Carney et al., 2012, p. 377). However, in their analysis, Takayama et al. (2017) assert “the differences recognized in much of the CIE scholarship drawing on the world-culture approach are treated as a manifestation of absence, or as a variation or inflection of the culture supposedly diffused from the West” (P. S5) To sum up, CIE as a field is under scrutiny based on the contested notions of the theories in the field as evinced by the criticism of the WCT. In other words, while the field of CIE has complex and multiple engagements across the world and in many languages, it also has contested foundations that predominantly exclude non-Western or non-European thinkers. As a result, critical reassessments of the field’s colonial onto-epistemological foundation are underway and continuing. While we are not asserting a view that the West is a homogenous space or category of analysis, critiques of the lacking epistemological diversities give rise to calls for reform and recognition of other epistemologies as valid. For instance, Crossley and Tikly (2004) convincingly argue for a (re)imagined more inclusive intellectual foundation of CIE: much of the critical edge of comparative education owes a debt to the thinking of anticolonial and post-colonial scholars and activists over the years including the likes of Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyerere, Ngu ˜g˜ı wa Thiong’o, Mahatma Ghandi, Paulo Freire and many others. These thinkers have not only produced devastating critiques of colonial education but have also provided a vision of how education, broadly conceived, can be a tool in the creation of a more socially just society within a post-colonial world order. —p. 150 We agree that as CIE is rooted in multiple international contexts, opening its epistemological foundations to multiple ways of knowing would ensure more just and accurate interpretations of diverse global, national, and local realities. Post-colonial theory therefore presents an opportunity to engage with these multiple ways of knowing and doing that could ensure respect for indigenous knowledge(s). Thus, post-colonial theory proves useful in understanding and problematizing the historical foundations of CIE. However, while there have been studies charting the usage of post-structuralism in the field (Ninnes and Burnett, 2003) and specifically analyzing the application of post-colonial theory (Ninnes and Burnett, 2004), postcolonialism is yet to be considered as a mainstream approach in the field. Hence, new critical scholarship calls for the re-evaluation of the historical legacy of the “founding fathers,” re-theorization and a close examination of current trends through critical lenses (Manzon, 2018a; Manzon, 2018b; Takayama et al., 2017). After all, “in leaving out the voices of the global South, when talking about the global, it enacts intellectual violence . . . and thus has no possibility of successfully tackling global problems” (Hickling-Hudson, 2009, p. 372).
Post-colonialism and post-socialism Traditionally, Western post-colonial scholarship overlooked analyzing educational trends in the post-socialist countries (see Chapter 8). One justification for this omission could be that it is debatable whether the Soviet Union presents a comparable case to other colonial empires. However, growing emerging scholarship makes a convincing argument in favor of applying a post-colonial lens to post-socialist contexts, as the Soviet Union was built on
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economic exploitation, military occupation and, furthermore, Russian language was forced onto occupied societies as a lingua franca in the majority of the educational institutions (Carey and Raciborski, 2004; Chankseliani, 2017; Moore, 2006). The purpose of this section is to illustrate the usage and relevance of post-colonial theory in thinking about educational reforms in post-socialist spaces and the potential of both approaches to “collectively challenge the established frameworks of Western modernity and critically interrogate dominant globalization frameworks” (Silova, 2014, p. 182). Many studies in the field of CIE highlight the limits of dominant theories that are either Eurocentric or informed by predominantly Western academic traditions and methods in researching post-socialist transformations (e.g., see an edited collection by Silova et al., 2017). In The Interplay of “Posts” in Comparative and International Education, drawing on extensive literature review and personal experience, Silova (2014) concludes that there are “common epistemological foundations between post-colonial and post-socialist research” (p. 182). Informed by the concept of Orientalism (Said, 1978), the author argues that by studying the post-socialist region in relation to the global, mainly Western and Eurocentric standards, international scholars, policymakers, and NGO workers created a discourse about the region as it being a less developed and undemocratic space of “danger” and “in crisis.” In another study, Interrupting the Coloniality of Knowledge Production in Comparative Education: Post-socialist and Postcolonial Dialogues after the Cold War, Silova, Millei, and Piattoeva (2017) cement the view that coloniality still persists in “the comparative research imaginary” and postsocialist spaces are still largely studied in relation to Western modernity projects. In a further substantial critique of the knowledge production on the post-socialist region in the CIE, Chankseliani (2017) argues that the knowledge production on Soviet and postSoviet region suffered from Russian imperialism and Western academic colonialism. The author grounds her argument on the analysis of 126 articles published since the 1950s in three comparative education journals. Chankseliani (2017) maintains that: the global geopolitics of knowledge has conditioned the nature of comparative research about Soviet and post-Soviet education systems. Western interest in studying Soviet education was fuelled by the Cold War and the surprise launch of the first artificial earth satellite which was an important milestone in the Cold War. Although the original intention was to absorb newly available finances to learn more about the region, about the culture of the people and their approaches to education and training, the articles analysed demonstrated limited engagement with intellectual traditions from outside Europe and North America. The problem with such studies is that they strictly follow the Western academic discourse, thus perpetuating the hegemony and the normative status of Anglo-American and Western European scholarship. —p. 277 While undoubtedly comparative education studies are a socially constructed field with multiple “histories” (Manzon, 2011), what is emerging from the literature is that the knowledge base of CIE is still interlinked with colonial ideas, while certain fields as postsocialism is specifically suffering from “multi-layered colonialism” (Chankseliani, 2017). That said, post-colonial theory could be useful in understanding and analyzing the (post)socialist educational transformations in several ways. First, it could help the scholars to unpack the historical educational developments in the countries of the former Soviet Union that were taking place during its existence. Second, post-colonial theory could shed light on international educational policy formation in that geopolitical space during
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the Cold War and post-1991 when all countries (re)gained their independence. Finally, it could be instrumental in unpacking and further problematizing the ongoing racist, colonizing, and neo-colonial practices that are taking place in onto-epistemological spaces of practice and in the fields of CIE and international development. Thus, studies of post-socialist contexts constitute a key area for the application of post-colonialism in CIE.
Global citizenship education The second CIE domain that explicitly utilizes a post-colonial lens is the field of global citizenship education (GCE), which Yemini, Goren, and Maxwell (2018) refer to as those programs, curricular or activities in educational institutions dedicated to the adoption of a “cosmopolitan narrative linked to global citizenship education” (p. 423). These narratives have a wide array of expressions, including “school partnerships, fundraising activities, study or volunteer schemes” and the advocating and reflecting of global issues and debates in curricula and educational content (Andreotti and de Souza, 2012, p. 1). As the vibrancy and dynamism within GCE has gained traction over the years, with continuous calls from UNESCO to localize its practices (UNESCO, 2018), there has been concurrent critique from scholars that are committed to addressing GCE’s colonial tendencies and underlying assumptions regarding universality. The core of this critique, as highlighted through a post-colonial lens, lies in a belief that GCE simply regurgitates a Western-centric perspective in the guise of a call for a common humanity, and seeks to cultivate a civilizing mission to educate those that are less privileged (Abdi, Shultz, and Pillay, 2015; Andreotti and de Souza, 2012). Indeed, some of the more prevalent critical scholars in the GCE field have elaborated on this further through incorporating a post-colonial lens into their own arguments. For example, Andreotti (2006), in her early scholarship, makes a clear distinction between the critical and soft approaches to GCE. Here, Andreotti (2006) utilizes Spivak’s perspective and analyses concerning the effects of advocating for “Northern/Western values and interests” (p. 42). She outlines that such values and interests embedded within GCE are promulgated as universal, thus naturalizing “the myth of Western supremacy in the rest of the world” (Andreotti, 2006, p. 42). Building on arguments made by Spivak, she delineates how a soft approach to GCE is characterized by an emphasis on poverty and helplessness, and thus simply reproduce the inequalities that are being studied within an educational setting (Andreotti, 2006). In contrast to this soft approach to GCE is the critical approach, which calls for the cultivation of critical literacy on the part of the student. Thus, as part of a critical GCE program, this approach is described as a way in which students can “reflect on their context and their own and others’ epistemological and ontological assumptions” so that systems of belief can be engaged with and problematized in terms of “power, social relationship and the distribution of labour and resources” (Andreotti, 2006, p. 49). Thus, through a post-colonial view of GCE, Andreotti (2006) outlines the need for a focused and radical participation in knowledge construction, and a reflexivity toward such knowledge and the various institutional, structural, and personal powers and privileges at play. In addition to Andreotti’s critique, other scholars (e.g., Abdi et al., 2015; Pashby, 2012) have used post-colonial perspectives to emphasize a radical actionable core to GCE, in that such education should pave the way for “agency and resistance within a global orientation” (Pashby, 2012, p. 18). The notion of agency is also discussed as one of the features of the
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capabilities approach in Chapter 27. Still, others, such as Howard et al. (2018), have more recently used the lens to investigate an elite school in Ghana that implements GCE as a method to achieve a pan-African identity. Through utilizing Bhabha’s (1994) theory of cultural hybridity in their study of an elite Ghanaian school, they identify the ways in which the colonizer is still present “through practices and meanings attached to GCE and the Pan-African ideas” underlying them (Howard et al., 2018, p. 498). Through their investigations, they find that students engaged in the GCE program at Sankofa were oriented toward the West, as opposed to Africa (Howard et al., 2018). As such, they advocate for a reimagined GCE that focuses on the Ghanaian context, through an emphasis on a pluralization of local knowledges. Indeed, this is echoed by other critical scholars who argue for a space in which multiple epistemologies can exist alongside one another in GCE programs (Santos, 2007; Stein, 2015). In line with these arguments, Abdi and Shultz (2012) further describe how a greater diversity of knowledges should pervade GCE programs through a focus on “lost memories” (p. 169). Furthermore, in further questioning the kinds of knowledges that lie at the center of GCE programs, Andreotti et al., (2012) call for the presence and realization of indigenous epistemologies in the endeavor of “living together as part of a shared planet and a global and very diverse community consisting of human and nonhuman beings” (p. 236). To conclude, the application of post-colonial theory to GCE in CIE highlights the importance of indigenous epistemologies, and so we now move to a discussion of CIE research in this domain.
Indigenous research and epistemologies Post-colonialism has been adopted as a powerful theorization to shine light on indigenous research and methodologies in CIE. This growing body of research has developed against the aforementioned Eurocentric knowledge base of the field, which has historically, and also continues to, delegitimize indigenous ways of knowing through colonialism and the advent of modern schooling. In Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, Smith (1999) outlines an agenda for indigenous research. She adopts the metaphor of ocean tides—survival, recovery, development, and self-determination—that represent “conditions and states of being through which indigenous communities are moving” in the four directions of decolonization, healing, transformation, and mobilization; these directions depict “processes which connect, inform and clarify the tensions between the local, regional and the global . . . which can be incorporated into practices and methodologies” (Smith, 1999, p. 116). Drawing upon this agenda, Chilisa (2012) then calls for a post-colonial indigenous research paradigm that: articulates the shared aspects of ontology, epistemology, axiology, and research methodologies of colonized Other discussed by scholars who conduct research in former colonized society in Africa, Asia, and Latin America; among indigenous peoples of Australia, Canada, the United States, and other parts of the world, and among the disempowered, historically marginalized social groups that encounter the colonizing effect of Eurocentric research paradigms. —p. 20 In the course of reflecting on efforts to decolonize indigenous education in Canada, Battiste (2008) highlights that the post-colonial turn carries with it the aspiration and hope for conceiving of an education system that enables the flourishing of indigenous peoples
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while also fostering intercultural diplomacy. A similar aspirational bent characterizes the work of Hickling-Hudson and Ahlquist (2003) in their comparative case study analysis of four schools educating indigenous students in Australia and the United States. Through a post-colonial perspective, the authors engage in “unmasking whiteness” to surface the invisible racist undercurrents of the Eurocentric curriculum, subsequently offering hope through alternatives that priorities indigenous self-determination as well as curriculum steeped in cultural and linguistic relevance (Hickling-Hudson and Ahlquist, 2003). More recently, indigenous research in CIE filtered through a post-colonial lens have explicitly pushed for the adoption of indigenous epistemologies in framing global education discourses. Aman’s (2017) work in the Andean region of Latin America seeks to offer an alternative epistemology to the colonialist (masked as universalist) discourse on interculturality, in the historically rooted concept of interculturalidad imbued with colonial awareness and resistance. Interculturalidad is conceived of as: respect for the diversity of indigenous peoples but also as a demand for unity in order to transform the present structures of society that, they argue, have been preserved from the time when an alien power established itself as the ruler, and imposed its own laws and educational system. —Aman, 2017, p. S106 Meanwhile, seeking to learn from indigenous ways of being and knowing, Shahjahan, et al. (2017) journeyed through the teachings of the Dagara indigenous people in West Africa to contend with the increasing salience of global university rankings (GUR) in higher education. Reflecting on Dagara’s teachings that “emphasize the central importance of sacred subjectivity, ancestral connections, limits of knowing, and uncovering the invisible that have been concealed by modern onto-epistemic grammars” (Shahjahan et al., 2017, S63), the authors restrain from proposing a universal alternative model to GUR that only commodifies indigenous ways of being and knowing, while continuing to operate within the same ontology of modernity and coloniality. Rather, they invite the reader to imagine a different reality that assuages our anxieties in education and beyond, which are currently held at bay by modern apparatus, such as GUR. These innovative and imaginative research trajectories signify the potential of postcolonial theory, and subsequently indigenous ways of being and knowing, to interrupt our current reality and carve out the possibility for reimagining the field of CIE, and thereby education more broadly.
CONCLUSIONS In this chapter we have sought to introduce the theory of post-colonialism as it is situated within CIE. We have delineated its genealogy and its relationship to the other “post” frameworks and have brought to light key questions in relation to its usage in the field of CIE. In addition, we detail below how the lens can be applied via two unique case studies concerning the historical legacies of colonialism in the Malaysian education system, and as a way to explicate the normative assumptions prevalent in certain global citizenship discourses. While having introduced the theory and outlined its utility, the chapter cannot be seen as an exhaustive resource on post-colonialism or its application within CIE, which we regard as a fluid, dynamic and evolving body of scholarship. Rather, we have sought to interrogate the state of post-colonialism in CIE in a particular temporal and geopolitical
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space, and to critically question who has the access and privilege to discuss its usage. To reiterate, our surveying and critique of post-colonialism has focused on discourses generated within the English language literature, much of which we have access to through our privileged positioning at a Western institution. Hence, the overview in this chapter only sheds partial light onto the construction of the field and its interaction with post-colonial theory. We return to Spivak’s emphasis on hyper self-reflexivity in tandem with the notion of positionality. Thus, as the authors of this chapter, we acknowledge how our own positionality as early career researchers situated in Oxford, in hybrid interaction with our diverse nationalities, ethnicities, class, and religious identities, has undoubtedly shaped our understanding and subsequent exploration of the theory. Similarly, we invite the reader to continuously engage in an exercise of hyper selfreflexivity while adopting post-colonial theory in research and knowledge production for CIE, recognizing the inherent tension in such an endeavor, one that Takayama (2011) describes as “an intricate balancing of simultaneously working with and against the current discursive structure of the field” (p. 464).
FURTHER READING 1. Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. 2. Crossley, M., and Tikly, L. (2004). Post-colonial perspectives and comparative and international research in education: A critical introduction. Comparative Education, 40(2), 147–156. 3. Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. London, UK: Zed Books. 4. Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In Nelson, C., and Grossbery, L. (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271–313). Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan Education. 5. Takayama, K., Sriprakash, A., and Connell, R. (2017). Toward a post-colonial comparative and international education. Comparative Education Review, 61(S1), S1–S24.
MINI CASE STUDIES Case Study 1 In further considering how a post-colonial lens could be utilized in a CIE scholarship context, we can now turn to the rich, yet often divided, theoretical discourses of global citizenship. Whilst the previous section gave an overview of scholars which have used post-colonial perspectives in GCE, for the purposes of this case study, we will use the lens in order to shed light on the theoretical discourses of global citizenship that primarily focus on the concept’s cosmopolitan notions. Thus, in order to make sense and sift through the colonial undertones of these theoretical debates, we adopt a post-colonial lens in synthesis with Oxley and Morris’ (2013) typology, critiquing one element of the discourse: “cosmopolitan based global citizenship.” Firstly, when surveying a certain element of the theoretical discourse of global citizenship, it is clear that a significant portion of writing is dedicated to descriptions of the cosmopolitan global citizenship that takes a universalist, human rights, and common humanity approach to global citizenship. In addition, the rhetoric used around the cosmopolitan based notion of global citizenship, and in particular the “moral global citizenship” (Oxley and Morris,
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2013) as a subcategory of the aforementioned term, continues to be the most prevalent discourse in academic and policy circles. This is in part due to the notion of global citizenship as primarily being sourced from the Stoics of Ancient Greece (Goren and Yemini, 2017), as well as the works of Kant (Inglis, 2014) who envisaged obedience to a universal law, a cosmopolitanism with a sense of morality (Pojman, 2005). This rhetoric, situated within celebrated texts in the Global North has further shaped discourses within supranational organizations, such as the United Nations. Indeed, one such definition as advocated for by UNESCO (2014) refers to global citizenship as: a sense of belonging to a broader community and common humanity . . . It is also a way of understanding, acting and relating oneself to others and the environment in space and in time, based on universal values, through respect for diversity and pluralism. In this context, each individual’s life has implications in day-to-day decisions that connect the global with the local, and vice versa. —, p.14 As such, discourses of global citizenship have become closely entwined with a human rights framework (UDHR, 1948), which further asserts the “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” (p. 1). Based on this perceived positioning within a human rights framework along with its aforementioned genealogy, it becomes evident for some that global citizenship takes on a neo-imperial shape predicated on a universalist perspective and sourced from institutions and practices described to be West-centric (Bowden, 2003; Clifford and Montgomery, 2014). Indeed, elements of these humanistic discourses, many of which contain seemingly value-free terms like global citizenship, serve as another reinvention of colonialism and contain “historically embedded colonialist assumptions about difference” (Pashby, 2011, p. 428). Drawing on post-colonial theory, we can utilize one of its core components concerning knowledge and power, in order to further critique and inquire into this portion of the cosmopolitan based discourse of global citizenship. As was previously mentioned, a postcolonial perspective aims to delineate the hegemony of Western representations of knowledge as being universal, thus pushing to the periphery local sources and diversities inherent in such contexts. Indeed, the issue of knowledge and power strikes at a conceptual nerve within the discourse concerning the cosmopolitan based global citizenship, as those that advocate for its importance are often positioned within the knowledge metropoles which receive the greatest attention and applaud from the English language discourse. An example of one of the key proponents (alongside the likes of the Stoics, Kant, and Rousseau) of this kind of global citizenship, which advocates for a global sense of belonging and an expansive moral purpose, may be found in the early works of Nussbaum (1996), who suggests that we: must also, and centrally, learn to recognize humanity wherever [we] encounter it, undeterred by traits that are strange to [us], and be eager to understand humanity in all its strange guises. [We] must learn enough about the different to recognize common aims, aspirations, and values, and enough about these common ends to see how variously they are instantiated in the many cultures and their histories. —p. 9 Here then, it is evident that whilst the notion of universality delineates a recognition of humanity wherever we may encounter it, the notion of “we” who recognize this humanity
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seems to be predicated on some notion of normality as opposed to this other humanity in its “strange guises.” We thus see how a subtle undertone of exclusivity lurks just below the surface of this position, and it is through the lens of knowledge and power, as offered by post-colonialism, which can aid in a critique of this particular kind of universality. Therefore, as the cosmopolitan based global citizenship carries with it a moral imperative and normative stance that outlines its necessity for educational systems, programs, policy, and a certain kind of student orientation, adopting a post-colonial lens can help address the underlying colonialist assumptions of such calls, frameworks, and conceptualizations. The lens itself can thus be used to shed light on how this portion of the discourse is deeply informed by those that believe in a universal, common humanity, yet paradoxically create a sense of exclusivity based on a neglect of particularity, context, and historical legacies (Andreotti, 2006). With this case study, we have thus demonstrated how a post-colonial lens can be used to critically assess elements of the global citizenship discourse. Here, we have paid particular attention to the role that knowledge and power plays in the dominance and legitimacy of cosmopolitan notions of global citizenship within these theoretical debates.
Case Study 2 In this case study, we utilize post-colonial theory to understand a facet of equity in the Malaysian education system, by elucidating the historical narrative of the colonial experience as well as the resulting ramifications in terms of inequality, identity formation as well as political and economic structures (Phillips and Schweisfurth, 2014). We therefore start by outlining the historical context of colonial rule in order to render an analysis of its implications on education in present-day Malaysia. Prior to independence in 1957, Malaysia (then known as Malaya) was colonized by the British (1824–1942, 1945–1957) through a “divide and rule” (Joseph, 2014a) strategy that assigned different ethnic groups with distinct labor roles. As part of the “divide and rule” strategy, Malays, and indigenous peoples (collectively referred to as the Bumiputera group) were relegated to agriculture work in villages, Indian immigrants were brought in to work in rubber estates whilst Chinese immigrants developed commercial settlements in urban areas (Joseph, 2014b). Consequently, education for each ethnic group was designed to be segregated along ethno-linguistic lines (Malay, Chinese, and Tamil schools) in addition to English-stream schools for the social elite (Rudner, 1977). In essence, the aim of basic education at the time was for each ethnic group to fulfill their respective labor roles in the colonial project (Joseph, 2014a). Vernacular schools with different languages of instruction (Malay, Chinese, and Tamil) at the primary level continue to operate to this day, amidst the tension between each ethnic group’s right to be educated in their mother tongue and concerns of unity and social cohesion (Jamil, 2010). In the decades following independence in 1957, the main concern of the Malaysian government was to correct economic imbalances between Bumiputera and other ethnic groups through affirmative action policies, in view that the Bumiputera held the smallest economic share despite being the majority ethnic group (Abdullah et al., 2015; Joseph, 2014b). Over the years since 1970, despite reduction in the overall incidence of poverty at the national level from 49.3 percent to just 5.6 percent in 2019, incidence of poverty is highest for the Bumiputera (7.2 percent in 2019), compared to the corresponding figure for Chinese and Indians, which stand at 1.4 and 4.8 percent respectively (Economic Planning Unit Malaysia, 2020). Additionally, a pilot study conducted by the Ministry of
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Education in 2016 to address the issue of school dropout revealed that 79.3 percent of primary school students and 95.5 percent secondary school students identified as having high risk of drop out hailed from low income families earning less than RM 1,500 per month (Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2017). Nevertheless, there are concerns that protracted implementation of affirmative action policies, such as scholarships, enrolment quotas for public higher education, and exclusive access to specialized schools have resulted in the unjust advantage exclusively for the Malays to the detriment of opportunities for other ethnic groups (Kenayathulla, 2015). For example, the creation of fully residential schools reserved for Bumiputera was intended to provide an opportunity for rural Bumiputera students to pursue science and technology related subjects in preparation for higher education and participation in the economy (Kenayathulla, 2015). However, in practice, a significant number of students in such schools were Malay Bumiputera from professional and middle classes, further solidifying the position of the Malay elite and reminiscent of those who benefited from English medium education in colonial times (Joseph, 2014b). In essence, elite Malays came to emulate their colonial predecessors in occupying administrative and politically influential roles, a form of reproduction that is characteristic of neo-colonialism and also indicative of a hybrid identity inherited from colonial times. Adoption of post-colonial theory enables us to undertake a historical and political analysis of why the affirmative action policies have not been able to rid of the persistent inequalities and incidences of poverty that impede equitable education access and outcomes. Kenayathulla (2015) argues that implementation of the affirmative action policies considered the Bumiputera community as wholly disadvantaged, despite the fact that there exists elite ruling class Malays who should not be considered as such. Hence, the lack of nuanced and targeted efforts in affirmative action have led to concerns of misuse by certain camps to maintain power through political dominance. In a political system where legislation is wielded to silence discourse around sensitive issues concerning the Bumiputera, scholars have called into question the prevalence of “nepotism, business cronyism and corruption associated with ethnic politics in Malaysia” (Joseph, 2014b, p. 153). Thus, through this case study, we have demonstrated the useful application of concepts of hybridity, historical analysis as well as neo-colonialism within post-colonial theory, in order to shed light on a facet of education equity in post-colonial Malaysia.
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Andreotti, V. (2010). Post-colonial and post-critical “global citizenship education.” In G. Elliott, C. Fourali, and S. Issler (Eds.), Education and social change (pp. 238–250). London, UK & New York: Continuum. Andreotti, V., and de Souza, L. M. T. M. (2012). Post-colonial perspectives on global citizenship education. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Andreotti, V., Ahenakew, C., and Cooper, G. (2012). Equivocal knowing and elusive realities: Imagining global citizenship otherwise. In V. Andreotti, and L. M. T. M. de Souza (Eds.), Post-colonial perspectives on global citizenship education (pp. 221–237). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Barry, P. (2009). Beginning theory: An introduction to literary and cultural theory (3rd edition). Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Battiste, M. (2008). The decolonization of aboriginal education: Dialogue, reflection, and action in Canada. In P. R. Saden and A. Akkari (Eds.), Education theories and practices from the majority world (pp. 168–195). New Delhi: SAGE Publications India. Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Bhambra, G. K. (2014). Post-colonial and decolonial dialogues. Post-colonial Studies, 17(2), 115–121. Bowden, B. (2003). The perils of global citizenship. Citizenship Studies, 7(3), 349–362. Carey, H. F., and Raciborski, R. (2004). Post-colonialism: A valid paradigm for the former sovietized states and Yugoslavia? East European Politics and Societies: And Cultures, 18(2), 191–235. Carney, S., Rappleye, J., and Silova, I. (2012). Between faith and science: World culture theory and Comparative Education. Comparative Education Review, 56(3), 366–393. Chakrabarti, D. (1992). Provincializing Europe: Post-coloniality and the critique of history. Cultural Studies, 6(3), 337–357. Chankseliani, M. (2017). Charting the development of knowledge on Soviet and post-Soviet education through the pages of comparative and international education journals. Comparative Education, 53(2), 265–283. Chilisa, B. (2012). Indigenous research methodologies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Clifford, V., and Montgomery, C. (2014). Challenging conceptions of Western higher education and promoting graduates as global citizens. Higher Education Quarterly, 68(1), 28–45. Cowen, R. (1996). Last past the post: Comparative education, modernity and perhaps postmodernity. Comparative Education, 32(2), 151–170. Crossley, M., and Tikly, L. (2004). Post-colonial perspectives and comparative and international research in education: A critical introduction. Comparative Education, 40(2), 147–156. Dirlik, A. (1994). The post-colonial aura: Third world criticism in the age of global capitalism. Critical Inquiry, 20(2), 328–356. Economic Planning Unit Malaysia (2020). Incidence of absolute poverty by ethnic group, strata and state, Malaysia, 1970-2019. Retreived from https://www.epu.gov.my/sites/default/ files/2020-08/Jadual%208_Insiden%20kemiskinan%20mutlak%20mengikut%20kumpulan%20 etnik%2C%20strata%20dan%20negeri%2C%20Malaysia%2C%201970-2019.pdf Enslin, P. (2017). Post-colonialism and education. In G. W. Noblit (Ed.), The Oxford research encyclopedia of education. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Gerrard, J., and Sriprakash, A. (2015). Gender, post-colonialism, and education. Encyclopedia of educational philosophy and theory, 1–6. Singapore: Springer. Goren, H, and Yemini, M. (2017). Global citizenship education redefined—A systematic review of empirical studies on global citizenship education. International Journal of Educational Research, 47(82), 170–183.
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Howard, A., Dickert, P., Owusu, G., and Riley, D. (2018). In service of the western world: Global citizenship education within a Ghanaian elite context. British Journal of Educational Studies, 66(4), 497–514. Hickling-Hudson, A. (2003). Multicultural education and the post-colonial turn. Policy Futures in Education, 1(2), 381–401. Hickling-Hudson, A., and Ahlquist, R. (2003). Contesting the curriculum in the schooling of indigenous children in Australia and the United States: From Eurocentrism to culturally powerful pedagogies. Comparative Education Review, 47(1), 64–89. Hickling-Hudson, A. (2009). Southern theory and its dynamics for post-colonial education. In R. S. Coloma (Ed.), Post-colonial challenges in education (pp. 365–377). New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing, Inglis, D. (2014). Cosmopolitans and cosmopolitanism: Between and beyond sociology and political philosophy. Journal of Sociology, 50(2), 99–114. Jamil, H. (2010). The aspiration for educational rights in educational policies for national integration in Malaysian pluralistic society. Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences, 9, 158–173. Jefferess, D. (2011). Unsettling cosmopolitanism: Global citizenship and the cultural politics of benevolence. In V. Andreotti, and L. M. Y. M. de Souza (Eds.), Post-colonial perspectives on global citizenship education (pp. 27–46). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Joseph, C. (2014a). Ancient and colonial Southeast Asia: Cultural and educational contexts. In C. Joseph, and J. Matthews (Eds.), Equity, opportunity and education in post-colonial Southeast Asia (pp. 1–11). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Joseph, C. (2014b). Education politics in post-colonial Malaysia. In C. Joseph, and J. Matthews (Eds.), Equity, opportunity and education in post-colonial Southeast Asia (pp. 150–168). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Kelly, G. P., Altbach, P. G., and Arnove, R. F. (1982). Trends in comparative education: A critical analysis. In P. G. Altbach, R. F. Arnove, and G. P. Kelly (Eds), Comparative Education. New York, NY: Macmillan. Kenayathulla, H. B. (2015). Ethical issues in the Malaysian education system. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 47(5), 440–454. Loomba, A. (2014). Colonialism–post-colonialism (2nd edition). London: Taylor & Francis Group. Macaulay, T. B. (1835/1958). Minute on education. In W. T. de Bary (Ed.), Sources of Indian tradition (p. 49). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Manzon, M. (2011). Comparative Education: The construction of a field. Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre. Manzon, M. (2018a). Comparative education histories: A postscript. Comparative Education, 54(1), 94–107. Manzon, M. (2018b). Origins and traditions in comparative education: Challenging some assumptions. Comparative Education, 54(1), 1–9. McEwan, C. (2009). Post-colonialism/post-colonial geographies. In international encyclopedia of human geography (pp. 327–333). Amsterdam: Elsevier. Ministry of Education Malaysia (2017). Malaysia education blueprint 2013–2015. Annual report 2016. Putrajaya. Retrieved from www.padu.edu.my/files/MEB_2016_Annual_Report. pdf Moore, D. (2006). Is the post- in post-colonial the post- in post-Soviet?: Toward a global post-colonial critique. In V. Kelertas (Ed.), Baltic post-colonialism (pp. 111–128). New York, NY: Rodopi.
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CHAPTER SEVEN
Post-Modernism and Post-Structuralism in Comparative and International Education Examining Background Context, Application, and Perspective EDITH MUKUDI OMWAMI
INTRODUCTION Post-modernism and post-structuralism are Eurocentric theoretical perspectives that dominated intellectual discourse in the 1960s; they appear as positionalities that run counter to the principles underlying universalism and determinism in foundational theories of modernity and linguistic structuralism. Post-modernism and post-structuralism sought to recognize difference and context, thus lending validity and legitimating phenomena and entities that were considered subservient on the basis of their observed deviation from the dominant referent (Stephanson, 1987). Post-modernism and poststructuralism did not reject modernism and structuralism, but instead sought to offer a deeper understanding of the role of history, culture, and context in influencing perception and belief in human experiences of inequality (Miller, 1998; Raulet and Reinhart, 1984). Both theoretical perspectives also emphasized individual experience as opposed to systemic homeostasis that accommodates hierarchies of inequality in value acknowledgements as exemplified in the tenets of structural-functionalism (see Chapter 1). The rise of post-modernism and post-structuralism theoretical frameworks in the 1960s is mostly associated with the philosophical ideas of Jean-Francois Lyotard (1924– 1998), Jackie (Jacques) Elie Derrida (1930–2004), Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007), PaulMichel Foucault (1926–1984), Jacques Lacan (1901–1981), and Jürgen Habermas (born 1929), with much of it centered on the important issue of language and representation (Zoeller, 1988; Hicks, 2004). While he may have been a critic of the postmodern embrace of unfettered individualism, Jürgen Habermas’ post-structuralism is evident in his rejection of positivist absoluteness and his call for the grounding of context and reason in informing the interpretation of scientific texts (Agger, 1991; Benhabib). The 1970s 129
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also ushered in a different post-structuralism that was informed by the critical sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002), one that while drawing on Marxist theory (see Chapter 3), interrogated the social and political context defining structural inequality in education systems (Rajagopalan, 2009; Raynaud, 1994). Bourdieu’s perspective is shared by Basil Bernstein (1924–2000), whose focus on examination of the relationship between culture and power at the micro-level within education systems preceded the dominance of post-structuralism and post-modernism in intellectual discourse of the 1960s (Apple, 1999). Bernstein’s critical sociology also drew from Marxist theory by infusing ethics in practices in education systems. The range of scholars associated with post-structuralism and post-modernism thus represent a broad spectrum of intellectual thought in which the commonality is the acknowledgement of difference and context in time and space. The historical and geopolitical context of the 1990s, characterized by globalization of democracy and individual rights, allowed for a broader dissemination of the intellectual discourse engaging with post-modernism and post-structuralism. While post-modernism and post-structuralism had flourished in the arts, architecture, philosophy, and literary works from the 1960s through the 1980s (Benhabib, 1984; Hassan, 1981), it was not until the 1990s that scholars in the field of comparative and international education (CIE) began to engage with the subject of post-modernism (Cowen, 1996). In modernization theory, a belief in the scientific value neutrality of the assumption of elements of the natural systems that were juxtaposed to human experiences was adopted into linguistic structuralism. This was first articulated in the principles of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), who focused on the structure and functional features of language. It was later advanced by other linguistic structuralists, such as Claude LéviStrauss (1908–2009) (Kronenfeld and Decker, 1979; Waterman, 1956). The intellectual development of post-modernism and post-structuralism in the 1980s and 1990s was mostly centered around critique of failures of modernization in developing countries (that modernization theorists had earlier deemed models of economic development), of what was once deemed irredeemably inferior cultures, and of discourses of difference in linguistic and literary works (Allen, 2018; Sweeney, 2014). Modernization theory is the attempt to make scientific the study of all language through the rigid and universalized structuring of connections between signifiers (sound image) and the signified (derived meaning). The standardization of the differential and associative relationship between signs (Barnouw, 1981; Wittig, 1975) was rejected by post-structuralists. Post-structuralism maintains that the universalization of language structure is an illusion because meaning is situated in the historical, political, and cultural context of the individuals and communities engaged in a linguistic dialogue. Post-structuralism therefore refutes rationality, determinism, and fixed structuration as they apply to linguistic analysis (Trifonas and Balomenos, 2012). A contemporary understanding of the tenets underpinning poststructuralism and post-modernism are, thus, best understood when differentiated from the context and assumptions presented under modernism, modernization theory, and structuralism. This chapter first offers an overview of the historical development of post-modern and post-structural frameworks, focusing on their differentiation and comparison with modernization theory and structural-functionalism (see Chapter 1). It then follows with the application of post-modernism and post-structuralism in the field of comparative education, with an emphasis on the theory, research, and practice. Post-modernism and post-structuralism represent some of the ideological perspectives explored in the context
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of post-foundational theories in comparative education (see Chapter 10). An illustration of a case study that discusses the application of the theories is then presented. The chapter concludes with an examination of the current debate and critique of post-modernism and post-structuralism.
OVERVIEW Post-modernism and post-structuralism are theoretical frameworks that are symbolic of an era or period of dominance of an intellectual engagement about difference and diversity. To ascribe a chronological order to the ascendance and decline of any theoretical perspective is problematic as it is difficult to pinpoint with absolute certainty an original proclamation, but it is possible to explore the dominance of an intellectual discourse of the theories during particular historical periods. It is in this context that post-modernism and post-structuralism come to be associated with the 1990s. The current analysis distinguishes the post-modern (a state of being, including both attitudinal and aesthetics value ascription), from post-modernism (an intellectual engagement that is juxtaposed against modernism as a philosophical standpoint). In the same vein, post-modernity acknowledges a shift in the features and characters of a state of mind and aesthetics regarding what had hitherto been considered “Modern.” Post-modernism and post-structuralism emerged as a critique of the fundamental assumptions underlying structural-functionalism and modernization theory (see Chapters 1 and 3). To place the original intellectual engagement of modernism, post-modernism, and post-structuralism in context, we must first understand the Eurocentric origin of modernism and modernity. Modernism was considered a present state that conferred more superior human experience than the previous state in thought, aesthetics, politics, and culture. While the modern is generally considered current and improved over the previous state and a break with tradition, modernism is a philosophical position seeking to modify both the traditional and the modern in order to attain a newer and desirable state. Modernism both captures the change within contemporaneity and continually redefines the current state, creating a new context and reality for the future (Šuvakovic´, 2017). Indeed, what was considered stylish and modern soon fades into obsolescence, and what may survive time in the context of newer forms of arts and literary works is then considered classic (Habermas and Ben-Habib, 1981). The initial use of the term “modern” had been used to represent the departure from the practice of Roman culture with the advent of Christianity as early as the fifth-century, seeing increased usage in the twelfth-century under the era of Charles the Great, and later in the early seventeenth-century literary and artistic debate between the ancients and the moderns (Habermas and Ben-Habib, 1981). The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw a rejection of a structured society as well as the rejection of the Victorian tradition of elite monopolized privileges and the dogmatic control of the spiritual life of the governed masses by the Church (Mitchell, 2009; Tyrrell, 1908; Wilde, 1979). This paved the way for the foundational theory of modernism as a dominant theoretical framework in intellectual discourse in a reform movement in the arts, aesthetics, culture, and politics that sought to break away from the certainty and safety of the previous state of Western society (Šuvakovic´, 2017). The history of post-modernism dates back to the 1800s—perhaps even earlier—as a critical response to elements of modernism and a redefinition of the present modern to create the new modern (Hassan, 1981; Huyssen, 1984; Miller, 1998; Šuvakovic´, 2017). However, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries came to represent the more contemporary
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understanding of modern and modernization with a shift from a focus on European national borders to a more global expansion of modernism (Šuvakovic´, 2017). Nevertheless, the characteristic features of the metanarrative of modernism remained inherently Eurocentric, positivist, and privileged. It is in the context of the nineteenth-century contemporaneous capitalism and class formation (Halperin, 2019) that the post-modern and post-structuralism and relevance to comparative education is examined. Post-modernism and post-structuralism in intellectual discourse realized from the 1960s is identified with the scholars Lyotard, Derrida, Baudrillard, Foucault, Lacan, and Habermas, all of whom come from a linguistics and aesthetics dimension. The critical sociology elements of post-structuralism are introduced by Bourdieu and Bernstein, interrogating the social and political context in education systems and infusing ethnical consideration in cultural and power relations. While the two theoretical perspectives come into intellectual prominence at the same time, their difference lies in the original focus on literary discourse around language and representation. In fact, post-structuralism is recognized as a perspective represented within post-modernism and within linguistic social theory. Complementary to post-structuralism is the literary theory of deconstructionism, associated with Derrida and drawing inspiration from the philosophical contributions of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900), Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), and Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) (Khurana, 2018; Trifonas and Balomenos, 2012). It is the concept of différrance relating to the literary deconstruction of text with respect to the relationship between the signifier (sound) and signified (idea or concept) that constitutes the point of departure from literary structuralism (Nuyen, 1989) and drawing us to the importance of context in time and space.
Differentiation from competing theories Post-modernism, post-structuralism, and deconstruction all embody the structuralism of modernity, departing from modernism only in as far as they offer a deeper understanding of history, culture, and context in human experience by challenging the assumption of an absolute scientific structural order (Hayles, 1990; Miller, 1998; Raulet and Reinhart, 1984). The rejection of the totalizing nature of metanarratives and grand narratives inherent in modernism and linguistic structuralism were at the core of post-modernism, post-structuralism, and deconstruction (Denzin, 1986; Jameson, 1984; Paulston, 1994; Rust, 1991). In linguistic structuralism was the assumption that elements of a language are constituted by structures that form a natural system independent of human influence, and can thus be scientifically examined (Ames, 1973). Narrative analyses of literary text are concerned with related patterns and structures, scientifically discerned through abstraction to reveal that which is fundamental in any language (Herman and Vervaeck, 2019). While linguistic structuralism focuses on determinism and stability in the relationship between text and meaning, deconstructionism introduced the element of situated context, where the meaning of a sign is represented at the point of interaction (synchrony) and is subject to change over time (diachrony) as the context evolves. Derrida argues that there is potential for transcendental violence in systems that privilege particular referents (the metaphysic of the presence or logocentrism) and marginalization of the alterity (othering) (Hagglund, 2004; Stimolo, 2016). It is also important to note that post-structuralism is incorporated under post-modernism as post-modernism captured all aspects of a people’s lived experience, including arts, aesthetics, history, politics, and culture. Whereas post-modernism directly derives from
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modernism with respect to the rejection of universalism and metanarrative, poststructuralism rejects the linguistic rigidities of structuralism that limit consideration of context in deriving meaning in text analysis (Miller, 1998; Schechner, 2000). The potential for—and the failures of—global development in the post-Second World War era were the impetus for the resurgence of post-modernism. Post-modernism, post-structuralism, and deconstruction aimed to advance a cultural logic of recognition of difference and context in forms that lent validity and legitimacy to phenomena that had previously been “othered” as deviations from the dominant norms (Stephanson, 1987). The point of contention was the universalist and determinist assumptions in linguistic discourse, art, history, architecture, philosophy, and in the framing of national development (economic and socio-cultural) that privileged what the contemporaneous “modern” in Western cultures valued. Intellectual engagement with post-modernism in the social sciences outside of literature, the arts, and architecture gained visibility during the 1980s (Rust, 1991). Nevertheless, much of the scholarship in post-modern and post-structuralist social and critical theory continued to be focused on literary works, with limited contribution from the field of sociology. What emerged as critical theories of the time, including conflict, neo-functionalist, interactionism, ethnomethodology, and world-systems theory remained tethered to modernism, and were inherently structuralist (Denzin, 1986). Further, the resistance to the universalist elements of structuralism was sometimes grounded in the disparaging of other cultures rather than the validation of their differences, as evidenced in the early critique of structuralism from a Eurocentric viewpoint at the dawn of globalization (Messing, 1951).
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION The diverse, interdisciplinary nature of the field of comparative education has created a growing field of theoretical perspectives over time. Even though this problematizes the field with respect to contours of disciplinary identity (Mehta and Ninnes, 2003; Wolhuter, 2008), it has also allowed for comparative education to grow and remain relevant. This chapter is viewed through the lens of the development of the field in the United States, realizing that comparative and international education has a unique and context-specific development in other regions of the world. The field of comparative education took an international turn in the 1960s with the decolonization of emerging nation states in non-European regions, enabling for the diffusion of modernization, structuralism, and functionalism as dominant theories of education research and practice. Much of the research was undertaken through international development agencies, such as the series of studies in comparative education undertaken by the United States government in the 1960s (United States Office of Education, 1963). As the chief architect in economic development finance, the World Bank also sponsored research into assessing the status of development for purposes of determining investment returns. Early World Bank efforts in development largely focused on support to economic sectors with the potential of immediate returns to investment, with agriculture and industry dominating the development negotiations (Davis, 1962; World Bank, 1962; 1963). Because matters of social inequality were not a primary concern for international development partners, post-modernism, post-structuralism, and deconstruction were not integrated into development dialogue even as they gained traction in the literary world.
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Rate-of-return principles informed the modernization, structuralism, and functionalist perspectives in the interventionism of governmental and global financial institutions in economic and education sectors from the 1970s through the austerity years of the 1980s. The primary focus of that research was to foster public sector fiscal responsibility through divestiture while shifting costs to the citizenry (Baran, 1989; Lacey, 1989; World Bank, 1989a; 1989b). The intellectual engagement of comparative education scholars in the 1960s through the 1980s reflected the positivist perspective underpinning modernism, structuralism, and functionalism (Kazamias and Schwartz, 1977). The early critical perspectives of post-modernism primarily derived from the Marxist world view (see Chapter 3), were rooted in radical functionalist paradigms, and included dependency theories and world-systems theory (Paulston, 1994). The post-structuralists introduced the radical humanist paradigm towards the end of the 1980s (Paulston, 1990), essentially bringing the discourse of difference in textual analysis to the social and cultural scene. The post-structuralism of Derrida is evident in critical theory scholarship examining context in the education experience of marginalized populations (Clignet, 1981) and the critical radical feminist examination of the educational experience of women and girls (Kelly and Nihlen, 1982) through the lenses of social reproduction. While comparative education scholars traverse disciplinary boundaries beyond education (Klees, 2008; Welch, 1998b), this analysis, narrowed to a review of research articles across three journal outlets, is deliberately limited to examining works disseminated through comparative education focused scholarly outlets. The focus of the analysis is also limited to the theoretical employ of post-modernism and post-structuralism in comparative education literature from the 1990s and beyond. The analysis is narrowed to a review of research articles across the journal outlets. A typical search for the combination of “post-modernism” and “theory” as keywords in the respective outlets yielded a total of 52 in Comparative Education, 52 in Comparative Education Review, and 32 in the International Journal of Educational Development. The distribution of the sources reviewed here are as shown in Table 7.1. Another search for the combination of “post-structuralism” and “theory” as keywords in the respective outlets yielded a total of 23 in Comparative Education, 15 in Comparative Education Review, and 10 in the International Journal of Educational Development. The distribution of the sources reviewed under post-structuralism are as shown in Table 7.2.
TABLE 7.1: Theoretical perspective search results for post-modernism Journal Back Matter/ Announcements Bibliography Book Reviews Editorial Research articles Review Article Index Total
Comparative Comparative International Journal of Education Education Review Educational Development – – 6 1 44 1 – 52
4 2 18 – 26 – 2 52
1 – 5 – 26 – 32
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TABLE 7.2: Theoretical perspective search results for post–structuralism Journal Back Matter/ Announcements Bibliography Book Reviews Editorial Research articles Review Article Index Total
Comparative Comparative International Journal of Education Education Review Educational Development – – 2
– – 15
13 – – 15
8 – – 23
– – 2 1 8 – – 11
This review reveals an exploration of theories that would seem to locate development in the context of modernity (modernization). Post-modernism, post-structuralism, and deconstruction are used in two main strands: to explain the merits of the theories; and in understanding the social context of populations that are the target for research and intervention-empirical productions. There is more research that engages with postmodernism than there is reflecting on post-structuralism or deconstruction. All the works reviewed herein recognize difference and diversity as the focus in the scholarship on postmodernism, post-structuralism, and deconstruction. The review also reveals a difference in the engagement of comparative education scholars with the theories, represented in the content of the published works. Examples of the scholarship of sameness and difference in comparative education includes Marginson and Mollis (2001). Overall, the application of theories in research and intervention is limited in scope, a feature that might be attributable to the divergent interest for comparative education scholars. The post-Second World War shift in the geographic focus of the field has meant that the Eurocentric indigeneity of post-modernism and post-structuralism has widened their application to the context of other regions of the world. Post-modernism and poststructuralism emerged from the European ideas about modernism narratives, modernist artifacts, contestation regarding difference as reflected in literary works, and overall skepticism about structuralism (Ruegg, 1979; Trifonas and Balomenos, 2012). The three comparative education scholarly outlets reviewed here show differences in the nature of works disseminated. The Comparative Education Review is dominated with works focused on exploring theories in comparative education. The majority of the works capturing this theme are presidential addresses (e.g., Arnove, 2001; Carnoy, 2006; Ginsburg et al., 1992; Hayhoe, 2000; Klees, 2008; Kobayashi, 2007; Rust, 1991; Torres, 1998). Calls to reflect on post-modernism and post-structuralism, and a few others situate education research with references that interrogate post-modernism and post-structuralism (e.g., Cook et al., 2004; Carney, 2009; Ichilov, 2005; Klees, 1991; Rust et al., 1999; London, 2003; Oplatka, 2002; Shields, 2013; Tarlau, 2017). Comparative Education Review also focuses on disseminating works that draw on post-modernism and poststructuralism to examine education issues in non-Western regions of the world, often comparing and contrasting Southern theories, such as postcolonial theory (Epstein, 2009; Park, 2017; Tarlau, 2017; Torres and Puiggrós, 1995), or those that relate post-modernism and post-structuralism to understanding cotemporary power relations in economic
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globalism (Mayo, 2001; Stromquist, 2019). Further, there is scholarship that contributes to the application of these perspectives in their diverse representation in comparative education (Ninnes and Mehta, 2000; Paulston, 1999; Paulston and Liebman, 1994; Rust, 1991; Schugurensky, 2000; Welch, 1998a). The Comparative Education journal focuses mostly on the relevance of theory to a socio-cultural context in education. However, much of the attention to post-modernism and post-structuralism is limited to citations from other works that employ the theories (e.g., Broadfoot, 2000; Coulby, 1997; Cowen, 2000; Gordon and Whitty, 1997; Jarvis, 1996; Lauglo, 1995; Mehta, 2008; Ninnes, 2008; St. Clair and Belzer, 2007; Torres, 2002; Welch, 1998a; Whitty and Edwards, 1998; Wiborg, 2000). Other authors see postmodernism and post-structuralism as emerging theories that acknowledge difference (Coulby and Jones, 1996; Katz, 2010; Quist, 2001; Schriewer, 2006; Tikly, 2004) and as a way to understand how artifacts of the information age mediate human experience in different contexts (Goodenow, 1996). Other scholars have offered a cynical view of the place of post-modernism and post-structuralism in development education discourse, attributing some of the challenges in policy and practice to the ideals of the theoretical perspectives (Ball, 1998). There is limited scholarship in Comparative Education that does not directly employ post-modernism and post-structuralism as theoretical perspectives, but nevertheless acknowledges difference in context in the experiences of Western Europe and non-Western regions, in which a reference to the theories is made in the research (e.g., Mok, 2005; Ramirez, 2006; Shenghong and Dan, 2004). Research distributed in the Comparative Education Review and the Comparative Education journals reflects an internal debate regarding the validity of post-modernism and post-structuralism in the field of comparative education. It follows therefore that there would be proponents and critics of post-modernism, post-structuralism, and deconstruction. Substantive contribution to this debate is reflected in the works of those who see no relevance of post-modernism to the field of comparative education (Cowen, 1996; Marginson and Mollis, 2001), and in the work of those who offer a defense of functionalism and modernization in their critique of post-modernism and poststructuralism (Epstein and Carroll, 2005; Hayhoe, 2007). Other scholars call for the shared understanding between post-modernism and globalization as an embrace of individualism (Welch, 2001), perhaps situating the debate in the dominant era of globalization and democratization. On the other end of the discussion is scholarship that is presented in defense of these theoretical perspectives (Mehta and Ninnes, 2003). The International Journal of Educational Development is mostly concerned with education research that draws on a variety of theoretical perspectives to inform the framing of the issues in education. Nevertheless, there is a tendency towards a mention of postmodern(ism) as a validation of difference (Choi-wa Dora, 2006; Craft et al., 1998; Dahl, 2015; Hickling-Hudson, 2002; Juffermans, 2011; McGrath, 2010; Morrow and Torres, 2001; Nordtveit, 2010; Thompson, 2013; Torres, 1996; Weiner 2009; Wright, 1994) or examining influence and change (DeJaeghere and Wiger, 2013; Harley et al., 2000; Nolan, 2007; Parkes et al., 2013; Shields and Menashy, 2019; Tikly, 2015; Wyse et al., 2014), and in citations of other works in the research (Bahou and Zakharia, 2019; Crossley and Vulliamy, 1996; Howard-Malverde and Canessa, 1995; Mayo, 1995). The International Journal of Educational Development also showcases scholarship in which the authors draw on post-modernism and post-structuralism. Some of the research draws on post-modernism (constructive social theory) as a theoretical framework to inform
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teacher practices in countries that experienced an ideological shift from communism to democratization and global economic liberalism, focusing on collaboration within difference and celebrating otherness in education (Kutsyuruba, 2011). Other works are largely limited to exploring context for populations in the postcolonial world, in which post-modernism and post-structuralism are adopted as lenses that contribute to understanding difference and diversity in experiences (Christie, 2010; Johnson, 2007; Kanu, 2005; Stranger-Johannessen, 2017).
CONCLUSIONS The relevance of post-modernism, post-structuralism, and deconstruction perspectives in comparative education lie in their recognition of difference and diversity. These perspectives call for the legitimization of experiences that have been “othered” and identities that have been marginalized in national scholarship. However, the original Eurocentric context of the theoretical perspectives and the cultural and literary embeddedness of its application does limit the general application of the theories in development education. The adaptation to non-Western contexts is further marginalized by the concurrent emergence of critical theories, including critical race theory, culturally relevant pedagogy, and postcolonial theories. The use of post-modernism, post-structuralism, and deconstruction in development education has often been limited by the international focus of comparative education. The more recent trajectory towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) across all nations has meant that comparative education scholars engage in both developing and developed countries, a shift from the developing and international focus. Research focusing on education issues that account for difference and diversity in the context of Western populations will thus return to the central concept of post-modernism and poststructuralism in development education. The completeness with which post-modernism and post-structuralism can be employed in research in Western cultural settings must, however, account for diversity in experiences of the populations for whom education research and development interventions are sought, given the diversity and inclusive nature of global communities even in the West.
FURTHER READING 1. Benhabib, S. (1985). Defense of modernity: The philosophical discourse of modernity (1985): Modernity as rationalization and the critique of instrumental reason. In H. Brunkhorst, R. Kreide, and C. Lafont (Eds.), The Habermas handbook (pp. 394–416). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. 2. Denzin, N. K. (1986). Postmodern social theory sociological theory, 4(2), 194–204. 3. Paulston, R., and Liebman, M. (1994). An invitation to postmodern social cartography. Comparative Education Review, 38(2), 215–232. 4. Ruegg, M. (1979). The end(s) of french style: Structuralism and post-structuralism in the American context. Criticism, 21(3), 189–216. 5. Trifonas, P., and Balomenos, E. (2012). Post-structuralism, difference, and critical pedagogy. Counterpoints, 422, 213–229. 6. Welch, A. (1998). The end of certainty? The academic profession and the challenge of change. Comparative Education Review, 42(1), 1–14.
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MINI CASE STUDY The 1990s are an era of theoretical and paradigmatic heterogeneity in the field of comparative education (Paulston, 1994). The 1990s ushered in global democratization as Western countries were embracing post-modernism as reflected in cultural diversity. It was not just an era marked by globalization and neoliberalism with respect to social change in politics, but it was also the time when theories of resistance gained traction in the field of comparative education. The impact on education is demonstrated in the areas of literary, cultural, and multicultural education reforms in the context of a democratizing post-modernism space. While the call for recognition of difference and diversity had been articulated in the Western intellectual discourse since as early as the 1960s, the 1990s represented a rise in minorities asserting their right to self-representation (Crichlow et al., 1990). The areas of reform had entailed research into pedagogical practices and the experience of learners that previously reinforced metanarratives that perpetuated deficit models regarding difference (Weiner, 2000). The 1990s also saw voices of minority scholars enter and offer a critique of the marginalizing subjectivity of the dominant Eurocentric narrative, and the standardization of White racial experience as the norm in the representation of a people’s experiences. The critique of Miles’ 1992 article on Black vs. Brown by Sharon Stockton regarding the underlying cause of the Rodney King riots offered a significantly different and experientially informed lens (Barnett, 2000) that moved away from dominant narratives in the lives of minority populations and questioned the Eurocentric perspective (Stockton, 1995) that juxtaposes the Western ideal “presence” against minority deficit (“absence”) theorizing. The intellectual discourse was further expanded to include the experiences of populations that are subjected to multiple layers of marginalization and oppression (Crenshaw, 1991). The relevance of post-modernism in interpreting the context of the Western world is most understood in the outcomes of education sector reforms. One of the areas of reform in the context of the US is the establishment of ethnic studies programs in post-secondary education. Ethnic studies programs in the US have roots in the civil rights movement, with many established in public higher education institutions (Brown, 1979; Hu-DeHart, 1993). As a counter to the Eurocentric curriculum in Western countries, minority ethnic groups demanded ethnic studies programs expanded to offer a space for the engagement with ethnic and racial identity groups that had been marginalized. By the end of the 1990s, there were ethnic studies programs in many universities in the U.S.. Ethnic studies and multicultural curricula have also been established in foundational education, including for K-12 in the U.S.. That is not to say that there was no resistance to the post-modernist thought in defense of the privileged positivist tradition and the status of Eurocentrism, be it modernization or Marxism (Cole et al., 1997). In fact, ethnic area studies have had to endure continued marginalization over the years (Clarke, 1977) and their consideration for inclusive curricula remains divisive. More recently, we have seen a backlash against ethnic studies in the State of Arizona, even when the curricula do not mandate children of all racial groups be exposed to the courses (Jensen, 2013). The current expansion of the Sustainable Development Goals to include the Western countries allows for a reconsideration of post-modernism and post-structuralism in comparative education. The U.S. has scholars currently engaged in monitoring the status of the 17 goals and 169 targets within the Sustainable Solutions Network (United Nations, 2015; (Lynch et al., 2019)). This new direction would complement critical race theory
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and other critical difference theories that focus on the experience of marginalized groups. It is an opportune moment, given the growing recognition of diversity in the identity of populations in the multicultural American society while centering race in the American experience (Delgado et al., 2017). Comparative education would allow for the undertaking of research that compares the experience of difference and the design of efficiency of interventions.
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Gordon, L., and Whitty, G. (1997). Giving the “hidden hand” a helping hand? The rhetoric and reality of neoliberal education reform in England and New Zealand. Comparative Education, 33(3), 453–467. Habermas, J., and Ben-Habib, S. (1981). Modernity versus postmodernity. New German Critique, 22, 3–14. Hagglund, M. (2004). The necessity of discrimination: Disjoining Derrida and Levinas. Diacritics, 34(1), 40–71. Halperin, S. (2019). Class. In G. Dale, C. Holmes, and M. Markantonatou (Eds.), Karl Polanyi’s political and economic thought: A critical guide (pp. 69–88). Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Agenda Publishing. Harley, K., Barasa, F., Bertram, C., Mattson, E., and Pillay, S. (2000). “The real and the ideal”: teacher roles and competences in South African policy and practice. International Journal of Educational Development, 20(4), 287–304. Hassan, I. (1981). The question of postmodernism. Performing Arts Journal, 6(1), 30–37. Hayhoe, R. (2000). Redeeming modernity. Comparative Education Review, 44(4), 423–439. Hayhoe, R. (2007). The use of ideal types in Comparative Education: A personal reflection. Comparative Education, 43(2), 189–205. Hayles, N. K. (1990). Chaos and poststructuralism. In Chaos bound: Orderly disorder in contemporary literature and science (pp. 175–208). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Herman, L., and Vervaeck, B. (2019). Structuralism. In Handbook of narrative analysis (pp. 42–109). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Hickling-Hudson, A. (2002). Re-visioning from the inside: getting under the skin of the World Bank’s education sector strategy. International Journal of Educational Development, 22(6), 565–577. Hicks, S. R. C. (2004). Explaining postmodernism: Skepticism and socialism from Rouseau to Foucault. New Berlin/Milwaukee, WI: Scholargy Publishing. Hoff, L., and Hickling-Hudson, A. (2011). The role of international non-governmental organisations in promoting adult education for social change: A research agenda. International Journal of Educational Development, 31(2), 187–195. Howard-Malverde, R., and Canessa, A. (1995). The school in the Quechua and Aymara communities of highland Bolivia. International Journal of Educational Development, 15(3), 231–243. Hu-DeHart, E. (1993). The history, development, and future of ethnic studies. The Phi Delta Kappan, 75(1), 50–54. Huyssen, A. (1984). Mapping the postmodern. New German Critique, 33, 5–52. Ichilov, O. (2005). Pride in one’s country and citizenship orientations in a divided society: The case of Israeli Palestinian Arab and orthodox and non-orthodox Jewish Israeli youth. Comparative Education Review, 49(1), 44–61. Jameson, F. (1984). The politics of theory: Ideology positions in the postmodernism debate. New German Critique, 33, 53–65. Jarvis, P. (1996). Continuing education in a late-modern or global society: Towards a theoretical framework for comparative analysis. Comparative Education, 32(2), 233–244. Jensen, B. (2013). Chapter six: Race erased? Arizon ban on ethnic studies. Counterpoints, 445, 81–100. Johnson, D. (2007). Building citizenship in fragmented societies: The challenges of deracialising and integrating schools in post-Apartheid South Africa. International Journal of Educational Development, 27(3), 306–317.
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Juffermans, K. (2011). “Do you want me to translate this in English or in a better Mandinka language?”: Unequal literacy regimes and grassroots spelling practices in peri-urban Gambia. International Journal of Educational Development, 31(6), 643–653. Kanu, Y. (2005). Tensions and dilemmas of cross-cultural transfer of knowledge: Post-structural/ postcolonial reflections on an innovative teacher education in Pakistan. International Journal of Educational Development, 25(5), 493–513. Katz, Y. (2010). The state approach to Jewish and non-Jewish education in Israel. Comparative Education, 46(3), 325–338. Kazamias, A. M., and Schwartz, K. (1977). Intellectual and ideological perspectives in Comparative Education: An interpretation. Comparative Education Review, 21(2/3), 153–176. Kelly, G. P., and Nihlen, A. S. (1982). Schooling and the reproduction of patriarchy: Unequal workloads, unequal rewards. In M. W. Apple (Ed.), Cultural and economic reproduction in education (pp. 128–161). London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Khurana, T. (2018). Deconstruction. In H. Brunkhorst, R. Kreider, and C. Lafont (Eds.), The Hebermas handbook (pp. 170–176). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Klees, S. (1991). The economics of education: Is that all there is? Comparative Education Review, 35(4), 721–734. Klees, S. (2008). Reflections on theory, method, and practice in Comparative and International Education. Comparative Education Review, 52(3), 301–328. Kobayashi, V. (2007). Recursive patterns that engage and disengage: Comparative Education, research, and practice. Comparative Education Review, 51(3), 261–280. Kronenfeld, D., and Decker, H. (1979). Structuralism. Annual Review of Anthropology, 8, 503–541. Kutsyuruba, B. (2011). Potential for teacher collaboration in post-Soviet Ukraine. International Journal of Educational Development, 31(5), 547–557. Lacey, R. M. (1989). Managing public expenditure: An evolving World Bank perspective. World Bank discussion papers No. WDP 56. Washington, DC: World Bank. Lauglo, J. (1995). Forms of decentralisation and their implications for education. Comparative Education, 31(1), 5–29. London, N. (2003). Ideology and politics in english-language education in Trinidad and Tobago: The colonial experience and a postcolonial critique. Comparative Education Review, 47(3), 287–320. Lynch, A., LoPresti, A., and Fox, C. (2019). The 2019 US cities sustainable development report. New York, NY: Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). Marginson, S., and Mollis, M. (2001). “The door opens and the tiger leaps”: Theories and reflexivities of comparative education for a global millennium. Comparative Education Review, 45(4), 581–615. Mayo, P. (1995). Critical literacy and emancipatory politics: The work of Paulo Freire. International Journal of Educational Development, 15(4), 363–379. Mayo, P. (2001). Revolutionary learning, biodiversity, and transformative action. Comparative Education Review, 45(1), 140–148. McGrath, S. (2010). Education and development: Thirty years of continuity and change. International Journal of Educational Development, 30(6), 537–543. Mehta, S. (2008). Renegotiating desire in North America: Risky education. Comparative Education, 44(3), 359–370. Mehta, S., and Ninnes, P. (2003). Postmodernism debates and Comparative Education: A critical discourse analysis. Comparative Education Review, 47(2), 238–255.
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Messing, G. (1951). Structuralism and literary tradition. Language, 27(1), 1–12. Miller, P. A. (1998). The classical roots of post-structuralism: Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault. International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 5(2), 204–225. Mitchell, S. (2009). Daily life in Victorian England. London, UK: Greenwood Press. Mok, K. (2005). Riding over socialism and global capitalism: Changing education governance and social policy paradigms in post-Mao China. Comparative Education, 41(2), 217–242. Morrow, R. A., and Torres, C. A. (2001). Gramsci and popular education in Latin America: From revolution to democratic transition. International Journal of Educational Development, 21(4), 331–343. Ninnes, P. (2008). Fear and desire in twentieth century Comparative Education. Comparative Education, 44(3), 345–358. Ninnes, P., and Burnett, G. (2003). Comparative Education research: Poststructuralist possibilities [1]. Comparative Education, 39(3), 279–297. Ninnes, P., and Mehta, S. (2000). Postpositivist theorizing and research: Challenges and opportunities for Comparative Education. Comparative Education Review, 44(2), 205–212. Nolan, P. (2007). Difference, diversity and difficulty: Problems in adult peace education in Northern Ireland. International Journal of Educational Development, 27(3), 282–291. Nordtveit, B. H. (2010). Development as a complex process of change: Conception and analysis of projects, programs and policies. International Journal of Educational Development, 30(1), 110–117. Nuyen, A. T. (1989). Derrida’s deconstruction: Wholeness and difference. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, New Series, 3(1), 26–38. Oplatka, I. (2002). The emergence of educational marketing: Lessons from the experiences of Israeli principals. Comparative Education Review, 46(2), 211–233. Park, J. (2017). Knowledge production with Asia-centric research methodology. Comparative Education Review, 61(4), 760–779. Parkes, J., Heslop, J., Sabaa, S., Januario, F., and Figue, A. (2013). Conceptualising gender and violence in research: Insights from studies in schools and communities in Kenya, Ghana and Mozambique. International Journal of Educational Development, 33(6), 546–556. Paulston, R. (1990). Toward a reflective Comparative Education? Comparative Education Review, 34(2), 248–255. Paulston, R. (1994). Comparative and International Education: Paradigms and theories. In T. Husen and N. Postlethwaite (Eds.), International encyclopedia of education (2nd edition). Oxford: Pergamon. Paulston, R. (1999). Mapping Comparative Education after postmodernity. Comparative Education Review, 43(4), 438–463. Paulston, R., and Liebman, M. (1994). An invitation to postmodern social cartography. Comparative Education Review, 38(2), 215–232. Preece, J. (2013). Africa and international policy making for lifelong learning: Textual revelations. International Journal of Educational Development, 33(1), 98–105. Quist, H. (2001). Cultural issues in secondary education development in West Africa: Away from colonial survivals, towards neocolonial influences? Comparative Education, 37(3), 297–314. Rajagopalan, K. (2009). Poststructuralism. In Chapman, S., and Routledge, C. (Eds.), Key ideas in linguistics and the philosophy of language (pp. 170–173). Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.
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Ramirez, F. (2006). Beyond achievement and attainment studies: Revitalizing a comparative sociology of education. Comparative Education, 42(3), 431–449. Raulet, G., and Reinhart, M. (1984). From modernity as one-way street to postmodernity as dead end. New German Critique, 33, 155–177. Raynaud, P. (1994). Bourdieu. In Gardiner A. and Lilla, M. (Eds.), New French thought: Political philosophy (pp. 63–70). Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press. Ruegg, M. (1979). The end(s) of French style: Structuralism and post-structuralism in the American context. Criticism, 21(3), 189–216. Rust, V. (1991). Postmodernism and its Comparative Education implications. Comparative Education Review, 35(4), 610–626. Rust, V., Soumaré, A., Pescador, O., and Shibuya, M. (1999). Research strategies in Comparative Education. Comparative Education Review, 43(1), 86–109. Schechner, R. (2000). Post post-structuralism? TDR (1988–), 44(3), 4–7. Schriewer, J. (2006). Introductory article: Comparative social science: Characteristic problems and changing problem solutions. Comparative Education, 42(3), 299–336. Schugurensky, D. (2000). Adult education and social transformation: On Gramsci, Freire, and the challenge of comparing comparisons. Comparative Education Review, 44(4), 515–522. Shenghong, J., and Dan, J-W. (2004). The contemporary development of philosophy of education in mainland China and Taiwan. Comparative Education, 40(4), 571–581. Shields, R. (2013). Globalization and international student mobility: A network analysis. Comparative Education Review, 57(4), 609–636. Shields, R., and Menashy, F. (2019). The network of bilateral aid to education 2005–2015. International Journal of Educational Development, 64, 74–80. St. Clair, R., and Belzer, A. (2007). In the market for ideas: How reforms in the political economy of educational research in the US and UK promote market managerialism. Comparative Education, 43(4), 471–488. Stephanson, A. (1987). Regarding postmodernism. A conversation with Fredric Jameson. Social Text, 17, 29–54. Stimolo, M. (2016). On Derrida’s critique of the metaphysics of the presence. Implications for scientific inquiry. In F. Santoianni (Ed.), The concept of time in early twentieth-century philosophy. studies in applied philosophy, epistemology and rational ethics, 24 (pp. 103–108). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Stockton, S. (1995). “Blacks vs. browns”: Questioning the white ground. College English, 57(2), 166–181. Stranger-Johannessen, E. (2017). The African storybook, teachers’ resources, and pedagogical practices. International Journal of Educational Development, 52, 26–36. Stromquist, N. P. (2019). Theoretical divergence and convergence in Comparative Education. Comparative Education Review, 63(4), 641–649. Šuvakovic´, M. (2017). Theories of modernism: Politics of time and space. In Neo-aesthetic theory: Complexity and complicity must be defended (pp. 17–38). Wien, Austria: Hollitzer Verlag. Sweeney, D. (2014). “Modernity” and the making of social order in the twentieth-century Europe. Contemporary European History, 23(2), 209–224. Tarlau, R. (2017). State theory, grassroots agency, and global policy transfer: The life and death of Colombia’s Escuela Nueva in Brazil (1997–2012). Comparative Education Review, 61(4), 675–700. Thompson, P. (2013). Learner-centred education and “cultural translation.” International Journal of Educational Development, 33(1), 48–58.
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Tikly, L. (2004). Education and the new imperialism. Comparative Education, 40(2), 173–198. Tikly, L. (2015). What works, for whom, and in what circumstances? Towards a critical realist understanding of learning in international and comparative education. International Journal of Educational Development, 40, 237–249. Torres, C A. (1996). Adult education and instrumental rationality: A critique. International Journal of Educational Development, 16(2), 195–206. Torres, C. (1998). Democracy, education, and multiculturalism: Dilemmas of citizenship in a global world. Comparative Education Review, 42(4), 421–447. Torres, C. (2002). The state, privatisation and educational policy: A critique of neo-liberalism in Latin America and some ethical and political implications. Comparative Education, 38(4), 365–385. Torres, C., and Puiggrós, A. (1995). The state and public education in Latin America. Comparative Education Review, 39(1), 1–27. Trifonas, P., and Balomenos, E. (2012). Poststructuralism, difference, and critical pedagogy. Counterpoints, 422, 213–229. Tyrrell, G. (1908). Mediaevalism and modernism. The Harvard Theological Review, 1(3), 304–324. United Nations (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development. New York, NY: United Nations. United States Office of Education. (1963). Education and welfare: Publications of the office of education on International Education (OE-14023-E). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Waterman, J. (1956). Ferdinand de Saussure – Forerunner of modern structuralism. The Modern Language Journal, 40(6), 307–309. Weiner, L. (2000). Research in the 90s: Implications for urban teacher preparation. Review of Educational Research, 70(3), 369–406. Weiner, L. N. (2009). “. . . but it has its price”: Cycles of alienation and exclusion among pioneering Druze women. International Journal of Educational Development, 29(1), 46–55. Welch, A. (1998a). The cult of efficiency in education: Comparative reflections on the reality and the rhetoric. Comparative Education, 34(2), 157–175. Welch, A. (2001). Globalisation, post-modernity and the state: Comparative Education facing the third millennium. Comparative Education, 37(4), 475–492. Whitty, G., and Edwards, T. (1998). School choice policies in England and the United States: An exploration of their origins and significance. Comparative Education, 34(2), 211–227. Wiborg, S. (2000). Political and cultural nationalism in education. The ideas of Rousseau and Herder concerning national education. Comparative Education, 36(2), 235–243. Wilde, A. (1979). Modernism and the aesthetics of crisis. Contemporary Literature, 20(1), 13–50. Wittig, S. (1975). The historical development of structuralism. Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 58(2), 145–166. Wolhuter, C. C. (2008). Review of the review: Constructing the identity of Comparative Education. Research in Comparative and International Education, 3(4), 323–344. World Bank. (1962). Swaziland – current economic position and prospects. Europe Series; No EA 132. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank. (1963). India—progress of economic development. Asia series; No AS 97. Washington, DC: World Bank.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
Post-Socialist Transformations in Comparative and International Education Monuments, Movements, and Metamorphoses IVETA SILOVA , ZSUZSA MILLEI , KETEVAN CHACHKHIANI , GARINE PALANDJIAN, AND MARIIA VITRUKH
INTRODUCTION Lenin Lived, Lenin Lives, Lenin Will Live Forever! —Mayakovsky, 1967, p. 101 In Yerevan, Armenia . . . those who took down Lenin’s statue placed it on a truck and drove it as they might the body of a deceased person, round and round the central square, as if in an open coffin. Bystanders tossed onto it pine branches and coins, as they would for the dead. Still other deposed statues were placated just like newly dead persons. —Verdery, 1999, p. 12 Throughout history, images of political leaders have served as powerful symbols of the stability or change of the political, economic, and social order. Their bodies—monuments and murals, “bones and corpses, coffins and cremation urns” (Verdery, 1999, p. 27)— constituted material objects, which could be easily manipulated to signal political transformations. As Verdery (1999) explains, “a body’s materiality can be critical to its symbolic efficacy: unlike notions, such as ‘patriotism’ or ‘civil society,’ . . . a corpse can be moved around, displayed, and strategically located in specific places” (p. 27). Throughout this chapter, we will use the symbolism and irony that accompany the movement of political (dead) bodies to cut across dominant—and dominating—knowledges by creating a distance from the field’s most familiar categories, making them strange and treating them as contingent. Following Haraway (1991), “irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible 147
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things together because both or all are necessary and true” (p. 149). Thus, we will connect the movements and metamorphoses of supposedly immortal political leaders across different former socialist contexts with educational research to trouble—and make strange—dominating knowledges, while opening spaces for knowing otherwise. Since the late 1980s, the statues of Soviet political leaders have been on the move. Similar to the public event of removing the statue of Lenin in Yerevan in the early 1990s, which was captured so vividly by Verdery (1999) in the epigraph, many other former Soviet Union republics proceeded to remove the statues of Lenin and other socialist leaders from their previous centrally displayed sites—some statues being enthusiastically torn down by crowds and eventually replaced by new symbols, while others being moved only a little bit further away and out of public view. The fate of these (dead) political bodies uniquely captures the complex, unpredictable, symbolic, and sometimes paradoxical and ironic nature of post-socialist transformations in a multitude of ways. It is as if the statues themselves could tell some of the complicated history of post-socialist transformations. History told by Lenin statues Losing his appeal Lithuania forgets Lenin. In Ukraine, In an embroidered folk shirt he remains. His steel shoulders in Osh Still carry his heavy coat. In Georgia, it seems He has missed his opening scene. In Bishkek, Lenin watches the government building. In the history museum of Yerevan, visitors greet him. In Grutas and Memento Park, in a heroic pose still he stands. While in Georgia his headless body rests in backyards and abandoned storage places. A patch of green grass, flowerbed, or a fountain marks his absent presence. His pedestals in Yerevan waiting for their new heirs. In his place in Tbilisi Saint Georgia weaves peace. Personating Frank Zappa in Lithuania he sings1 1 When the statue of Lenin was torn down in Lithuania, it was replaced by a monument to Frank Zappa, an American rock and roll musician, composer, and bandleader. Ironically, it was built by a 70-year-old Konstantinas Bogdanas, a sculptor famous for making the statues of Soviet political leaders in Soviet Lithuania. This poem was written by Zsuzsa Millei with contributions from other authors of this chapter.
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The movement of Lenin statues symbolizes different freedoms after communism in the face of current political powers and as part of complex post-socialist transformations. “But what does this all have to do with education?” a reader may be wondering. Just as “statues participate in stabilizing particular spatial and temporal orders” (Verdery, 1999, p. 7), so do education researchers also contribute to sustaining, challenging, or overhauling different political, economic, and social processes. Having personally experienced post-socialist transformations in Armenia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, and Ukraine, and drawing on our professional experiences in the broader region of Southeast and Central Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus, it seems the fate of the statues of Soviet political leaders offers an ironic portrayal of educational research depicting post-socialist transformations.2 In this chapter, we will “follow the leader” (Lenin)—using a skill most of us learned through our socialist schooling—to trace the different trajectories of research on post-socialist education transformations. For the purposes of this chapter, we will approach “post-socialism” both as an intellectual space and a conceptual category and a human condition, which goes beyond the geographical boundaries of the countries in Southeast/Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, but instead captures the region as both a geopolitical and epistemological construct. As a geopolitical construct, the term “post-socialism” is rooted in the historical legacies of the Cold War, reminding us of the artificial division of the world along the so-called “three worlds ideology,” while also signaling the ambiguities of geopolitical boundaries and the coexistence and relatedness of “multiple post-socialist spaces, places, and times” (Silova et al., 2017, p. 76) based on various political, geographical, economic, or historical commonalities. As an epistemological construct, the term “post-socialism” echoes the notion of the “South” in “Southern Theory” (Silova et al., 2017, Chapter 6). Reflecting the persisting “consequences of colonial [and post-socialist] legacy in culture, subjectivity and knowledge,” while pointing to the potential of the region to serve as “a source of unique but often un- or misrecognized knowledge developed through layered and localized experiences of socialism and coloniality” (Silova et al., 2017, p. 77; see Takayama et al., 2016, p. 5). Post-socialism as a condition refers to a shared experience by millions of people “who are still inhabiting this symbolic East which is fragmenting today under the pressure of new geopolitical divisions and North/South axes” (Tlostanova, 2017, pp. 1–2). Such an approach helps disrupt the hegemony of dominant globalization narratives while enabling us to see and interpret ongoing post-socialist education transformations through the lens of pluralities (Silova, 2010). After providing a short historical overview about research on “socialist” education during the Cold War, we will trace its movements (and metamorphoses) in various postsocialist contexts.3 In particular, we will focus on two dominant theoretical responses that seek to understand changing post-socialist education conditions. The first theoretical response is the interpretation of the disappearance of socialist ideology in the early 1990s as de-ideologization (paralleling the removal of monuments), which tended to overlook In some socialist countries across the world, distinct educational approaches have been developed mixing local traditions, Marxist-Leninist ideologies, and taking on influences from liberal and progressive educationists, such as Dewey and other pre-Second World War reform pedagogues. In this chapter, we do not have space to engage with this diversity and instead we mostly focus on the Soviet educational initiatives. 3 Cowen (2009) used the phrase “as it moves, it morphs” to engage with a theoretical problematique of “the international mobility of ideas and discourses, institutions and practices across international boundaries” (p. 315). We will pay particular attention to the “metamorphoses” of education policies and practices across time and space. 2
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the emergence of neoliberal education policy scripts as an active process of reideologization (a new form of colonization). Second, neoliberal education reforms were often interpreted from the perspective of global convergence, assuming a linear journey toward liberal democracy and market economy in different post-socialist times and spaces. After the analysis of these interpretations, we discuss how comparative and international education (CIE) research about post-socialist education transformations could be approached differently making visible alternative education imaginaries through an approach that brings into conversation post-socialist, post-colonial, and de-colonial perspectives to decenter dominating knowledge production.
OVERVIEW The creation of socialist myths and rites: a historical overview In the end, to construct a building is first of all to foresee how it will be demolished so that, as a result, you will have the kind of ruins that a millennium later will inspire thoughts just as heroic as did their ancient prototypes. —Yampolsky, 1995, p. 99 Nations feed on myth (Cummings, 2013). Socialism, as an ideological system, was “based on various myths, connected with rites, shrines and icons” (Czepczyn´ski, 2010, p. 70). Following the establishment of the Soviet regime in the 1920s, the new Bolshevik education visionaries, including Nadezhda Krupskaya, Anton Makarenko, and Anatoly Lunachrsky among others, engaged in bold experimentation to create “a new, secular, democratic, and progressive school system without uniforms, grades, textbooks, or conventional disciplinary boundaries” (Eklof, 2005, pp. 4–5). Inspired by Marixsm and borrowing from the work of John Dewey, Maria Montessori, and other prominent international and socialist educators, they formulated their own system of theories and methods of social pedagogy, envisioning an education system based on the principles of the collective—an education system, which would be open to all strata of society and operate without the walls separating school, work, and society.4 However, given the economic hardship and social instability following the Russian revolution and the civil war, the results of this democratic and decentralized school “experimentation” were soon discredited (Eklof, 2005). By the end of the first decade of the Soviet rule, the Stalinist government “imposed a breathtaking uniformity and hierarchy upon education across the vast territories and ethnically diversified populations of the Soviet Union” (Eklof, 2005, p. 5). At the same time, the government launched a rite of honoring objects and spaces of celebrations: “the socialist ‘gods’ had been produced, together with all pantheon of socialist heroes, celebrated according to ritualized cult” (Czepczyn´ski, 2010, p. 70). Of all socialist “gods,” Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) received the central status of worship—a 4 For example, the early Soviet education concept of “labor education” was based on liberal ideals and aimed at shifting the learning process from home to school, while combining education and productive labor with moral upbringing to create well-rounded individuals (Valkanova, 2009). Under the leadership of Lunacharsky as the first Bolshevik Soviet People’s Commissar (Narkompros) responsible for the Ministry and Education, Krupskaya contributed to building the concept of labor education beginning in preschools. Alongside, but focusing on the work with orphans, Makarenko experimented with developing the child labor-collectives based on the principles of self-governance and collective labor activity as a vital institution of the Soviet education. The work of these Soviet educators was very influential not only in the Soviet Union, but also other socialist and non-socialist countries.
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“prophet of genius,” “the friend of the poor peasant,” “genuine leader of the working class” (Tumarkin, 1997, p. 98). His cult was created during his active rule: “ ‘Illich’, as the Communists lovingly call him . . . is the mortal man and Lenin is the immortal leader and universal symbol” (Tumarkin, 1997, p. 84). His immortality (even after his death) became “a pledge of faith and loyalty to the party and government” (Tumarkin, 1997, p. 166), and his visibly incorruptible remains proved him immortal.5 The institutionalization of the cult of Lenin was accompanied by mass literacy campaigns and the establishment of a mass schooling system, aiding the Soviet government to spread “the word of socialism” and gain legitimacy among people as quickly and as widely as possible. Viewing literacy as a path to communism, the Soviet government made schooling available to almost every child, compared to only 70 percent of boys and 40 percent of girls in pre-revolutionary Russia (Brooks and Brooks, 2000). School enrollment increased rapidly across the Soviet Union, especially in Central, Asia where mass schooling was not available before the Soviet regime. Since the October Revolution, Lenin had entered practically every school in the form of portraits, and later as statues, textbooks, and posters. For elementary school children, he usually appeared as a friendly child with wavy blond hair, while older children encountered Lenin as a determined youth or a disciplined young adult through textbooks, images and stories, as well as numerous artifacts (e.g., pins, postcards, medals, or even wall decor). The cult of Lenin was used to convey to children the revolutionary ideas of and a universal dream for a society of equality and peace. At the same time, it was used to legitimize the new regime by promoting the vision of Soviet exceptionalism, further sacralizing the state and its leaders (Brooks and Brooks, 2000). While schools were mobilized to put revolutionary socialist visions into practice, childhood was viewed as “a powerful icon of revolution” (Kirschenbaum, 2001, p. 159). Children were expected to continue “the project begun by the older generation of builders of Communism” (Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1952, p. 134). Teaching became a direct expression of ideology and was used to “convey to students, on the one hand, an image of the enemy and on the other a sense of national superiority” (Karp, 2006, p. 23). Through the politicization of the official curriculum and various extra-curricular activities, schools aimed “to develop social consciousness, loyalty to the Soviet regime, and the virtues of initiative, activism, discipline, and cooperation” among children (Matossian, 1962, p. 76). For example, the biology curriculum underwent a major political evolution during Stalin’s era, replacing theories of genetics with Lysenko’s “new biology,” claiming that “human beings could command the very nature of plants and animals” (Holmes, 2005, p. 63) through vernalization techniques to increase agricultural productivity. Furthermore, diplomatic tensions in the West and military clashes with Japan in the late 1930s led to the introduction of military training, while curriculum for history and geography became strongly politicized through the introduction of patriotic themes during the Second World War (Holmes, 2005). Over time, Soviet schools were expected to homogenize children’s behaviors, actions, and appearances, ultimately resulting in the formation of an ideal Soviet citizen (Silova and Palandjian, 2018). However, it was not until the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and Yuri Gagarin’s (1934– 1968) successful space mission in 1961—which came as “a severe shock to the United States’ self-image” (Steiner-Khamsi, 2006b, p. 9)—that the Soviet education system 5 On January 9, 1925, the Soviet government launched the first round of competition to construct a monument to Lenin that would contain his remains (Tumarkin, 1997). It was completed on November 1, 1930.
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became widely referenced internationally. For comparative education researchers in the United States, the Soviet education system was first an object of admiration, prompting the U.S. government to increase spending on education, especially in the areas of mathematics and science, in order to compete in the “space race” with the Soviet Union. In the 1960s, however, Western researchers began to point to the authoritarian nature of Soviet education, including its uniformity and ideological indoctrination (Bereday, 1960; Bronfenbrenner, 1970). Meanwhile, the Soviet accounts of American education became equally condemnatory, criticizing American schools for their emphasis on “play” rather than serious study, “lack of universal access to education, and particularly the inability to deal with racism and school segregation” (Steiner-Khamsi, 2006a, p. 21). References to bourgeois education were used to “sharpen one’s own Marxist-Leninist position” (SteinerKhamsi, 2006a, p. 38) and further distance the Soviet education from the political West. As Sanders (1997) pointed out, “Comparative Education on both sides of the Iron Curtain was deeply involved in a sordid and ruthless propaganda war serving wider purposes of the Cold War policy” (p. 3). The dichotomous approach to comparative education research—codifying divisions between East and West, socialism and capitalism, authoritarianism and democracy, racism and egalitarianism—spilled over into the international development efforts as both the United States and the Soviet Union attempted to establish spheres of influence in nonaligned countries of the so-called “third world.” Both superpowers used education as a vehicle for international development. In particular, the U.S. model emphasized economic growth, decentralization, a decrease of public expenditures, and privatization, whereas the Soviet model focused on human capacity building, centralization, an increase of public expenditure on education, and collectivization (Steiner-Khamsi, 2006b). Without getting into the analysis of advantages and disadvantages of each approach, the most severe consequence for the field of comparative education was a reproduction of spatial partitioning of the world according to “the three-worlds ideology” in educational research. As a direct outcome of the Cold War politics, this logic shaped mutual perceptions and research practices among scholars on both sides of the Iron Curtain in far-reaching ways, perpetuating into the post-Cold War era (Silova et al., 2017).
Erasing the past: the disappearance of socialist symbols The act of destruction of a monument, a mimetic symbol of the past and reviled power, was a particular act of catharsis, a way to start from the “new beginning”. —Czepczyn´ski, 2010, p. 72 After the dissolution of the socialist bloc in the late 1980s, familiar socialist symbols, which formerly represented greatness, had to be actively removed—both figuratively and physically—from pedestals, textbooks, and institutions. Were these deliberate acts aiming to destroy symbols from the past (Czepczyn´ski, 2010)? How was the “new beginning” understood by education research within the now post-socialist educational spaces? In general, the period of the late 1980s and early 1990s was interpreted within the dichotomous framework inherited from the Cold War. Post-socialist states were depicted as “collapsed” systems ridden with “crises,” which entailed an almost immediate removal of socialist ideologies and required a radical change of economies (from state to market) and, in some cases even a “shock therapy” (Griffiths and Millei, 2013; Silova, 2010). The expectation was that post-socialist states had to “catch-up” with Europe and the rest of the “Western” world in order to transform into fully functioning democracies and market
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economies (often taking extreme forms)—always with the help of Western sciences and scientists (Silova et al., 2017). In this context, post-Cold War political narratives introduced a critique of the Soviet educational system as overtly ideological, positioning Western education policies and practices as ideals to emulate (Perry, 2009; Silova et al., 2017). Reflecting on the educational reform movements from the 1990s to the early 2000s, Fimyar (2010) described the educational reform atmosphere in Ukraine as capturing two significant themes: “educational crisis” and “an attack against the postcommunist state” (p. 64). Criticism ranged from the political leadership’s “lack of commitment, expertise, vision, and strategy” but also the “slow” pace of adopting due to the institutional practices that were perceived as being “too Soviet” (Fimyar, 2010, p. 5). Similarly, education policymakers and scholars across the post-socialist education space were often positioned as “incapable” and “unqualified” (due to their training in ideological institutions during socialism) in Western academic scholarship and policy documents (Silova et al., 2017). In this context, it is not surprising that the underlying purpose of the national development projects was legitimized through the “rationalities of catching-up Europeanization” (Fimyar, 2010; Silova et al., 2017). In Ukraine and the Baltic states, the “catching-up” language was used to demonstrate progression towards Europeanization and a move away from Russia (Fimyar, 2010; Silova, 2006). Through international development assistance, post-socialist countries became the recipients of “best practices”—delivered as “educational reform packages”—ranging from new textbooks and curricula to teacher training and finance reforms. For example, the World Bank has been using its power of political conditionings to promote neoliberal education reform packages, containing outcomes-based performance standards, accountability systems, decentralization of education management and financing, among other reforms (Mundy and Verger, 2015; Silova and Steiner-Khamsi, 2008). OECD left a strong mark by introducing education policies associated with “governing by numbers” from Europe and beyond, including a culture of large-scale student achievement tests accompanied by prescriptive reforms (Grek, 2009). Many international development agencies (e.g., United States Agency for International Development, Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, etc.) use the achievement gaps identified by the OECD Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA) to propose wide-scale programs, which promote market ideologies, competition, and other neoliberal reforms, often presented as “best practices.” Yet, it was unclear how the interventions of international development agencies in post-Soviet education reforms were legitimized (Takala and Piattoeva, 2012). Takala and Piattoeva (2012) offer three possible explanations to explain the legitimization of international development assistance in the post-Soviet space, including (1) resetting the mindset from totalitarian ideology to new Western scripts, (2) introducing new systems and training professionals, (3) decreasing budgets for reform seen as justification for assistance. In the case of ideological replacement, textbook reforms replaced “old” Soviet practices with Western ones. The textbook climate of the 1990s was described as having “democracy and market fever” where teachers desired reforms in textbook publishing practices; however, there were “no established rules in emerging textbook markets” and “there were no established mechanisms (and very often no funds)” (Kovac and Sebart, 2004, p. 43). This led to the mediating role of international NGOs and development agencies, such as the World Bank and Open Society Foundations to play an important role not only in the production and funding of new textbooks, but also in addressing “crucial textbook
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publishing issues such as state monopolism and decentralization” (Kovac and Sebart, 2004, p. 44). In addition to textbook reforms, international organizations also offered assistance through training professionals as in the case of Armenian policymakers who were recommended to adopt modernized curriculum and teaching practices, to help facilitate Armenia’s transition to what experts suggested a “modern” (capitalistic) knowledge-based economy (UNESCO, 2014). And yet, while these transformations were implemented, Khachatryan et al., (2013) claim that there was no concrete understanding of the reform: “no valid evidence indicating the education system is moving toward a specific well-defined goal, and . . . no priorities identified that would result in improving the overall system” (p. 6). Such critiques reflect the logic of coloniality present in postSoviet knowledge production, or the post-Cold War East/West binary, where post-socialist reforms were expected to conform to “singular Western models, and abstract global universals . . . for understanding post-socialist transformations” (Silova et al., 2017, p. 82). From an outsider looking in, post-socialist education reforms were thus often interpreted in terms of global convergence (Baker and LeTendre, 2005). For example, scholars using world culture theory suggest that a global convergence implied a pattern of one global culture of schooling (Ramirez et al., 2006; for a critique see Silova and Rappleye, 2014; see Chapter 12). In CIE, the discussion of global educational trends has been polarized into either convergence or divergence—both perspectives taking for granted the assumption of global “sameness”—and thus implying that Westernization is the only trajectory available in post-socialist education contexts. In this context, world culture theorists understood the global convergence trends in education based on a narrow interpretation operating through a Western/North American approach, reproducing the idea of a homogenizing world society, and setting forth only one trajectory for post-socialist education contexts (for a critique see Carney et al., 2012). Such a dominant and dominating analytical approach omits—and often silences—the local interpretations and nuances, blocking the possibility of alternative understandings and interpretations of post-socialist education transformations. Moreover, it cancels historical continuities or changes that have started well before the so-called “transition” (Bockman, 2011; Millei and Imre, 2010), and disregards complex local conditions directing post-socialist transformations into many directions.
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION? Contesting Westernization blueprints: divergence and difference of post-socialist education transformations The old landscape is being re-interpreted and de-contextualized, while the newly constructed scenery answers new intentions and is continuously being constructed, both physically and mentally. —Czepczyn´ski, 2010, p. 129 When “statues began falling from their pedestals” (Verdery, 1999, p. 5), their spaces opened up to new ideological projects brought by a variety of international development agencies, ranging from large international organizations (e.g., OECD, the European Union, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, and United Nations agencies) to
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smaller non-governmental organizations (e.g., Save the Children, Chemonics, and Mercy Corps, etc.). Although the involvement of these organizations in education policy and practice was frequently presented as resembling almost a complete takeover of the former socialist space by the Westernization project (see the section above), there are alternative interpretations. Just as in the case of empty pedestals, the post-socialist education space became equally highly contested, which is reflected in two important dynamics. First, international development agencies—and the education reform agendas they promoted— were not as uniform as they may have appeared from the outside; instead, they were rife with conflicting and competing ideological projects. Second, many international development initiatives were strongly contested by local education stakeholders who skillfully redirected, modified, and sometimes subverted outside reform efforts. While the presence of neoliberal education reforms in the post-socialist education space has been strong, it is not entirely omnipresent. In addition to Western neoliberal projects unfolding in post-socialist education spaces, we also see the attempts of nonWestern donors competing for the sphere of influence in the area of education, including Asian donors (e.g., China, South Korea), Russia, and Turkey among many others. Niyozov and Dastambuev (2012) describe them as globalizers with intersecting interests: hardcore neoliberals, disguised anti-neoliberals, negotiators, and genuine anti-neoliberals from everywhere. Governments of Turkey, China, Russia, India, as well as the Aga Khan Foundation, and the Gülen Islamist Movement have been acting in a capacity of both channeling and contesting neoliberalism in Central Asian countries and the Caucasus. For example, with their strong presence in these post-Soviet countries, the Aga Khan Foundation and the Gülen Islamist Movement tried “to reshape neoliberalism through their particular Islamic ethical frameworks of dialog and synthesis of Islamic, Western, and socialist discourses” (Niyozov and Dastambuev, 2012, pp. 7–8). Seeing their educational activities as the means for retaliation against the missionary activities of “others,” the Gülen foundation has been actively expanding the number of Turkish schools both in Central Asia and beyond (Silova, 2009a; Yanik, 2004). Parallel to the Western efforts to erase everything Soviet in post-Soviet countries, Russia has been re-emerging as a donor organization in the field of education. As one of the new donors of the World Bank’s Fast Track Initiative (FTI),6 Russia has opened discussions for its role in future development assistance in post-Soviet countries. Russian Education Aid for Development (READ) Trust Fund has already appeared in various lowincome countries, including Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, with the ambitious goal to improve the quality of schooling (Takala and Piattoeva, 2012). Mkhoyan (2017) also writes about Russian “soft power” that has come to play in Armenia since 2000. Through opening various educational centers, offering school textbooks, and promoting Russian as one of the main languages of instruction, the Russian government has aimed to strengthen its ties and expand its role in the post-Soviet educational space. Its relationships with the Baltics states and Ukraine, however, are more complicated because of military concerns and political tensions. Policies of the global and regional donor organizations are not taken at face value at the local level by the national governments. Given the diversity of sociopolitical and
Fast Track Initiative (FTI) was launched in 2002 as a partnership between “donor” and “developing” countries to accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of universal primary education (World Bank, 2005). FTI is now serving to accelerate progress towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
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economic contexts in the former socialist spaces, education trajectories have differed significantly. The countries joining (or aspiring to join) the European Union tried to position themselves within European education spaces by aligning their education institutions within the European frameworks and therefore radically restructuring the Soviet foundations of their education systems. Other countries, such as Central Asian republics, insisted on maintaining many Soviet practices along with the creation of their new systems (Silova, 2009b). In addition, as the case of Tajikistan suggests, there is a substantial ideological divergence in how international agencies and local actors perceive schooling. Unlike the neoliberal approaches proposed by the World Bank and other international organizations, local policymakers, educators, and parents in Tajikistan and other countries see schooling more in social, spiritual, and cultural terms (see Niyozov and Bahry, 2006; Szakács, 2018 about the paradoxes of the institutionalization of new educational tropes in the post-socialist Romanian education context). As far as Kazakhstan is concerned, it has managed to become a donor-free country with its reform agenda, while pursuing international cooperation on its terms (Kalikova and Silova, 2008). It is not surprising, therefore, that the post-socialist countries responded differently to the “reform packages” offered to them by various global and regional donor organizations. In some cases, cultural legacies clashed with the expectations of the donor organizations and only those policies were borrowed, which resonated with the interests of the local actors, or suggested policies were translated and adapted to the local contexts from the very beginning, or changes were introduced at a later stage of the reform sometimes resulting in the full reverse of certain reforms. As Niyozov and Dastambuev (2012) point out, Central Asian policymakers and practitioners are not “helpless victims, but exhibit agency in reshaping what globalization offers” (p. 4). And finally, one could find the noticeable difference between the adoption rhetoric and actual implementation of these travelling policies, revealing the political nature of the education borrowing processes and the power of local actors in determining the outcomes (Djerasimovi´c , 2014; Gurova and Piattoeva, 2018; Silova, 2009b; Silova and Steiner-Khamsi, 2008; Steiner-Khamsi, 2004; Steiner-Khamsi and Stolpe, 2004). An excellent illustration of how different countries respond to seemingly identical reforms is the case of per capita financing reforms in two post-Soviet countries—Georgia and Latvia. As Janashia (2018) argues, while adopting the same financing policy, the two countries had different needs and priorities on their agenda. Georgia saw the new funding system as an effective instrument to promote transparency, effectiveness, and fair distribution of funds, while Latvia was trying to address its financial crisis by attracting international donor funding. As a result, both countries reframed the financing reform depending on their local needs. In this context, Western “best practices” are not the only powerful drivers behind the post-Soviet reforms; instead, local priorities and power dynamics play an equally if not more decisive role in shaping post-socialist trajectories. These dynamics have been widely captured and analyzed in several edited volumes, further revealing complex dynamics, contestations, and ambiguity of the post-socialist transformations (Chankseliani and Silova, 2018; Griffiths and Millei, 2013; Silova, 2010; Silova and Niyozov, 2019). More importantly, this research has directly challenged neoliberal globalization and World Culture frameworks, while “critically interrogating the nature of divergence and difference in the study of globalization in Comparative Education” (Silova, 2010, p. 4). Paying attention to the contestations of Western education reforms within the post-Soviet spaces thus enables us to create plural explanations for education transformations.
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Beyond singular interpretations: (re)writing pasts, presents, and futures The leftover landscapes of emptiness or silence, such as empty pedestals, can be meaningful only for those who dare or care to remember. —Czepczyn´ski, 2010, p. 74 While monuments may come and go as geopolitical powers shift over time, the landscapes around them keep memories—“mythologies, genealogies, as well as cultural, community, and personal histories” (Holtorf and Williams, 2006, p. 237)—which are inherited and passed down from one generation to another. Unlike monuments, memories cannot be easily removed, destroyed, or replaced by those in power, because memories are usually kept at home, rendered in folk songs and stories, or performed in rituals. We only need to “dare or care to remember.” Shifting the focus away from globalization and neoliberal education reform packages and their contestations in different local contexts, some scholars have focused on what lies outside of the global reforms in order to bring into focus a wide range of histories that enable us to see and (re)imagine education. As Silova et al. (2017) note, “rethinking and rewriting the socialist past(s) through new and multiple frames”—as opposed to the singular history constructed from the Cold War binary frameworks—reveals potential possibilities for imagining multiple futures (p. 85). This brings a post-socialist approach in conversation with the post- and decolonial research, both aiming to decenter Western hegemony in knowledge and subjectivity in an effort to produce a different “horizon of expectations,” one that is not dictated by a single way of life or a single political principle—whether progress, emancipation, or world culture expansion—but as a coexistence of different and non-hierarchical worldviews and experiences rooted in local and personal histories (Milleiet al., 2018). Building on the work of Walter Mignolo, Madina Tlostanova, and other decolonial scholars, Silova et al. (2017) and Silova et al., (2018), outline three possible strategies of delinking from the hegemonic knowledge production about education in post-socialist spaces. The first strategy aims to overcome singular histories constructed from the Cold War binary frameworks of the East/West divide in order to disrupt the linearity and singularity of post-socialist trajectories present in some comparative education research. This strategy entails “posting” socialism; that is, a rethinking of the socialist past through new and multiple frames that contribute to writing histories that run against the grain of the Cold War binary framework (Silova et al., 2017). This strategy is skillfully used by Yurchak (2006), which reveals the paradoxes of Soviet life through the eyes of the last Soviet generation. Drawing on ethnographic material (including personal diaries, memoirs, letters, interviews, photographs, jokes, and musical recordings as well as official publications of speeches, documents, newspaper articles, fiction, and film), Yurchak (2006) provides a compelling alternative to binary accounts of youth lives in the Soviet Union, showing how Soviet youth genuinely valued the ideals and realities of socialism but at the same time routinely transgressed the norms and reinterpreted the rules of the socialist state. In this context, youth acted as “the system’s authors” (Yurchak, 2006, p. 290) in their own right, creating their reality alongside the official authoritative scripts. In CIE and childhood studies, recent efforts of “posting” socialism include Millei’s (2013) research on teacher subjectivities in Hungarian preschools under socialism, Tesar’s (2013) analysis of children’s magazines published in Czechoslovakia, or Silova’s (2019) research on temporal and spatial socialization of Latvian children before, during, and after the Soviet regime, among others. Combined, these attempts of “posting” socialism avoid the stereotypical images of the socialist child as “an icon” of revolution or the
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subjectivity of a “traumatized victim of a repressive regime” (Silova et al., 2017, p. 87). They give way to more complex depictions of diverse childhoods, a richer understanding of educational settings and how children were fashioned and exercised various subjectivities and agencies with/in and against dominant discourses. The second strategy entails unsettling the established spatial partitions of the world through a careful re-mapping of the relations and highlighting the intertwined histories of “different worlds” (Silova et al., 2017). In the field of sociology, Bockman (2011) offers a fascinating example of neoliberalism not as a hegemonic project of the West, which was simply diffused into post-socialist societies, but rather as a hybrid body of knowledge, rationalities, and policies that developed through a decades-long, but quickly forgotten, transnational dialogue in heterogeneous networks of economists from West and East. In CIE, an example of this strategy could be found in Tröhler’s (2013; 2014) research on the Cold War legacy of the OECD and its central policy trends (e.g., standardization, statistical planning, educational accountability, large-scale comparative assessment), pointing to surprising similarities of these trends to the main pillars of socialist education. The statues themselves could tell some of the complicated history of post-socialist transformation. His research shows how policies commonly perceived as emanating from the West developed in a “symbolic relation to the parts of the world that since 1989, ironically, have been relocated to the receiving end of the global politics of educational borrowing and lending” (Silova et al., 2017, p. 90). Similar entanglements of the different “worlds” are also examined in Millei’s (2011) comparative research of early childhood education in socialist Hungary and neoliberal Australia and Piattoeva and Takala’s (2015) research on Russia as a new knowledge broker that moves education policies and practices from West to East and South, among others. Overall, such a relational approach to CIE research blurs the boundaries between different “worlds,” thus contributing to its “central intellectual project, that is, to explore the interconnections and transfers of educational ideas and ideals across spaces and times” (Silova et al., 2017, p. 90; see Cowen, 2006). Finally, the third strategy aims to reclaim our positions as “epistemic subjects who have both the legitimacy and the capacity to look at and interpret the world from our origins and lived realities” and methodological tools (Silova et al., 2017, p. 86). This includes recent biographic, autoethnographic, and collective biography research about socialist childhood and schooling by several comparative international education scholars (Bodovski, 2015; Fimyar and Kurakbayev, 2016; Silova et al., 2016). This research examines how childhood and schooling were constituted and experienced in different socialist contexts by discussing the complex subject positions that the authors themselves— as children under socialism—fashioned, inhabited, and exhibited. By using memories to foreground their personal lived experiences under socialism, these scholars speak against both scientific and political master narratives that dominate the space of post-socialist childhoods and effectively multiply the accounts of socialist childhood and history more broadly. Combined, these three strategies of delinking from the hegemonic knowledge production in comparative education—“posting” socialisms, highlighting relationalities between different “worlds,” and reclaiming authority as epistemic subjects—open spaces that are more inclusive of different perspectives, experiences, and voices in comparative education (Millei et al., 2018, p. 236; Silova et al., 2017; Tlostanova, 2012; Tlostanova, Thapar-Björkert, and Koobak, 2016). It is thus a move from Western universality to new horizons of pluriversality where multiple worldviews—and worlds—can coexist on a non-hierarchical basis.
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CONCLUSIONS Tearing down and erecting statues goes on all over the world, in times past as well as present; there is nothing specifically post-socialist about it. Because political order has something to do with both landscape and history, changing the political order, no matter where, often means changing the bronzed human beings who both stabilize the landscape and temporally freeze particular values in it. —Verdery, 1999, p. 6 As we conclude this brief “tour” of post-socialist spaces, we would like to draw the parallels—and further complicate the connections—between the movement of monuments and the shifts in CIE research. As Verdery (1999) argues, there is “nothing specifically post-socialist” about erecting and tearing down monuments during the periods of significant political change. While monuments temporarily fix particular political ideologies and cultural values in time, enabling researchers to quickly and superficially interpret official education policies and practices, what is going on in the liminal spaces around the fallen “bronzed human beings” often goes unnoticed by researchers. The intellectual space created by a post-socialist approach draws attention to these liminal spaces, bringing into focus multiple histories and complex conditions that extend beyond the dominant narratives. It also captures “the cultural interaction of the place, time, and society,” thus serving as “a litmus paper of the transformations” (Czepczyn´ski, 2010, p. 67). Dwelling in these liminal spaces—and carefully observing both the movements of “bronzed human beings” and the landscapes around them—effectively disrupts the perception of linearity and singularity of post-socialist education transformations, revealing multiple metamorphoses that create splintering effects. So why has this depth and diversity of understanding post-socialist education transformations not been more visible in comparative education research? Why has it been so readily subsumed by dominant globalization frameworks that view post-socialist transformations as simply residual? Here, we bring post-socialist studies into dialogue with post- and decolonial research to argue that much research about post-socialist education transformations has been framed in the colonial matrix of power, which continues to reify the symbolic foundations of Western (neo)liberalism through singular history writing and binary frameworks—East/West, socialism/capitalism, authoritarianism/ democracy—while simultaneously erasing difference and divergence that lies outside these binaries. When the West is used as a single yardstick for measuring post-socialist education transformations, it is not surprising that we can only see familiar patterns that immediately meet the eye, just as the Lenin monuments direct the attention of the onlooker. Yet, it is precisely in such very moments when our gaze becomes fixated on the elevated “monuments” that we need to pause and consider what may remain invisible (Carney et al., 2012; Silova et al., 2019; Silova and Rappleye, 2014). By (re)focusing our gaze on the liminal spaces around the “bronzed human beings,” we can begin to see multiple postsocialist education trajectories crisscrossing the landscape (Massey, 2005; Sobe, 2018)— mixing, fusing, contesting, energizing, or canceling each other.
FURTHER READING 1. Gawlicz, K., and Marcin Starnawski, M. (2018). Educational policies in Central and Eastern Europe: Legacies of state socialism, modernization aspirations and challenges of semiperipheral contexts. Policy Futures in Education, 16(4). [special issue].
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2. Griffiths, T. G., and Millei, Z. (Eds). (2013). Logics of socialist education: Engaging with crisis, insecurity and uncertainty. Dordrecht, Germany: Springer. 3. Huisman, J., Smolentseva, and A., Froumin, I. (2018). 25 years of transformations of higher education systems in post-Soviet countries: Reform and continuity. New York, NY: Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education. 4. Oleksiyenko, A., Zha, Q., Chirikov, I., and Li, J. (Eds.). (2018). International status anxiety and higher education: The Soviet legacy in China and Russia. Hong Kong: CERC/Springer. 5. Silova, I., Sobe, N., Korzh, A., and Kovalchuk, S. (Eds.). (2017). Reimagining utopias? Theory and method for educational research in post-socialist contexts. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
MINI CASE STUDY We would like to finish this chapter by presenting the case of Mongolia with its interesting post-socialist journey skillfully captured by Steiner-Khamsi and Stolpe in their book Educational Import: Local Encounters with Global Forces in Mongolia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and break-up with the “older brother” Russia, Mongolia engaged in transformation conversations with IMF, ADB, the World Bank, and quite a few NGOs. In this process, Mongolia was exposed to several educational reforms to which local authorities responded differently. Three structural adjustment reforms imposed by ADB are perfect examples of different policy encounters. Tuition-based higher education reform fully replaced Mongolia’s socialist practice of free education. In subsequent years, it was further strengthened by such follow-up reforms as deregulating higher education sector, reducing state involvement, and attracting the private sector. These reforms had sustained effects and fully changed the landscape of the higher education system in the country. Unlike this, the second ADB-recommended policy on decentralization of educational finance and governance did not live long. As a consequence of an unspoken disagreement about the definitions of democratic governance among the international donors and the Mongolian Government, the latter “drove a thick nail through the coffin of the decentralization policy” (Steiner-Khamsi and Stolpe, 2006, p. 100) by adopting a re-centralization law in 2002. Optimizing schools in rural areas (i.e., terminating grades 9 and 10 in small rural schools and placing continuing students in regional schools) was another dismantled reform. Although imposed as a “rationalization reform” aimed to use state funds more efficiently, the government had to respond to the boycott of parents, teachers, and principals and reverted to the previous practice. Mongolia’s import of learner-centered teaching and learning is an excellent example of the hybridization of the Western reform in local practice. Mongolian teachers, class monitors, and regular students indigenized Western student-centered approaches by adding hierarchical features to it. Also, their cultural constructions of “good teachers,” which were not necessarily aligned with the Western beliefs, countered the neoinstitutionalist assertion about the final destination of de-territorialized universal schooling. Finally, teacher voucher reforms for in-service education made a perfect case of strategically speaking the language of the donors and creating the illusion of implementing a non-existent reform. Although the teacher voucher decrees contained the language of choice and marketization and encouraged the participation of non-governmental and international organizations along with the public ones, the original intent was watered
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down at the implementation stage. Rather than allowing teachers to have a choice of professional development programs, the reform preserved the socialist practice of teacher education and created a nepotistic system for the benefit of principals, methodologists, and directors of educational centers. To sum up, Mongolia’s diverse and complex journey is a good illustration of postsocialist transformation shaped both by the active engagement of Western and nonWestern donor organizations and local-level resentment and recontextualization. Most importantly, the case of Mongolia shows that post-socialist transformation, even in the context of a single country, is not a linear process headed towards a single world culture. Instead, it is unique to the country’s political, cultural, and economic contexts in the preand post-socialist period.
REFERENCES Baker, D. P., and LeTendre, G. K. (2005). National differences, global similarities: World culture and the future of schooling. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bereday, G. Z. F. (1960). The changing Soviet school: The Comparative Education society field study in the U.S.S.R. Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press. Bockman, J. (2011). Markets in the name of socialism: The left-wing origins of neoliberalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bodovski, K. (2015). Across three continents: Reflections on immigration, education, and personal survival (American University Studies). New York, NY: Peter Lang. Boym, S. (2001). The future of nostalgia. New York, NY: Basic Books. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1970). Two worlds of childhood: U.S. and U.S.S.R. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation. Brooks, J., and Brooks, J. (2000). Thank you, comrade Stalin!: Soviet public culture from revolution to Cold War. New Jersey, NJ: Princeton University Press. Carney, S., Rappleye, J., and Silova, I. (2012). Between faith and science: World culture theory and Comparative Education. Comparative Education Review, 56(3), 366–393. Carnoy, M. (2016). Educational policies in the face of globalization: Whither the nation state? In K. Mundy, A. Green, B. Lingard, and A. Verger (Eds.), The handbook of global education policy (pp. 27–42). London, UK: John Wiley & Sons. Chankseliani, M., and Silova I. (2018). Reconfiguring education purposes, policies and practices during post-socialist transformations: Setting the stage. In M. Chankseliani, and I. Silova (Eds.), Comparing post-socialist transformation: Problems, policies, and practices in education (pp. 7–26). Oxford, UK: Symposium Books. Cowen, R. (2006). Acting comparatively upon the educational world: Puzzles and possibilities. Oxford Review of Education, 32(5), 561–573. Cummings, S. N. (2013). Leaving Lenin: Elites, official ideology and monuments in the Kyrgyz Republic. Nationalities Papers, 41(4), 606–621. Czepczyn´ski, M. (2010). Interpreting post-socialist icons: From pride and hate towards disappearance and/or assimilation. Human Geographies, 4(1), 67–78. Djerasimovi´c , S. (2014). Formation of the civic education policy as a discursive project in post-2000 Serbia. Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (Order No. 10658038) Eklof, B. (2005). Introduction—Russian education: The past in the present. In B. Eklof, L. E. Holmes, and V. Kaplan (Eds.), Educational reforms in post-Soviet Russian: Legacies and prospects (pp. 1–20). London, UK & New York, NY: Frank Cass.
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Fimyar, O. (2010). Policy why(s): Policy rationalities and the changing logic of educational reform in postcommunist Ukraine. In I. Silova (Ed.), Post-socialism is not dead: (Re)reading the global in Comparative Education (pp. 61–91). Bingley, UK: Emerald. Fimyar O., and Kurakbayev K. (2016). “Soviet” in teachers’ memories and professional beliefs in Kazakhstan: Points for reflection for reformers, international consultants and practitioners. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 29(1), 86–103. Goodman, B. A., and Karabassova, L. (2018). Bottom up and top-down: Comparing language in education policy in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. In M. Chankseliani and I. Silova (Eds.), Comparing post-Socialist transformation: Problems, policies, and practices in education (pp. 147–166). Oxford, UK: Symposium Books. Grek, S. (2009). Governing by numbers: The Pisa “effect” in Europe. Journal of Education Policy, 24(1), 23–37. Griffiths, T. G., and Millei, Z. (Eds). (2013). Logics of socialist education: Engaging with crisis, insecurity and uncertainty. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Gurova G., and Piattoeva N. (2018). A postsocialist perspective on audit culture: Changing practices and subjectivities of school teachers in a Russian region. In R. Normand, M. Liu, L. Carvalho, D. Oliveira, and L. LeVasseur (Eds.), Education policies and the restructuring of the educational profession. Perspectives on rethinking and reforming education (pp. 173–187). Singapore, Australia: Springer. Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, cyborgs and women: The reinvention of nature. London, UK: Free Association Books. Holmes, L. E. (2005). School and schooling under Stalin, 1931–1953. In B. Eklof, L. E. Holmes, and V. Kaplan (Eds.), Educational reforms in post-Soviet Russian: legacies and prospects (pp. 56–101). London, UK & New York: Frank Cass. Holtorf, C., and Williams, H. (2006). Landscapes & memories. In D. Hicks (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to historical archaeology (pp. 235–254). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Janashia, S. (2018). Introduction of per capita funding model of finance in the post-Soviet countries: the cases of Latvia and Georgia. In M. Chankseliani and I. Silova (Eds.), Comparing post-socialist transformation: Problems, policies, and practices in education (pp. 63–84). Oxford, UK: Symposium Books. Kalikova, S., and Silova I. (2008). From educational brokers to local capacity builders. In I. Silova and G. Steiner-Khamsi (Eds.), How NGOs react: Globalization and education reform in the Caucasus, Central Asia and Mongolia (pp.137–156). Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press. Karp, A. (2006). The Cold War in the Soviet school: A case study of mathematics education. European Education, 38(4), 23–43. Khachatryan, S., Petrosyan, S., and Terzian, G. (2013). Assessment of teacher professional development and educational context in the content of general education reforms in Armenia. Armenia: Open Society Foundations. Kirschenbaum, L. (2001). Small comrades: Revolutionizing childhood in Soviet Russia, 1917– 1932. New York, NY: Routledge Falmer. Kovac, M., and Sebart, M. K. (2004). Where East meets West: Controversies in textbook publishing in small former communist countries. Publishing Research Quarterly, 20(3), 40–52. Lane, D. (1992). Soviet society under perestroika. London, UK: Routledge. Massey, D. (2005). For space. London, UK: Sage. Matossian, M. K. (1962). The impact of Soviet policies in Armenia. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Mayakovsky, V. (1985). Selected verse (volume I). Raduga Publishers.
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Mkhoyan, A. (2017). Soft power, Russia and the former Soviet states: A case study of Russian language and education in Armenia. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 23(6), 690–704. Millei, Z., and Imre, R. (2010). Re-thinking transition through ideas of “community” in Hungarian kindergarten curriculum. In I. Silova (Ed.), Post-socialism is not dead: (Re)reading the global in Comparative Education (pp. 125–154). International perspectives on education and society (volume 14). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Millei, Z. (2011). Governing through early childhood curriculum, “the child,” and “community” ideologies of socialist Hungary and neoliberal Australia. European Education, 43(1), 33–55. Millei, Z. (2013). Memory and kindergarten teachers’ work: Children’s needs before the needs of the socialist state. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 11(2), 170–193. Millei Z., Silova I., and Piattoeva N. (2018) Towards decolonizing childhood and knowledge production. In I. Silova, N. Piattoeva, and Z. Millei (Eds.), Childhood and schooling in (post) socialist societies. Palgrave Macmillan. Mundy, K., and Verger, A. (2015). The World Bank and the global governance of education in a changing world order. International Journal of Educational Development, 40, 9–18. Niyozov, S., and Bahry, S. (2006). Challenges to education in Tajikistan: The need for a research based solution. In J. Earnest and D. Treagust (Eds.), Educational change and reconstruction in societies in transition: International perspectives (pp. 211–32). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers. Niyozov, S., and Dastambuev, N. (2012). Exploiting globalization while being exploited by it: Insights from post-Soviet education reforms in Central Asia. Comparative and International Education/Éducation Comparée et Internationale, 41(3). Perry, L. (2009). American academics and education for democracy in post-communist Europe. In N. Sobe (Ed.), American post-conflict educational reform: From the Spanish war to Iraq (pp. 169–188). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Piattoeva, N., and Takala, T. (2015). Russia as a returning donor—Four roles in development assistance to education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 13(3), 388–410. Ramirez, F. O., Meyer, J. W., and Lerch, J. (2016). World society and the globalization of educational policy. In K. Mundy, A. Green, B. Lingard, and A. Verger (Eds.), The handbook of global education policy (pp. 43–63). London, UK: John Wiley & Sons. Sanders, T. (1997). Cold War and the politics of Comparative Education: The case of divided Germany. Presented at the Annual Meeting of AERA, Chicago, IL, March 24–28, 1997. Silova, I., and Steiner-Khamsi, G. (Eds.). (2008). How NGOs react: Globalization and education reform in the Caucasus, Central Asia and Mongolia. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press. Silova, I. (2009a). Reclaiming the empire in post-Soviet Asia: Turkish education initiatives towards Central Asia and Azerbaijan. In L. Chisolm and G. Steiner-Khamsi (Eds.), Southsouth cooperation in education and development (pp. 173–191). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Silova, I. (2009b). Varieties of educational transformations: The post-socialist states of Central/ SouthEastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. In R. Cowen and A. Kazamias (Eds.), International handbook of Comparative Education (pp. 295–320). The Netherlands: Springer Publishers. Silova, I. (2010). Rediscovering post-socialism in Comparative Education. In I. Silova (Ed.), Post-socialism is not dead: (Re)reading the global in Comparative Education (pp. 1–24). Bingley, UK: Emerald. Silova, I., and Rappleye, J. (2014). Beyond the world culture debate in Comparative Education: Critiques, alternatives and a noisy conversation. Globalisation Societies and Education, 13(1), 1–7.
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CHAPTER NINE
Gender in Comparative and International Education Gender as Noun, Adjective, and Verb LAURA WANGSNESS WILLEMSEN AND PAYAL SHAH
INTRODUCTION Scholars have focused on gender within comparative and international education (CIE) since the field’s inception. As far back as 1817, Marc-Antoine Jullien (1775–1848) examined girls’ education and its implications for relationships between women and men (Janigan and Masemann, 2008). In the ensuing years, as feminist and development theories both gained greater influence, the field has expanded to attend to a wide variety of gender-related issues, such as access, inclusion, pedagogies, parity, equality, curricula, equity, intersectionality, masculinities, agency, empowerment, and methodologies. Yet, these developments have been nonlinear and contested: this chapter will demonstrate how some conceptualizations of gender and education popularized nearly fifty years ago remain in use today, alongside and in occasional tension with newer conceptualizations. At the same time, the emphasis on education for girls and women in relation to larger social, political, economic, and material contexts—first evidenced as an area worthy of attention some two hundred years ago by Jullien— continues to be taken up anew in the current work of scholars, practitioners, and policymakers alike. In short, gender work in the field of CIE has both deep roots and new, evolving branches. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce several influential perspectives on gender within the field of CIE. We focus on the developments within the last fifty years, when feminist thought began to alter the shape of the social sciences and when CIE began to more closely intersect with international development work. To do so, we draw on Unterhalter’s (2007) observation that the term “gender” has been variously used as a noun, adjective, and verb in the field of CIE and the closely related field of international development. Even as “gender” continues to be used all three ways, each usage—each part of speech—can be seen as corresponding to the development of different theoretical paradigms at the nexus of gender, education, and development. In the following chapter, we discuss how the initial movement to center gender in the field—the Women in Development (WID) movement—drew upon a notion of gender as 167
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noun. The WID movement made inroads in securing greater access to education for females worldwide and remains prevalent within today’s popular imagination and discourse. This perspective has not historically attended to the distinction between gender as a social construct and sex as a biological category; rather, it has emphasized increasing opportunities for women and girls as part of a push for economic growth. WID was followed by the Women and Development (WAD) approach which also conceptualized gender as a noun while critiquing WID’s reliance on modernization theory. WAD instead sought to recognize women as active participants in the development process, drawing from neo-Marxism (see Chapter 14) and dependency theory (Barriteau et al., 2000; see Chapter 5). Like WID, WAD historically viewed women as a class, flattening differences across and within groups of women. In response to WID and WAD, the Gender and Development (GAD) perspective moves beyond a focus solely on women, and instead focuses on the relationship between men and women and the social systems and structures that condition these relationships. GAD theorists view gender as an adjective as well as a noun, and point out that the gendered nature of the structures, institutions, practices, pedagogies, etc. that comprise education and development often disadvantage females. Even as GAD scholars have emphasized the need to transform education for greater gender equity and empowerment, much of their work has remained focused on improving wellbeing for women and girls worldwide. In contrast, the final group of scholars, those who also conceptualize gender as a process of becoming—a verb—extend gender work beyond the historic emphasis on girls and women to attend to more categories and processes of meaning and identity, such as sexuality, gender identity, and the intersections with race, class, situatedness within global systems of power, and knowledge production, etc. These scholars draw on a collection of genderrelated and emancipatory theories including queer theory, post-colonial theory, and theories of intersectionality. We employ this grammatical framework to examine these approaches to gender in the hopes of historicizing and enlivening their contributions within the field of CIE.
OVERVIEW AND APPLICATION TO COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION Gender the noun: WID emphasizes females’ access to education and development The first gender-focused movement to influence the field of CIE, the WID movement, was established within the related field of international development. Within this framework, gender is conceptualized as a noun, is typically synonymous with the category of biological sex, and its usage implies a focus on a homogenous typology of women and their inclusion in international development efforts. At the time of WID’s emergence in the 1960s, a leading theory of international development was modernization theory (see Chapter 4), which assumed that societies were evolving from “traditional” toward “modern,” whereby “modern” societies were conceptualized as similar to European societies with “more rational forward-looking human subjects” (Unterhalter, 2009, p. 782). The underpinnings of modernization theory and its related movement of WID would soon come to be critiqued as Euro-centric and neocolonial. Although modernization was understood as a predetermined, linear process in this view, it was also thought that modernization required investment. Citizens of developing societies
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were viewed by development practitioners and theorists as requiring training to become more economically productive and achieve modernity (Inkeles, 1973). Human capital theory (see Chapter 4), which is associated with modernization theory, posits that “the population must have the requisite skills and knowledge—human capital—to participate in the new economic environment” (Vavrus, 2003, p. 27). Efforts at development via investment in human capital, including through education and training, were primarily aimed at developing men’s economic capacity, despite the fact that many women had been gaining access to fuller participation in public life, including the paid labor market. Nevertheless, economists and development practitioners gave little consideration to women’s potential roles in development at that time, for, as Vavrus and Richey (2003) point out, “it was assumed that once men attuned to ‘modern,’ that is, Western, forms of political, economic, and social organization, women would naturally follow along” (p. 8). This assumption was upended by the 1970 publication of economist Ester Boserup’s (1910–1999) seminal Women’s Role in Economic Development, which pointed to how females were marginalized by development schemes that ignored how women did the bulk of the agricultural work (Unterhalter, 2005). Boserup’s (1970) critique was revelatory, spurring a host of initiatives, practices, and policies aimed at including women in development practices that came to be known as the WID movement. The push by WID to include women and girls in expanding economic, political, and educational opportunities rested on the assumption that increased access to the marketplace via education will unleash the latent economic potential of females, thus helping drive development and modernization as conceptualized in a neoliberal, capitalist framework. WID, an approach still in use within international development and CIE, therefore, offers an inherently functionalist rationale for female education. Methodologically, the WID perspective tends to focus on studies that measure the contributions that women make to the economy through inclusion in the development process. This primarily economic perspective undergirds much of the academic and practical research that informs policymaking at the international (e.g., the World Bank) and national levels. Within CIE, research and policy from a WID perspective have historically emphasized improving educational access for girls and women in order to achieve gender parity (i.e., equal numbers of males and females) in an effort to strengthen women and girls’ economic participation. This emphasis is bolstered by a significant amount of related research that quantifies, typically at the state level, various tangible, often instrumental, benefits of schooling for females in relation to other development outcomes. Work from the WID approach has documented the returns on investing in female education in areas, such as more productive farming, delayed marriage, and childbirth (Lloyd, 2005), a reduction in HIV rates (Fylkesnes, 2001), and higher wages with each year of schooling (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos, 2004), among others. Herz and Sperling’s (2004) work is an example of a WID approach in that they quantify rates of return for girls’ schooling including higher wages, faster economic growth, decreases in family size, etc., while at the same time identifying barriers to girls’ schooling, such as insufficient numbers of latrines and female teachers, etc. Furthermore, they identify strategies to expand educational access including decentralization, public sector reform, and increased reliance on NGO partnerships to deliver educational services, all of which are well-aligned with neoliberal goals of reduced state involvement. WID’s perspective of the marketplace as “the ideal arbiter of resources and the harbinger of social good” (Sharma, 2008, p. 16) appeals to many governmental, non-governmental, and multilateral development organizations that have neoliberal underpinnings as well as
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for-profit corporations. As such, the WID approach to gender and education has played an influential role in the creation of major international campaigns and policies; for example Education for All (EFA), a UN-backed initiative that, among other targets, aimed to achieve gender parity and equality in education. WID-based critiques of discriminatory educational practices and policies have greatly informed both the World Bank and United Nations policies (Unterhalter, 2005; 2007). The straightforward conceptualization of the relationships between gender, schooling, and development inherent in a WID perspective lends itself well to the creation of compelling narratives of empowerment through education, as evidenced in corporate campaigns, such as Nike’s Girl Effect. In the nearly fifty years since its inception, the WID approach has proven effective in raising awareness of female marginalization (Shah, 2016) and mobilizing diverse groups of stakeholders to enact policies and practices that have in fact enrolled many more girls in school around the world. The WID perspective on gender and education continues to hold powerful mainstream appeal today.
Gender is still a noun: WAD bridging from WID to GAD Many have critiqued WID as placing value only on women’s productive capabilities and viewing gender through colonial, Eurocentric lenses (Unterhalter, 2005). Among the first critiques of WID to take shape is the related, yet distinct, perspective of Women and Development, or WAD, which seeks to redress the blanket application of Western women’s experiences to “Third World Women” as found in WID-related gender and development work. This critique mirrors—and arises from—similar critiques of and within feminist thought at the time in which considerations of race, socioeconomics, and culture problematized the notion of a “universal woman.” This resulted in new forms of multiracial feminism in which women of color—for example, the Black feminists of The Combahee River Collective (1979)—led a movement “characterized by its international perspective, its attention to interlocking oppressions, and its support of coalition politics” (Thompson, 2002, p. 337). In addition to multicultural feminist influences, the WAD perspective also draws on neo-Marxist (see Chapter 14), dependency theories (see Chapter 5), and socialist thought to argue for the importance of privileging the perspectives of women from the Global South. WAD theorists contend that the “perspective of poor and oppressed women provides a unique and powerful vantage point” (Sen and Grown, 1987, p. 23) from which to examine development policies, practices, and strategies that have been ineffective in ensuring women are able to meet their basic needs. Through the amplification of marginalized women’s voices, WAD activists argue, gaps might be bridged between the micro and the macro, between women’s lived experiences with domestic, economic, and reproductive work, and those policies that seek to empower them. A prominent example drawing on a WAD approach is the work of Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), a group of activists, researchers, and policymakers founded in Bangalore, India in 1984 that continues to this day. Founding DAWN members Sen and Grown (1987) state that “it is the experiences lived by poor women throughout the Third World in their struggles to ensure the basic survival of their families and themselves that provide the clearest lens for an understanding of development processes” (p. 10). By centering Third World women’s experiences, DAWN has sought to make explicit the connections between issues such as sexual violence or a dearth of dignified work opportunities and those development-related policies that produce or perpetuate these issues. Doing so, they reason, can also strengthen local-level participation,
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thereby addressing the too-often top-down and ineffective nature of many development schemes. DAWN is characteristic of a WAD approach, and distinct from a WID approach, in that it draws on socialist and neo-Marxist insights to challenge the capitalist premises of those development strategies that promote marketization or mechanization, noting how women are negatively impacted by such schemes. This further exemplifies how WAD approaches, in contrast to WID approaches, make incursions into examining more systemic sources of women’s oppression. As such, WAD may be viewed as a conceptual bridge to a GAD approach and exempt from some of the criticism that is aimed at WID. WAD perspectives have not been as influential as WID perspectives within CIE, in part because WAD development work has not been as focused on education. For example, although Sen and Grown (1987) theorize extensively on issues from agriculture to militarization, they give comparatively little attention to the possible roles of education in development processes. Indeed, they frame education as a consciousness-raising tool useful for challenging traditional gender norms, yet they give little indication as to how this may occur other than to suggest the use of “institutional education and mass movements” (Sen and Grown, 1987, p. 77). Furthermore, it is not uncommon for WAD perspectives to be conflated with WID (or at times GAD) despite being rooted in multiracial feminist, socialist, neo-Marxist, and anti-colonialist thought in contrast to WID’s roots within modernization theory, neoliberal rationalism, empiricism, and Eurocentric thought. Differences aside, both perspectives seek to include women in development processes chiefly aimed at overcoming poverty; both approaches attend to education in instrumentalist ways, situating it as but one area of focus within a larger economic development agenda; and finally, both perspectives remain rooted in a notion of gender as a noun which is nearly synonymous with the biological category of female. Such a conceptualization of gender has been critiqued as reductive, static, and heteronormative, critiques that will be further explored in subsequent sections. Other critics, specifically of WID, further contend this approach does not sufficiently attend to systems-level social, political, or economic sources of inequality. Rather, in its zeal to promote access to education and quantify the outcomes of girls’ education as means of development and modernization, WID-based scholarship and policies within CIE are seen as overlooking existing schooling systems’ complicity in producing and perpetuating complex structures of oppression (DeJaeghere, 2015; Unterhalter, 2005; Vavrus and Richey, 2003), something WAD attempts to address, but inadequately so with regard to education. In short, despite WID’s widespread influence and appeal, the approach is critiqued as conceptually insufficient for addressing and transforming gendered systems of oppression within education and development, which is the focus of GAD, the next perspective on gender within CIE that we examine.
Gender the adjective: GAD theorists emphasize transforming education for gender equity In contrast to the WID and WAD approaches’ emphasis on increasing access to education, the Gender and Development (GAD) approach highlights the need to transform the gendered institutions which comprise systems of education and development. This notion of gender extends beyond sex as a biological category toward gender as a social construct that is produced within larger systems and relations (Unterhalter, 2005; Vavrus and Richey, 2003). Gender is thus an adjective, whereby schools, practices, policies, pedagogies, systems, institutions, and relations are inherently gendered, meaning they are
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rooted in various concepts of gender, many of which are viewed as oppressive. As such, work from a GAD perspective within CIE has been focused on advancing gender equality and equity within and through education, going beyond the right to education (Subrahmanian, 2005), as is typical within the WID emphasis. GAD scholars, therefore, examine what happens within various educational spaces and implications for relations and rights beyond these spaces. In this way, GAD influenced scholarship shifts from the macro-level emphasis of WID toward meso-level and micro-level analyses. While WID can be characterized as primarily an economic approach underpinned by modernization theory, a GAD approach draws on critical feminist theories advanced by scholars such as Hartsock (1983), Haraway (1988), and Mohanty (1998) to attend to issues of power, knowledge, gendered roles, and norms (Moser, 1993), as well as social, political, and economic structures, often with an increased emphasis on contextualization. This focus developed directly from two sources. First, the GAD perspective arises from diverse women’s organizations’ efforts at re-conceptualizing gender, development, and notions of female empowerment (Unterhalter, 2005) and is thus similar to WID and WAD in that it responds to and grows from development work, albeit more critically than WID. At the same time, GAD approaches have also drawn from notions and discourses of human rights, many of which have Western conceptual roots. DeJaeghere (2015) describes: “while GAD scholars have been concerned with how structures of oppression affect women differently in different contexts, the linkage with a rights discourse shifted the approach to one that assumed universality of gender oppression through institutions” (p. 5). There is, therefore, a tension within GAD between localization and contextualization on the one hand, and more universalist notions of rights on the other. As will be examined shortly, this tension is rooted in resistance to and expressions of coloniality. A recurrent focus within the GAD perspective has been conceptualizing and advocating for increased female empowerment (Shah, 2016; Unterhalter, 2005), a focus indicative of GAD’s roots in both global women’s movements and human rights frameworks. Despite decades of practitioners and scholars theorizing aspects, processes, dimensions, units of analysis, and measurements of female empowerment, there remains no agreed-upon definition. For example, Rowlands’ (1995) work draws from feminist and post-structural perspectives to divide power into four distinct forms and frames empowerment as being aimed at “undoing negative social constructions, so that the people affected come to see themselves as having the capacity and right to act and have influence” (pp. 102–103). She also states the importance of collective empowerment, as do other GAD theorists (Kabeer, 1999; Monkman et al., 2008). Stromquist’s work (1995; 2002) further delineates empowerment as a process involving multiple dimensions that changes thoughts, emotions, power, and economics. Such conceptualizations, attending to larger social structures, individual agency, and intrinsic notions of empowerment, move beyond the instrumentalism and economic emphasis of WID. Among the most influential theorists of empowerment associated with GAD is Kabeer (1999), whose work conceptualizing empowerment has been taken up repeatedly within CIE and in development practice (e.g., UNGEI). Kabeer (1999) defines empowerment as “the expansion in people’s ability to make strategic life choices in a context where this ability was previously denied to them” (p. 437). Thus, empowerment is a process in which: i) resources (material, human or social) combine with ii) individual or collective agency toward iii) valued goals, or achievements (Kabeer, 1999). She argues that the measurement of empowerment must take the three interrelated, indivisible constructs into account. Her conceptualization is characteristic of the GAD scholars’ recurrent
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interest in the interplay between macro-level structures and individual and collective agency. The GAD approach’s emphasis on structure and agency and on conceptualizing and measuring empowerment as well as gender equity, has significantly shaped scholarship at the nexus of education, gender, and development. Among the most visible shifts within CIE scholarship is a movement from the frequent state-level measurement associated with WID scholarship toward a prioritization of the local. This has entailed community, institutional, group, and individual level analysis that may employ more qualitative methodologies rooted in interpretivist and critical epistemologies. This shift is evident in a proliferation of studies examining education’s various processes, pedagogies, and practices within programs, schools, and movements worldwide. Narrowing in on schooling, a number of qualitative studies drawing on various GADrelated conceptualizations have examined the social, material, political, and economic realities of life within school for young people, and particularly young women, in an effort to promote increased educational quality. One strand of such scholarship, standing in contrast to WID assumptions of schooling, examines the diverse ways in which schooling is oppressively gendered. Ames’ (2005) work in Peru, Sanou and Aikman’s (2005) work in Mali, and Thomas and Rugambwa’s (2011) work in Tanzania, are but a few examples of qualitative studies that highlight the limitations of schooling to promote gender equity or empowerment. Other studies, such as Holmarsdottir et al.,’s (2011) work in Southern Sudan and South Africa simultaneously reveal constraints and possibilities of schooling to promote empowerment. Yet, another group of scholars such as Muhanguzi et al., (2011) and Willemsen et al., (2016) focus on secondary schools as sites in which the production, perpetuation, and policing of sexuality and gender relations occur. Such GAD-influenced scholarship has opened up an increased amount of attention toward understanding masculinities,1 and in this way, GAD has ventured beyond the WID related conflation of gender with female. Another strand of scholarship examines programs and schools with explicit empowerment missions in an effort to better understand the potential of schooling to promote gender equity and empowerment. Among these are Murphy-Graham’s (2008; 2012) examination of SAT, a secondary program in Honduras that seeks to disrupt patriarchal power structures through innovative content and pedagogical approaches. Shah’s (2011; 2015; 2016) work on the KGBV Residential Primary School in India similarly highlights a program that intentionally challenges hierarchical approaches in an effort to support girls’ empowerment, as does Willemsen and DeJaeghere’s (2015) and Willemsen’s (2016) work at Sasema Secondary School in Tanzania. Even as this scholarship examines women’s and girls’ conceptualizations of empowerment, it also focuses on ways to change schooling in terms of social relations to become more anti-oppressive; for example through the use of student-centered pedagogies, peer and adult mentorship, sex education, and life skills instruction. Critics have pointed out that while the GAD approach has advanced understandings of gender inequality within CIE, it has thus far been less able to catalyze action at a policy level than the more straight-forward WID approach. Others note GAD’s Western lineage and critique the continued centering of Eurocentric notions of rights and empowerment.
1 See, for example, masculinities work in South Africa including Bhana (2009), Bhana and Pattman (2011), and Morrell et al., (2012).
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Still, other critics of GAD point out that this work does not go far enough in deconstructing dominant discourses equating gender with female, and that it, therefore, reifies the male– female binary inherent in the notion of gender as a noun. GAD notions of gender, despite going beyond WID’s with regard to the application to institutions and systems, are nevertheless critiqued as reductive and insufficiently attending to intersections of race, socio-economic status, sexuality, ethnicity, etc. Indeed, the GAD-related concept of gender as an adjective, while more nuanced than the WID-related notion of gender as a noun, is likely insufficient for understanding the complexity and fluidity of subjectivities or the processes involved in the gendering of institutions, systems, and individuals, all of which we turn to examine now.
Gender the verb: The posts disrupt categories and examine gendering processes In addition to the WID, WAD, and GAD movements, feminist scholars within CIE draw from post-structural and post-colonial perspectives to provide further critiques of development practices that serve to universalize notions, such as “third world women,” “development,” and “childhood” (Unterhalter, 2005). In contrast to the WID, WAD, and GAD approaches, which primarily grew out of development practice, post-structural and post-colonial approaches emerged out of academic, social critique, for example those advanced by scholars such as Abu-Lughod (2001) and Moya (2001), and others who will be discussed shortly. The post-structuralist approach conceptualizes gender as a verb; where, drawing on the insight of feminist philosopher Butler (2006), gender is seen as a constantly performed and negotiated process through which one can deconstruct the existence of an objective, reliable, and universal foundation of knowledge and truth. Post-structuralists seek to deessentialize the “binaries, hierarchies, categories, tables, grids, and complex classification schemes that are said to reflect an innate, intrinsic order in the world” (St. Pierre, 2000, p. 480). Gender becomes one of the often essentialized processes which post-structuralists seek to complicate and expand; conceptualizing gender as a fluid and shifting process of identification in tension with the fixed structures noted by GAD analysists (Unterhalter, 2005). For example, many post-structural feminists take an intersectional approach to analyzing identity categories—recognizing that all identity categories, such as race, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, wellness, etc., must be considered in relation to one another. The belief here is that all individuals exist at the “intersection” (Crenshaw, 1997) of multiple, often conflicting, fluid categories. An example of work attentive to these ever-fluid intersections is Francis’ (2014) life story study of one transgender man’s negotiations of masculinity within the rural educational space in which he is a teacher. Drawing on queer and masculinities theories (see Chapter 23), this study examines the gender performances of a self-identified “lesbian man” to chip away at prevailing notions of masculinity, rurality, and gender in South Africa. Similarly, Tamale’s (2011) work on African sexualities is rooted in—and celebratory of—intersectional complexity. She advocates for “[closing] the gap between different voices demanding justice and equality, celebrating the infinite possibilities of our sexual, social, economic and political beings” toward transformation (Tamale, 2011, p. 4). Part of the deconstruction process in post-structuralist analysis involves explicit attention to systems, structures, and processes that often produce and reproduce the multiplicity of hierarchies that govern our social world. Focus is on the systems that manipulate, dismiss,
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and oppress all people, but in particular individuals who occupy multiple locations of oppression, of which feminist post-structuralists see gender as significant. Post-structuralists focus attention on the themes of language, discourse, power, and resistance to question and deconstruct systems, structures, and relations within society. They seek to make visible the ways that these themes operate to “produce very real, material, and damaging structures in the world” (St. Pierre, 2000, p. 481). In addition to revealing how processes of marginalization function, feminist post-structuralist scholars seek to critique this process of marginalization which has had resonance with a variety of activist political movements (e.g., queer, Dalit, and “Third World women”) around the globe. Within CIE, post-structural perspectives tend to problematize schools as sites that marginalize and diminish the power of local, indigenous, and nondominant knowledges (Unterhalter, 2005). One strand of feminist post-structuralism in CIE draws from postcolonial theory rooted in the humanities. Theorists who fall under this strand critique the Eurocentric perspectives of gender, education, and development which form the base of WID, WAD, and even the GAD perspectives. For example, post-colonial feminists, such as Mohanty (2003) contend that the emergence of a Third World women’s feminist politics grew out of colonialism and capitalism where “systemic socioeconomic and ideological processes position the peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America, Middle East, and ‘minority’ populations in the U.S. and Europe” (p. 44) in a disadvantaged relationship with the state. This Third World feminist politics seeks to “pivot the center” (i.e., Europe and the United States) and illuminate the complex ground of the “intersecting lines of power and resistance” (Mohanty, 2003, p. 42) that constitute the world as all people occupy it. Thus, this form of feminist politics explicitly challenges and re-conceptualizes the interrelated histories of colonialism, capitalism, race, and gender. One of the primary contributions of post-structural and post-colonial feminist perspectives to CIE comes in the form of research methodology. Drawing upon the tradition of deconstruction, research within this perspective explicitly seeks to broaden the epistemological frames with which we engage in the research process. As a part of this perspective, the posts shift from the WID, WAD, and GAD focus on gender as an object of study toward using feminism as an onto-epistemological lens. For example, postcolonialists question the traditional knowledge production process and the colonial gaze often involved in research. Examples of this work can be found in the 2017 special issue of Comparative Education Review, edited by Takayma et al., (2017), in which various authors seek to show ways of working beyond the colonial legacies that still dominate the field of CIE. For example, Stein (2017) engages in epistemic reflexivity on the history and politics of curriculum internationalization in higher education. She traces the ways in which Western academic institutions act as the key sites of academic knowledge production through their understandings of internationalization. The studies in this issue combine various qualitative and decolonial methodologies with the goal of decentering Eurocentric knowledge construction. An additional example highlighting post-structural and post-colonial feminist research in CIE can be found in Baily et al.,’s (2015) chapter in the Annual Review of Comparative and International Education. This chapter references articles that pay attention to the geopolitics of knowledge and challenge the traditional epistemological frames used in CIE research (Ghaffar-Kucher, 2014; Khurshid, 2014; Moeller, 2013; Shah, 2015). In disrupting the “colonial gaze” with which much research in CIE is conducted, many of these scholars draw upon the work of such feminists as Butler (2006), Mohanty (2003), and Spivak (1988), and root their analysis in the feminist epistemological tenets of
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reflexivity, authority, voice, and the politics and hierarchies of knowledge production and representation. This perspective critiques the modern institution of schooling as a transformative and empowering space and illuminates the complex and conflicting ways that individuals express their subjectivities as educated individuals. Another significant arena of feminist post-structural and post-colonial work in CIE focuses around defining the Third World, Third World women, and in particular the framing of the Third World girl. Scholars in this arena critique the assumptions embedded in international development agendas that position girls from the Third World as “disempowered” and reinforce current geopolitical relations of power. From this perspective, scholars illuminate how girls in the global South are seen as the ideal sites of intervention by international development initiatives, as their “empowerment” is believed to lead to other development goals, such as increasing economic productivity and interrupting intergenerational poverty. They attend to the cultural production of a certain “girlhood” that leads to the “girl-powering” of development (Lesko et al., 2015). Within this research area, girls have become the subjects of inquiry across a range of domains, including popular music and film, international development organization statements (e.g., UNICEF, UNGEI, and UNESCO, etc.), academic scholarship and contemporary novels, and corporate philanthropic aims (Desai, 2016; Khoja-Moolji, 2015; 2018; Khurshid and Pitts, 2019; Moeller, 2013; 2014; 2018). Emerging from this growing recognition of girlhood as a transnational process in the context of international development, some scholars have recently put forth a “Girls in Development” (GID) frame to be placed alongside the WID, WAD, and GAD paradigms used within CIE (Switzer, 2018). Post-structural and post-colonial perspectives and their interaction with gender are often criticized as remaining in the abstract locales of academia, devoid of policy or practical implications. However, within CIE, these perspectives are seen as generating insights and ideas that have significant implications not only for how comparativists do research, but also for the way they teach in the classroom and support scholarly engagement in the field. For example, Patel (2016), Fine (2018), Merinyo and Willemsen (2021) and Nagar (2014) propose powerful and personal texts that examine issues that arise in the co-production of knowledge and activism including researchers’ and participants’ relationships, enduring coloniality, and epistemic violence. Further, the post perspectives also compel policy actors, non-university based researchers, and practitioners to reconsider and challenge “the historical and contemporary geopolitics of relations with foreign-aid-dependent courtiers that structure—thought never determine—their development work” (Takayama et al., 2017, p. 19). With its epistemological interrogation, feminist post perspectives have the potential to fundamentally challenge what it means for scholars within CIE to be comparativists across research and practice (Rappleye and Komatsu, 2015; Takayama et al., 2017).
CONCLUSIONS This chapter has introduced readers to some of the rich and varied gender work within the field of CIE. We have outlined how WID and WAD perspectives conceptualize gender as noun, GAD perspectives conceptualize gender as adjective and post perspectives conceptualize gender as verb; we have shown how these notions are rooted in varied epistemological groundings, methodological trajectories, and axiological commitments; and finally, we have examined various examples of research and policy from these
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respective perspectives. We conclude by acknowledging that this grammatical framework presents a simplified overview of work at the nexus of gender, education, and development, and we encourage readers to delve further into the often intertwining, occasionally knotty, and still-unfolding storylines of gender work within CIE.
FURTHER READING 1. Lloyd, C. B., and Young, J. (2009). New lessons: The power of educating adolescent girls: A girls count report on adolescent girls. New York, NY: Population Council. 2. Sen, G., and Grown, C. (1987). Development alternatives with women for a new era. London, UK: Earthscan. 3. Kabeer, N. (1999). Resources, agency, achievements: Reflections on the measurement of women’s empowerment. Development and Change, 30(3), 435–464. 4. Murphy-Graham, E. (2012). Opening minds, improving lives: Education and women’s empowerment in Honduras. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press. 5. Shah, P. P. (2016). Partnerships and appropriation: Translating discourses of access and empowerment in girls’ education in India. International Journal of Educational Development, 49, 11–21.
MINI CASE STUDY A recent exemplar of feminist post-structuralist, post-colonialist work within CIE is Shenila Khoja-Moolji’s (2018) book entitled Forging the Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia. In this volume, Khoja-Moolji (2018) focuses on the historic and present-day production of educated Muslim girl and women figures through an examination of texts that range from policy documents to advertisements to novels. This tracing of multiple articulations over time, space, and power relations disrupts the universalized, monolithic figure of the educated Muslim girl/ woman in conflict with a flattened, oppressive culture and religion. Khoja-Moolji’s (2018) examination reveals a nuanced attention to power, history, fluidity, complexity, and gendering processes as well as an anti-essentialist rejection of static categories of gender. She states: I explore the multiple articulations of educated girlhoods, paying attention to the dense historical networks within which they take shape. In doing so, the book enacts core feminist commitments to the fluidity of gender formation and sees gender categories as always in-the-making. In fact, a key move that I make is to trace the production of categories of gender. I do not take “woman” and “girl” to be self-evident. These categories are socially constructed and their content changes with time. —Khoja-Moolji, 2018, p. 8 Her attention, therefore, is not so much on subjects themselves (in this case, educated Muslim girls and women) as would be typical in WID, WAD, or GAD related work which views gender as a noun or adjective. Rather, she focuses on the various processes involved in shaping subjectivity, as is typical of post-structural feminist work viewing gender as a verb: as a genealogist, then, my intention is not to discover some essential characteristics about the Muslim girl, but to investigate the different appearances of this girl and inquire into how she comes into being, the webs of discourses in which she is entangled,
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and the ways in which her constitution shifts over time. These shifts are an effect of power relations. —Khoja-Moolji, 2018, p. 17 Among the power relations Khoja-Moolji (2018) traces are the colonial and nation state political influence in various constructions of the educated feminine ideal. From colonial India, through the post-partition era, into present-day neoliberal regimes, she examines the production of educated female figures that have been deployed in service to projects, such as nation building, religious reform, and development. At the same time, she draws on fieldwork and texts, some written by women themselves, to highlight women’s active participation in various projects, thereby disrupting narratives of Muslim female passivity or silence. In an analysis ever attentive to intersections of religion, class, ethnicity, etc., she presents Muslim girls and women as agents who themselves take up and shape various educated subjectivities even as narratives are simultaneously being produced by inter(national) discourses and power relations. As is characteristic of work from post perspectives, Khoja-Moolji (2018) does not provide closure. Rather, she notes how “we are very much in the middle of stories— stories about the preservation of class privileges, of changing norms of respectability, of exploitation of women’s labor, of fluid gender categories, and of activism and political agency” (Khoja-Moolji, 2018, p. 157). Although she does not offer any predetermined endings, Khoja-Moolji (2018) nevertheless advocates for particular unfolding of these stories when she closes with an appeal to readers who would support girls’ education in South Asia to attend to systemic oppression of females within schooling and beyond, highlight women’s and girls’ agency, and give greater attention to Muslim masculinities. Her innovative work is among the latest chapters in a long lineage of feminist gender work within CIE that can help us to do just that. Note: The authors would like to thank Elisheva Cohen for her careful reading and suggestions as well as those of the two anonymous reviewers.
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Tembon, M. M., and Fort, L. (Eds.). (2008). Girl’s education in the 21st century: Gender equality, empowerment and growth. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Thomas, M. A., and Rugambwa, A. (2011). Equity, power, and capabilities: Constructions of gender in a Tanzanian secondary school. Feminist Formations, 23(3), 153–175. Thompson, B. (2002). Multiracial feminism: Recasting the chronology of second wave feminism. Feminist Studies, 28(2), 337–360. Tom, MN., Suárez-Krabbe, J., and Caballero Castro, T. (2017). Pedagogy of absence, conflict, and emergence: Contributions to the decolonization of education from the Native American, Afro-Portuguese, and Romani Experiences. Comparative Education Review, 61 (S1) (May Supplement), S121–S145. Unterhalter, E. (2005). Fragmented frameworks? Researching women, gender, education and development. In S. Aikman and E. Unterhalter (Eds.), Beyond access: Transforming policy and practice for gender equality in education (pp. 15–35). Oxford, UK: Oxfam. Unterhalter, E. (2007). Gender, schooling and global social justice. New York, NY: Routledge. Unterhalter, E. (2009). Social justice, development theory and the question of education. In R. Cowan and A. M. Kazamias (Eds.), International handbook of comparative education (pp. 781–802). Dordrecht, Holland: Springer. Vavrus, F. (2003). Desire and decline. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Vavrus, F., and Richey, L. A. (2003). Editorial. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 23(3/4), 6–18. Walker, M. (2003). Framing social justice in education: What does the ‘capabilities’ approach offer? British Journal of Educational Studies, 51(2), 168–187. Willemsen, L. (2016). Embodying empowerment: Gender, schooling, relationships and life history in Tanzania. (Doctoral dissertation.) Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota. Willemsen, L. W., and DeJaeghere, J. (2015). Learning to negotiate sexual relationships: A girls’ school in Tanzania as a restrictive and agentic site. Gender and Education, 27(2), 183–197. Willemsen, L., and Ndesamburo Kwayu, A. (2016). Peers, sexual agency and relationships in Tanzania. In J. DeJaeghere, J. Josic and K. S. McCleary (Eds.), Education and youth agency: Qualitative case studies in global contexts (pp. 173–191). Basel, Switzerland: Springer International.
CHAPTER TEN
Post-Foundational Approaches in Comparative and International Education Uncertain Moves toward Unknown Horizons JORDAN CORSON AND SUSANNE RESS
INTRODUCTION Few things seem certain if one is to enter the elusive terrain of post-foundational approaches to comparative and international education (henceforth CIE) except for one: perspectives in this field problematize taken-for-granted ideas; that is, the “foundations” of research. In CIE, these foundations include ideas of universalism, modernization, progress, development, rationality, measurability, history, and so on; and even education itself. Post-foundational perspectives criticize monolithic perceptions of modernity (e.g., through post-modernist perspectives), and they advocate against re-colonizing/reracializing modes of representation and Western-centric norms of knowledge production (e.g., cultural studies, indigenous studies, post-colonial studies, critical feminist, Black, and ethnic studies). Some scholars in the field question the very idea of society and subject or the possibility of language with the objective to destabilize limited and binary notions of what it means to be an “educated person” (e.g., post-structural perspective). If one looks in the index of a textbook often assigned to introductory courses in comparative education (Arnove et al., 2013), they will find only a small section in one chapter touching on post-modernism (see Chapter 7), post-structuralism (see Chapter 7), and post-colonialism (see Chapter 6). Arguably, post-foundational ideas have been dwelling at the fringes of established texts in the CIE field for some time. Yet, their influence has been growing in recent years. They have a subversive quality, one that undermines many prior assumptions, such as the objectivity of knowledge or the centrality of scientific methodology. Post-foundational theories carry a battery of meanings that entwine with and exceed post-modernist, post-structuralist, and post-colonialist’s perspectives. Together they defy any rigid definition; yet, they share the goal to act as disruptive forces in the pursuit of big questions concerning social realities. How did post-foundational ideas emerge in CIE? How have they wandered from scant references in an index to warranting an entire chapter in this volume? Was their presence actually so marginal? Is it now any less marginal? Beyond their presence, what do these 183
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ideas mean and what do they do within CIE? In this chapter, we explore the meanings, uses, and trajectories of post-foundational approaches to CIE theory and research. The chapter traces the emergence and shifting positions of post-foundational approaches in the CIE field. Overall, the chapter suggests that post-foundational approaches remain an open and unfinished project. From here, the chapter looks at several recent examples to show how these ideas are taken up and deployed in CIE research, showing an antiessentialist stance through varied perspectives and approaches. While we have made an effort to reference a range of authors who are often associated with post-foundational ideas—including continental philosophers, such as Bruno Latour (1947–2013), Joseph Butler (1959), Michael Foucault (1926–1984), Félix Guattari (1930–1992), and Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) and post-colonial critics, such as Edward Said (1935–2003), Arturo Escobar, and Boaventura de Sousa Santos—these authors by no means represent the full range of ideas that can be meaningfully captured under the umbrella of post-foundational approaches. This chapter provides an introduction into the field. It focuses on critiquing modernity as a guiding principle, which has oriented knowledge in the “Western world” since the Enlightenment Era of the eighteenth-century. We hope to inspire further (deep) readings with great passion and always—we suggest—beyond one’s own horizon. The chapter closes with examining some recent contributions of post-foundational perspectives in CIE theory and research to stimulate such readings.
OVERVIEW One approach to understanding post-foundational theories would be to delineate various terms associated with the field and then interrogate their meanings and uses. For instance, what is a post-structural epistemology? Or, is post-modernism a historical moment or more of a condition? Having scraped together individual meanings, one could then assemble them and bundle them together to articulate a single, bounded idea of a presumably coherent “post-foundationalism.” As discussed throughout this chapter, however, to do so would be the antithesis of post-foundational systems of thought; a point of view from which knowledge appears contingent, socio-historically positioned, and negotiated. These perspectives prefer to be just that, a collection of perspectives that stay rough around the edges, porous and messy, wedded decidedly to indeterminacy. Postfoundational perspectives prefer to be just that, a collection of perspectives. At the same time, for all its becoming-transforming ways and resistance to set definitions, the postfoundational field is definitely something. Therefore, even if these ideas bleed into other areas or trail off without a sense of completion, it is worthwhile to trace some common themes found in post-foundational work conjuring perhaps an unfinished map that invites ideas within and beyond this outline into the fold. Marchart (2007) offers a broad understanding of post-foundational theories as “a constant interrogation of metaphysical figures of foundation—such as totality, universality, essence, and ground” (p. 2). From this perspective, anything arriving at a transcendent truth presupposed to be at the root of one’s research should be investigated and critiqued. Post-foundational perspectives refute the assumption that research stands outside political and historical forces, that it represents a clear, indisputable, and objectively knowable Truth. Rather, research is seen as an actor in a world organized by Enlightenment principles, such as modernity. Thus, post-foundational theories are very much what they sound like: they push against the foundations on which “knowledge” is constructed. For CIE, that means challenging the
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universality of particular Western-centric understandings of education. Scholars taking up post-foundational approaches might ask how schooling came to be understood as a universal goal that marks national or individual progress. They could also question the possibility of a claim to universal equality as it is defined and deployed by central institutions. That is not to say that post-foundational scholars stand against children attending school. Rather, they see education as something that emerged from certain historical ideas, which carry specific values and norms. These values and norms form a grid of intelligibility that outlines characteristics by which people are judged as either “educated” or “uneducated,” creating a truth regime of what it means to be progressive, developed, and modern.
Post-foundational perspectives on modernity, development, and social progress Post-foundational approaches are particularly concerned with challenging the interrelated foundations of modernity, scientific certainty, and universality. Within CIE, these foundations are often used to build schooling and other educational projects around developmentalist theories. Historically, most development theories are modernist theories (Peet and Hartwick, 2009). During the Enlightenment Era from about the seventeenth-century onward, philosophers like Voltaire (1694–1778) proposed that through the use of science and reason, societies and individuals could progress (Nisbet, 1980). Subsequently, societies supposedly transitioned from traditional agrarian systems under Feudalism to secularized and rationalized systems of industrial production under capitalism (Barker, 2005). This development trajectory is also rhetorically associated with progress (Rist, 2014). For example, in his 1949 inaugural speech, U.S. President Harry Truman (1884–1972) described countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America as technologically backward. He stated that poor countries suffered from stagnant economies and the lack of new technologies. Truman also proposed a solution. Poor countries could be lifted out of poverty by using the technological knowledge and wealth of industrialized countries. He believed that joint efforts of “business, private capital, agriculture and labor [of the United States]” and the hard work of people in poor countries would generate an industriousness, which would ultimately lead to the improvement of people’s lives. Truman “invented” the idea of foreign assistance, subsequently casting it as a moral obligation and thus a continuation of the idea of the “civilizing mission.” Most modernization theories incorporate some variant of formal (mass) education as an explanatory concept for development, or lack thereof. Much of the CIE architecture, especially in the English-language context, continues to be held up by the developmentalist logic of progress through modernization. Post-foundational approaches aim to loosen the ground and destabilize the scaffolding of development that has been built. Before exploring the postfoundational response to this design, we first turn to understand the blueprints. Like development, modernity is a foundational assumption upon which much of the CIE research is grounded. Giddens (1991) refers to modernity as “modes of social life or organization which emerged in Europe from about the seventeenth-century onwards and which subsequently became more or less worldwide in their influence” (p. 1). Modernist ideas thus marked a dramatic shift in the world, moving outward from Europe toward universal understandings of ways of social life, aided by colonial expansion and exploitation of slave labor in the Americas (Mbembe, 2017). Modernity is not only about time or place but also about a shift in thinking that centers “a new way of administering time and making it useful, by segmentation, seriation, synthesis, and totalization” (Foucault, 1995, p. 160) that rests on the creation of a society composed of individuals,
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who can be oriented toward the future. Time is but one element as modernity saw a shift from a traditional, medieval structuring of society to a thrust outward to societies creating new, scientific ways of organizing humans including nation-states, social institutions, and a focus on people as rational individuals. To pursue such goals, modernity ushered in the emergence of new and more complete social institutions, which were accompanied by ideas and practices to reach these goals. Returning to Foucault (1988), modernity allowed for the creation of institutional apparatuses (e.g., the asylums). Institutions, scientific disciplines, and practices like psychiatry emerged. Specifically, trained experts, armed with specific practices, also emerged to enact the aims of these institutions. Their intent was to measure, codify, and treat individuals with a view toward making them productive parts of a more clearly structured society. These institutional shifts aimed at changing societies, moving them toward certain, predetermined notions of progress. Work cited in post-foundational research may even disrupt the foundation of modernity’s existence. Latour (1993), for instance, challenges the very divisions born into modernity. The separation of society and individuals from nature allegedly allows modern beings to scientifically work from a removed, dispassionate position. Latour (1993) proposes that these distinctions are not so clear, concluding that they, in fact, never existed. Similarly, other writers take up the postfoundational embrace of plurality to suggest that modernity itself is not so monolithic. There is not modernity, but there are modernities. Wittrock (2000), questioning whether modernity is singular, plural, or nonexistent, determines that “there was never one single homogenous conception of modernity. There was never homogeneity of social institutions, even in the most restricted European setting” (p. 58). This work pushes against modernity’s foundations, whether by challenging its aims or questioning its existence. Schooling is an institution that embeds many of the assumptions of modernity. As mass education traveled from country to country in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century, the school became an institution tasked with producing rational, secular, and productive members of nation-states who could work toward the progress of the nation (Cowen, 1996). Enlightenment philosophers, for example Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), and Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), whose ideas continue to be foundational to the field of education, understood education (Bildung, Erziehung) as the operation by which rational subjects were formed to benefit humankind, the society, and themselves by becoming better versions of themselves. From this perspective, an educated being was considered to be someone with a free will and love for freedom, an autonomous subject responsible for his actions—a White, Christian, European male, morally upright, self-reflective thinker—the Cartesian “Rational Man”—a reasonable person. Everyone else, the colonized, the underdeveloped, the women, the poor, the insane, the enslaved, the disabled, and the child came to be seen as deviating from this norm. Education could come to the rescue to mold a temporarily immature and impulsive child into a disciplined, cultivated, and moral being able to contemplate the world (Popkewitz, 1998). Within this analysis, rationality came to be understood as the practice of measuring, explaining, and calculating the world (divide and conquer) in which the notion of the norm rests on the possibility of conceiving some groups as other. In other words, European enlightenment thinkers developed a particular cultural thesis of who the child is, and who s/he should be (Popkewitz, 2008). A critical response to supposedly universal enlightenment ideals does not imply doing away with schools and teachers or denying the existence of mental health disorders. Instead, by questioning these foundations, post-foundational work endeavors to open up new ways of thinking about institutions like schools where modernity has created over time a rigid body with rather specific means and ends.
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Linked with these institutional shifts, modernity also ushered in the explosion of social categories and positions for individuals, all aimed at allowing individuals to make similar progressions. Under modernity, people could learn about and become their best, most productive selves. To do so, society would need to understand who individuals are and how to treat them, especially if they fell outside the dominant conceptions of the normal. To take for example the notion of the homosexual, which through institutions, such as the asylum “was now a species” (Foucault, 1990, p. 43). Of course, gay people were not “invented” with the advent of modernity. What Foucault suggests is that through enlightenment principles, those identified as homosexual would be submitted to certain rationalities, treatments, and controls. These practices aimed to make homosexuals into certain kinds of “subjects” who could be understood as thinking and acting in intelligible ways. Subjects could then be made sense of in order to fit them into modern societies, which led to the creation of broad narratives—often called metanarratives in post-modernist analysis— about people, places, and things to rationalize and maximize treatments. Those who fall outside these metanarratives of the normal become excluded, marginalized, or precarious. In short, a post-foundational perspective identifies how enlightenment rationales construct views of “the self as rational, transparent, self-knowing, and unified,” where we see “truth as the product of rational dialogue between self-knowing subjects” (Ninnes and Mehta, 2004, p. 6). According to this logic, modernity liberates individuals to become autonomous, rational creatures capable of reasonable choice. These rational choices lead to directly causal outcomes. Someone at an NGO in Washington, D.C. identifies a group of out of school children in another country (the children here carry the subject position of “uneducated”). The NGO designs a project to find a way for the kids to return to school. Through hard work and smart design, the project leads to success (or ends in failure, the other side of the binary). Of course, this hypothetical example serves as its own kind of metanarrative, suggesting a broad picture of how international education and development work and how NGO workers think and act. Yet, it is a familiar example or recognizable discourse, one within which post-foundational approaches would challenge such assumptions of autonomous agency or linear causality. Given the movement from Europe outward, the imposition of certain knowledge, and the subsequent making of precariousness, modernity as a project is also deeply linked to coloniality. As Mignolo (2011) puts it, coloniality “is constitutive of modernity—there is no modernity without coloniality” (p. 3). In other words, modernity could only work as a broad knowledge conquering local knowledges. Built into the entire project is a concept that social institutions and individuals can work toward a specific notion of progress. This notion is centrally defined and disseminated onto localities. Within CIE and other fields of education it meant that “as an agent of social change, education was expected to promote ‘individual modernity’, defined as the ‘process by which individuals supposedly change from a traditional way of life to a rapidly changing, technological way of life’ ” (as cited in Tabulawa, 2003, p. 14). Education was but one mechanism through which modernity could be colonially deployed. Post-foundational approaches quite directly work against these foundational understandings. They resist the stability and rigidity of institutional approaches and categorizations. Working within, on the margins, and beyond institutions, post-foundational work questions the roots of institutional understandings and the logics of institutions, such as school. This way of thinking seeks a plurality of understandings and multiple approaches. For individuals, postfoundational theories mine questions of how subjects and positions have been socially produced in order to resist them. There are not set ways to be gay nor are there singular
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treatments for those suffering from mental health issues. Nor are there simply multiple true ways of occupying these positions. Instead, sexuality, gender, race, and many other categories are socially produced. Their creation produces real materialities—there are such things as, for example adolescents, who truly exist, young people go through a phase in their lives that many identify as adolescence—but there are no prefigured meanings (such as ideas about identity) attached to these positions.
Post-foundational perspectives on knowledge and science Post-foundational perspectives also critically question the epistemological foundation upon which knowledge is constructed. Post-foundational approaches often respond to the term positivism, which suggests that everything is knowable and measurable. Unlike postfoundational approaches, positivist perspectives privilege scientific certainty as the pathway to a Universalist Truth, which, when duly applied, will lead to equally universal improvement. The increasingly ubiquitous presence of scientific rationality favors defined methodologies and indisputable answers. Under positivism, any problems facing CIE simply need the right questions, the right research designs, and data to identify them correctly and to develop a presumably adequate response. In this kind of positive approach, knowledge is not situated, emerging from contested, political contexts but considered a universal truth. With minor adaptability and tinkering, a method or finding, can, potentially, be picked up and dropped anywhere without altering its veracity. For instance, Friedrich (2014) looks at the expansion of the Teach for All organization into Argentina, arguing that this move represents yet another expansion of a specific developmental discourse and not necessarily the mechanism by which local and international actors partner to solve a problem. CIE is far from the only field in which this kind of certainty is present, but, as Cowen (1996) points out, a tendency toward positivism acted as a distinguishing characteristic of CIE. This singularity creates what Santos (2016) calls “epistemicide,” the wiping out of alternative ways of knowing, such as those, for instance, embedded in indigenous, postcolonial, post-humanist, or critical feminist epistemologies. Scientific certainty postfoundational approaches relentlessly question the existence of a stable, discoverable single truth, for example by paying attention to local knowledges instead of listening to metanarratives. The attention to local knowledges moves CIE research and theory toward plurality in considering a diversity of ways of knowing to be legitimate. While positivist educational research has sought to identify models of schooling, pedagogy, and policy that work well universally, post-foundational perspectives are skeptical that such universal truths can exist. Scientific rationality leads to an illusion of certainty. It proposes truths free of geography or history that can apply to anyone or anything at any time. A post-foundational response asks: what exceptions might exist for such truths? Who is the intended subject of this truth? From what locations does such authority emerge? Or, as Butler (1995) frames it: “what authorizes such an assumption from the start?” (p. 5). These theories often look to truth claims as a point of contestation, seeing any project or any piece of work as contingent on historical, political, and social factors. “These ‘foundations;’ that is, those premises that function as authorizing grounds, are they themselves not constituted through exclusions which, taken into account, expose the foundational premise as a contingent and contestable presumption” (Butler, 1995, p. 7). Conclusions here become acts of making meaning through interpretation rather than excavating the essence of something that was already there to be found. From a post-foundational perspective,
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research and theory are always acts of interpretation, ideologies, and discourse, or, as Derrida (1967) has famously asserted, there is “nothing outside the text” (p. 159). Within this realm, post-foundational conclusions come to welcome uncertainty. Leaving space for uncertainty does not entrench these ideas in overwhelming relativity. It is also not simply a shrugging of the shoulders at the weighty issues faced within CIE, hinting at an impossibility of knowing anything. Uncertainty encounters these issues as complex, contested, and political terrains, as hybrid assemblages. Post-foundational approaches lean toward invitations or provocations rather than conclusions, saying something but leaving an opening to continue the conversation. And yet, in CIE work, conclusions may still emerge through such a lens, but they will remain partial, contextualized, and unfinished. The contingency of post-foundational work also implies a sense of impermanency, something that cannot be generalized, scaled, or presented as a finished product. It focuses more heavily on becoming rather than being, which can be found in Foucault’s (1988) emphasis on events or Deleuze’s (1994) notion of encounters. Before turning to the next section, it is important to note that these lines of critique do not challenge the realness of facts. Post-foundational approaches do not aim to open a question like “is climate change real?” The questioning of truth claims instead aims at two points. First, facts/knowledges are historically situated in a particular space. Two plus two still makes four. Yet, post-foundational scholars would remind the reader that the using of arithmetic never operates outside its political conditions. Second, they might question the privileging of mathematical knowledge above other ways of knowing. Postfoundational theories are in no way against science. They do, however, tend to work against claims that certain scientific questions are universally the right ones to ask. Finally, though discussed in greater detail in the section below, and though postfoundational approaches clearly welcome deeply critical lenses, these critiques of enlightenment ideals of modernity and progress, or universal truth claims, should not confuse post-foundational approaches with destructive ideas. As a “post” theory, postfoundational theories work in the wake or in the ruins (to use St. Pierre and Pillow, 2000) of established foundations. It is not what comes outside but what responds to these foundations. Post-foundational perspectives are less interested in tearing down entire constructs. To do so would simply leave space to build something new that rests on new foundations. Instead, “the task is to interrogate what the theoretical move that establishes foundations authorizes, and what precisely it excludes and forecloses” (Butler, 1995, p. 7 emphasis original). It is to unearth “the history of the present” (Foucault, 1979). Through such interrogation, post-foundational accounts look to shake and loosen these foundations so that they may become more flexible, able to be played with, and so that others may come to see them as foundations that were built rather than preexisting even though they have produced real, material consequences.
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION In 1991, Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) president Val Rust (1991) focused his presidential remarks on post-modernism in CIE. Rust (1991) argues that while post-modernism had been a dominant conversation in other academic fields in the 1980s, it had almost entirely bypassed CIE. He went on to suggest that, though it poses risks and dangers, post-modernism offers ways to push against a narrow conception
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of modernity that has, at times, dominated CIE. By exploring post-modernism, Rust (1991) highlights a way for CIE scholars to “increase our attention to small narratives, the far-ranging Others of the world” (p. 626). This suggestion reflects many of the qualities of post-foundational approaches. Given the broadness of CIE as a field and postfoundational approaches’ resistance to linear causality, it would be misleading to suggest that Rust’s (1991) address sparked the emergence of post-foundational thinking within CIE. Since the early 1990s, however, post-foundational ideas have taken on an increasingly visible presence in the field. For instance, Cowen (1996) echoes Rust’s (1991) concerns, placing CIE directly under the umbrella of the modernity project. Calling, perhaps not for a directly postfoundational, but certainly a turn away from the field’s modernist traditions, he writes that “our ability to understand the structural mini-narratives involved in the creating and the taking of conceptions of the other. . . will emancipate Comparative Education itself— as it investigates the international distribution of economic, cultural and political inequalities and the construction of possible selves in education” (Cowen, 1996, p. 167). As a way to resist these othering metanarratives, he proposes that CIE could turn toward a pluralistic understanding of different ways of knowing. In the process, these ideas could reshape the field in dynamic ways. Paulston (1999) similarly offers a nuanced, intentionally fractured view of postmodernism and critiques of enlightenment thinking. Heterogeneously examining 60 texts—in his own words: “all I could find on the topic”—he asks how a discursive mapping of these texts might provide new ways to understand how comparative educators “choose to represent the world” (Paulston, 1999, p. 438). He ultimately concludes that comparative educators may be “positioned to become social cartographers, able to translate, map, and compare multiple perspectives on social and educational life” (Paulston, 1999, p. 462). These social cartographers would work through “sites in knowledge work where we encounter more allies, resources for practice, and options for movement” (Paulston, 1999, p. 462), a shift that could create opportunity for mutual action moving the CIE field into new directions. By 2004, developments of these ideas coalesced into an edited volume specifically focused on post-foundational theories in CIE. Ninnes and Mehta (2004) set out to reimagine CIE in a way that both folds post-foundational work into the mixture of ideas in the field and pushes at the field’s boundaries. In their book, chapters range from calling for a place for post-foundational theories to offering “examples of research projects that employ these theoretical perspectives” (Ninnes and Mehta, 2004, p. xi). In a critical engagement with Education for All, Burnett’s (2004) chapter takes up colonial educational discourses in the Kiribati government’s move to universalize secondary school in the region. Burnett (2004) determines that in challenging discourses of uncritically expanding access to schools in Kiribati, new educational futures may be opened, ones that allow those impacted by a colonial history or present to explore the role education has played in a place like Kiribati and search for an education not centrally determined by a Euro or North American center. In another chapter in the book, Naseem (2004) examines “subject construction and subject constitution in the educational discourse in Pakistan, specifically how these processes are articulate with respect to women” (p. 85). Similar to Burnett (2004), Naseem (2004) shows complex and contested educational discourses at play in issues, such as citizenship or gender. Naseem (2004) takes up post-structural feminist theory as a way to disrupt Western feminist theory, seeing a “potential to shift the focus of educational
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research from ahistorical quantitative analysis to an understanding that is grounded in the history, culture, and socio-politics of particular societies. It also has the potential to avoid construction and/or employment of metanarratives” (p. 101). As with Rust (1991), Cowen (1996), or Paulston (1999), this volume serves as a kind of (non)introductory call to reconceptualize CIE in ways that welcomes post-foundational approaches. In the last 10 years, a range of research drawing on post-foundational ideas has appeared in CIE journals (particularly Comparative Education and Comparative Education Review), ranging from policy studies (Carney, 2009) to historical studies of CIE (Epstein, 2008). These examples illustrate a key question that post-foundational approaches pose to the CIE field: what is in and what is out? What is part of CIE and what is not? CIE has been an interdisciplinary field, welcoming insights from various disciplines (e.g., sociology and anthropology) and practitioners of global development. It is not the case that post-foundational approaches operated as a closed and isolated sub-field, eventually moving into a bounded field, and expanding it. The articles cited here do not reflect self-identified post-foundational comparative educators finally finding a home for their work. Rather, these articles simply reflect post-foundational ideas appearing in various CIE journals. Another example of how CIE includes post-foundational approaches into its more general canon is the creation of the Post-foundational Special Interest Group (PfA SIG) within CIES in 2014. The PfA SIG aims to open new areas of inquiry within the CIE field, which could challenge and go beyond some of the limitations inherent in the field’s traditional “foundations” in Western ideas of modernity, society, and development. In recent years, the post-foundational SIG has organized a growing number of sessions at the annual CIES conference (e.g., Chenyu Wang, Helena Hinke Dobrochinski Candido, Jasmin Blanks, Chris Kirchgasler, and Ryan Ziols and many more at CIES 2018). Outside the annual conference, the SIG is dedicated to promoting a more thorough engagement with theory, a goal that it pursues through various activities including a Research Seminar for emerging scholars, and webinars on topics, such as cyborgs (briefly summarized below) and datafication. It is also increasingly hard to continue the narrative that post-foundational ideas reside on the margins of CIE. At the 2018 CIES conference, president Sobe (2018) delivered an address deeply influenced by post-foundational thinking. Sobe (2018) pushes back against “Big Data,” the framework of scientific certainty used to legitimate universal truths. He calls for pluralistic ways of knowing and being while recognizing a need to work within CIE’s confines of comparison. Unlike the presidential address from 1991, Sobe (2018) does not just pose a general call to attend to these theories; he directly uses them. However, the trajectory of post-foundational influences within CIE is not so clear. It is not as simple as articulating a theory of post-structuralism and then those ideas gradually taking hold within a distinct sphere called CIE. It offers a narrative to spur subtle shifts and reshape the field. While we have already generally examined the broad scope and general work of postfoundational approaches, we will now highlight several specific ways that this work has been taken up and used in CIE. Post-foundational work in CIE pursues the same pattern of critical engagements with themes, such as modernist methodologies (Tabulawa, 2003) or scientific rationality (Popkewitz, 2010). Dominant critiques specifically within the field focus on international development (Desai, 2016)—research and practices concerned with working toward progressively impacting specific markers, such as literacy rates or school enrollment. Post-foundational research in CIE has also engaged critics of development
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work, such as Marxist research (Peters, 2001). At the same time, post-foundational work deviates from many of these critiques, searching for new avenues for those working with (or even those with no interest in) post-foundational theories. Through a modernist lens, development is not only comparative but competitive. It is about “developed” countries or the “developed” world pushing those that are underdeveloped toward their ideas of development. It presupposes that the world is structured in a way that post-foundational scholars, who question notions of “the society,” for instance, would hardly follow. Makuwira and Ninnes (2004) provide a broad overview of what they call “post-development.” Drawing on post-foundational theories, they outline a number of areas in which CIE work challenges this framework for global development. In post-development, there is a rethinking of “terms such as ‘progress,’ ‘improvement,’ ‘participation,’ and ‘development’” (Makuwira and Ninnes, 2004, p. 244). There is also an examination of development as an invention that proliferates hegemonic, Western values. Citing Escobar (1995), they describe that “development was—and continues to be for the most part—a top-down, ethnocentric, and technocratic approach, which treated people and cultures as abstract concepts, statistical figures to be moved up and down in the charts of progress” (as cited in Makuwira and Ninnes, 2004, p. 244). For post-foundational theorists, especially those with post-colonial inclinations, development is less the building up of localities to create equal conditions and more of a colonial imposition. It is a political practice promoting select values disguised as a universal tool for justice. Post-foundational approaches are not alone as a critical approach. Many in the modernist tradition have leveled similar critiques (e.g., Torres, who engages a Marxist lens to show how CIE acts as a mechanism for the hegemonic proliferation of Western values), yet working across many geographies and with dynamic methodologies, scholars and practitioners drawing on post-foundational work open new ideas, mine silences, and redraw maps.
CONCLUSIONS Between the post-foundational SIG and the fact that the 2020 CIES conference theme was “education beyond the human,” it might seem like post-foundational ideas have found a comfortable spot within the CIE community. Yet, this stability, or a place in the foundations, is exactly what post-foundational ideas resist. Even as these approaches become further recognized and used in CIE, remaining unsettled and pushing toward new, unknown, and unknowable places remains a prominent desire within postfoundational approaches. In doing so, CIE itself can continue questioning who counts in what ways in comparative and international education research.
FURTHER READING 1. Baudrillard, J. (2007). In the shadow of the silent majority. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e). 2. Deleuze, G., and Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis, MI: University of Minnesota Press. 3. Derrida, J. (1980). Writing and difference. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 4. Mbembe, A. (2017). Critique of black reason. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 5. Mignolo. (2011). The darker side of western modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 6. Popkewitz, T. S. (1998; 2017). Struggling for the soul. The politics of schooling and the construction of the teacher. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
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MINI CASE STUDY In this section, we showcase a joint effort of post-foundational scholars to move CIE discussions toward new directions. On September 29, 2017, the Post-Foundational Approaches to comparative and international education Special Interest Group (PfA SIG) hosted its first webinar titled “Discussing Comics and Notions of the Human” based on the reading of the comic series “The Vision Vol.1” and “The Vision Vol.2.” In a 90-minute webinar the panelists Elizabeth De Freitas (Manchester Metropolitan University), Jinting Wu (SUNY at Buffalo), and Daniel Friedrich (Teachers College, Columbia University) critically inquired into notions of the human portrayed in the comics. Together with the audience they reflected on ideas of the human experience, learning, computation, posthumanism, desiring to be other, and racialization. A brief summary of the comic: one of the reasons Marvel Comics’ shared universe has resonated with fans is because it is a place where even fantastic beings like aliens and artificial humanoids confront the truths ordinary humans deal with on a daily basis—like not being able to choose the family you are born into. That is something that the Avenger known as the Vision—mixing comic and movies up, maybe just cut this bit—has been wrestling with ever since his debut in Avenger#57 (Thomas and Buscema, 1968). Since then, the Vision has overcome his original programming and served on a number of Avengers teams. He dealt with his painful past by building a family of his own with fellow hero Scarlet Witch—which left the synthezoid emotionally and physically destroyed. Now the Vision is ready to give family life another go. “The Vision Vol. 1” and “Vol. 2” (King, Hernandez Walta, and Walsh, 2015–2016) chronicle the Vision’s new life of living in the suburbs of Arlington, Virginia (Washington, DC) with a family of synthezoids that he created. His wife, Virginia, and the teenage twins Viv and Vin look like the Vision. They have his powers, and they share his desire to be ordinary. Behold the Visions! They are a family next door, and they have the power to kills us all. What could possibly go wrong? In fact, throughout “Vol. 1” and “Vol. 2,” the family facade crumbles as the Vision attempts to balance his responsibilities as a superhero with the family life he craves. Friedrich was first to comment on the comics. To him, the story of the Visions exudes an interesting form of racialization and disturbance of whiteness. He points out that the Visions, although seemingly wanting to be an ordinary family living in the suburbs, do not hide their mechanistic capacities and powers. Friedrich argues that they do not want to pass as humans; that they just want to have the experience of what it means to be human. Following from this, Friedrich asks: What, specifically, is being learned by those who endeavor to be human? Are the Visions learning to be human or are they learning to be white? He carefully draws some parallels between the Visions’ failed attempts—since they are constantly out of sync with the human experience and stuck in the middle between the human and the non-human existence—and black parents’ and communities’ attempts to enforce certain behaviors in children to minimize the risk of exclusion only to realize that, so Friedrich argues, no behavior can guarantee inclusion into the category of life worth protecting. De Freitas critically interrogated the images of bodies/matter, technology, life, computation, and conflict that are deployed in the comics. She finds the comics’ centering on an image of the human body as an organism and on the family as the center of the reproduction of life disturbing and suggests that we need to think about ecology and the environment rather than the organism. She continues her questioning of assumptions about the body versus matter by pointing out that the Visions are portrayed as cyborgs
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whereas the humans in the story are not. To her, this creates a false image of the human as non-technical while glossing over the enabling of humans through technology. Our (the human) anxiety about technology is well developed in the story, says De Freitas. In her analysis of the image of life, she highlights the link to the capacity to die. The fragility and the precariousness of the cyborgs (shouldn’t they be indestructible) let her ask about what it takes for a rhizome (a cyborg) to die. Regarding the image of conflict, De Freitas remarks that the idea embedded in the comics, that perhaps saving the world is not about rescuing humanity implies a different image of the future. Wu relates her comments to questions of difference versus sameness. To her, the Visions’ effort to live the life of a family like ordinary humans is a very human-like process. Wu goes on assembling moments in which humans and non-humans share traits and experiences; moments in which they are more same perhaps than different. For instance, Viv (the daughter) thinks that embracing preeminence moves them closer to humanity. Wu insinuates that the need for preeminence distinguishes humanity from the rest of the planet. She goes on to suggest that just like humans, the Visions seem stuck in dualities: us versus them, hatred versus love, happiness versus misery, and conquer versus defeat. Unable to see the world any differently, a series of misunderstandings between the Visions and their human fellows lead to a chain of destruction and violence. Again, just like humans, the Visions are self-centered in their desire to be ordinary, to fit in, while in our contemporary multicultural, multi-everything world, everyone claims their own identity, exaggerates their uniqueness without seeing the underlying sameness. Like De Freitas, Wu invites us to think differently about humanity by inquiring into the possibility of evolution beyond the human existence. She ultimately asks: How can education play a role in nurturing a different kind of human? In the conversation among the panelists supplemented with questions from the audience, the webinar continued touching on themes, such as death, transmorality, the recursivity in the Visions’ existence, dying as learning and the impossibility of dying as the impossibility of learning. The panelists discussed the co-existence of destiny and free will in the comics’ plot, and the Vision attempt of creating meaninglessness to appear normal, which ultimately failed.1 These responses are therefore post-foundational in that they question the foundational assumption of the human/non-human dichotomy that underpins most social science research. While the commentators share this critical approach, they also show the multiplicity of possible readings and interpretations of a single text. There is no single “true” interpretation of the comic, but rather different analysis, each of which yields different insights. In addition, engaging comics as a pedagogical text expands CIE understandings of what counts as method or legitimate text.
REFERENCES Arnove, R. Franz, S., and Torres, C. A. (2013). Education in Latin America: From dependency and neoliberalism to alternative Paths to development. In R. Arnove, C. A. Torres, and S. Franz (Eds.), Comparative Education. The dialectic of the global and the local (pp. 315–339). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
If you wish to listen to the webinar and to learn more about the PfA SIG, please visit our website www. postfoundatioal.weebly.com or send us an email to [email protected]
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Barker, C. (2005). Cultural studies: Theory and practice. London, UK: Sage. Burnett, G. (2004). Deconstructing educational discourse in Kiribati: Post-colonial encounters. In P. Ninnes, and S. Mehta (Eds.), Re-imagining Comparative Education: Postfoundational ideas and applications for critical times (pp. 63–84). Butler, J. (1995). Contingent foundations: Feminism and the question of “postmodernism.” In J.W. Scott and J. Butler (Eds.), Feminists theorize the political (pp. 2–21). London, UK: Routledge. Carney, S. (2009). Negotiating policy in an age of globalization: Exploring educational “policyscapes” in Denmark, Nepal, and China. Comparative Education Review, 53(1), 63–88. Cowen, R. (1996). Last past the post: Comparative Education, modernity and perhaps post modernity. Comparative Education, 32(2), 151–170. Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and repetition (P. Patton, Trans.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Derrida, J. (1967). Of grammatology (G. C. Spivak, Trans.). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Desai, K. (2016). Teaching the third world girl: Girl rising as a precarious curriculum of empathy. Curriculum Inquiry, 46(3), 248–264. Epstein, E. (2008). Setting the normative boundaries: Crucial epistemological benchmarks in Comparative Education. Comparative Education, 44(4), 373–386. Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering development: The making and unmaking of the third world. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Foucault M. (1979). Politics and reason. Reprinted in: Kritzman LD (Ed.) (1988). In Politics, philosophy, culture: Interviews and other writings, 1977–1984. New York, NY: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1988). Madness and civilization: A history of insanity in the age of reason. (R. Hurley, Trans.). New York, NY: Vintage. Foucault, M. (1990). The history of sexuality: Volume 1: An introduction. (R. Hurley, Trans.). Foucault, M. (1991). Questions of method. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality (pp. 73–86). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York, NY: Vintage. Friedrich, D. (2014). “We brought it upon ourselves”: University-based teacher education and the emergence of boot-camp-style routes to teacher certification. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 22(2), 1–18. Friedrich, D., de Freitas, and E. Wu, J. (2017). Discussing comics and the role of the human. [Video webinar]. Retrieved from https://postfoundational.weebly.com/webinars.html Giddens, A. (1991). The consequences of modernity. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. King, T., and Hernandez Walta, G. (2018). Vision: The complete series. New York, NY: Marvel Kirchgasler, C. (2018). True grit? Making a scientific object and pedagogical tool. American Educational Research Journal, 55(4), 693–720. Latour, B. (1993). We have never been modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Makuwira, J., and Ninnes, P. (2004). Post-development theory and Comparative Education. In P. Ninnes and S. Mehta (Eds.), Re-imagining Comparative Education: Postfoundational ideas and applications for critical times (pp. 241–254). Marchart, O. (2007). Post-foundational political thought: Political difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press. Mbembe, A. (2017). Critique of black reason. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
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Mignolo, W. (2011). The darker side of western modernity: Global futures, decolonial options. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Naseem, M. A. (2004). State, education and citizenship discourses, and the construction of gendered identities in Pakistan. In P. Ninnes and S. Mehta (Eds.), Re-imagining Comparative Education: Postfoundational ideas and applications for critical times (pp. 85–106). New York, NY: Vintage. Ninnes, P., and Mehta, S. (2004) A meander through the maze: Comparative Education and postfoundational studies. In P. Ninnes and S. Mehta (Eds.), Re-imagining Comparative Education: Postfoundational ideas and applications for critical times (pp. 1–18). Ninnes, P., and Mehta, S. (2004). Introduction: Re-imagining Comparative Education. In P. Ninnes and S. Mehta (Eds.), Re-imagining Comparative Education: Postfoundational ideas and applications for critical times (pp. ix–xv). Nisbet, R. A. (1980). History of the idea of progress. New York, NY: Basic Books. Paulston, R. G. (1999). Mapping Comparative Education after postmodernity. Comparative Education Review, 43(4), 438–463. Peet, R., and Hartwick, E. R. (2009). Theories of development: Contentions, arguments, alternatives. 2nd edition. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Peters, M. (2001). Poststructuralism, Marxism, and neoliberalism: Between theory and politics. Oxford, UK: Rowman & Littlefield. Popkewitz, T. S. (1998). Struggling for the soul. The politics of schooling and the construction of the teacher. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Popkewitz, T. S. (2008). The reason of reason: Cosmopolitanism, social exclusion and lifelong learning. In Foucault and lifelong learning (pp. 94–106). New York, NY: Routledge. Popkewitz, T. (2010). The political of PISA, numbers and the alchemy of school subjects. In J. Kau (Ed.), Restructuring the truth of schooling–Essays on discursive practices in the sociology and politics of education (pp. 42–60). Jayvskya, Finland: University of Jayvsya. Rist, G. (2014). The history of development: From western origins to global faith. Zed Books Ltd. Rust, V. (1991). Postmodernism and its Comparative Education implications. Comparative Education Review, 35(4), 610–626. Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Santos, B. (2016). Epistemologies of the south: Justice against epistemicide. New York, NY: Routledge. Sobe, N. (2018). Problematizing comparison in a post-exploration age: Big data, educational knowledge, and the art of criss-crossing. Comparative Education Review, 62(3), 325–343. St. Pierre, E., and Pillow, S. (2000). Working the ruins: Feminist poststructural theory and methods in education. New York & London: Routledge. Tabulawa, R. (2003). International aid agencies, learner-centered pedagogy and political democratization: A critique. Comparative Education, 39(1), 7–26. Thomas, R. and Buscema, J. (1968). The Avengers #57 silver age 1st Vision. Marvel Comics. Torres, C. (2013). Comparative Education: The dialectics of globalization and its discontents. In R. Arnove and C. Torres (Eds.), Comparative Education: The dialectic of the global and the local (pp. 459–483). Lanham, UK: Rowman & Littlefield. Wittrock, B. (2000). Modernity: One, none, or many? European origins and modernity as global condition. Daedalus, 129(1), 31–60.
PART THREE
Theoretical Adaptation and Revision Part 3 addresses different adaptations and revisions that have been made to various theories within comparative and international education (CIE). Today, globalization has emerged as part of a common discourse that has sought to reshape national educational systems. As global educational ideologies and reforms have become pervasive, so too have the processes—such as transnational capitalistic economics—that propel these philosophies. Globalization has brought with it global educational policy agendas and new modes of consensus policymaking, particularly as transnational state apparatuses are replaced with increasing market fundamentalism. Given the cultural, politicaleconomic, and technological dimensions of globalization, chapters in this section highlight the ways in which these aspects intersect with education, as well as examine significant debates and trends by talking either implicitly or explicitly about the consequences of globalization upon national educational systems. For these authors, these theories present but one approach towards studying the associated problems of globalization and education in CIE. In this way, the chapters explore the implication for national educational systems of the growing interdependence of the world’s economies and foreground diverse methodologies and perspectives. As such, these chapters show that we do not merely react to globalization and correlated processes, but that we tenaciously interact with it. The section commences with a chapter on neoliberalism by Anthony Welch, who makes a distinction between the market and the polis by arguing that we have replaced the social good with the economic good. While neoliberalism has in many ways become merely a “rhetorical weapon” (p. 201), Welch argues in Chapter 11 that it has substantially shaped educational reforms due to its overwhelming emphasis on efficiency and effectiveness. In examining neoliberalism as both a theory and a program of reform, Welch reminds us that the history of neoliberalism is fought with contradictions and contestations. With its concentration on reducing the role of the state, dismantling the Keynesian welfare state, liberalizing capital flows, competition, and privatization, neoliberalism has drastically restructured national educational systems. In CIE, the effects of neoliberalism have therefore, been studied at different levels: international/global, national, and institutional. Welch highlights how scholars have focused on examining the 197
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core instruments that international organizations have used to engender educational reforms, such as structural adjustment programs (see Chapter 4, too, on human capital and structural adjustment programs). While giving specific examples of the pervasiveness of the neoliberal education agenda, Welch reminds us that several countries (e.g., Vietnam, Cuba) also resisted neoliberal reforms. The chapter concludes by arguing that “neoliberalism in education has run its course; it has failed” (p. 208). In explaining the spread of mass schooling, Alexander W. Wiseman begins Chapter 12 on neo-institutionalism by suggesting that this theory is concerned with the cultural influences and effects of organizational models. He asserts that the aim of neoinstitutionalism is to understand the educational transformation that comes about through the reproduction and development of social systems. Here neo-institutionalism is undergirded by three foundational processes—scripting (or modeling), legitimacyseeking, and loose coupling—which are explored concurrently with isomorphic (i.e., similar forms of) change. Wiseman argues that scripts and models of educational systems and practices, no matter how different they are, always follow a similar trajectory culminating in educational isomorphism. Thus, these scripts and models result from legitimacy-seeking. For Wiseman, loose- or de-coupling is framed through the configuration of institutionalized beliefs between organizational processes and structures. In assessing the application of neo-institutionalism to CIE, Wiseman asserts that that world culture theory is a theoretical strand and that it is used to discuss the ways in which non-governmental organizations create, distribute, and alter their visions. Similarly, Wiseman notes that world society theory as a theoretical component is concerned with the explaining patterns, specifying of processes, and identifying causal mechanisms. He concludes by arguing that neo-institutionalism brings culture, comparison, and scope to CIE research. In Chapter 13 on neo-realism, Tavis D. Jules, Syed Amir Shah, Pravindharan Balakrishnan, and Serene Ismail place neo-realism within the context of post-Second World War to suggest that neo-realists’ arguments in education focus on how international structures shape outcomes. Neo-realism has its historical trajectory in the origins of realism, which recognizes that nation-states are the primary agents in the inter-state system of international relations. In this way, neo-realists hold value in structural constraints; the aim becomes unveiling the power behind the system. Thus, neo-realism focuses on studying the power relationship between the system and its members. In applying neo-realism to CIE, Jules et al. suggest that since the system is shaped by different relationships of power, then education from a neo-realist perspective focuses on the balance of power. The balance of power holds that in an anarchic world, cooperation is essential to state survival; in education, this implies that macro-phenomenon movements, such as globalization, have been influential in shaping the structures of international organizations, multilateral groupings, regional organizations, and trans-regional regimes. For Jules et al., as global projects change, so too does state behavior, resulting in consequences for educational reforms. In sum, this chapter profiles the rise of non-state actors in education and their impact and suggests that international organizations and multinational institutions perform a substantial role in the regulation of state activities. The case study examines large-scale international assessments, promoted and administered by these organizations and institutions, which have become increasingly influential activities within and beyond CIE in recent decades. In Chapter 14, on neo-Gramscian theory, Tavis D. Jules, Richard Arnold, Pravindharan Balakrishnan, and Victoria Desimoni explain how such an approach is aimed at questioning
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the world order by focusing on institutions and social and power relations. They draw attention to the role of state and non-state actors in seeking to cement hegemonic dominance as well as how Robert Cox’s work on hegemony has helped shape the role of education at the supranational level. Moreover, Jules et al. demonstrate how the neoGramscian perspective, which is a critical theory, aims to understand historicism and how societal relations of production, forms of state, and world orders give rise to material capabilities, ideas, institutions. In education, a neo-Gramscian perspective has been applied to explain the rise of national hegemonies and organizations and how their thinking is reflected in international educational frameworks. The chapter also provides several examples of how a neo-Gramscian perspective can be applied across cases, including the regulation of national education systems and internationalization and corporatization of education. A case study of European Higher Education Area (EHEA) implemented through the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) is provided at the end of the chapter to show how hegemonic power in the neo-Gramscian sense works. Marcelo Parreira do Amaral begins Chapter 15 on regimes and regionalism by placing the nation-state at the center of regulation and educational governance. For Parreira do Amaral, regimes, which regulate and coordinate behavior, and regionalism, which are political and economic projects, are central in shaping national educational reform agendas. While both regime and regionalism theories focus on cooperation in education, scholars have used these theories as ways of making sense of the impact of processes of collaboration and economic integration (regionalization) upon national educational systems, particularly in an era of internationalization and globalization. In applying these theories to the field of CIE, Parreira do Amaral asserts that regimes have been used as theory-building exercises by pinpointing and studying different education regimes (e.g., Education for All), while regionalism has focused on exploring the impact of regional organizations (e.g., EU, CARICOM) on education. Nonetheless, both regime and regionalism theories serve to uncover how new actors are making sense of national educational developments, policy, and government. He concludes by suggesting that regime and regionalism theories are theoretical lenses for describing cooperation and competition in the field of education, and offers readers a case study on worldwide higher education regimes as explored by Zapp and Ramirez (2019). The final chapter of this section, Chapter 16, focuses on cultural political economy (CPE). For Susan Robertson and Roger Dale, CPE is an interdisciplinary framework that allows us to focus on “how the meanings that actors attribute to the social world are embedded in material, political and economic relations and institutions” (p. 284) in the field. They identify that this approach is based upon the cultural turn in political economy; constituted by the cultural, political, and economic dimensions; and serves as a way to problematize challenges for education associated with globalization. While CPE is informed by critical realism, it is both a method and theory. In introducing the concept of the “education ensemble,” which accounts for an array of actors and institutions, they argue that while the educational ensemble should be taken apart to be understood, there is no understanding of it without studying it collectively. In applying CPE to CIE, they suggest that CPE pushes researchers to consider a broader set of questions. In this way, the cultural emphasizes the ways of making meaning, the political allows us to ask questions of socio-political activity, while the economic lets us focus more broadly in terms of societal relations. CPE, therefore, helps make visible actors who are not always apparent. They conclude by suggesting that CPE is a way to study complex education problems.
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In sum, these chapters collectively explore the rich tapestry of globalization and its attendant effects upon national educational systems. As educational policies, practices, and values continue to converge and diverge in novel ways, theories related to globalization remain a valuable focus of educational exploration in research and practice.
REFERENCES Zapp, M., and Ramirez, F.O. (2019). Beyond internationalisation and isomorphism—The construction of a global higher education regime. Comparative Education, 55(4), 473–493.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Neoliberalism in Comparative and International Education Theory, Practice, Paradox ANTHONY WELCH
INTRODUCTION The market vs. the polis There is no complete consensus regarding the definition of neoliberalism; indeed, the term has now become so commonly used as to be stripped of much of its meaning. Yet, there is little doubt of its major impact on education, worldwide, especially in recent decades. For some, “the word has become a rhetorical weapon, a way for anyone left of centre to incriminate those even an inch to their right” (Metcalf, 2017; see also Morley, et al., 2014). But it is possible to define the major tenets of the neoliberal reform agenda that rest on the proposal to replace older notions of the social good with that of economic good. That is, reform proposals, including in education, are to be measured according to their efficiency and effectiveness (fundamentally economic principles), rather than their capacity to contribute to wider notions of the social good. This core idea places economic considerations above social considerations when developing and implementing social policy, including in education. The strategy is in equal parts audacious and mendacious, as Denniss (2018) points out: much of the rhetorical power of neoliberalism arose from the way it laid claim to words like “efficiency,” “productivity” and “growth,” distorted them, and then injected them back into public debate in the most confusing ways. For example, once you convince people that government spending is wasteful, it is easy to argue that any cuts in government spending are efficient. —p. 10; see also Habermas, 1968; 1971 Critics of neoliberalism, however, have been swift to point out what has been lost in the process of reducing decisions regarding policy options to an economic calculus: “contrary to what neoliberalism has taught us, a cost–benefit analysis is only one part of democratic decision-making. And it’s usually a small one” (Denniss, 2018, pp. 49–50; see also Welch, 2018). 201
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This chapter examines neoliberalism as both a theory and program of reform. It begins by outlining the main pillars of neoliberalism, then sketches its influence in comparative education, followed by pointing out some of the paradoxes within neoliberal theory, and finally presenting a case study, and conclusion.
OVERVIEW In practice, neoliberalism can be reduced to two pillars, as a recent paper by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded: the first is increased competition—achieved through deregulation and the opening up of domestic markets, including financial markets, to foreign competition. The second is a smaller role for the state, achieved through privatization and limits on the ability of governments to run fiscal deficits and accumulate debt. —Ostry et al., 2016, p. 38 So, the market is the key mechanism to discipline society along neoliberal lines. If running the economic or financial abacus1 over education, health, or transport indicates that the private sector is a more efficient provider (in practice, this often means “apparently cheaper,” although many examples of privatization ultimately led to higher costs), then the state should abandon the field, “get out of the way,” and turn provision over to the private sector (Connell, 2013). According to this principle, the rational actor, whether the state or the individual, makes choices based on an economic calculus of what will yield the best return on investment, under market conditions. The state creates an education market supposedly based on open competition between institutions; the individual then chooses a school from among a range of choices available (Olssen and Peters, 2005). Education is thus transformed into a commodity or tradeable good, to be bought and sold in the education market, just like any other commodity—a computer, or pair of sneakers (Connell, 2013; Gewirtz, Ball, and Bowe, 1995; McKenzie, 2012; Welch, 2018). In this sense, it can be seen as the latest iteration of human capital theory (see Chapter 4), an instrumental view that treats education purely as a form of private (individual) or public (state) investment, and ignores other factors (such as, someone’s passion for poetry, ancient history, or music, for example). The individual is thus also transformed: into a knowledge entrepreneur, risking their future on choices of the individual school or university, according to a “rational” estimate of financial benefit. Under this ideology, the reduced role for the state is to intervene only in the interests of promoting (further) market-type reforms: to develop what has been called the “competition state” (Cerny, 1997; 2010; see also Jessop, 2002). Neoliberalism helped spread the transition to the competition state “by focussing . . . on competitiveness and discrediting policy alternatives” (Genschel and Seelkopf, 2015, p. 238). But this dismantling of the earlier Keynesian welfare state2 (that included state intervention to
1 An abacus is an ancient Chinese calculating tool in the form of a counting frame, with beads signifying specific amounts. It was used for centuries to calculate amounts, payments etc. See, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Abacus 2 John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) was an economist who showed that that unemployment and inflation varied inversely, and thus that state intervention to mitigate the worst effects of the market was justified (for example, building more infrastructure, and thereby creating more jobs was an effective means to address an economic recession, and mass unemployment).
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lessen mass unemployment or economic downturn by investing in infrastructure, and by providing a social safety net for all citizens), and its replacement by the competition state (that just relies on market mechanisms, and eschews market interventions, except those that promote further competition) has produced some consequential outcomes. One flows from the fact that, since the competition state is international rather than national, it is thus subject to cross-border capital flows. But flows of finance are fickle—what floods in during good times, can just as easily (and quickly) pour out, when external perceptions of risk increase, as happened in East Asia in the late 1990s, with some signs of potentially similar trends, especially in Argentina and Turkey, from mid-2018 (Bloomberg, 2018a; 2018b; Nikkei Asian Review, 2018). As seen below, this can lead to dire educational effects, when money for education dries up, leaving poorer people most affected. The same IMF review of the effects of policies of liberalizing capital flows across borders (allowing money to flow across borders, with fewer regulations or restrictions), and introducing austerity reforms (such as cutting or reducing benefits, e.g., welfare payments or unemployment benefits) to reduce debt, pointed to “genuine hazards,” and concluded that the outcomes of such policies were “disquieting:” 1. across a broad group of countries, benefits in terms of increased growth were difficult to establish. 2. there were major costs in terms of increased inequality. These represented the trade-off between the growth and equity effects of elements of the neoliberal agenda. 3. in turn, increased inequality reduced both the level and sustainability of growth. Even if economic growth remains the core goal of neoliberalism, proponents must focus on the distributional effects. (Ostry et al., 2016, p. 39) Equally, the assessment of the assumed need for austerity and debt reduction concluded that it was by no means universal; indeed, “austerity policies not only generate substantial welfare costs . . ., they also hurt demand—and thus worsen employment and unemployment” (Ostry et al., 2016, p. 40). Despite this admission of the very real economic effects of such agendas on both demand and employment, as well as to worsening inequality (that then undermines economic growth), neoliberal reforms continued to be put forward with undiminished vigor. Arguably, neoliberalism is a solution in search of a problem, or in the more modest language of the IMF, the “benefits of some policies that are an important part of the neoliberal agenda appear to have been somewhat overplayed” (Ostry et al., 2016, p. 40).
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION Within the field of comparative and international education (CIE), the impact of neoliberalism can be observed at several different levels: international/global; national; and institutional. First level effects can best be seen in the actions of major international organizations, such as the World Bank, IMF, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in the latter decades of the twentieth-century. Spruiked enthusiastically by these organizations from the 1980s, a wide set of proposed reforms to countries around the world crystalized around what became known as the Washington Consensus (Jessop, 2002; Williamson, 1993). Largely ignoring different
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social and economic goals, histories, and levels of development among countries, the advice of consultants from such organizations tended to cohere around a consistent set of core “structural adjustment” reforms: privatization, de-regulation, market reforms, trade liberalization, and flexible exchange rates. The egregious effects were particularly marked on developing nations, whose capacity to gain much-needed loans from, for example, the World Bank was made conditional upon the acceptance of such structural reforms. Some countries, such as Vietnam, resisted specific elements of the neoliberal reform agenda. Another refusenik was Cuba, which withdrew its membership of the World Bank in 1960, and never ratified its membership of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Admittedly, even if it had wanted to join, the U.S., the largest shareholder of both banks, would have blocked the application (Morris, 2014). But most developing countries complied; many felt they had little choice. In response to recommendations stemming from a World Bank mission in 1981, Malawi, for example, introduced fees for both primary and secondary schools. The justification for their introduction, according to World Bank economists, was, unsurprisingly, economic: that “poor people would be willing to pay more fees than they currently do, if they could have more access to better schooling” (Klees, 2008, p. 313). This was despite numerous studies showing that higher fees depressed enrollments, most particularly among the poor. And indeed, this was just what happened in Malawi, and subsequently in Ghana: substantial enrolment decline was the consequence. As late as 1999, as part of Ghana’s debt relief, economic reforms imposed user fees in primary school, leading to an immediate and significant decline in attendance. The imposition of user fees led to three-quarters of the street children in the capital city, Accra, dropping out of school. —Klees, 2008, pp. 313–314; see also Dune, 2000 Critics, including former senior economists from within the World Bank, were dismissed as socialists or anti-globalists; nations were advised “There is No Alternative” (Stiglitz, 2002). Ultimately, however, even the World Bank acknowledged that strict neoliberal measures “were eroding safety nets, widening inequalities, and leading to corruption and instability” (Bergeron, 2008, p. 349): the Washington Consensus had become a “damaged brand.” A post-Washington consensus subsequently emerged that emphasized health, education, and environmental priorities, and allowed for more state intervention, albeit still based on trickle-down economic assumptions (Bergeron, 2008). With hindsight, it is widely accepted that the introduction of such measures, for example, to developing (South) East Asian nations in the late 1990s, only exacerbated what came to be known as the regional currency crisis. The value of regional currencies, such as the Korean Won, Indonesian Rupiah, and Malaysian Ringgit plunged, and tens of millions of people throughout the region were thrown into poverty. The effects in education were immediate and dramatic, with budgets slashed, children taken out of school, and students abroad told to return home to complete their degrees, as national scholarship funds dried up (Welch, 2011a). In Latin America, implementation of neoliberal reforms was blamed for the Argentine economic crisis, and the IMF subsequently acknowledged it had learned some painful lessons from its mistakes (Connell, 2013; IMF, 2013 ). Second level effects were also soon observed. Within developed nations, for example, neoliberalism licensed the creation of education markets, under the guise of promoting
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school choice (Ball, 1993; Chubb and Moe, 1990; Gewirtz et al., 1995). Of developing countries, Chile adopted structural adjustment reforms, including in education. Its private schooling sector is now proportionally the largest in the OECD,3 and educational inequality has risen, at all levels. Much the same occurred within the higher education sector both in Latin America and in developing countries elsewhere, which, acting on World Bank advice, prioritized basic (primary) schooling over higher education. In response, the private sector expanded, and as fees increased, both in public and private sector HEIs, poor families were increasingly excluded from (quality) higher education. (Torres and Schugerensky, 2002; Welch, 2011a; 2012). Although it was true that “in most developing countries, there were relatively few low-income students in universities, now there are fewer” (Klees, 2008, p. 317). In Australia, which after Chile has about the largest state-subsidized private school sector among the 34 OECD member states (OECD, 2014; 2017), de-regulation of the schooling sector paralleled increased subsidies to private schools, by both state and federal governments. This combination of privatization and de-regulation came straight from the neoliberal playbook, and was justified by appeals to its ideology of school choice and markets (Welch, 2018). But as was pointed out in response, whereas choice was differentially distributed among the population, “the education market presupposes ‘possession of the cultural code required for decoding the objects displayed’ ” (as cited in Ball, 1993, p. 13). As Ball (1993) went on to explain, markets actually work to reproduce and entrench class differences in three key ways. The first flows from the mistaken assumption that the skills and predisposition to exercise choice, and associated cultural capital are distributed equally across the population, although it is widely acknowledged that, in practice, middle class choosers, and some ethnic groups, are better at harvesting the benefits of choice (Ball, 1993; Da and Welch, 2016; Gewirtz et al., 1995; Redmond and Skattebol, 2018; Skattebol and Redmond, 2018). Secondly, non-choosers and poor choosers are labelled “bad parents,” obscuring systemic biases, and blaming the victims. Deploying discourses of empowerment in fact masks mechanisms of exclusion and dispossession. Lastly, the education market doubly disadvantages the “poor chooser” (often from poorer communities, such as indigenous, or recently-arrived, minorities) by linking the distribution of resources to the distribution of choices (Ball, 1993; Gewirtz et al., 1995; Redmond and Skattebol, 2018). The result in Australia was a significant shift towards the residualization4 of the neighborhood public school, especially in disadvantaged suburbs and areas, in favor of both state-subsidized private schools, and, to a lesser extent, state selective schools (Campbell et al., 2009; DOTE, 2015; Klees, 2008). In Latin America, and elsewhere, claims as to the superior performance of private schools are largely explained by their more selective intake (Somers et al., 2004). In both developed and developing countries, giving educational vouchers to parents resulted in greater advantage to wealthier parents (Carnoy, 1998; 2000; McEwan and Carnoy, 2000). Third level effects in many countries distorted enrolments, aggravating social disadvantage. Just as in Africa, the introduction of neoliberal policies to schools in Latin
Chile acceded to OECD membership in 2010, the first Latin American member state to do so. Residualization of public schools refers to a process whereby, under conditions of increased competition between schools, and greater funding to private schools, parents increasingly see public schools as second choice.
3 4
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America led to falls in enrollments among the poorest. When the American aid agency USAID introduced a scheme that lent money to parents for textbooks in Nicaragua, for example, it insisted on repayment. For poor parents, this amounted to a choice between food and schooling, “tortillas or textbooks” (Klees, 2008, p. 314). For such parents, it was often too embarrassing to send their children to school without textbooks. The effects were most serious for girls, who were less likely to be sent to school. While in theory, the scheme was to be accompanied by scholarships for the poorest part of the population, in practice it was either neglected, not implemented, or inadequate. “Thus, it is not at all surprising that when fees are raised, large numbers of children from poor families withdraw from school or never start” (Klees, 2008, p. 314). Subsequent reversals of the policy led to significant enrolment increases in countries, such as Malawi, Zambia, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika, from the mid-1990s. Institutional effects in higher education also show regressive effects of neoliberal policies. While in many developing countries, higher education has traditionally been dominated by the middle class, the privatization of higher education, an outcome of neoliberal policy prescriptions, arguably aggravated the problem (Carnoy, 1999; Klees, 2008). The effect in a number of countries in Southeast Asia, for example, was a proliferation of private sector HEIs, often of dubious quality, and often poorly regulated (Welch, 2011a; 2012; 2016). The same was true in Afghanistan (Welch and Wahidyar, 2013; 2018). In both cases, the rapid growth in number of private HEIs, combined with limited state capacity, overwhelmed the capability of either ministries, or national quality assurance agencies, charged with responsibility for maintaining the quality of higher education. The Janus face of privatization also affected public sector HEIs, where rising enrollments were not paralleled by equivalent growth in public funding. The increasing funding gap pushed many public HEIs to establish parallel private sector arms, that taught a few selected subjects (often IT, Languages, and Business) for much higher fees, to a wider audience (since admissions to these fee-based “Executive” or “Diploma” programs was commonly based on much lower entry standards, than in the regular programs). Taught by the same lecturers from the public HEI, complaints soon emerged of poor quality, inadequate financial transparency, bribery and corruption, and ghost-written papers and research degrees. The net effect was to further marginalize poorer aspirants to higher education, who, unable to afford the higher fees of quality private HEIs, or the rising fees of public HEIs, were either restricted from higher education altogether or could only avail themselves of low-fee, low quality private HEIs (Welch, 2011a). In both developed and developing countries, the growth of spurious private HEIs, some no more than diploma mills, has developed into a major problem. Another index of the pervasiveness of the neoliberal education agenda is the rise of high-stakes achievement tests, introduced both within and across a range of countries in the past decade or two. Again, licensed by appeals to the logic of competition, they are one of the key mechanisms whereby education has come to be governed by numbers. (Ball, 2015; 2016). Such tests come in two forms, international and national, but it is the school effects that are arguably the most egregious. Developed and spruiked by the OECD, the International Program of International Student Achievement (PISA) is now seen as an index of the quality of schooling systems, and of pupils. Upon publication of PISA results, ministers of education tremble, lest the results show a decline in performance. If so, the performance of pupils in the local system is criticized for not matching the performance of whichever system appears to be leading the league tables of educational
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achievement (Welch, 2011b). The era of governance by comparison has arrived, based on a regime of power/knowledge. School effects of mandated high-stakes testing programs, such as the Australian National Assessment Programme, Numeracy and Literacy (NAPLAN) or their equivalent in the UK, or USA, are pervasive. The schemes often discipline schools that perform less well: principals may lose their jobs, while schools can lose staff, or funding. The pressure is relentless, the consequences are clear: parts of the curriculum not to be tested are downplayed or omitted as teachers “teach to the test,” drill children on items to be tested, and at times, cheat, to improve results (Dulfer et al., 2012; NPR, 2010; Ravitch, 2010a; 2010b; Welch, 2018). “Books were cooked, test scores were confabulated” (Klees, 2008, p. 330). Social class differences are reproduced, teacher autonomy eroded, and a vast industry of consultants and print and online resources springs up, touting commercial remedies for schools that do not “make the grade” (Comber, 2012). Pupils’ time is taken up by test preparation (rather than learning), parents worried, and teachers and school leaders stressed and demoralized. And, after a decade or more, and carrot and stick approaches to individual schools with below or above average performance, there is little evidence that genuine student achievement has risen. But somehow, test results are seen to be objective, or true; which in turn raises the question of how some things come to be seen as true (Ball, 2016; Foucault, 1988a; 1988b). This relentless focus on achievement tests, is part of the wider agenda of neoliberal reform in education, that results in a comprehensive regime of being governed by numbers. Given this “regime of truth” (Ball, 2016), it is no surprise to find that the first goal of the Australian Education Act (2013) is for Australia to be ranked among the top 5 of the 34 OECD member states’ PISA results. As a UK teacher, suffering under much the same regime, lamented: schools are littered with data; at times it seems that everything I do as a practitioner is valued only in as far as it impacts positively on the data. . . . The value we place on everything we do is formed by its relationship to the measure. —Ball, 2016, pp. 1131–2 In Australia, similar responses, widely evident among teachers, were evocatively summed up by a committed teacher, who, after a successful career of 15 years, critiqued the effects on teachers of neoliberal reforms and governance by numbers: “apparently, I’m more valuable as an assessor, an examiner, a data collector. I have had to dull my once-engaging lesson sequences” (Stroud, 2016). It was not, she argued, that she left the teaching profession; rather, “teaching left me” (Bonnor, 2018; Stroud, 2018).
Paradoxes of neoliberal policy Beyond the examples above, the contradictions evident among those who claim to champion neoliberalism are pointed to in a withering analysis by Denniss (2018), in the process of contrasting an earlier era in Australian history, characterized by the early introduction of worker-friendly policies, such as the eight-hour day, paid sick leave, and annual holidays, with the current pattern under neoliberal influence, of unpaid overtime, worker underpayment, and exploitation. As he underlines, there is a difference between the agenda of neoliberalism (which is at least consistent) and the rhetoric of its proponents (which is fraught with contradiction). Those who currently champion de-regulatory reforms in Australia, for example, press for intervention to subsidize new coal mines (but
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seek to deny subsidies to forms of renewable energy); advocate free speech, while preventing journalists and researchers from investigating human rights abuses on offshore detention camps in Nauru and Manus Island; supported a Royal Commission into trade unions, while stoutly opposing one into the banking and finance industry; railed against supposed restrictions on religious freedom, while at least licensing Islamophobia; promoted a “level playing field” in vocational training, while shoveling billions of taxpayer dollars to dodgy private providers; and cracked down on payments to welfare recipients, while proposing large tax cuts to wealthy corporations. Hence, as Denniss (2018) argues, while many politicians and business people have dressed themselves “in the cloak of neoliberal ideas and ideals. . . they lack the consistency and strength of principle” (p. 20) to apply the neoliberal agenda across the board. Another rhetorical claim often put forward by proponents of neoliberalism (most famously by former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher) is that “there is no alternative,” despite the fact that “the world is full of alternatives” (Denniss, 2018, p. 17). This reveals that neoliberalism is, ultimately, a political, rather than (just) an economic strategy, with the aim of reducing the role of the state, and transferring responsibility to individuals and families, with all the attendant risks that this implies.
CONCLUSIONS The world is full of alternatives and choices. Neoliberalism’s real power came from convincing us that we had none. We do, and making them is the democratic role of citizens—not the technocratic role of economists . . . —Denniss, 2018, p. 77 The reform agenda of neoliberalism in education has run its course; it has failed. In spite of this failure, tired clichés of markets, choice, level playing fields, and “throwing money at education” continue to be publicly spoken about by conservative politicians, and likeminded economists. Comparative research in many parts of both the global South and global North, show the effects to have been profound and pervasive: the privatization of public education, de-regulation, unending managerialism, re-structuring, achievement tests, cost-cutting, deeper divides in both educational institutions and systems, and among individual and families. The stubborn pursuit of neoliberalism was in spite of clear evidence, even from the World Bank itself, that, for example, if privatization was to be introduced, “strengthening the capability of the state to develop and supervise health and education systems is thus critical . . . [This will require] major capacity and institution-building of public sector agencies” (Klees, 2008, p. 332; World Bank Group, 2002, pp.18–19). As seen above, the case study of the pursuit of privatization and de-regulation of vocational training in Australia, highlighted that the failure to maintain regulatory standards proved very costly, in both financial and quality terms. Ultimately, cost-cutting proved far too costly: “in education, privatization requires considerable regulation for it to have a chance of operating well, equitably, in the public interest, transparently, and free of corruption” (Klees, 2008, p. 333). In one sense, the above account reveals neoliberalism to be a political, rather than an economic, ideology. Yet, in another sense, the fact that in the UK, New Zealand, and Australia, the agenda was embraced by both conservative and social-democratic parties, reveals that the appeal of the neoliberal agenda transcended narrow party politics. There
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were differences between parties of the right and the left, but they were more of degree than of kind (Denniss, 2018; Welch, 1996; 2018). The wide appeal of neoliberalism to political parties of left and right, in both the developed and developing world, should not be taken to mean that there is no resistance to its implementation in education, nor that there are no differences between regimes, and states. The pervasiveness of its appeal, however, is that strategies, such as privatization and de-regulation divert responsibility for problems and failures from government, on to non-government agencies, to educational institutions, and shifts the risk of failure to families and students. The resulting democratic deficit is keenly felt by voters, who feel disenfranchised, but it allows governments to press ahead with unpopular reforms, based on ideologies of efficiency, markets and choice. In this sense, neoliberalism shrinks the set of policy options, by arguing that its reforms and prescriptions are objective, and rational. The attempt is to persuade the public that, as the late UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher intoned, “there is no alternative.” The result is a shrunken, shriveled notion of democracy: “neoliberalism has served not just to shrink the menu of policy choices available, but to isolate the voting public from a genuine debate about the kind of services they want and the way they want them provided” (Denniss, 2018, p. 35). In the process, the gap between those whose need is greatest, and those whose wealth is greatest, continues to widen, while demographic, geographic and racial fissures deepen across society (Denniss, 2018, p. 17). The slide-rule of economics is run over educational options, so that cost–benefit calculations, and “efficiency” determine the worth of educational policies. As the above example of the privatization and de-regulation of vocational training graphically illustrated: the result is thousands of unemployed people borrowing thousands of dollars to do short online courses to become nail artists and physical trainers. Employers can’t get the trained young people they need, young people ran up debts they can’t repay, and the private providers made a fortune . . . all in the name of efficiency. —Denniss, 2018, p. 61 Debates about education can no longer be permitted to be confined to an economic/ financial calculus. The lesson of neoliberalism is that the results are to widen gaps between haves and have nots, while simultaneously eroding democratic structures and principles.
FURTHER READING 1. Campbell, C. Proctor, H., and Sherington, G. (2009). School choice. How parents negotiate the new school market in Australia. Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin. 2. Carnoy, M. (1998). National voucher plans in Chile and Sweden: Did privatization reforms make for better education? Comparative Education Review, 42(3), 309–37. 3. Gewirtz, S., Ball, S., and Bowe, R. (1995). Markets, choice and equity in education. Milton Keynes, Open University Press. 4. Denniss, R. (2018). Dead right: How neoliberalism ate itself and what comes next. Quarterly Essay, 70, 1–79. 5. Jessop, B. (2002). The future of the capitalist state. Cambridge Polity Press. 6. Klees, S. (2008). A quarter century of neoliberal thinking in education: Misleading analyses and failed policies. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 6(4), 311–348.
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MINI CASE STUDY A powerful illustration of neoliberal reform in education, and its impact, was seen in Australia in recent years, with the evisceration of the publicly-funded technical and further education (TAFE) sector. In a federal system, (paralleling somewhat similar structures in Germany, Brazil, the USA, and Canada), one state after another cut funding to the training sector, that had traditionally been both the backbone of production of skilled trades personnel, as well as a major source of wider community education. Defying warnings, from within and beyond the sector, that major programs would be put at risk and the quality of the system undermined, the discourse of markets and the so-called “level playing field” was used to impose severe cuts to TAFE colleges around the state, including in rural areas where there were no alternative training institutions (Centre for Policy Development, 2012; Connell, 2013). Of its eighty-two TAFE campuses, the northern state of Queensland planned to close thirty-eight, while the most populous state of New South Wales listed 27 TAFE sites for sale, while shedding more than 5,000 TAFE staff (both teaching and administrative), and 150,000 enrollments, between 2012 and 2015 (SMH, 2015; 2017). Other states introduced similar reforms, that in some cases have had to be reversed, at considerable cost (SMH, 2018). With hindsight, the effects could have been predicted—and indeed had been predicted, by both teacher unions and some researchers and policy analysts. Earlier moves to deregulate the training sector within New South Wales, for example, had led to a dramatic rise in the number of private training providers, that soon outstripped the capacity of the state department of education to control and monitor the quality of training provided. The later episode magnified such effects, across the country, with spectacular effects of regulatory failure laid bare in 2015 and 2016, as a result of the imposition of a marketdriven model that shifted training provision decisively towards private, for-profit training institutions (Workplace Research Centre, 2015). The effects were not uniform, with most private training providers offering quality programs. Nonetheless, inquiries subsequently revealed that a number of large, unscrupulous private providers, had accepted hundreds of million dollars in government funding while failing to provide proper (or any) training. Supported by federal government subsidies that delivered funds upon enrolment, a number of unprincipled training organizations employed recruitment agents, who preyed on the disabled, non-English speakers, indigenous people, nursing home residents and welfare recipients, with in most cases almost no idea of what they were signing up to, or the extent of their financial commitment. “Free” laptops were offered to individuals with neither adequate educational backgrounds, nor any real interest in the programs offered, as inducements to enroll. Subsequent investigations revealed that thousands of students had, without knowing, incurred substantial debts for courses they neither understood, nor had much chance of completing (Welch, 2018; Denniss, 2018, p. 61). Individual debt levels ran as high as $25,000, and since many students were poor, or otherwise disadvantaged, the prospects of them repaying their debts were remote. Other outcomes were equally serious. TAFE enrolment rates plummeted, as did graduation rates at a number of private colleges, one of which enrolled 4,000 students in 2014, but only managed to graduate five students. A combination of low completion rates, poor alignment between courses offered and student understanding and interest, and predatory enrolment practices, ensured that the large majority of students could never repay their debt. This meant that, in the end, the taxpayer footed the bill. The widening series of scandals in 2015 and 2016 ultimately cost
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Australian taxpayers billions—$2.15 billion in 2015 alone. The final bill to taxpayers was likely to be much larger—an estimated $6 billion. Ultimately, providers with lofty-sounding names, such as the Australian Institute of Professional Education, Unique International College, Smart City Vocational College, Phoenix Institute, Aspire College, and the Australian Vocational Training Institute had their registrations as training providers cancelled by the relevant national regulator—the Australian Skills Qualification Agency (ASQA)—and were stripped of access to government funding. But this was closing the door after the horse had bolted, and only served to underline the perils of de-regulation—one of the policy pillars of the neoliberal agenda. Overall, the effects were egregious. Privatization programs imposed in virtually all states led to sharp falls in TAFE enrolments—in the largest state of New South Wales, for example, TAFE commencements fell by 30 percent over the period 2014–2015, and in 2016 by another 86,300. Sadly, this only mirrored developments in other states—across the country, the imposition of sharp cuts to TAFE funding by state governments of both liberal and conservative persuasion, led to major falls in enrolment (Nous Group, 2016). The effects were made worse by sharp rises in costs to students, that were not restricted to private sector training institutions. Faced with demands to put training courses on a cost-recovery basis, fees for some key vocational courses delivered by TAFE also rose dramatically—between 30 and 80 percent for vocational qualifications, such as Certificate II, III, and IV. The ensuing scandal engulfed training provision nationwide, forced the Federal Minister for Education to restrict availability of the federal Fee Help scheme, that had been part of the problem, setting higher entry barriers to new providers (including track record, employment outcomes and industry links), and capping fees. Given that the federal body (ASQA) lacked both the resources and powers to adequately regulate quality, and state regulatory bodies had proven unable to regulate training providers effectively, the future looked troubled: “drastically plummeting enrolments in government supported providers, student exploitation, poor regulation” (CEDA, 2016, p. 6). The ultimate assessment by one of the country’s leading economists was an indictment of the neoliberal premises on which the training reforms had been based: that the “ ‘systemic failures (were) caused not by individual wrongdoing but by underfunding and a blind faith in market forces” (Quiggin, 2018, para 4; see also Connell, 2013).
REFERENCES Altbach, P., and Welch, A. (2011). The perils of commercialism: Australia’s example. International Higher Education, 62, 21–23. Ball, S. (1993). Education, markets and social class: The market as a class strategy in the UK and the USA . British Journal of Sociology of Education, 14(1), 3–19. Ball, S. (2015). Education, governance and the tyranny of numbers. Journal of Education Policy, 30(3), 299–301. Ball, S. (2016). Subjectivity as a site of struggle: Refusing neoliberalism. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 37(8), 1129–1146. Bergeron, S. (2008). Shape-shifting neoliberalism and World Bank education policy: A response to Steven Klees. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 6(4), 349–353. Bloomberg (2018a). Emerging markets in May saw biggest out flows in 18 months. Retrieved from www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-05/emerging-markets-seesbiggest-outflow-in-18-months
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Bloomberg (2018b). Rupiah rout puts Indonesia in spotlight as vote looms. Retrieved from www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-06/rupiah-turmoil-puts-indonesia-debt-inspotlight-as-vote-looms Bonnor, C. (2018). I don’t believe I left teaching. Teaching left me. Inside story. Retrieved from https://insidestory.org.au/i-dont-believe-i-left-teaching-teaching-left-me/ Bourdieu, P., and Passeron, J-C. (1990). Reproduction in education, society and culture. London, UK : Sage. Campbell, C., Proctor, H., and Sherington, G. (2009). School choice. How parents negotiate the new school market in Australia. Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin. Carnoy, M. (1998). National voucher plans in Chile and Sweden: Did privatization reforms make for better education? Comparative Education Review, 42(3), 309–337. Carnoy, M. (1999). Globalization and educational reform: What planners need to know. Paris, Francia: UNESCO (IIEP). Carnoy, M. (2000). Globalization and educational reform. In K. Monkman and N. Stromquist (Eds.), Globalization and education: Integration and contestation across cultures. New York, NY: Rowman and Littlefield. Centre for Policy Development [CPD] (2012). Valuing skills. Why vocational training matters. Occasional Paper 24. Retrieved from https://cpd.org.au/2012/11/valuing-skills/ Cerny, P. (1997). Paradoxes of the competition state: The dynamics of political globalization. Government and Opposition, 32(2), 251–274. Cerny, P. (2010). The competition state today: From raison d’etat to raison du monde. Policy Studies, 31(1), 5–21. Chubb, J., and Moe, T. (1990). Politics, markets and America’s schools. Washington, DC : Brookings Institution. Comber, B. (2012). Mandated literacy assessment and the reorganisation of teachers work: Federal policy, local effects. Critical Studies in Education, 53(2), 119–136. Connell, R. (2013). The neoliberal cascade and education: An essay on the market agenda and its consequences. Critical Studies in Education, 54(2), 99–112. Da, W-W., and Welch, A. (2016). Educative and child-rearing practices among recent Chinese migrants in Australia: Continuity, change, hybridity. In C. Chou and J. Spangler (Eds.), Chinese education models in a global age (pp. 231–245). Singapore: Springer. Davis, D., and Mackintosh, B. (Eds.) (2011). Making a difference: Australian international education. Kensington: UNSW Press. Denniss, R. (2018). Dead right: How neoliberalism ate itself and what comes next. Quarterly Essay, 70, 1–79. Retrieved from https://search-informit-com-au.ezproxy1.library.usyd.edu. au/documentSummary;dn=655966511180393;res=IELLCC Dropping off the Edge (DOTE). (2015). Dropping off the edge 2015. Retrieved from http://k46cs13u1432b9asz49wnhcx-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/0001_ dote_2015.pdf. Dulfer, N., Polesel, J., and Rice, S. (2012). The experience of education: The impact of high-stakes testing on school students and their families. Sydney: The Whitlam Institute. Dumenil, G, and Levy, D. (2005). The neoliberal (counter)-revolution. In A. Saad-Filho and D. Johnston (Eds.), Neoliberalism: A critical reader. Ann Arbor, MI : Pluto Press. Dunne, N. (2000, October 18). Fees issue entangles US debt relief plan. Financial Times. Foucault, M. (1988a). Michel Foucault: Politics, philosophy and culture—Interviews and other writings 1977–1984. New York, NY: Routledge.
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Foucault, M. (1988b). Truth, power, self: An interview with Michel Foucault. L. Martin, H. Gutman, and P. Hutton (Eds.), Technologies of the self. Amherst, MA : University of Massachusetts Press. Genschel, P., and Seelkopf, L. (2015). The competition state: The modern state in a global economy. In S. Leibfried, E. Huber, M.E. Lange, J.M. Levy, and J. Sand Stephens J. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of transformations of the state. Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press. Gewirtz, S., Ball, S., and Bowe, R. (1995). Markets, choice and equity in education. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Habermas, J. (1968). Knowledge and human interests. Boston, MA : Beacon Press. Habermas, J. (1971). Towards a rational society. London, UK : Heinemann. International Monetary Fund (IMF). (2004). Report on the evaluation of the role of the IMF in Argentina 1991–2001. Retrieved from www.imf.org/External/NP/ieo/2004/arg/eng/ index.htm Jessop, B. (2002). The future of the capitalist state. Cambridge Polity Press. Klees, S. (2008). A quarter century of neoliberal thinking in education: Misleading analyses and failed policies. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 6(4), 311–348. McEwan, P., and Carnoy, M. (2000). The effectiveness and efficiency of private schools in Chile’s voucher system. Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 22(3), 213–239. McKenzie, M. (2012). Education for y’all: Global neoliberalism and the case for a politics of scale in sustainability education policy. Policy Futures in Education, 10(2), 165–177. Metcalf, S. (2017, August 18). Neoliberalism: The idea that swallowed the world. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-ideathat-changed-the-world Morley, L., Marginson, S., and Blackmore, J. (2014). Education, and neoliberal globalization. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 35(3), 457–468. Morris, S. (2014). Will Cuba join the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank? Centre for Global Development. Retrieved from www.cgdev.org/blog/will-cuba-join-worldbank-and-inter-american-development-bank National Public Radio [NPR] (2010). Cheating investigation focuses on Atlanta. Retrieved from www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130335370 National Public Radio [NPR] (2013). El Paso schools cheating scandal: Who’s accountable? Retrieved from www.npr.org/2013/04/10/176784631/el-paso-schools-cheating-scandalprobes-officials-accountability. Nikkei Asian Review (2018). Southeast Asia braces for emerging market capital flight. Retrieved from https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Southeast-Asia-braces-for-emerging-market-capitalflight. Nous Group (2016). Smart and skilled year one program review, stage 1 and stage 2, Retrieved from www.skillsboard.nsw.gov.au/publications/smart-and-skilled-year-one-program-review Olssen, M., and Peters, M. (2005). Neoliberalism, higher education and the knowledge economy: From the free market to knowledge capitalism. Journal of Educational Policy, 20(3), 313–345. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] (2014). Education at a glance 2014: OECD indicators. Retrieved from www.oecd.org/education/EAG2014Indicator%20C7%20(eng).pdf Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] (2017). School choice and school vouchers: An OECD perspective. Retrieved from www.oecd.org/education/ School-choice-and-school-vouchers-an-OECD-perspective.pdf
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Ostry, J., Loungani, P., and Furceri, D. (2016). Neoliberalism: Oversold?. Finance and Development, 53(2), 38–41. Pusey, M. (1991). Economic rationalism. A nation-building state changes its mind. Cambridge, MA : Cambridge University Press. Quiggin, J. (2018, February 22). Vocational education policy is failing and it’s not hard to see why. Inside Story. Retrieved from https://insidestory.org.au/vocational-education-policy-isfailing-and-its-not-hard-to-see-why/ Redmond, G., and Skattebol, J. (2018). Young Australians’ prospects still come down to where they grow up. The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/youngaustralians-prospects-still-come-down-to-where-they-grow-up 102640?utm_ medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20 September%2017%202018%20-%20111369956&utm_content=Latest%20from%20 The%20Conversation%20for%20September%2017%202018%20-%20111369956+ CID_0f25c36ebbcb8886a2e3aaafd5a10186&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_ term=Young%20Australians%20prospects%20still%20come%20down%20to%20 where%20they%20grow%20up Ravitch, D. (2010a). The death and life of the great American school system: How testing and choice are undermining education. New York, NY: Basic Books. Ravitch, D. (2010b). The myth of charter schools. New York Review of Books. Retrieved from www.nybooks.com/articles/2010/11/11/myth-charter-schools. Skattebol J., and Redmond, G. (2018). Troubled kids? Locational disadvantage, opportunity structures and social exclusion. Childrens’s Geographies. Retrieved from https://doi.org/ 10.1080/14733285.2018.1487031 Somers, M-A., McEwan, P., and Wilms, J. (2004). How effective are private schools in Latin America? Comparative Education Review, 48(1), 48–69. Stiglitz, J. (2002). Globalization and its discontents. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company Stroud, G. (2016). Teaching Australia. Griffith Review, 51. Stroud, G. (2018). Teacher. One woman’s struggle to keep the heart in teaching. Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin. Sydney Morning Herald [SMH] (2015). TAFE to sell off 27 sites, close regional campuses. Retrieved from www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/tafe-to-sell-off-27-sites-close-regionalcampuses-20150912-gjl093.html Sydney Morning Herald [SMH] (2017). “Shortsighted”: More TAFE closures feared. Retrieved from www.smh.com.au/education/shortsighted-more-tafe-closures-feared-20171027-gz9b0q. html Sydney Morning Herald [SMH] (2018). Labor promises $220 million to rebuild TAFE campuses in election sweetener. Retrieved from www.smh.com.au/politics/victoria/laborpromises-220m-to-rebuild-tafe-campuses-in-election-sweetener-20180918-p504fu.html Torres, C., and Schugurensky, D. (2002). The political economy of higher education in the era of neoliberal globalization: Latin America in comparative perspective. Higher Education, 43, 429–455. Welch, A. (1996). Australian education. Reform or crisis? Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin. Welch, A. (2011a). Higher education in Southeast Asia. Blurring borders, changing balance. London, UK : Routledge. Welch, A. (2011b). PISA performance and Australian education: Myths and realities. Revista Española de Educación Comparada (Spanish journal of Comparative Education), 18, 89–124.
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CHAPTER TWELVE
Framing Comparative and International Education Through a Neo-Institutional Lens The Discourse on Global Patterns and Shared Expectations ALEXANDER W. WISEMAN
INTRODUCTION Citizenship, development, childhood, and personhood have become ubiquitous themes in education around the world. Often the de facto version of education that many people imagine is formal schooling, where students attend teacher-led classes in schools located in or near their communities. There are shared expectations for what classrooms look like, smell like, and what the students and teachers typically do in those classrooms. Yet, education is more than a formal school or traditional classroom and has been institutionalized beyond this widely-shared experience. Education has other structural components, such as curriculum, subject-matter content, a hierarchy of knowledge, the social and economic status of educational attainment, and the recognition of certification. Even in communities where most people are not formally educated, there is an understanding of what education is and an expectation that it provides access and opportunity to those who have it. Neo-institutional theory has been used by researchers investigating these kinds of phenomena and others around the world for decades. It considers the cultural impacts and consequences of an organizational model that has been imbued with value, meaning, and legitimacy over hundreds of years. It also attempts to explain the inexplicable. For example, in the 1960s education was being used as a universal tool for development by development agencies worldwide. The problem is that post-colonial and developing nations worldwide were being introduced to and asked to adopt the same Westernmodeled form of mass education that developed in Europe as a result of European values, history, and socio-econo-political needs. Scholars at the time were doubtful that this European-grounded mass education model would be able to develop and grow in the 217
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varying and vastly unique social, cultural, economic, and political landscapes in these developing communities (Meyer and Rubinson, 1975). Surprisingly, formal mass education in the largely Western model not only became firmly established in nations that were decidedly not Western, but these new national governments and communities embraced formal mass education and continued to develop it. Why would a system born out of a completely different context and set of needs thrive and grow in what is by all accounts a foreign or alien context? The development of neo-institutional theory as it relates to comparative and international education (CIE) is in many ways an extended response to this question. This chapter provides an overview of neo-institutional theory as understood through the lens of CIE research. This overview includes an explanation of the ways neoinstitutional theory is often used to explain CIE research, how CIE has impacted the development of neo-institutional theory within this field, and how neo-institutional theory is differentiated from other similar as well as more agent-centric or power-driven theories used in CIE research. Next, the contribution of neo-institutional theory to CIE research is discussed and the relevance of this contribution is discussed.
OVERVIEW Neo-institutional theory in CIE is often used by researchers trying to understand how education systems reproduce or develop in frequently similar directions, especially when the national, cultural, social, and political contexts suggest they should not. Neoinstitutional theories have often been applied in CIE research when large-scale educational transformations occur, especially when those transformations that occur slowly over time are taken for granted (Meyer et al., 1992). But, neo-institutional theory is not a theory specific to CIE, even though it has been productively applied to CIE research since the 1980s. Neo-institutional theory is more commonly used by researchers in sociology, economics, or political science to frame analyses of systems and organizations, including education. In fact, sociologists, economists, and political scientists have used neoinstitutional theory to examine education as an institution as well as educational organizations and people participating in education, especially formal schooling (Baker, 2014; Shields and Watermeyer, 2019). The components of neo-institutional theory that are often used to frame research related to education include the following foundational processes: 1. scripting (or modeling); 2. legitimacy-seeking; 3. loose coupling. These processes are sometimes examined in conjunction with those of isomorphic change. The terms “scripting” or “modeling” suggest that there are templates for education that become recognized and replicated in educational systems. Research framed by neoinstitutional theory has shown that educational systems and educational practices often follow similar patterns even when the objectives and contexts of those systems are vastly different, a pattern that is also called isomorphism (“iso” meaning same, “morph” meaning shape) (Meyer et al., 1997; Shields, 2015). The similarities are even stronger when different contexts have a shared history, strive to achieve similar goals, or embody similar contextual characteristics. These scripts or models then may become
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institutionalized, meaning that they slowly become part of the culture of an organization, social community, or the experiences and expectations of individuals. In other words, the scripts become taken-for-granted. Institutionalized scripts and models, according to neo-institutional perspectives, are often the result of legitimacy-seeking. Legitimacy-seeking may be either explicit or implicit and may be internally or externally regulated. In educational systems, for example, the formal mass education experience has been a taken-for-granted component of school-age youths’ life course at some point in most countries within the last century. The expectation that children must attend school is not only then a taken-for-granted assumption of parents, families, and community members, but it is also frequently enforced by local or regional communities’ legal systems (e.g., truancy laws). It is, in other words, “normal” for children between the ages of 6–18 to go to school for most of the day, even though this was not the norm for most children until the twentieth-century (Richardson, 1980). Parents’ work responsibilities and schedules rely on this expectation as well, and when schooling is not assumed and parents must tend to their children during work hours, labor markets feel the burden of a less stable adult workforce (Gornick and Meyers, 2003). Processes of institutional, organizational, and individual change are also an important consideration for researchers framing their work with neo-institutional theory. A classic approach to these processes is focused on change that occurs gradually over time. There are other models of change, but to create a legitimized script for an institution as broad and embedded as education is often the result of isomorphic (i.e., extremely slow and constant) change (DiMaggio and Powell, 1991). DiMaggio and Powell (1983) are credited with expanding classic sociological theory related to isomorphic change, although other neo-institutionally inspired research suggested alternative explanations (e.g., Hannan and Freeman, 1984). DiMaggio and Powell (1983) identified three types of isomorphic change: coercive, mimetic, and normative. Much has been written about these types of change and how they occur in education, but the most interesting as well as the most misunderstood is normative isomorphism. Normative isomorphism has become a hallmark of neo-institutional understandings of educational change in comparative and international contexts as well as a point of contention among critical and conflict-oriented researchers (Wiseman, Astiz, and Baker, 2014). Last, but not least, is the process of loose- or de-coupling. This process addresses the strength or alignment of institutionalized expectations between organizational processes and structures and the contextualized implementation of those processes and structures. In other words, the district level policies for formal school systems may conform to a legitimized set of expectations for formal education, which is shared across communities characterized by vastly different socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and political contexts. But, the implementation of those policies may de-couple or only loosely couple with the actions of organizational sub-units or individuals enacting the policies (Wiseman et al., 2014). The idea of coupling may be linked to explanations about “bounded rationality.” Bounded rationality is when expectations for what is supposed to happen according to formal policies and structures set the boundaries for what is legitimate behavior and what is not (March and Olsen, 2006). Yet, within those rationally established boundaries, there are many different versions of legitimate behavior, which tend to vary based on contextualized needs and norms.
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Historical overview and development of neo-institutional theory The theory as it is applied to CIE has its origins in two schools of thought, neither of which originates in educational studies research. One school of thought grew from the early work of American sociologist Meyer and his students at Stanford University in the 1970s. Another school of thought grew from complementary work on neo-institutional theory in a European context (e.g., Berger and Luckmann, 1967). The theory itself as applied to CIE research grew out of a much broader body of work, which modified and specified earlier sociological and organizational versions of the theory called more simply: institutional theory (Scott, 1987). Institutional theory as developed by Selznick (1957) outlined more of a process over time that instilled value in an institutional structure or process that simply served a function prior to being instilled with intrinsic value (Scott, 1987). That value imbued the institution with stability and structure that was durable and resilient over time. This was then extended by Berger and Luckmann (1967), who argued that institutionalization was characterized both by repetition over time as well as the assignment of shared meanings to the repeated structures and processes (Scott, 1987). Later, the German comparativist Schriewer (2000) would bring Berger and Luckmann’s (1967) institutionalization phases (externalization, objectivation, and internalization) more explicitly to the field of CIE by using these phases to explain education policyborrowing (see Chapter 19). Neo-institutional theory itself is broadly used by researchers in all social science disciplines (DiMaggio and Powell, 1991), but its uses in economics, political science, and especially sociology are relevant to CIE research. Since CIE, like educational studies in general, has not developed a unique methodology or theoretical base, research done in CIE borrows from other disciplines as needed (Turner, 2019). Therefore, the use of neoinstitutional theory by those researchers situated outside of the professional or scholarly field of CIE is relevant to and used to frame CIE research. In the sociological literature, neo-institutional theory has become a useful voice related to the sociology of education and organizational studies. For example, the idea from early work by Zucker (1977) and Meyer and Rowan (1977) on neo-institutional theory was that institutionalization is a “social process by which individuals come to accept a shared definition of social reality” (Scott, 1987, p. 496). This was highly relevant because this conceptualization of institutionalization suggests that shared expectations about what is and is not real were often independent of individuals’ own beliefs and actions, meaning that individuals, organizations, and whole systems could take certain ideas for granted even if those ideas contradicted their beliefs and actions (Scott, 1987). This was an idea that could be applied to the isomorphic spread of formal mass education around the world during the twentieth-century, but it does not mean that there is only one shared expectation. In fact, there can and are many taken-for-granted expectations about education, which are rationalized to either fit with more locally contextualized beliefs and actions, or are abstracted in order to not explicitly contradict those locally contextualized beliefs and actions. Weber (1947), Durkheim, (1964), Parsons (1951), March and Simon (1958), and Berger and Luckmann (1967), among others, influenced the conceptual development of neo-institutional theory as applied to CIE. These foundational works locate neo-institutional theory as applied to CIE rather firmly in the sociological tradition. Weber’s (1947) work is, according to some, a strong example of the “sociological approach to comparative institutional analysis” (Nee, 1998, p. 5). Weber pioneered the
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“context-bound rationality” approach as well. Parson synthesized various institutional perspectives from Weber (1947), Durkheim (1964), and others to highlight issues related to “choice within institutional constraints” (Nee, 1998, p. 7). Neo-institutional theory, as applied to CIE has a relationship with sociological neo-institutionalism broadly speaking, and with the sociology of organizations and sociology of education, in particular.
Differentiation from alternative theories For CIE research, there are many alternative theories to neo-institutional theory. Most of the CIE research-related alternatives focus on imbalanced, power-based relationships, and agency-focused analyses (e.g., critical theory). Most of the professional or development-oriented alternatives are linear, functional, and traditionally economic theories (e.g., human capital or neoliberal theories). But, neo-institutional theory provides CIE research a theoretical framework that recognizes both the practical need for educational development, improvement, and change, while also recognizing the conflict and inequities that persist in education worldwide. Neo-institutional theory as typically used in CIE research, however, is not an explicitly agency-oriented theory, nor is it an overtly social justice advocacy theory, although in the broader literature beyond CIE there are more agency-oriented approaches to neo-institutional theory (e.g., Scharpf, 1997). It is an academic or scholarly framework for understanding a specific set of phenomena, which is neither universal nor ideological (Wiseman et al., 2014). It is also used as an empirically testable theory in CIE research, meaning that it requires evidence to either support or not support the explanations that the theory might provide about an educational phenomenon. As indicated above, there are theoretical approaches to educational studies and CIE research, in particular, that serve as reasonable alternatives. These theories are often typified as (1) functionalist (see Chapter 1), (2) critical or conflict (see Chapter 3), and (3) globalization theories, although overlap among these types exists. The first type tends to reflect development, governmental, and other more linear and functional approaches to educational phenomena. These theories are focused on human capital, manpower planning, modernization, and more neoliberal approaches to education (Becker, 2009; Carnoy, 2016; Psacharopoulos, 2014). The second type is comprised of theories that push conflict, power, and agency to the fore when analyzing educational phenomena. These are critical theories, often related to colonialism, imperialism, stratification, and conflict (Klees, 2019). The third type are theories related to the global diffusion or spread of models, values, and behaviors related to education, such as theories on “glocalization” and translocal cultures (Appadurai, 1990; Robertson, 1994). One theoretical framework that also began forming around the same time as Meyer and colleagues were articulating neo-institutional theory, and which also approached the evolution of education and other institutions as a global phenomenon is worldsystems theory. Wallerstein (2004) argued that instead of a cultural or sociological global system, education and other institutions operated in a more conflict-oriented model that was dominated by increasingly global capitalist economic and political agendas. These agendas divided the world into a core, periphery, and as the theory developed, eventually a semi-periphery. In Wallerstein’s (2004) world-systems framework, the inequality and immorality of an otherwise “functional” system was central to explaining global phenomena.
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Perhaps, however, one of the most useful alternatives is a conceptual framework explaining the process of educational policy-borrowing developed by Phillips and Ochs (2003). Phillips and Ochs (2003) created a template to help professionals as well as researchers understand the processes of policy-borrowing, which may be applied across many contexts, including cross-national educational policy-borrowing. It shares some elements of scripting, legitimation, loose-coupling, and isomorphism with neoinstitutional theory, but approaches the policy-borrowing phenomenon less from a cultural standpoint and more from a functional and agent-oriented perspective.
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION Much CIE-related research has looked at large-scale change over long time periods using neo-institutional theory (Baker and Wiseman, 2006). In CIE-related research, neoinstitutional theory has been frequently divided into work that is neo-institutional, broadly speaking, work that is characterized as world society theory, and work that is associated with world culture theory. It should be noted that most of the work that researchers in CIE identify as neo-institutional was written from a more sociological perspective and used education as an example of an institution that displayed the kinds of characteristics that are relevant to large-scale, isomorphic, and culturally laden change. Although sociologists who have framed research on organizations and institutions at the global and cross-national levels have published in education-related journals, their research has been interpreted by readers as belonging to both sociology as well as CIE. World culture theory is an example of a theoretical thread of neo-institutional theory that has been misinterpreted by some CIE researchers (Wiseman et al., 2014). World culture is a term that Lechner and Boli (2005) used to discuss the ways that international non-governmental organizations develop, share, and modify their visions, missions, and activities. This work is not explicitly CIE research, but their globalization work is cited frequently in the CIE research literature (Lechner and Boli, 2014). Sometimes in CIE articles, world culture is a term applied by those arguing that the concept is underdeveloped or not supported by evidence. It is not, however, as much of a distinct theory as some have implied; therefore, it is difficult to discuss the use of world culture theory in CIE research, when it is not used but rather is a moniker defined by critics of cultural legitimation and transnational dissemination. Another version of neo-institutional theory that has been frequently used in research published specifically in sociology and that has overlapped with CIE research is world society theory. Krücken and Drori (2009) note that Meyer has perhaps done more to meaningfully develop this thread of neo-institutional theory than anyone else, and as was noted earlier, Meyer’s work has been cited and used to frame CIE research. They summarily explain world society theory as “describing patters (such as structuration and globalization), detailing particular processes (such as the institutionalization of personhood and education), and pointing to causal mechanisms (such as international organizations and the professions)” (Krücken and Drori, 2009, p. 3). world society theory, like neoinstitutional theory, emphasizes the role of culture and legitimacy in creating large-scale change, specifically in society and social organizations. Perhaps the most familiar use of neo-institutional theory is to frame analyses of global trends in education, especially those with a structural or formal component.
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Why is neo-institutional theory relevant to international comparative education research? As suggested above, neo-institutional theory is used to frame empirical research and conceptual understanding in fields across the social sciences, including education. It has been applied in CIE research, specifically, by researchers seeking to explain how largescale change occurs in education and what the isomorphic effects of those changes are in terms of the institutionalization of educational structure, policy, and practice. Thus, the conceptual relevance is that it provides a framework for examining and understanding the shifting effects of formal schooling, often away from technical output like student achievement scores and towards understanding the importance of education’s impact on less technical outputs like citizenship, cultural alignment, healthcare, and other legitimized expectations about educational participation and persistence (Baker et al., 2011). The theory also has empirical relevance for CIE research. The empirical relevance is particularly observable in two related areas. Neo-institutional theory provides a framework for (1) the empirical measurement of institutionalized, non-technical school effects and (2) for the empirical importance of loose coupling (Wiseman and Baker, 2006). The technical effects of education are typically measured as student achievement scores and associated economic productivity levels. Other quantifiable measures of educational effects are included in the technical effects of schooling as well, but there are many nontechnical and less concisely quantifiable effects of schooling that neo-institutional frameworks recognize. Citizenship and political incorporation, for example, are nontechnical effects of education. While political or civic action can be empirically quantified, the core of citizenship and political incorporation is identity, values, and belief systems. While formal educational systems have historically been used to generate generations of citizens who are economically productive and actively engaged in government-approved civic activity, the affiliation of individuals with nations, racial or ethnic communities, or other civic entities is highly relevant to CIE research. Certainly, the citizenship of individual students is not a key factor in determining student achievement, but it is highly relevant to individuals’ application of knowledge and skill in society and the labor market. This is known well today in an era of increased mass violence in schools perpetrated by students and terrorist acts by adults, which contradicts the civic ideals that were explicitly taught during their basic education courses. Neoinstitutional theory, as a theory of culture, organizations, and society, is relevant to CIE research that attempts to measure or examine institutionalized behaviors and legitimized expectations because it looks at cumulative and isomorphically observable phenomena that extend beyond the summative evaluation of student achievement scores. Neo-institutional theory is also relevant to CIE research because it provides a framework for both conceptualizing and empirically measuring loose coupling. Loose coupling suggests a responsive connection or relationship between two or more events or entities, but as Weick (1976) suggests, “each event also preserves its own identity and some evidence of its . . . separateness” (p. 3). Therefore, the degree of coupling (loose versus tight) is determined by the number of variables that are shared by two or more events or entities. Coupling can occur between all manner of events and entities. For example, coupling could occur between events like educational policymaking and the implementation of policy into practice. Or, coupling could be observed between relational groups, which can be conceptualized as relational systems. One relational system could include international organizations (IOs) and national education departments (NEDs).
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Another relational system could include school principals (SPs) and classroom teachers (CTs). Coupling would then be a way of explaining the connectedness between variables in the IO-NED group and the SP-CT group. The IO-NED group may rely on rationalized global scripts for what “good” education is, while the SP-CT group may rely on contextualized needs to determine what “good” education is. Neo-institutional theory and the application of loose coupling are relevant to CIE because they provide a framework that explains how and why global or national education models that are not a good fit for local communities, especially unique communities, are applied and maintained by those communities even when they are not overtly required to maintain them. This is crucial to understanding how global models of educational policy and practice spread and survive even when they are not contextually appropriate or viable operational models. It also explains what local communities may receive in exchange for maintaining inviable models at the structural level by de-coupling or only loosely coupling local practice from those models. Other theories look for technical benefit or functional balance. Still others look for explicit agency or power imbalances, and those are all possible explanations. But, few other theoretical frameworks applied by researchers in CIE explain the relevance, value, and mechanisms of system-level cognitive dissonance as well as neo-institutional theory.
What has been Neo-Institutional Theory’s contribution to the field? In previous work on the relationship between empirical CIE research and neo-institutional theory (Wiseman and Baker, 2006), several conceptual advantages of neo-institutional theory were explained. These explanations suggested that neo-institutional theory offered unique insights into CIE research, which includes (1) culture, (2) comparison, and (3) scope. These conceptual advantages are also empirical advantages when applied to CIE research. First, is the fact that neo-institutional theory brings culture into CIE research as a causal factor at multiple levels. Neo-institutional theory has contributed an understanding of how culture resides at multiple levels of educational policy and practice, and that educators, educational administrators, educational policymakers, and others can enact multiple and often contradictory cultural models simultaneously without overtly recognizing the contradictions at play. This theoretical framework provides a conceptual and empirical advantage in CIE research because it allows for a more nuanced understanding of how conflict occurs, even when it is embedded in the institution of education itself. By providing a framework that explains how it is possible for contradictory policies and practices to be embedded and maintained within the same system or organization without that system or organization failing as a result of this institutionalized conflict is a contribution to the theoretical options available to CIE researchers, especially when overt power, coercion, or force is not present and implicit power imbalances persist without resistance. Second, neo-institutional theory also balances the “everything is different” and “everything is power” approaches, which continue to be the dominant voices in CIE research (Baker and LeTendre, 2005), with a theoretical framework for examining why educational systems, organizations, and practices are not any more different than they are. In other words, neo-institutional theory provides an empirical framework for examining comparison through both differences and similarities. So, a contribution of neo-institutional theory to CIE research is that it provides an opportunity for true
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comparison rather than difference-seeking. Comparison is at its most basic form an examination of what is different and what is similar among people, groups, organizations, systems, or other units of analysis (Wiseman, 2012). Neo-institutional theory provides a fruitful framework for identifying and explaining what similarities and differences coexist even when they are contradictory or create sustainable conflict within educational systems. Part of the contribution of neo-institutional theory is an examination of largescale historical patterns and phenomena that undergo “isomorphic” change. The preference among much CIE research is to focus only on those changes that take place overtly or within relatively short time periods. But, the processes of institutionalization are more sustained, deliberate, and often implicit than that. Quick breaks or changes may punctuate or even conclude longer processes of isomorphic change, and neo-institutional theory is one of the few frameworks that CIE researchers have been able to use to acknowledge and understand those institutionalization processes. Third, neo-institutional theory has provided a more genuinely global comparative scope for CIE research than is typical in the field. Most of the empirical education research that is published as being explicitly international or comparative is focused on a specific nation, system, school, community, or sometimes individually-specific analyses (Wiseman et al., 2017). Neo-institutional theory has provided a link to cross-national, cross-system, cross-school, and cross-community analyses, which complements the more micro or single case study approaches to CIE research. As exchange across political, social, economic, and cultural boundaries becomes increasingly fluid and globalized, it is increasingly useful to have multiple frameworks for examining how transnational and trans-system structures, beliefs, cultures, and expectations influence educational policy and practice. Neo-institutional theory contributes a framework for investigating these cross-national, cross-system, or cross-cultural educational phenomena that is flexible and malleable as well. In other words, there is not one stable or universal model, culture, or set of behaviors, but many. Neo-institutional theory provides for fluidity and change in those cross-boundary factors through the fluidity of what is legitimate or contextually relevant from space to space or system to system.
CONCLUSIONS Current debates and critiques about this theory Contemporary debates about neo-institutional theory and CIE mimic older critiques in both content and consequence. Both new and old debates regarding neo-institutional theory fall into two broad camps. First are those rationalists and functionalists who argue that neo-institutional theory ignores the agency of the individual and the organization by asserting that, for example, the stated goal of student learning and preparation for future productive citizenship may not be the primary or even achievable function of schooling around the world. Those who create and implement educational policy and directly align it with overt economic outcomes assert that parents, students, and communities have direct and purposeful agency in selecting schools, promoting educational goals, and linking K-12 schooling to labor market participation and outcomes. In the more organizational and sociological literature, the role of rational choice and an assertion for individual agency defined debates related to neo-institutional theory in the 1970s and 1980s (Zucker, 1977). In contrast, neo-institutional theory suggested that
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isomorphic change and normative assumptions, which were embedded in organizational and institutional culture, had an advantage in determining the structures of organizations and behaviors of individuals participating in those organizations. Neoliberal approaches to education worldwide contrast markedly with neoinstitutional theory because neoliberals assert the value and function of market-based systems (see Chapter 11). They argue that market-based educational and other governmental systems provide efficient quality, and choice-driven outcomes. This directly contradicts a neo-institutional framework, which suggests that function is secondary to legitimacy and cultural embeddedness, and that neither are necessarily efficient, lead to quality, or involve agent-driven rational choice. Second are those who claim that neo-institutional theory ignores agency and power. This is similar to the first critique but is broader because the claim is that neo-institutional theory is focused solely on normative isomorphism. The dominant theoretical approaches applied by those in the academic side of comparative education (Cook et al., 2004) have been more conflict, critical, and power-focused since the 1970s (Davidson et al., 2019). There are also those who tend to misapply or misunderstand social justice to only mean that scholarship is assumed to support disadvantage and the reproduction of inequality if it does not explicitly and repeatedly identify and denounce conflict and power-based inequality. This is a less thoughtful approach than those agency- and power-based critiques of normative isomorphism from the sociological literature.
FURTHER READING 1. DiMaggio, P. J., and Powell, W. W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 48(2), 147–160. 2. Meyer, J. W. (1977). The effects of education as an institution. American Journal of Sociology, 83(1), 55–77. 3. Meyer, J. W., and Rowan, B. (1977). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology, 83(2), 340–363. 4. Powell, W. W., and DiMaggio P. (1991). Introduction. In W. W. Powell and P. DiMaggio (Eds.), The new institutionalism in organizational analysis (pp. 1–38). Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press. 5. Jepperson, R. L. (2002). The development and application of sociological neoinstitutionalism. In J. Berger and M. Zelditch Jr. (Eds.), New directions in contemporary sociological theory (pp. 229–266). Lanham, MD : Rowman & Littlefield. 6. Wiseman, A.W., Astiz, M.F., and Baker, D.P. (2014). Comparative Education research framed by neo-institutional theory: A review of diverse approaches and conflicting assumptions. Compare: A Journal of International Comparative Education, 44(5), 688–709.
MINI CASE STUDY A case that overtly reflects the type of phenomena that neo-institutional theory appropriately frames is the case of Saudi Arabia’s approach to gender equality in education within a completely gender-segregated educational system. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has had a gender-segregated society throughout most of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the formal national educational system has reflected this gender segregation throughout its existence since the mid/late twentieth-century. This means that female
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Saudi students and male Saudi students do not attend the same schools, do not have the same teachers, and do not interact with each other in any way within their regular school activities. And, in fact, boys and girls did not attend school at equal levels, nor did they achieve equally in the 1970s when the formal education system in Saudi Arabia was nascent (Al-Hariri, 1987; Baki, 2004). There are, however, several exogenous and endogenous factors that have led to Saudi Arabia developing the educational system that it has within the overall gender segregated society that exists. For example, as of the early twenty-first century, Saudi Arabia does have a formal mass education system, which is implemented nationwide and centrally directed by the Saudi Ministry of Education. Although the history of the development of the Saudi educational system has some clear roots in Western colonial influence, the twenty-first century model or script for the national education system is also rooted in Western ideals of individualism, excellence, and democratic equality, including the concept of equality between males and females (Wiseman, 2006). Gender equality is also highly legitimized within the international community (Monkman and Hoffman, 2013). For example, several international education-related agendas put forth by international organizations that Saudi Arabia either belongs to or aligns itself with focus on equality of girls and women, especially in education. These include UNESCO’s Education for All (EFA), the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Unterhalter, 2018). Part of the emphasis on girls’ and women’s participation in education is their proven role in labor market development, economic productivity, and political stability (Lincove, 2008). These globally legitimized norms related to international education agendas for gender equality in education are influential on Saudi education policymakers and the broader Saudi public as well. As a result, Saudi Arabia has pursued gender parity as a loosely-coupled proxy for gender equality. In other words, the implementation of education in Saudi Arabia approximates gender equality without literally providing the same schools, classes, and educational experiences for both male and female students. Research shows that male and female enrollment is relatively equal to male, and female student achievement is not significantly different or posts female advantage, and that the facilities and resources that provide students the opportunity to learn are relatively equal between boys and girls even though they are not the same. Finally, although much of the gender parity that exists in the Saudi education system is a result of coercive (i.e., purposeful) and mimetic isomorphism, which looks at what other systems perceived by Saudi education policymakers as “successful” do with boys and girls, and then mimics or copies those elements of the target systems, there is an increasingly normative isomorphism at play. Gender equality in Saudi Arabia has become increasingly difficult to deny even in a segregated society. Examples include women’s expanding role in politics (Thompson, 2015) and changes in laws about women driving (Krane and Farhan, 2018). These details demonstrate the ways that gender equality in the Saudi educational system reflects each of the key elements of neo-institutional theory, and therefore are framed well by neo-institutional explanations for these phenomena.
REFERENCES Al-Hariri, R. (1987). Islam’s point of view on women’s education in Saudi Arabia. Comparative Education, 23(1), 51–57.
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Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and differencein the global cultural economy. Public Culture, 2(2),1–24. Baker, D. P., and LeTendre, G. K. (2005). National differences, global similarities: Current and future world institutional trends in schooling. Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press. Baker, D. P., and Wiseman, A. W. (Eds.). (2006). International perspectives on education and society, volume 7: The impact of Comparative Education research on institutional theory. Oxford, UK: Elsevier Science, Ltd. Baker, D. P., Leon, J., Smith Greenaway, E. G., Collins, J., and Movit, M. (2011). The education effect on population health: A reassessment. Population and Development Review, 37(2), 307–332. Baker, D. (2014). The schooled society: The educational transformation of global culture. Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press. Baki, R. (2004). Gender-segregated education in Saudi Arabia: Its impact on social norms and the Saudi labor market. Education policy analysis archives, 12(28). Retrieved from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v12n28/. Becker, G. S. (2009). Human capital: A theoretical and empirical analysis, with special reference to education. Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press. Benavot, A., Cha, Y.-K., Kamens, D., Meyer, J. W., and Wong, S.-Y. (1991). Knowledge for the masses: World models and national curricula, 1920–1986. American Sociological Review, 56(1), 85–100. Berger, P. L., and Luckmann, T. (1967). The social construction of reality. New York, NY: Anchor. Boli, J., Ramirez, F. O., and Meyer, J. W. (1985). Explaining the origins and expansion of mass education. Comparative Education Review, 29(2), 145–168. Boli, J., and Ramirez, F. O. (1986). World culture and the institutional development of mass education (pp. 65–90). In J. G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education. New York, NY: Greenwood Press. Boli, J., and Thomas, G.M. (1997). World culture in the world polity: A century of international non-governmental organization. American Sociological Review, 62, 171–190. Boli, J., and Thomas, G.M. (Eds.). (1999). Constructing world culture: International nongovernmental organizations since 1875. Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press. Carnoy, M. (2016). Educational policies in the face of globalization: Whither the nation state? (pp. 27–42). In K. Mundy, A. Green, B. Lingard, and A. Verger (Eds.), Handbook of global education policy. Oxford, UK : John Wiley. Chabbott, C. (2002). Constructing education for development: International organizations and education for all. London, UK : Taylor & Francis. Cook, B. J., Hite, S. J., and Epstein, E. H. (2004). Discerning trends, contours, and boundaries in Comparative Education: A survey of comparativists and their literature. Comparative Education Review, 48(2), 123–149. Davidson, P. M., Park, M. F., Dzotsenidze, N., Okogbue, O., and Wiseman, A. W. (2019). The osmosis of Comparative and International Education: What, how, and why CIE research appears in non-CIE journals (pp. 1–24). In A. W. Wiseman (Ed.), Annual review of Comparative and International Education 2018. Bingley, UK : Emerald Publishing Ltd. DiMaggio, P. J., and Powell, W. W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 48(2), 147–160. DiMaggio, P., and Powell, W. W. (1991). Introduction (pp. 1–38). In W. W. Powell and P. DiMaggio (Eds.), The new institutionalism in organizational analysis. Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press.
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Durkheim, E. (1964). The division of labor in society. New York, NY: Free Press. Finnemore, M. (1993). International organizations as teachers of norms: The United Nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization and science policy. International Organizations, 47, 567–597. Frank, D., Wong, S.-Y., Meyer, J. W., and Ramirez, F. O. (2000). What counts as history: A cross-national and longitudinal study of university curricula. Comparative Education Review, 44(1), 29–53. Gornick, J. C., and Meyers, M. K. (2003). Families that work: Policies for reconciling parenthood and employment. Thousand Oaks, CA : Russell Sage Foundation. Hannan, M. T., and Freeman, J. (1984). Structural inertia and organizational change. American Sociological Review, 49, 149–164. Jepperson, R. (1991). Institutions, institutional effects, and institutionalism. In W. W. Powell and P. J. DiMaggio (Eds.), The new institutionalism in organizational analysis (pp. 143–163). Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press. Jepperson, R. L. (2002). The development and application of sociological neo-institutionalism. In J. Berger and M. Zelditch Jr. (Eds.), New directions in contemporary sociological theory (pp. 229–266). Lanham, MD : Rowman & Littlefield. Kamens, D., Meyer, J. W., and Benavot, A. (1996). Worldwide patterns in academic secondary education curricula, 1920–1990. Comparative Education Review, 40(2), 116–138. Klees, S. J. (2019). Capitalism and global education reform (pp. 11–26). In K. J. Saltman and A. J. Means (Eds.), The Wiley handbook of global educational reform. Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons. Krane, J., and Farhan, M. (2018). Women driving in Saudi Arabia: Ban lifted, what are the economic and health effects? Issue brief no. 06.13.18. Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, Houston, Texas. Krücken, G., and Drori, G. S. (Eds.). (2009). World society: The writings of John W. Meyer. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Lechner, F. J., and Boli, J. (2005). World culture: Origins and consequences. Malden, MA : Blackwell Publishing. Lechner, F. J., and Boli, J. (Eds.). (2014). The globalization reader. Malden, MA : Blackwell Publishing. Lincove, J. A. (2008). Growth, girls’ education, and female labor: A longitudinal analysis. The Journal of Developing Areas, 41(2), 45–68. March, J. G., and Olsen, J. P. (2006). Elaborating the “new institutionalism.” In R. E. Goodin (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of political institutions (pp. 3–20). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. March, J. G., and Simon, H. A. (1958). Organizations. New York, NY: Wiley. McEneaney, E., and Meyer, J. W. (2000). The content of the curriculum: An institutionalist perspective. In M. Hallinan (Ed.), Handbook of the sociology of education (pp. 189–211). New York, NY: Plenum. Meyer, J. W. (1971). Economic and political effects on national educational enrollment patterns. Comparative Education Review, 15(1), 28–43. Meyer, J. W., and Rubinson, R. (1975). Education and political development, 3, 134–162. Meyer, J. W. (1977). The effects of education as an institution. American Journal of Sociology, 83(1), 55–77. Meyer, J. W., and Rowan, B. (1977). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology, 83(2), 340–363.
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Meyer, J. W., and Hannan, M. T. (Eds.). (1979). National development and the world system: educational, economic, and political change, 1950–1970. Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press. Meyer, J. W., Ramirez, F. O., Rubinson, R., and Boli-Bennett, J. (1977). The world educational revolution, 1950-1970. Sociology of Education, 50(4), pp. 242–258. Meyer, J. W., Tyack, D., Nagel, J., and Gordon, A. (1979). Public education as nation-building in america: Enrollments and bureaucratization in the American states, 1870–1930. American Journal of Sociology, 85(3), 591–613. Meyer, J. W. (1986). Types of explanation in the sociology of education. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 341–359). Westport, CT: Greenwood. Meyer, J. W. (1987). Implications of an institutional view of education for the study of educational effects. In M. Hallinan (Ed.), The social organization of schools (pp. 157–175). New York, NY: Plenum. Meyer, J. W., Hufner, K., and Naumann, J. (1987). Comparative education policy research: A world society perspective. In M. Dierkes, H. Weiler, and A. Antal (Eds.), Comparative policy research (pp. 188–243). Gower, UK : Aldershot. Meyer, J. W., Scott, W. R., and Strang, D. (1987). Centralization, fragmentation, and school district complexity. Administrative Science Quarterly, 32, 186–201. Meyer, J. W., Scott, W. R., Strang, D., and Creighton, A. L. (1988). Bureaucratization without centralization: Changes in the organizational system of U.S. public education, 1940–1980. In L. G. Zucker (Ed.), Institutional patterns and organizations: Culture and environment (pp. 139–168). Cambridge, MA : Ballinger. Meyer, J. W., Kamens, D., and Benavot, A. with Cha, Y.-K. and Wong, S.-Y. (1992). School knowledge for the masses: World models and national primary curricular categories in the twentieth century. London, UK : Falmer Press. Meyer, J. W., Ramirez, F. O., and Soysal, Y. N. (1992). World expansion of mass education, 1870–1980. Sociology of Education, 65(2), 128–149. Meyer, J. W., Nagel, J., and Snyder, C. W., Jr. (1993). Interpreting the expansion of mass education in Botswana: Local and world society perspectives. Comparative Education Review, 37(4), 454–475. Meyer, J. W., and Baker, D. P. (1996). Forming American educational policy with international data. Sociology of Education, 69 (Extra Issue), 123–130. Meyer, J. W., Boli, J., Thomas G. M., and Ramirez F. O. (1997). World society and the nation-state. American Journal of Sociology, 103(1), 144–181. Meyer, J. W. (1999). Organizational integration in Lesotho primary education: Loose coupling as problem and solution. In C. W. Snyder Jr. (Ed.), Exploring the complexities of education. Windhoek, Namibia: Gamsberg Macmillan. Meyer, J. W., and Ramirez, F. O. (2000). The world institutionalization of education (pp. 111–132). In J. Schriewer (Ed.), Discourse formation in Comparative Education. Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang. Monkman, K., and Hoffman, L. (2013). Girls’ education: The power of policy discourse. Theory and Research in Education, 11(1), 63–84. Nee, V. (1998). Sources of the new institutionalism. In M. C. Brinton and V. Nee (Eds.), The new institutionalism in sociology (pp. 1–16). New York, NY: Russel Sage Foundation. Parsons, T. (1951). The social system. Glencoe, IL : Free Press. Phillips, D., and Ochs, K. (2003). Processes of policy-borrowing in education: Some explanatory and analytical devices. Comparative Education, 39(4), 451–461.
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Neo-Realism in Comparative and International Education Power, Influence, and Priorities TAVIS D. JULES , SYED AMIR SHAH , PRAVINDHARAN BALAKRISHNAN, AND SERENE ISMAIL
INTRODUCTION If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. —A Nation at Risk, 1983 On October 4, 1957, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) launched the world’s first artificial satellite to orbit the globe. The satellite, named Sputnik 1, barely larger than the size of a football, came as a shock to the Americans, who viewed it as a Soviet victory in the space race and evidence of their superior scientific and technological prowess. This realization brought attention to the lack of funding devoted to the American education system and spurred educational reforms and increased funding for science and engineering as well as language education, thus focusing on education as a tool for national development. Eventually, the U.S. would allocate vast sums of financial resources to the improvement of science and mathematics education and the building of foreign language competencies, all while employing education as a tool for national development and international competition. The so-called Sputnik-moment that forced the U.S. to reform its educational system was the commencement of the rise of Kenneth Waltz’s (1924–2013) structural based “neo-realist” theory of International Relations (IR) in education. Before Sputnik, realist theorists held that sovereign states are the most critical agents in IR. The highest authority that exists is the authority of the state, and there is no authority higher. All other actors, including individuals, religions, or multilateral institutions, are deemed subservient to the states’ interests and authority according to the realist framework. Although Waltz (1959) agrees with the basic tenet affirming the supremacy of the state in IR, he also adds that states are not the only agents acting in this global arena. He also highlights the growth of international economic interdependence and brings into his analysis the role of international organizations and their structuring effects in IR. 233
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The use of education as a political tool at the initiation of the Cold War marked a decisive moment in the post-Second World War global architecture. The post-Cold War American quest for hegemony led to a multipolar world, with the BRICs1 Countries— Brazil, Russia, India, and China—assuming a prominent role in a continually changing disruptive world. However, during the 1980s, with the push towards neoliberal reforms, the power of the states gradually shifted away from governments and the nation, or what has been called the “movement from government to governance” (Pierre and Peters, 2000) or “governing without government” (Rhodes, 1996). Thus, from a neo-realist perspective that views the world as anarchic, this provides governments with the power to chart their development trajectories in the absence of an overarching international organization or power governing them. Neo-realists, therefore, focus on how international structure shapes outcomes. This chapter explores how national education systems across the globe fit into the policy agenda of competing countries. Thus, the first part of the chapter sheds light on the evolution of neo-realism in the field of IR. The second part of the chapter focuses on the application of the theory of neo-realism to comparative and international education (CIE) so as to explain the role and function of the national education systems in relation to the international systems. The chapter concludes with a short case study.
OVERVIEW The origins of realism As noted above, for realists, the state is the primary agent in IR, and therefore, the role of the state is to provide security by exercising a monopoly over power. In this way, realists argue that security and power reinforce one another—power increases a country’s security, and, in turn, security enables a country to consolidate power. Another core point for realists was that war is logical and a natural corollary of the international system where each sovereign state is vying to increase its chances of security and power. As Clausewitz (1982) puts it, “war is politics by another means” (p. 121), and realists argue that war is not intended for gain or conquest, but instead, it is always defensive in its nature. War, just like politics, is a means to the state’s ends of power and security. Just like “politics is a struggle for power” (Morgenthau et al., 1985, p. 17), war too performs the same function and is, therefore, two sides of the same coin. Conflict becomes the background for educational policy. The preoccupation with interstate conflict found in realist thought is driven by the premise that states exist in a world of anarchy. For a realist, the concept of anarchy, lack of supreme authority, and eventuality of war are the guiding principles of the interstate and international systems. Thus, there is no higher court of appeal nor a standard definition of justice to which all states subscribe, and the national interest of individual states is the supreme value and justification for the state’s action. To phrase it in Machiavellian (2008) terms, “the ends justify the means” with “national interest” as an ultimate “end.” Given the conditions of the international system, each state finds itself driven by its need for selfpreservation and security, which will be viewed in its educational policy. The intellectual origins of the theory of realism can be traced back to the Greek historian and philosopher Thucydides (460–400 BC), and thus giving the realist school of thought South Africa is sometimes included in this categorization.
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the designation as one of the oldest schools of thought in the field of IR In fact, some have suggested that realism is the core theory of IR, with other theories merely improving upon the realist framework or negating it. In his book History of the Peloponnesian War (431– 404 BC), Thucydides not only writes a detailed account of civil wars that took place in the fifth-century B.C. between different Greek city-states, but also draws lessons about how foreign policy is being conducted between independent Greek city-states. Thucydides argues that the differences between individuals, as well as amongst states, are natural and a given. Thus, given that there are “superior men” (Greeks) and “inferior men” (slaves), there are also strong and weak states. On his account, which is wholly consistent with other Greek philosophers, being weak or strong is part of the natural order, and education becomes highly nationalistic. Thucydides formulates that strong states have to act and behave resiliently out of necessity because if they do not, they will invite the aggression of other competing powers and risk warfare. Strong states continuously have to defend their hegemony and pride. Similarly, weak states need to know their place in the hierarchy. Later, the work of Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469–1527) and Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) would be instrumental in shaping realist thought. Machiavelli’s (2008) ideas about political power and its role in establishing peace and security inform realist theory in various ways. He emphasizes that the moral values of politics are different from the moral values of private life. Thus, religious virtues make good human beings, but not good rulers, and therefore, leaders need to be fair and just but also willing to act cunningly and ruthlessly. He further argues that neighbors are not to be trusted blindly and that enemies are not to be forgiven but eliminated with brutal strength. However, this argument does not entail that a ruler has to be ruthless all the time. The rulers must learn that their ultimate strength and power come from the people they govern. Hobbes’s (1946) articulations of self-interested people representing individual states and the “state of nature” are akin to the international state of anarchy. For Hobbes (1946), the state of nature is the “state of war,” which does not mean that all the individuals are fighting with each other all the time. What “state of war” actually means is a state where peace is not guaranteed; if peace is not ensured and guaranteed, we are then living in the “state of war.” During war-like conditions, state sovereignty is established, which brings an end to the perpetual “war of all against all” and establishes peace and security within the state. Look no further than the ways the Progressive movement in American education extended to student-centered learning and a focus on a wider range of opportunities for all students; the prevailing attitude in the decades after the First World War was one of internal prosperity and a disregard for international competition over international security. However, the authority of the state to establish peace and security is confined by certain territorial limits. What lies beyond the authority of individual states is the “state of security dilemma”—one of the central concepts of realist thought. The idea of “security dilemma” in IR is based on perception rather than reality since states function in conditions categorized by lack of information and uncertainty. It was not until the post-war years and the advent of the Cold War that the security dilemma gained global traction in the writings of Morgenthau (1956) and Carr (1946). For these authors, realism was both a response to the market-driven ideologies, which emphasize the opening-up of international borders for greater trade and human exchange and an effort to enhance the understanding of twentieth-century realities further. These thinkers were critical of the idealistic perception of IR embodied in liberal theory, along with the failed attempts to establish peace through the institution of collective security (such as the League of Nations) and the rise of fascism in Europe. These thinkers took the
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events of the twentieth-century as a reaffirmation of the basic tenets of realist theory. Morgenthau (1956) articulates that liberty and personal freedom are intimately tied to the power and security of individual states. Confirming to the realist concept of international anarchy, Morgenthau (1956) proposes that each state is responsible for its security and wellbeing. Carr (1946) suggests that in this quest for power and security on the global stage, IR can be understood primarily as the conduct of national policies of the hegemonic states. These realist ideas became foundational for the twentieth-century international diplomacy and served as a critical lens through which IR became understood and carried amongst nations.
TOWARDS NEO-REALISM OR STRUCTURAL REALISM Realist ideas have theoretical limitations and have been criticized on various grounds. At the most basic level, realist accounts are viewed as reductionist given their assertion that “politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature” (Morgenthau, 2014, p. 53). They do not account for international politics as a phenomenon in itself, but instead try to trace it back to basic principles of “human nature.” For example, the drive of the state for power and security is explained with reference to the individuals’ lust for power and his/her urge to dominate others. There is also a normative element in the realist theoretical framework in its desire to unmask the “real” intentions of the states behind their rhetoric of doing good. While responding to liberal ideas, Morgenthau et al. (1985) argue that the task of the scholars is to unveil the real intentions of the power behind the banner of rationality and collective peace. These theoretical challenges became the context in which the neo-realist school of thought emerged. Waltz (1959), a vital figure of the neo-realist school of thought, formulated a new framework of neo-realism, or structural realism, to understand the system of IR Waltz’s (1959) analysis focuses on showing the relationship between the international system and its member states. Waltz (1959) is critical of the realist assertions of human nature and their role in explaining national for power and security. He elucidates how states are unitary actors (like units) whose primary preference is the survival in its environment and managing the alternative actions. For neo-realists, this essentialist account of human nature is entirely hypothetical and cannot be empirically verified; no one knows what the “true” nature of human beings is. Thus, classical realism gives undue importance to human nature and causes that prevail at the individual or national level. To overcome this theoretical shortcoming, Waltz (1959) locates the competition for “power” not in human nature but in the anarchical nature of the world system. In this way, “structure” is central to the systemic approach that is defined in terms of the specification of the functions of differentiated units, and by the distribution of capabilities. He argues that international anarchy generates the logic of competition and power politics while causing individual states to struggle to gain power. His work attempts to systematically understand the intricate pattern of interaction between the states and an effort to rejuvenate the realist thinking of international politics. Waltz (1959) argues that classical realism has simplified the picture of the reality of international politics through reduction and omission of facts. The neo-realist perspective divides the analysis of the international system into three levels—systemic level, state level, and individual level. Waltz’s (1959) ideas about the systemic level analysis of IR suggest that “with many sovereign states, with no system of law enforceable upon them, with each state judging its grievances and ambition according
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to the dictates of its own reason or desire—conflict, sometimes leading to war, is bound to occur” (p. 159). In this way, he adheres to all notions and principles propounded by the classical writers, including the primacy of the state, anarchical international system, incomplete and imperfect information system, and temporal nature of alliances. However, his real contribution is the logical extension of these ideas to the next level. Waltz (1959) contends that states are rational actors in that “war most often promotes the internal unity of each state involved. The state, plagued by internal strife may then, instead of waiting for the accidental attack, seek the war that will bring internal peace” (p. 81). Actions of a state in war are not random or knee jerk reactions to the actions of other states. The decisions taken by the states and their leaders always comes after detailed deliberations and the exercise of great caution. The third level of analysis takes into account the nature of the leadership of the state. Waltz (1959) theorizes that the anarchic system of the international arena compels states to act in specific ways and structures their behavior. Similarly, the nature of the states and their historical ties compel their leaders to act in specific ways. Therefore, all three factors—international, state, and individual – are interrelated and give rise to the order of the international system of relations. The system of IR is also shaped by the different relationships of power at any given time. Waltz (1959) describes bi-polar, uni-polar, and multipolar systems of IR based on the concentration of power. In a uni-polar system, one hegemonic state dominates the international arena; in a bi-polar system there are two hegemonic states; while in a multipolar system, there are three to five major powerful states that influence the IR Accordingly, these relations of powers and levels of analysis give a particular structure to the anarchic system of IR. Thus, the nature of the international system, anarchic as it is, forces states to make the decisions they do. The decisions that states make over time influences future decisions that new leaders will make. Waltz (1979) is critical of theories and approaches that focus only on the state level analysis and ignore the political structures. He questions how we can account for the similar outcomes and behavior of the states, given that each state is very different from the rest of the states. Accordingly, he explains that this is from the “enduring anarchic character of international politics [that] accounts for the striking sameness in the quality of international life through the millennia” (Waltz, 1979, p. 66). We can understand the political structure by looking first at the “principle according to which they are organized or ordered, second by differentiation of the units and the specification of their functions, and third by the distribution of capabilities across units” (Waltz, 1979, p. 88). Thus, political structures are either centralized and hierarchical (like domestic political structures) or decentralized and anarchical, such as the international system. Buzan et al. (1993) revise the primary assumption of Waltz’s (1979) theory that uses the unit level as central scaffolding and overwhelming focus on the concept of anarchy. They propose a more ‘probabilistic’ version of neo-realist theory, which is more advanced than Waltz’s (1979) deterministic model of the world’s system. In Waltz’s (1979) model, states’ behavior is overly determined by the anarchical world system, which leaves little or no room for the states’ agency. Buzan et al. (1993) argue that agency and structure are “mutually constitutive,” thus, there is no “single logic of anarchy but many” (p. 8). Not all states need to behave uniformly under the situation of stress or strain; on the contrary, different states socialize and cooperate antithetically under the structure of international politics. For this reason, the theory propounded by Buzan et al. (1993) better accounts for interpreting both continuity and transformation in the international system.
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Gilpin (1984) identifies five assumptions of state behavior in world politics, describing the purposive role of the state in international politics. His first proposition is that: [the] international system is stable if no state believes it profitable to attempt to change the system. [Second], a state will attempt to change the international system if the expected benefits exceed the expected costs. [Third], the state will seek to change the international system through territorial, political and economic expansion until the marginal costs of further change are equal to or greater than the marginal benefits. [Fourth], once the balance between the costs and benefits of further change and expansion is reached, the tendency is for the economic costs of maintaining the status quo to rise faster than the economic capacity to support the status quo. [Finally], if the disequilibrium in the international system is not resolved, then the system will be changed, and a new equilibrium reflecting the distribution of power will be established. —pp. 10–11 Mearsheimer (2001) suggests a state’s struggle for relative power and gains in an anarchical structure of international politics by explaining that the power-seeking nature of the state is not because of human nature, as asserted by classical realism, but because of the anarchical structure of human nature. He claims that “power is a means to an end and the ultimate end is survival” (p. 78), where every actor in the system and every player in the game attempts to survive at the regional and international levels. Mearsheimer (2001) puts forward the concept of “offensive realism,” as opposed to Waltz’s (1979) more defensive realism. The fundamental assertion of offensive realism that “great powers are always searching for opportunities to gain power over their rivals, with hegemony as their final goal” (p. 29) is based on five key principles. First, he agrees with Waltz (1979), that the international system is anarchic. Second, “great powers inherently possess some offensive military capability, which gives them the wherewithal to hurt and possibly destroy each other” (Mearsheimer, 2001, p. 6). States have varying degrees of potential to harm each other. The third assumption is that states can never be sure about the intentions of other states, and “no state can be sure that another state will not use its offensive military capability to attack the first state” (Mearsheimer, 2001, p. 31). These circumstances give birth to the fourth assumption; that survival, territorial integrity, and maintaining domestic political order become the primary purpose of the great powers. The motive of “survival dominates other motives because, once a state is conquered, it is unlikely to be in a position to pursue other aims” (Mearsheimer, 2001, p. 31). The final assumption is that great powers are rational actors in world politics. States “consider the preferences of other states and how their own behavior is likely to affect the behavior of those other states, and how the behavior of those other states is likely to affect their own strategy for survival” (Mearsheimer, 2001, p. 31). These five principles provide great incentive for powerful states to act and think in an offensive manner, which results in three distinct outcomes of “fear, self-help, and power maximization” (Mearsheimer, 2001, p. 32). Of course, neo-realism is not without its critics. Democratic peace theorists also criticize neo-realism. To neo-realists, war may break out any time since each state has the choice to use its power/force. Waltz (1979) and Mearsheimer (2001) share the same opinions: that world peace is not easy to win. Another criticism of the neo-realist approach is that culture, a framework of people’s daily activities and actions, is taken for granted. Culture is the basis on which interests, links between identities, and political actions are created and analyzed, yet neo-realism does not account for this. Gilpin (1981) criticizes
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neo-realism on two grounds: it is a narrow approach, and it fails to accommodate dissenting perspectives or voices. In short, he suggests that neo-realism as an approach emerges to explain the nature of the Cold War/post-Cold War period, which further poses new challenges from a rising multipolar world order, increasing proliferation of nuclear weapon states, deepening threats posed by “rogue states,” and growing “security crises” posed by the expansion of terrorism and environmental crisis. Ashley (1984) argues that the neo-realist approach uses a modern form of reasoning which excludes critical self-reflection, and further contends that neo-realist approaches are unable to comprehend the significant role of non-state actors in international politics. We continue this examination in the next section as we argue that neo-realism has been a particularly useful scaffolding for investigating the role of non-state actors in education.
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION In an era of interdependence and rapid technological change, neo-realism has dominated the IR literature for the last three decades. Its application to education is not that straightforward, and it is often intertwined with several other global forces that have dominated educational reforms, such as capitalism, neoliberalism, and globalization. For neo-realists, while several influential factors drive state behavior and the characteristics of governmental units—norms, laws, and institutional ideologies—the traditional balanceof-power in an anarchic inter-state system is the most critical factor in IR as states seek to maximize power. According to Ngan (2016), neo-realism is an outgrowth of the balanceof-power theory, which suggests that state survival is based on cooperation; otherwise, there is an “imbalance of power that can easily cause conflicts and disputes among states” (p. 9). In this way, neo-realism focuses on how international structures shape political outcomes, and state behavior is an outcome of ideological intentions. In the global education landscape, an understanding who wields the power of change, both nationally and globally, within the inter-state system reveals how neo-realist thought has been applied to the temporal trajectories and geometries of educational systems. Thus, given that the inter-state system is organized and measured by the distribution of capabilities (the number of superpowers) and decentralized anarchy (no one central authority) where state survival is based on the achievement of its perceived ideological goals, attention is then focused on the “structural constraints” that are placed on nation states as they seek to reform their educational systems. However, as countries compete with each other, they develop the capabilities for foreign interventionism (non-defensive or proactive activity) to increase their powers. In doing this, while seeking to strike a balance of power (a state’s ability to maximize its capabilities), a security dilemma ensues, and functional areas, such as education, health, and transportation, become the target for foreign interventionism. Therefore, IR and, by extension, the organizations that govern these relations, have the primary responsibility to seek and keep the peace against a backdrop of several structural constraints since norms influence state actions. Today, education is no longer a static endeavor, and it has become a discipline highly commodified by global competitiveness, which is fostered through global education surveys, technological revolution, the emergence of the intelligent economy—the production of digital data to measure, analyze, and predict educational performance— (Jules and Salajan, 2020), and ultimately, the unfolding of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
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In tracing the spatial trajectory of neo-realism in CIE, it is imperative to spotlight the role of economic globalization and its influences in shaping multilateral organizations, international organizations (I.O.s) and “transnational regimes,” (Jules, 2015) and “intergovernmental regimes” (Kresner, 1985) such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and the European Union (E.U.) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which continues to expand due to the transformation of transnational education policy. Although multilateral organizations have strong imprints on global education policies, however, it is not to construe that these global institutions are mere the tools of nation states to enhance their own national agendas and interests. These global institutions have the authority to “propagate prescriptive models of behavior for nation-states and provide public stages on which the latter acquire the legitimacy through these models’ ritualistic enactment” (Koenig and Dierkes, 2011 p. 8). Furthermore, these entities vary in terms of agenda, size, interests, power, and, most of all, they have their own interests, which often conflict with each other. This incompatibility of interests and agendas is further compounded by the composition of governing boards of these institutions, which in some cases, are representative of all stakeholders, while in other cases, serves the interests of only powerful states. For example, Mundy (1998) maps the varying roles international organizations played in promoting the educational reform agenda. She notes that UNESCO as an institution serves the interests of all member states through its representative governing board. However, she argues that the role played by UNESCO in promoting education has gradually decreased as the focus of large donor countries has shifted towards the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). This shift was also accompanied by the increasing role of the World Bank in education policy framing and the growing bilateralism of OECD countries, which further led to the decreased role of UNESCO. Fundamentally, globalization has hugely influenced the governance of global educational institutions, which Davies and Guppy (1997) conceptualize in two sets of arguments— economic globalization and global rationalization. It can be inferred that globalization, which is often viewed as “transnational connectedness and encompasses important economic, political, cultural, and environmental dimensions” (Eriksen, 2007, p. 1), has disrupted the role of the state. Thus, economic globalization has come to be seen as the catalyst for educational change with economic tentacles (Lee, 2018). Sahlberg (2006) postulates that the economization of education can be observed as countries are aligning their education systems in order to prepare workers with twenty-first-century skills— creativity, collaborations, communication, and critical thinking. Meanwhile, global rationalization is influenced by world culture theory (see Chapter 12), which views the behavior of nations as closely influenced by other nations (Lee, 2018). Consequently, while globalization is a “homogenizing force,” it is also a “heterogenizing force.” While Mundy (1998) posits that educators today understand the impact of global forces on education, it is also pertinent to unpack the complexities of globalization. In the postWorld War II period, globalization was “reconstructed and recrystallized as communication, and technological advancements proliferated” (Jules, 2012, p. 1). The transformation of political and economic spheres in tandem with the rise of various global state and nonstate actors or “educational brokers” (Jules and Stockdale Jefferson, 2017) has meant that states are reshaping their behavior. Therefore, neo-realism in education is deeply embedded through multilateralism, which can be viewed as “an institutional form which coordinates relations among three or more states on the basis of generalized principles of conduct”
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(Ruggie, 1992, p. 571). A nation state is assumed to be of a “natural, purposive, and rational actor in an essentially anarchic world” (Drori and Krucken, 2009). Due to this, the action of nation states is primarily due to varying needs and interests. In using the state as their barometer, several scholars have focused on the role of regimes, I.O.s, multilateral groupings and regional organizations (Dale and Robertson, 2002; 2013; Jones, 2007; Jules 2008; 2012; Mundy, 1999; Parreira do Amaral, 2010; Tikly, 2017) in shaping educational reforms in an archaic world. These scholars highlight a neo-realist argument that the changing nature of multilateralism within national educational systems accounts for the actions of both state and non-state actors—from global institutions, such as UNESCO, and regional organizations like CARICOM, and economic entities, such as the OECD. Mundy (1998) traces the rise of the mechanisms of coordination in education or “educational multilateralism’s” geopolitical and georestructuring as a manifestation of the post-World War II era. Thus, the roots of neorealism in education can be seen through the promotion of mass schooling through the efforts of UNESCO and the World Bank’s “educational fundamentalism” (Jones, 2007) project of loan conditionalities attached to education reforms. These forms of coordination of educational reforms and institutional density have now led to “educational regionalism” (Jules, 2015), premised upon deeper regional coordination, given the perception that the current wave of globalization has paused. Established in 1945, UNESCO aimed to promote a wide range of “governmental and non-governmental educational and intellectual relations across five thematic areas— education, culture (including libraries, museums, and fine arts), science, social science, and mass communications” (Mundy, 1998, p. 456). During its early years, the focus was on providing order in the vast expectations of the education frontier. Due to the varied demands of various actors in the education landscape, UNESCO responded in a rather ad hoc fashion through the launching of expansive educational activities (Mundy, 1998). The promotion of mass schooling by UNESCO during the 1950s gained momentum as nation states from the Third World started to shift their focus in promoting education for its citizens. During this time, IR was dominated by one hegemonic state, the U.S., which determined the role, scope, and function of reform agendas. As the power was concentrated in the U.S., its government was: convinced that support for the Third World offered a key to both the continued expansion of a liberal world economy and to the containment of communism; funding for international development became the center of its attempts to integrate postcolonial nations into its vision of world order. —Mundy, 1998, p. 456 From a neo-realist standpoint, the nature of the international system during this period gave power to the U.S. through UNESCO to govern nation states to make the decisions that they do. This illustrates how nation states were influenced by global players, such as UNESCO, in redefining their education systems. Similarly, Boli et al. (1985) pointed how UNESCO easily gathered data on international education as “educational systems everywhere are built to conform at least nominally to worldinstitutionalized standard models” (p. 148). This clearly shows the traces of neo-realism, as education systems become homogenized due to the influence of global actors and institutions. Another influential educational regime dictating the trajectories of national education systems and reorienting the global educational structure is the 36-member OECD. Unlike
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UNESCO, which was founded on the basis to achieve multiple visions of international education cooperation (Mundy, 1998), the foundation of the OECD is to stimulate economic advancement. Nonetheless, OECD has penetrated and solidified its position in the global governance of education through large-scale international assessments, such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), and International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study (IELS), which is currently in field trial and being dubbed as ‘baby PISA’ (it tests children at the age of 5). The OECD has been able to create global economic competitiveness through comparative schooling performance. This has created new modes of global educational governance that has reshaped the global education architecture by bringing together the policy interests of the OECD and national economies. While nation states “feel” that they have the power to chart their educational trajectories, a neo-realist would argue that new educational reforms undertaken at the national level are largely due to the influence of OECD as it continues to create a global infrastructure for human capital assessment and expands into other forms of assessments (Sellar and Lingard, 2014). From a neo-realist viewpoint, the behavior of a nation-state in shaping and formulating education reforms is dictated by the needs of the market, which is governed by economic entities, such as the OECD. It is essential to note that many other I.O.s and trans-regional regimes have also been influential in the continued implicit and explicit shaping of neo-realist thought in education. Taking a cue from the expanding role of regionalization in the global education, Jules (2012) and Dale and Robertson (2002) highlight how regional actors, such as CARICOM and E.U. operate in the education sphere. Jules (2012) postulates that governments are voluntarily shifting their education policies to validate their education systems based on regional standards. With the dawning of the so-called intelligent economy, education is viewed as a highly prized commodity. The increased visibility of global education surveys that act as a panopticon further fuels nation states to improve their education systems, since having a strong education system signals power. As Mearsheimer (2007) suggests, power is a “means to an end and the ultimate end is survival” (p. 78), every nation-state attempts to “tweak” their education system in order to survive, compete, and thrive at both regional and international level. Through the production of global metrics (Grek, 2019), often scripted by I.O.s and trans-regional regimes, the diverse and complex nature of national education systems are reduced and simplified through global league charts. Grek (2019) posits that as modern society is governed by numbers, statistics, measurements, and quantification, regimes gain power and direct influence over education systems, which now function at the transnational level. As a result, governments have become conscious of their education systems as they aspire to achieve their performance targets but also shift their policies and public spending in light of their poor ranks in verticallypositioned global league tables, which promotes a global surveillance culture. Neo-realists would argue nation states are directly influenced not only by global structures but also by regional groups in shaping the behavior of their education system. Several authors, drawing on the relationship between foreign aid and international development, have relied upon a neo-realist scaffolding to tease out the tensions that exist between “donor-logic” (Steiner-Khamsi, 2008) and developmental assistance in education (Edwards and Hulme, 1996; Samoff and Stromquist, 2001). In focusing on the role of I.O.s and trans-regional regimes in managing donor aid, scholars have used a neo-realist framework to explore the effectiveness of past and current activities of bilateral and
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multilateral organizations, and private donors in education aid (Heyneman and Lee, 2016). Another donor logic narrative that is dominating education at this time are the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are “conceived with the active participation of UNESCO” (UNESCO, n.d.). Like PISA, the objectives of the SDGs somewhat highlight how neo-realism is taking precedence as the role of the nation-state in education is emphasized. SDG lists 17 interconnected goals that are focused on protecting the planet and ensuring that peace and prosperity are achieved. Including areas such as sustainable consumption, economic inequality, climate change, and other priorities, the SDGs are meant to be integrated into the national development plans and policies by governments. Drawing from SDG’s aspiration, we can see how neo-realism is playing out in the field of CIE since nation-states are incorporating elements of SDG in their curriculum and educational structure. This can be seen through the voluntary publication of national review reports to ensure that nation states are on track in accomplishing SDG goals within the given timeline. In some instances, we see the rise of statism—in the form of the return of the state as the main actor of international politics—which authoritarian regimes are increasingly adopting as a way to govern their educational systems. This move towards the centralization of educational governance has drastic consequences for national policymaking. Cosmopolitanism explains that nation-states are responsible for their education systems, but they are also affected by international organizations and their procedures to compete globally. Today, the governance of education, if observed closely, is the combination of different agents/actors, planning, and coordinating various activities for construction and execution of education in national spaces (societies). These activities can be carried out under the educational governance of nation state or by multiple stakeholders like the World Bank, UNESCO, or OECD. Popkewitz (2008) suggests that “social (re)construction of society through schooling” (p. 387) is one of the education priorities of non-state actors. From a statist perspective, non-state actors are considered relevant political agents in the governance of education (Dale and Robertson, 2009). This does not mean states are less powerful; instead, it redefines the roles of other players involved in education policies and politics in relation to the state. Thus, nation states cannot be taken as the only, or most important, actors in the field of education.
CONCLUSIONS Neo-realism is not without its criticisms. It is important to acknowledge the crucial role recently played by the non-state actors in the world system. According to Lipschutz (1992) and Matthews (1997), globalization has resulted in a web of non-state actors that have led to declining state autonomy. Undoubtedly, non-state actors do bring a significant change in the entire world’s political system, and they have a considerable impact on politics. Similarly, states become weaker when they fail to fulfill traditional functions like economic stability, national security, and prosperity, as argued by Drenzer (2007). There is no doubt that international organizations and multinational institutions play a significant role in the regulation of state activities and resolving inter-state conflicts and issues. We have argued that international politics is described as states in search of power and security in an anarchic world. Neo-realism holds that the nature of the international structure is defined by its ordering principle anarchy and by the distribution of capabilities. The anarchic ordering principle structure is decentralized, meaning there is no formal central authority; every sovereign state is equal in the system. The states will not support
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the interest of other states due to lack of trust and uncertainty between states, called a security dilemma. Although no one denies that the international system is anarchic, the disagreement lies as to what it means and why it matters in today’s globalized world. States look for allies and preserve their independence by balancing the power of others. Intense globalization, especially economic globalization, brought about many changes that tied most countries at unprecedented levels. As the international system becomes more complex and diverse due to globalization and interdependence, non-state actors are playing an integral role in institutionalizing cooperation between states through regionalization. This is giving rise to the diffusion of norms in education and the exercise of power in the global system, thus making them “transnational” in nature. Educational expansion is emphasized as a driving force behind the political, social, and economic advancement of any developing nation through agricultural, industrial, and commercial modernization. Education systems are influenced by global structures as well as transnational regimes. Thus, in an anarchic world, where there is no overarching power, nation states actually “behave” in such a way due to the influence of these global powers, and by extension, international and regional organizations. I.O.s cannot then be regarded as independent international actors; rather, they are a “reflection of the distribution of power in the world” (Mearsheimer, 1994, p. 7). As the world shifts from a uni-polar system to a multipolar system, the distribution of power in education has also shifted.
FURTHER READING 1. Jules, T. D. (2015). “Educational regionalization” and the gated global: The construction of the Caribbean educational policy space. Comparative Education Review, 59(4), 638–665. 2. Morgenthau, H. (2014). A realist theory of international politics. In C. Elman, and M. A. Jensen (Eds.), Realism reader (pp. 53–59). New York, NY: Routledge. 3. Mundy, K. (1998). Education multilateralism and world (dis)order. Comparative Education Review, 42(4), 448–478. 4. Parreira do Amaral, M. (2010). Regime theory and educational governance: The emergence of an international education regime. In International educational governance (pp. 57–78). Bingley, UK : Emerald Group Publishing. 5. Tikly, L. P. (2017). The future of education for all as a global regime of educational Governance. Comparative Education Review, 60(1), 22–77.
MINI CASE STUDY From the last two decades, large-scale international assessments (ILSA) in education, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), have arisen to strategic prominence. In 1999, the OECD, an economic entity of rich countries, launched PISA to assess the preparedness for adult life and creativity of youth. PISA provides evidence about students’ abilities and potential to continue learning throughout their lives. Bureaucratic institutions (schools and colleges) need to prepare students for jobs that have not yet been created, to understand and solve the issues and problems that are not yet anticipated. To navigate these uncertain conditions, students will need to develop resilience, curiosity, and critical thinking to cope with future issues and move ahead in times of adversity. In the last testing cycle of 2015, 540,000 students from 72 countries took the computerbased test. Students were tested in three core areas of mathematics, science, reading, and
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collaborative problem-solving, which was added in 2015. With the addition of the fourthdomain, countries can replace it with creative-thinking. According to the OECD, PISA tests are designed “to gauge how well the students master key subjects in order to be prepared for real-life situations in the adult world” (OECD, n.d.). Similar to a balanceof-power measurement, the PISA assessment ranks nation states in vertical league tables. While not accounting for structural constraints at the national level, countries that perform highly in PISA are looked upon as exemplary, while countries that perform poorly are considered to have a deficit in their education system. This scenario intensifies the dichotomy of PISA winners and PISA losers. Due to the increased visibility of comparisons in education under the pretext of economic globalization, nation states are exerting their power to “improve” or “survive” their education systems by looking at PISA-winners. According to Sellar and Lingard (2014), the expanding scope, scale, and explanatory power of PISA have enabled the OECD to facilitate new epistemological and infrastructural modes of global governance in education. In short, educational agenda setting norms are done through trans-national regimes, such as the OECD and not at the national level. PISA results initiate discussions about changes in educational reforms since its methods and rankings are viewed as a legitimate authority. In this case, neo-realism and its balance-of-power theory helps to explain the role of non-state actors like OECD in influencing educational systems around the world. Balance-of-power suggests that states balance to prevent the loss of territory, and in education, the balance to prevent the loss of influence. It is seen that countries are not sure of each other’s future intentions or development, but they are in a race of comparison to achieve their socioeconomic and political prosperity. The OECD notes that creative thinking is a necessary tool for young people’s development and essential to compete for survival since societies are becoming dependent on new technology and innovation to address new challenges. The shifting landscapes of future education is a significant concern for every country. A neo-realist analysis would explain the shifting trends towards the contemporary PISA over the traditional testing as one driven by the amount of power that the OECD wields. Neo-realism tends to focus on the systemic nature of power distribution in general rather than individual state power. Here, the question arises as to why education leaders and policymakers are interested in PISA results globally. The neorealist approach captures the importance of these standardized testing results as a benchmark to differentiate the level of education nationally and globally. Countries, in aligning policies across all areas of their public policy, make them coherent over a sustained period of time and thereby ensure what they do is consequently implemented. Thus, it can be said that international entities control the educational reforms so the participating nations can expand their human capital and create a global impact.
REFERENCES Ashley, R. K. (1984). The poverty of neorealism. International Organization, 38(2), 225–286. Boli, J., Ramirez, F. O., and Meyer, J. W. (1985). Explaining the origins and expansion of mass education. Comparative Education Review, 29(2), 145–170. Buzan, B., Jones, C. A., Little, R., and Richard, L. (1993). The logic of anarchy: Neorealism to structural realism. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Carr, E. H., and Cox, M. (1946). The twenty years’ crises, 1919-1939: An introduction to the study of I.R. London, UK : Macmillan.
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Clausewitz, C., and Maude, F. N. (1982). On war. London, UK : Penguin. Dale, R., and Robertson, S. L. (2002). The varying effects of regional organizations as subjects of globalization of education. Comparative Education Review, 46(1), 10–36. Dale R., and Robertson S. (2009). Beyond methodological “ISMS” in Comparative Education in an era of globalisation. In R. Cowen and A. M. Kazamias (Eds.), International handbook of Comparative Education (pp. 1113–1127). Springer international handbooks of education, vol 22. Springer, Dordrecht. Davies, S., and Guppy, N. (1997). Globalization and educational reforms in Anglo-American democracies. Comparative Education Review, 41(4), 435–459. Drezner, D. W. (2007). The new new world order. Foreign Aff., 86, 34. Drori, G. S., and Krücken, G. (2009). World society: A theory and a research program in context. World society: The writings of John W. Meyer (pp. 3–35). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edwards, M., and Hulme, D. (1996). Too close for comfort? The impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations. World Development, 24(6), 961–973. Eriksen, T. H. (2007). The key concepts: Globalization. London, UK: Bloomsbury. Gilpin, R. (1981). War and change in world politics. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Gilpin, R. (1984). The richness of the tradition of political realism. International Organization, 38(2), 287–304. Grek, S. (2019). Ingenta connect. Retrieved from www.ingentaconnect.com/content/sil/ impact/2019/00002019/00000001/art00014# Heyneman, S. P., and Lee, B. (2016). International organizations and the future of education assistance. International Journal of Educational Development, 48, 9–22. Hobbes, T., and Oakeshott, M. (1946). Leviathan: Or, the matter, forme and power of a commonwealth, ecclesiasticall and civil (with a Introd. by Michael Oakeshott. B. Blackwell). Hobbes, T. (2006). Leviathan. London, UK : A & C Black. Jones, P. W. (2007). Education and world order. Comparative Education, 43(3), 325–337. Jules, T. D. (2008). Re/thinking harmonization in the Commonwealth Caribbean: Audiences, actors, interests, and educational policy formation (Doctoral dissertation, Teachers College, Columbia University). Jules, T. D. (2012). Neither world polity nor local or national societies: Regionalization in the global South—the Caribbean community. Berlin, Germany: Peter Lang. Jules, T. D. (2015). “Educational regionalization” and the gated global: The construction of the Caribbean educational policy space. Comparative Education Review, 59(4), 638–665. Jules, T. D., and Stockdale Jefferson, S. (2016). The next educational bubble–educational brokers and education governance mechanisms: Who governs what!. The global educational policy environment in the fourth industrial revolution (Public Policy and Governance), 26, 123–147. Jules, T. D., and Salajan, F. D. (2020). The “educational intelligent economy”: Artificial intelligence, machine learning and the internet of things in education. Bingley, UK : Emerald Publishing. Koenig, M., and Dierkes, J. (2011). Conflict in the world polity-neo-institutional perspectives. Acta Sociologica, 54(1), 5–25. Krasner, S. D. (1985). Structural conflict: The third world against global liberalism (Vol. 12). University of California Press. Lipschutz, R. D. (1992). Reconstructing world politics: The emergence of global civil society. Millennium, 21(3), 389–420.
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Lundborg, T. (2019). The ethics of neorealism: Waltz and the time of international life. European Journal of I.R., 25(1), 229–249. Machiavelli, N. (2008). The prince. Indianapolis, IN : Hackett Publishing. Matthews, J. A. (2006). Dragon multinationals: New players in 21st century globalization. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 23(1), 5–27. Mearsheimer, J. J. (1994). The false promise of international institutions. International Security, 19(3), 5–49. Mearsheimer, J. J. (2001). The tragedy of great power politics. W. W. Norton & Company. Mearsheimer, J. J. (2007). Structural realism. International Relations Theories: Discipline and diversity, 83, 77–94. Meyer, H. D. (2013). PISA, power, and policy: The emergence of global educational governance. Didcot, UK : Symposium Books. Morgenthau, H. (1956). Politics among nations. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Morgenthau, H. J., Thompson, K. W., and Clinton, D. (1985). Politics among nations: The struggle for power and peace. New York, NY: Knopf. Morgenthau, H. (2014). A realist theory of international politics. In C. Elman, and M. A. Jensen (Eds.), Realism reader (pp. 53–59). New York, NY: Routledge. Mundy, K. (1998). Education multilateralism and world (dis)order. Comparative Education Review, 42(4), 448–478. Mundy, K. (1999). Educational multilateralism in a changing world order: Unesco and the limits of the possible. International Journal of Educational Development, 19(1), 27–52. Ngan, T. T. T. (2016). Neo-realism and the balance of power in Southeast Asia. International Studies Association Conference. University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, 23–25 June. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD]. (2003). The program for international student assessment. Retrieved from www.oecd.org/pisa/ pisaproducts/39725224.pdf Parreira do Amaral, M. (2010). Regime theory and educational governance: The emergence of an international education regime. In International educational governance (pp. 57–78). Emerald Group Publishing. Pierre, J., and Peters, G. P. (2000). Governance, politics and the state. Basingstoke, UK : Macmillan. Popkewitz, T. S. (2008). The social, psychological, and education sciences: From educationalization to pedagogicalization of the family and the child. In Educational research: The educationalization of social problems (pp. 171–190). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Rhodes, R. W. (1996). The new governance: Governing without government. Political Studies, 44, 652–667. Rizvi, F. (2015). Mobilities paradigm and policy research in education. In K. N. Gulson, M. Clark, and E. B. Peterson (Eds.), Education policy and contemporary theory: Implications for research (pp. 171–182). New York, NY: Routledge. Robertson, S., and Dale, R. (2003). Changing geographies of power in education: The politics of rescaling and its contradictions. Published by the Centre for Globalisation, Education and Societies, University of Bristol. Ruggie, J. G. (1992). International regimes, transactions, and change: Embedded liberalism in the postwar economic order. International Organization, 36(2), 379–415. Sahlberg, P. (2006). Education reform for raising economic competitiveness. Journal of Educational Change, 7(4), 259–287. Samoff, J., and Stromquist, N. P. (2001). Managing knowledge and storing wisdom? New forms of foreign aid? Development and Change, 32(4), 631–656.
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Sellar, S., and Lingard, B. (2014). PISA and the expanding role of the OECD in global educational convergence. In H. D. Meyer, and A. Benavot (Eds.), PISA, power, and policy: The emergence of global education governance (pp. 185–206). Oxford, UK : Symposium Books. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2008). Donor logic in the era of Gates, Buffett, and Soros. Current Issues in Comparative Education, 10, 10–15. Strange, S. (1987). The myth of lost hegemony. International Organization, 41, 551–574. Tikly, L. P. (2017). The future of education for All as a global regime of educational governance. Comparative Education Review, 60(1), 22–77. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO]. (n.d.). UNESCO and sustainable development goals. Retrieved from https://en.unesco.org/sdgs Wallerstein, I. (2004). World-systems analysis. Durham, NC : Duke University Press. Waltz, K. N. (1959). Man, the state, and war: A theoretical analysis. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Waltz, K. N. (1979). Theory of international politics. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Neo-Gramscian Theory in Comparative and International Education Power, Ideas, and Institutions TAVIS D. JULES , RICHARD ARNOLD, PRAVINDHARAN BALAKRISHNAN, AND VICTORIA DESIMONI
INTRODUCTION In today’s global environment, many question the role of the state in educational policy, given the numerous actors in the landscape. The global education architecture is becoming more complex, particularly with the movement, as denoted by Ball (2008), from centralized bureaucratic government to governance by multiple networks. Market-driven capitalist processes are now the hegemonic order that is generating multilevel (global, regional, and national) educational initiatives. Because the internal characteristics of the state shape its external behaviors, neoliberal internationalization of the state produces both positive and negative results in the contours of national education. As globalization continues to exhort influence upon states, we must pay attention to how forms of the state change under pressure from international organizations. Such actors “[function] as a process through which the institutions of hegemony and its ideology are developed” (Cox and Sinclair, 1996, p. 139). Today, education is big business, as evidenced by the rise of diverse actors who engage in the sector. These actors range from regional supranational entities (such as the European Union [E.U.] to the Caribbean Community [CARICOM]) to financial institutions (such as the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], and International Monetary Fund [IMF]), to philanthropic foundations (such as the Bill and Melinda Gates, the Hewlett Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative), to United Nations Agencies (such as UNESCO and UNICEF), to private corporations (such as McKinsey and Co, Pearson, Deloitte, Accenture, Cambridge Education, and PriceWaterhouseCooper); for-profit entities that emphasize austerity, leanness, human resource maximization, performance targets, and competition. In that environment, the dominant hegemony of the capital holders, which revolves around their interests, outweighs the individual, and networks of influence give rise to similar ideologies and the propagation of policies that favor the demands of the 249
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global political economy. It comes down to who can successfully influence national governments to enact reforms entwined with the global “pay-to-play” scenarios, wherein national governments surrender some autonomy to join the global educational reform movement. Put another way, the state becomes the agent for the transmission of neoliberal globalization and the logic of capitalist competition. This change implies that educational policy reforms and development are no longer a statist endeavor, but are now subjected to the whims and fancies of external, as well as, international organizations. One such example would be how the OECD is able to enter the national education policy agenda through their global education benchmarking tool, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Resulting from this, states have lost autonomy in the educational policymaking process, and much of their influence lies now in the configuration they have with different external actors. Therefore, the actors in education are part of a transnational hegemonic bloc that combines local and global actors, where the state mostly plays a mediating role. Thus, external educational actors, such as the OECD, impose and implement national policies aligned with common global rhetoric. A neo-Gramscian perspective in education is concerned with the economy that is exerted by international actors in influencing a nation’s educational policies, programs, and processes. It analyzes the global political economy and its external influences upon educational systems by examining the historical ways in which educational influence is institutionalized and produces different hegemonic relations. Neo-Gramscian theory is situated within the historical materialist context of social transformation around hegemony. Developed by Robert W. Cox (1926–2018), the neo-Gramscian perspective broadens the domain of hegemony. Historically, we present material resources and institutions as holding a central role within the state, building a hegemony, or dominance. Hegemony, here, can be briefly described as the supremacy of the ruling class over the oppressed. However, Cox (1981) argues that if we view hegemony as an “opinion-molding activity,” then we can account for “how intersubjective meanings—shared notions about social relations—shape reality” (Bieler and Morton, 2004, p. 88) where reality is composed of human actions and “institutional, moral and ideological context that shapes thoughts and actions” (Cox, 1997, p. 252). Here, hegemony filters through societal, economic, political, and cultural structures where we can capture “the reciprocal relationship of structures and actors” (Cox, 1995, p. 33) and give attention to the social forces and processes that aided the state in its development. In focusing on the changing nature of transnational social forces, we see that as the actions of the main actors shift, so too do the social forces undergirding those actions. For example, the restructuring of national educational systems under the World Bank’s and IMF’s loan conditionalities in the 1980s were engendered by neoliberalism; it was realized that as “international knowledge banks” (Jones, 2004) restructured capitalism in globalization, this had led to the emergence of new social forces in the form of capital and labor. Neo-Gramscian theory questions the prevailing world order1 by deconstructing the institutions and social and power relations that function within the global order. This draws attention to the origins of those orders and anticipates whether or not they might be changing. Neo-Gramscian theory understands what norms, institutions, and practices
1 Cox preferred to use the term “world order” as opposed to international relations since he thought the latter was too state-centric. In this way world order “is neutral as regards the nature of the entities that constitute power; it designates an historically specific configuration of power of whatever kind” (Cox and Sinclair, 1996, p. 494).
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have emerged around social and world orders, and how these can be changed and transformed. In this way, a critical theory of hegemony focuses “on [the] interaction between particular processes, notably springing from the dialectical possibilities of change within the sphere of production and the exploitative character of social relations, not as unchanging ahistorical essences but as a continuing creation of new forms” (Cox, 1981, p. 132). In what follows, this chapter will present a historical overview of neo-Gramscian theory and its critics. The next section then connects the application of neo-Gramscian theory to comparative and international education (CIE). This is followed by a conclusion and a case study that applies neo-Gramsci to education.
OVERVIEW Lauded as a reinvigorating approach to international relations and the international political economy, neo-Gramscian theory is situated within the general discipline of international relations (IR). The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) believed that the power of cultural hegemony rested in cultural institutions, such as schools, the media, churches, and courts, among others. Thus, the modern application of his work, as pioneered by Cox, places hegemony within a global context of power, ideas, and institutions. Gramsci is thought to be the cultural counterpart to Marxism; where Marx focused on economic determinism, Gramsci theorized that state class power was maintained through cultural hegemony. As these two ideas are not mutually exclusive, Gramsci’s theories of cultural hegemony are part of a larger contribution to Marxism. Gramsci’s works mostly depart from Marxism, however, it mainly looks at how the ruling class is able to maintain control through ideology. Gramsci believed this was accomplished through the “organic intellectual,” wherein an intellectual class cultivates mass participation in the counter hegemonic movement. Intellectuals were not necessarily academics, but more often industrialists: every social group. . . creates together with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the social and political fields. The capitalist entrepreneur creates alongside himself the industrial technician, the specialist in political economy, the organizers of a new culture, of a new legal system, etc. —Gramsci, 1989, p. 113 In modern educational terms, this is accomplished through the funding of progressive academic initiatives by wealthy entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. In Gramscian terms, these moves help cultivate a “mass consciousness” that drives the counterhegemonic movement that gives rise to a new cultural hegemony. By combining Gramscian perspectives with historicism, Cox (1981; 1983) sought to re-read Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony, civil and political societies, and historical blocs in a contemporary context. For Cox, this allows us to move away from approaches based on structural-functionalism and Marxism (see Chapters 1 and 3) that emerged in the field of IR such as neo-realism. Gramsci (1971) viewed hegemony as a critical concept that accentuates the power of material capabilities, ideas, institutions, and socio-economic and cultural forces used by the ruling class to subordinate others. In this system, a hegemonic order is created once consensus emerges. With the rise of the hegemonic order, the
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historical bloc emerges as the existing hegemonic order produces a structure. In this way, neo-Gramsci goes beyond the neo-realist state-centric framework by focusing on how world orders—material conditions, ideas, and institutions—are constituted. Cox (2007), places emphasis on historicism and calls for the “international” to be broadened beyond state actions within interstate relations, given that the larger sphere of world order shapes societies. The focus of critical political economy becomes developing a “historical mode of thought” (Cox and Sinclair, 1996, p. 91) that investigates the actors and structures that exist in a particular period of time. The goal then becomes to explain the historical process and understand change. The development of a neo-Gramscian perspective by Cox (1981; 1983) coalesces with a rejection of mainstream positivist IR approaches during the 1980s. For Cox (1981), IR scholars had developed a static theory of politics, an abstract, ahistorical view of the state, and an appeal to universal validity (Keohane, 1984: 1989; Waltz, 1979). NeoGramscian theory began as a critique of the “Nixon shock” event, which was a series of economic measures undertaken in 1971 by then-U.S. President Richard Nixon (1913– 1994) in response to a capitalist economic crisis. One measure of this event was the unilateral cancellation of the gold-dollar convertibility, which signaled “the end of the post-war regime of ‘embedded liberalism’ ” (as cited in Bieler and Morton, 2003, para 3). This event also signaled that the world was moving into a period of sustained structural change. As a result of this, Bieler and Morton (2003) argue that established IR theories were unable to describe the economic structural change of the 1970s. For example, normative theories and new critical theories, such as feminism, post-structuralism, and historical sociology, rejected the “positivist assumption that the aim of social science is to identify causal relationships in an objective world” (Bieler and Morton, 2003, para 3). This evidently challenged traditional approaches in the early 1980s. Drawing from this, Cox’s (1981) work was responding to the way in which, during post-World War II period, endless metaphors such as the “retreat of the state” (Strange, 1996) and the emergence of the “borderless world” (Ohmae, 1990) arose to describe the crises of the 1970s. Cox (1981) suggests that we use a critical theory, which identifies the origins of historical phenomena by seeking out sources of contradiction and conflict, to explain the crises of the 1970s (Sinclair, 1996). In other words, critical theory was viewed as adopting a more holistic approach of dealing with the changing of realities. Therefore, drawing from this, Cox’s (1981; 1983) development of the neo-Gramscian perspective is part of a rejection of traditional positivist IR approaches. At the time, IR was undergoing its own critical inquiry, as it was thought to be the sustenance of existing social and power relationships, which brings along inherent inequalities. Similarly, these features had been viewed as a constant, proven incorrect as the “Nixon shock” demonstrated sustained structural change. This change was driven by what Gills (1993) calls the movement for the “international historical bloc,” which was a post-World War II configuration that cemented hegemony of transnational capital. In this context, the historical bloc is the moment when the change, which is driven by a diverse set of actors, occurs. In the wake of the change in the 1970s, Robert Cox’s seminal articles—Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory and Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations: An Essay in Method—laid the foundation for neo-Gramsci applications in CIE. In brief, Cox’s (1981; 1983) work engages with Gramsci’s writing on the critical theory of hegemony, world order, and historical change. Under this approach, world hegemonic forces are perceived to be the outgrowth or expansion of national
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hegemonies. To understand the neo-Gramscian theory, it is important to understand the construction of hegemony. As defined by Bieler and Morton (2003), hegemony from a neo-Gramscian perspective is “an expression of broadly-based consent, manifested in the acceptance of ideas and supported by material resources and institutions” (p. 85). The authors postulate that neo-Gramscian work examines how hegemony permeates the many aspects of an individual’s life. This is because hegemony is viewed as “consensual” institutionalization between the ruling class and the ones who are ruled. Adding to that, the world’s hegemonic forces become realized and concretized through economic alliances. This can be seen through the work of Cox (1981), as he notes that “hegemony in complex societies involve complex alliances” (p. 132). Drawing from this, governance, which Jessop (1997) refers to the “self-organization of inter-organizational relations” (p. 9), is enacted through the hegemony of these alliances. Cox (1981) framed his approach by contrasting critical theory and problem-solving theories such as neo-realism, neoliberal institutionalist approaches, and world-systems theory (see Chapter 5). As Bieler and Morton (2003) highlight, problem-solving theories “assume that the basic features of international systems are constant” (para 4). However, for Cox (1981), problem-solving theories observe the world as it is by highlighting the “the prevailing social and power relationships and the institutions into which it is organised, as the given framework for actions” (p. 88). Similarly, Robertson and Dale (2008) view problem-solving theories in education as maintaining the status quo; they are ahistorical in that they assume a continuing present, and they try to make institutions work more smoothly by placing limits and parameters on problems. However, Cox’s (1981) critical theory emphasizes the importance of standing aside from the prevailing order and asking how that order came about. Critical theory, which analyzes social structures through the lens of the dominated and oppressed, calls into question the nature and origins of institutions by reviewing old categories with which to understand changes in social relations, and perhaps generating new categories as well. According to Cox (1981), critical theory “does not take institutions and social and power relations for granted but calls them into question by concerning itself with their origins and whether they might be in the process of changing” (p. 129). It analyzes how existing world orders emerged, and how dominant norms, institutions, and practices were established. Importantly, this is not a purpose in and of itself, but a starting point to identify and develop an emancipatory project for a new and more just world order. Similar to other post-positivist approaches, neo-Gramscian perspectives, in their normative drive, accept that “theory is always for someone and for some purpose” (Cox, 1981, p. 128). As Bieler and Morton (2004) denote, Cox’s work critically examines the origins of institutionalized “social or world orders” and then “what forces may have the emancipator potential to change or transform the prevailing order” (p. 86). Gramsci used hegemony to emphasize the power of material capabilities, ideas, institutions, and other socioeconomic and cultural forces in ensuring legitimacy for the ruling class over the subordinate class. For Cox (1981), within a world order, hegemony may triumph “based on a coherent conjunction or fit between a configuration of material power, the prevalent collective image of world order (including certain norms) and a set of institutions which administer the order with a certain semblance of universality” (p. 139). As Bieler and Morton (2003) put it, hegemony, in neo-Gramscian terms, is “initially established by social forces occupying a leading role within a state but is then projected outwards on a world scale” (p. 1). Cultural hegemony diffuses into the global stage, as state actors construct new hegemonies.
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A hegemonic order is said to come into existence when a form of consent between the two classes becomes fully cemented, which is the dominant and the oppressed. The historical structure of hegemony is constituted in three dialectical relations of forces (1) the production which encompasses societal relations in “material, institutional and discursive forms that engender particular social forces,” (2) “historically contingent statecivil society complexes,”2 and (3) world orders that “permit scope for thinking about how alternative forms of world order might emerge” (as cited in Bieler and Morton, 2004, p. 88). For Cox (1987), the examination of the mechanisms and operations of hegemony begins with the patterns of production relations. For Cox (1989), production is understood in its broadest sense, covering “the production and reproduction of knowledge and of the social relations, morals and institutions that are prerequisites to the production of physical goods” (p. 39). Cox (1981) focuses on three forces: material capabilities (accumulated resources and technology), ideas (shared intersubjective meanings of the world order [institutional facts]), and institutions (the ways orders are stabilized) that interact with structures. From this perspective, historical structures consisting of these forces are broken down over time. Thus, if we are able to discern the social relationships of production, then we are able to identify the particular social forces of power that exist within and across a specific world order (Bieler and Morton, 2004; Moolakkattu, 2009). The aim then becomes understanding how “power in social relations of production may give rise to certain social forces, how these social forces may become the bases of power in forms of state and how this might shape world order” (Bieler and Morton, 2004, p 89, emphasis in original). Therefore, hegemonic structures, composed of material capabilities, ideas, and institutions, consist of the social relations of production, forms of state, and world orders. In this way, social relations are an “ ‘organization of production,’ forms of state [are] derived from the study of state/society complexes, and world orders, or the configuration of forces [are] define[d by] the ‘problematic of war or peace for the ensemble of states’ ” (as cited in Sinclair, 2016, p. 513). In order for us to understand the spheres, we need to understand the forces—material capabilities, ideas, and institutions (or institutionalization)3— through which they are constituted. State power, therefore, rests on the new patterns of social forces created by the social relations of production. We locate forms of state in their historical construction and their embedded political struggles. Historically, consent is established by the continued prestigious status of intellectual concepts (Carroll and Greeno, 2013). This is actively strengthened in states through institutions that both support and expand these concepts as the normative practice, or as Carroll and Greeno (2013) denote as the “common sense of an era” (p. 122). The reinforcement of these concepts can be referred to as the hegemonic order, which then develops into a “historic bloc” which, according to Gramsci (1971), is a solid structure produced by an existing hegemonic order. The role of this historic bloc is “to cement or bind together all the other segments of society into a relationship characterized by common political, economic, and cultural practices” (Conteh-Morgan, 2002, p. 59). Whereas forms of the state widen theories of the state to account for the civil society, the historical bloc is embedded within the construction of hegemony and world orders. Thus, the consolidation of hegemony nationally in social orders leads to its diffusion globally. As Cox (1983) notes, “a world
In this way, the basic relationship is between the state and society, and a plurality of states exists. Institutionalization for Cox is the same as Gramscian hegemony.
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hegemony is thus in its beginnings an outward expansion of the internal (national) hegemony established by a . . . social class” (p. 171). Therefore, hegemony may operate at two levels, “by constructing an historical bloc and establishing social cohesion within a form of state as well as by expanding a mode of production internationally and projecting hegemony through the level of world order” (Bieler and Morton, 2004, p. 93, emphasis in original). This approach assumes that motivations are not fixed between structures, and therefore produces a variety of historical forms. Historical action, therefore, constitutes the context. Of course, locating hegemony within the global political economy is not without its critics, who note that the neo-Gramsci approach is caught up in modernist assumptions. Scholars such as Burnham (1991) contend it is “pluralist empiricism,” while others have argued that it lacks the rigor of Marxism. Similarly, other scholars suggest that neoGramscian theory is a top-down process that “overlooks reciprocal interaction between the global and the local . . . mutually reinforcing social relations within the global political economy; or ignores class conflict within national social formations” (Bieler and Morton, 2004, p. 101). Others have suggested that Cox is replacing concepts like complex interdependence, regimes, and international organization with “internationalization of production” and “internationalizing of the state” (Moolakkattu, 2009).
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION In the field of CIE, neo-Gramscian approaches look at how a national hegemony becomes an international hegemony, and how this is reflected in international educational frameworks. A theme that emerges in the neo-Gramscian framework is “Common Sense.” Common sense, in other words, is the type of thinking that leads us to see a practice or policy and say “of course, it would be done this way, why wouldn’t it?” To tackle this question, a neo-Gramscian approach is trifold: first, it will identify the origin of this hegemonic common sense; second, it will identify the institutions that enable it (usually state actors in an international system); and third, it will identify the dissemination and probable fragmenting of that hegemony. In this way, we recognize the possible counter hegemonic strands that could lay in the future. As Jessop (1997) writes: because state power is inevitably realized through its projection into the wider society and its coordination with other forms of power, one must look beyond formal government institutions to a wide range of governance mechanisms and practices. Likewise, governance is relevant to the day-to-day practices in and through which the various structural forms of regulation are instantiated and reproduced. —p. 9 In CIE, this can be seen when there are established educational norms at both the supranational and national levels. As comparative educators, we pay attention to the broader international structure, and we question that structure’s origins by asking, “What is the hegemonic discourse? Who are the actors? What are the historic blocs? What institutions support it?” In applying a neo-Gramsci framework to CIE, the focus becomes on understanding how institutions (educational and otherwise) maintain a stable hegemony. As established,
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a stable hegemony must have “a particular configuration of forces;” in this case, Cox (1981) would suggest that neo-Gramscian hegemony is the merger of material power, ideas, and institutions. Robertson (2009), in applying this line of thinking to education, states that “hegemony prevails when there is a coherent fit between a configuration of material power, a set of ideas about world order, and the institutions that administer that order” (p. 3). Cox (1981) argues that the weakening of hegemony occurs when the balance between these three forces is destabilized. Like other aspects of capitalism, in CIE the neo-Gramsci framework questions “How do actors acquire a new common sense around the role of education in society?” to which we should first observe “the social practices or actions of agents whose structurally inscribed agency produces and reproduces capitalist social orders and futures” (Robertson, 2017, p. 297). For example, the World Bank developed a set of indexes for loan approvals that can be used within a country’s educational system so as “to advance, materialize, and institutionalize the specific architecture of a ‘knowledge-based economy’ ” called the Knowledge Assessment Methodology (KAM), which “enables countries to benchmark themselves against either neighbours, competitors, or other countries they wish to learn from” (Robertson, 2009, p. 9). The World Bank structures its capitalist orders based on an index of its potential, which extends to higher education in member countries. Countries may measure themselves against each other, but as the arbiter of the loans, the World Bank is what the countries are really being measured against. The key here is to observe the historical origins of an institution that gains hegemonic dominance in the education arena. Significant to the neo-Gramscian theory in CIE is the regulation approach, which “examines the historically contingent ensembles of complementary economic and extraeconomic mechanisms and practices which enable capital accumulation to occur in a relatively stable way over long periods” (Jessop, 1997, p. 3). From a neo-Gramscian perspective, hegemony can be achieved through the accumulation of capital, both economic and prestigious. In this way, “economic hegemony derives from economic leadership through general acceptance of an accumulation strategy” (Jessop, 1983, p. 92). Looking backward from current international regulations, we see that “the rules of the game framing the direction of national education policies . . . was [created by] the dominance of the agenda by the international organisations who were responsible for creating it — UNESCO, UNDP, UNICEF and the World Bank” (Robertson and Dale, 2015, p. 10). These organizations develop that framework over time through “accumulation strategies,” which are “a specific economic ‘growth model’. . .[that] unifies the different moments in the circuit of capital (money or banking capital, industrial capital, commercial capital) under the hegemony of one fraction” (Jessop, 1983, p. 91). Robertson and Dale (2015) measure this ontologically as a “critical cultural political economy of education (CCPE),” (see Chapter 16) wherein one critically examines the accumulated cultural and political capital of an institution, and from there “speak of the ways in which we live and experience our condition through categories, classifications and frameworks for action which shape the possibilities for reflexivity and social practices” (p. 6). So, the regulation approach requires us to examine how historic blocs accumulate that capital within the CCPE; this becomes apparent in the neoliberal rise of corporatization and internationalization of education. In the case of economic hegemonies, such as the World Bank, market forces led to natural dissemination of their influence on education through internationalization and corporatization. As the competitive international markets, promulgated by economic
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globalization, shifted us towards a knowledge-based economy, economic hegemonies such as the World Bank and IMF built a dominance of policy within that economy, and “since the late 1990s, the World Bank has increasingly involved the International Finance Corporation [IFC] in the development of policy and programmes to identify ‘frontier’ or ‘emerging markets’ in higher education” (Robertson, 2009, p. 11). With bureaucratic structures, such as the aforementioned KAM, “the IFC, part of the World Bank Group, is visible. . . as a global actor in the education sector, and one which has over time taken on a bigger and bigger role aimed at opening up education markets in low-income countries” (Robertson, 2017, p. 298). Neoliberal ideas of globalization and privatization led to the institutionalization of regional education markets, and “support for various programmes of modernisation continued in rather piecemeal fashion, largely on the basis of bilateral aid, with support from UNESCO, and increasingly the World Bank” (Robertson and Dale, 2015, p. 10). And so, in a few relatively short decades, “just as domestic economies are subordinated to the demands of transnational capital and finance, so the modern state itself is being transformed” (Pass, 2018, p. 595) there are entrenched blocs of power within the neoliberal international market. They can create a hegemony through the accumulation of capital; economic and beyond. In education, one idea that exists within Cox’s (1981) balance is the corporatization of education. This is the product of reconceptualizing education in the framework of global competition that has occurred over the decades. In this way, “the economic crisis in the early 1970s provided the entry point for early work in orchestrating” that shifted our focus to “how the sector might be governed using principles of competition from capitalist markets” (Robertson, 2017, p. 300). In using that framework, we can “reconceptualize” the purpose of education “as a key sector to promote the stock of human capital and knowledge, on the one hand, and to boost creativity and innovation to feed the development competitive knowledge-based economies on the other hand” (Robertson, 2017, p. 300). By the 1980s and 1990s, digital storage added a new dynamic, involving “the constant reframing of knowledge into digitally driven information which has changed the scale of the production of information and knowledge and modes of access” (Robertson, 2017, p. 300). The digitization of data meant that all variables of learning could be quantified and measured, as could the results. This promise of promoting human development has led to the rise of international education corporations, and their “ongoing efforts to reframe education as a competitive market have expanded to the point that the idea of a global education industry has been normalised” (Robertson, 2017, p. 298). This reconceptualization of education as a tradable commodity also owes its roots to international trade agreements, such as the World Trade Organization’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), the TransPacific Partnership (TPP), and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) (both part of the OECD), which are “formatting” education in the international arena, and transforming it to a service that “is not only abstracted, but also fragmented” (Robertson, 2017, p. 302). If education can be abstracted, fragmented, and normalized within a competitive market, it can, therefore, be quantified and distributed as easily as a meal at a restaurant. This implies the rise of educational servitization. From Cox’s (1981) neo-Gramscian perspective, internationalization occurs naturally through these dominant hegemonies, including education policy. Thus, “the internationalization of the state is associated with the expansion of international production” (Cox, 1996, p. 109). A major component of that internationalization is the “transformation of a social good into a commodity, whose taken-for-grantedness is yet to become more stable” (Robertson, 2017, p. 296). With educational servitization, the
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product indirectly serves to empower an existing international hegemony. To Cox and Sinclair (1996) such things were an extension of the old hegemonic class structures, and “at the apex of an emerging global class structure is the transnational managerial class . . . it is a class both in itself and for itself ” and its focal points include “the World Bank, IMF, and OECD” (p. 111). Cosmopolitan ideals of globalization give rise to a class that can profoundly influence education policy in states, and “the notion of international obligation move[s] beyond a few basic commitments, such as observance of the most favoured nation principle or maintenance of an agreed exchange rate, to a general recognition that measures of national economic policy affect other countries” (Cox, 1981, p. 21). Once internationalized, these measures of economic policy create normalized conceptions of education. As an example of this internationalization, note how the accumulation strategy can be deployed hegemonically to create normalization. An international hegemony led to the rise of standardized systems of league tables which rank colleges, pushed by global and regional hegemonic actors: by the early 1980s, however, there was growing pressure from the World Bank (WB) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to publish indicators that could be globally ranked and compared, in other words, to develop a means of vertical and horizontal comparison. —Robertson, 2012, p. 3 This push creates a hegemonic dominance and creates space for more opportunities for dominance, because “the emergence of global rankings has, therefore, provided entry points and spaces for a range of new actors and projects to enter the higher education sector” (Robertson, 2012, p. 3). If the historic blocs are the actors behind the trade and treaty agreements that created this market, the actions that attempt to draw parallels between social and economic productivity are the normalization, because “markets do not come into existence without considerable work at generating equivalences between social activity and economic activity, and from there, economic activity into competitive market activity that is dynamic and innovative” (Robertson, 2017, p. 303). The structure supporting higher education across World Bank and OECD countries becomes based on normative ideas of quantifiable educational practices and services. If we know the ideas that dominate the hegemony, and we know the historical origins of that power, we must still acknowledge the institutions that support and facilitate these factors. While Marxist dogma might place more importance on political alliances, we have seen the impact of economic trade agreements on education in a far more visible way. We have seen how the World Bank, OECD, and the World Trade Organization have worked to create overlapping regional hegemonies dictating common sense education policy, and: this alignment of actors, agendas and practices marks a radical shift toward a new kind of global economy whose neo-liberal tenets are being constitutionalized in a complex architecture of policies, funding programs, agreements, protocols, indexes and registers that operate at multiple scales. —Robertson, 2009, p. 5 Through the bureaucratic mechanisms in place between member countries, “it is important to note the formatting of education into a legal, contractual, language with mechanisms such as Dispute Settlement to resolve differences between countries and
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investors” (Robertson, 2017, p. 302). This creates an inevitable intertwining of dominant institutions over member states, for example: the World Bank’s rehabilitation of higher education for low-income/developing countries—as a centre-piece of their policy agenda—reflects a shift in interests and strategy of the powerful (and client) states of the developed world (e.g., US, UK, Australia, Canada) tied to the development of a services economy realized through sectors such as higher education. —Robertson, 2009, p. 5 Thus, economic entities lead paradigm shifts (initiated by its developed states) on behalf of its member states (generally followed by developing states). But by fragmenting this hegemony, it also fragments the ideology itself and upsets the balance. One way the institutional balance that CIE exists within becomes destabilized is through a counter-hegemonic movement. For counter-hegemonic efforts to materialize, “hegemony must, according to Gramsci, be in a state of ‘organic crisis’ ” (Airas, 2017, pp. 2–3), meaning that the system must be facing a crisis of legitimacy; for example, a crisis of faith in hegemonic educational measurement programs implemented by the E.U. or the World Bank. For “a counter-hegemonic movement to be successful, it requires a ‘coalition of social forces’ to coalesce around the rejection of the ‘common sense’ of the prevailing hegemony” (Cox, 1981, p. 132). The hegemony can be both dominant and fractured, and in fact, “many realists have predicted a return to a Hobbesian world where the fragmentation of international order and the emergence of rivalry among atomistic national units exist” (Özçelik, 2005, p. 89). In a digital age, it is not so strange that cultural hegemonies spread out and are consented to on a wide scale, nor is it strange that this fragmentation weakens that hegemony, as populations diversify and then begin to coalesce around new hegemonies. And so, regions and cities rise to create new (one could say “relocated”) hegemonies: for Gramsci, hegemony was generally realized at the “national-popular” level and expressed in the organization of national states. . . However, if one of the principal features of contemporary capitalism is the “hollowing out” of national states and the resurgence of regions and cities, it is important to consider how far hegemony can also be relocated (perhaps once again) at the subnational level. —Jessop, 1997, p. 13 In education, this takes the form of local districts rejecting the economic and international hegemonies placed by the actors we have been discussing. As the data driven education economy “advanced by a range of private and public actors,” hegemonic dominance becomes inevitably threatened by both “the object and outcome of projects passing through, disturbing, and transforming the higher education sector in visible, and yet to be made more visible, ways” (Robertson, 2012, p. 4).
CONCLUSION Neo-Gramscian theory emerged as a way to make sense of the structural changes of neoliberalism and globalization of the 1970s. At its heart, it focuses on extending the concept of hegemony (exercised through social forces, forms of state, and world orders) by showing how transnational processes underpin internationalization, and how these have been inculcated throughout the policymaking channels of governments. A neo-
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Gramscian approach emphasizes the role of hegemony in the global political economy and takes the societal relations of production as its starting point for thinking about world order and the ways in which social forces are engendered. To explain the globalization and internationalization of the state, it is important to treat the state as one of many actors that are examined and thus allowing us to move away from “methodological nationalism” (Dale and Robertson, 2009). A neo-Gramsci approach in education uses a broad historical-materialist framework in examining the structural organization of the world order. As we have noted above, hegemony here is exercised through historical blocs within a particular world order. Thus, for a hegemonic world order to be stable, it requires the entanglement of material power, ideas, and institutions. Hegemony is a coalescence of common sense, and political transformation occurs through social forces, forms of the state, and world order. Neo-Gramsci theory seeks to explain transformations from one structure to another and the underlining intersubjective meanings, and focuses on the historical changes of world politics as opposed to behavioral changes. While the neo-Gramscian theory has tended to focus on the concept of hegemony, it is also built upon two central pillars—ideas, institutions, and material capabilities in one, and social forces, forms of state, and world order in the other—of historic structures, which operate synchronically and diachronically. In education, a neo-Gramscian approach has been used to investigate European integration within the context of globalization by focusing on the governance of the European educational arena. Such an approach locates European hegemony within national education systems by drawing attention to how ideas, institutions, and material capabilities constructed that hegemony. In this way we can say that the global hegemony that shapes national educational systems is impacted by social forces (preparing global citizens), forms of states (education as a national right [the state-education complex]), and world orders (globalization, neoliberal capitalism, trade liberalization, and servitization).
FURTHER READING 1. Cox, R. W. (1987). Production, power and world order: Social forces in the making of history. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. 2. Cox, R. W. (1981). Social forces, states and world orders: Beyond international relations theory. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 10(2), 126–155. 3. Cox, R. W. (1983). Gramsci, hegemony and international relations: An essay in method. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 12(2), 162–175. 4. Pass, J. (2019). American hegemony in the 21st century. New York, NY: Routledge.
MINI CASE STUDY To illustrate the exercise of neo-Gramscian hegemonic power, observe the creation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) implemented through the Open Method of Coordination (OMC). In 1999, the education ministers of 29 European countries met in Bologna and agreed on the creation of the EHEA, a higher education project with the objective of ensuring comparable standards of higher education qualifications across the European Union (E.U.), promoting European higher education throughout the world, and making Europe a top competitor in the knowledge-based business (Shields, 2016). Today, 48 countries are part of the EHEA and have agreed to the standards defined in the
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Bologna Process. The way in which the EHEA enacts this higher education project is through the OMC, a mechanism that is guided and regulated by the EU. Through the EHEA and the OMC, the EU has established itself as a hegemonic power acting upon all its conforming nations, enhancing the creation of a homogenous European identity. The Bologna Process and the EHEA utilize three “homogenizing” roles in the neoGramscian sense. One role is working towards the creation of a strong European identity, or “thickening the idea of Europe” (Dale and Robertson, 2009, p. 126). The second role, according to Dale and Robertson (2009), is to strengthen the European Social Model. The EHEA transformed European education in an institution that “helps to create in people certain modes of behavior and expectations consistent with the hegemonic social order” (Cox, 1996, p. 126). Standardizing European higher education allows for the inculcation of the same norms, beliefs, and values across the member states, aligning with the European Social Model the E.U. promotes. This homogenous identity is what allows the EU to maintain its hegemonic power. The third role is to increase the contribution of education to the Lisbon Process (Dale and Robertson, 2009). For its part, the Lisbon Process was an economic development plan created in 2000, with the objective of, by 2010, making Europe “the most competitive, dynamic, knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustained growth, with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion” (as cited in Dale and Robertson, 2009, p. 126). The OMC is the coordinating mechanism utilized by the EU to implement the Lisbon Process, in the form of “soft law,” which does not impose legislative measures nor require member states to change their existing laws (Dale and Robertson, 2009). The OMC aims to “spread” the most effective educational practices with the objective of generating greater “convergence” among the E.U. nations, in both outputs (e.g., the percentage of school dropouts) and inputs (e.g., how much money each member state spends in education). The emphasis on the idea of “common goals, divergent means” (Dale and Robertson, 2009) reinforces the possibility of “convergence.” As Robertson (2016) asserts, the OMC “favours the flexibility of norms and their national reappropriation whilst framing it through a series of instruments (especially evaluative tools) to obtain convergence and the progressive alignment of resistant partners to the European standards” (p. 92). The “flexibility” of both the EHEA and the OMC is also what makes them an appropriate example of how hegemonic power in the neo-Gramscian sense works, as here hegemony rests in the power maintained through the acceptance of ideas and the generation of consensus, rather than by coercion. As Shields (2016) explains, the EHEA is different from other European policymaking because “it is situated outside the institutional structures of the European Commission, allowing flexibility in its implementation and providing a delicate balance between national autonomy and central coordination” (p. 7). In Cox’s (1996) definition of a Gramscian hegemonic power, the power is obtained through the discovery and protection of a world order that is compatible with the interest of other nations and is supported by them as if it was theirs; a “convergence” (Cox, 1996). The Bologna Process, whose goal was to standardize the European higher education, consisted of multiple negotiations and redefinitions of its goals and how to achieve them. Nothing was imposed, but agreed upon, through lengthy exchanges and debates. Similarly, the OMC is not an imposition of policies and standards, but a mediating mechanism through which member states are guided to rethink their educational practices and policies—through guidelines, indicators, benchmarks, and the sharing of the most efficient practices.
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To conclude, both the homogenizing goals and the flexible procedures of the EHEA and the OMC make them excellent examples of a neo-Gramscian hegemonic power in practice. Through the EHEA, education became an institution that inculcates certain modes of behavior and expectations that are consistent with the hegemonic social order promoted by the EU. And, by the OMC’s flexible “spreading” of educational guidelines, benchmarks, and practices, the EU is able to generate convergence and consensus among all its member states.
REFERENCES Airas, I. (2017). A neo-Gramscian analysis of Brexit. E-international relations students. Retrieved from www.e-ir.info/2017/05/30/a-neo-gramscian-analysis-of-brexit/ Ball, S. J. (2008). New philanthropy, new networks and new governance in education. Political Studies, 56(4), 747–765. Bieler, A., and Morton, A. D. (2003). Theoretical and methodological challenges of neoGramscian perspectives in international political economy. International Gramsci Society, 8–28. Retrieved from www.internationalgramscisociety.org/resources/online_articles/articles/ bieler_morton.shtml Bieler, A., and Morton, A. (2004). A critical theory route to hegemony, world order and historical change: Neo-Gramscian perspectives in international relations. Capital & Class, 28(1), 85–113. Burnham, P. (1991). Neo-Gramscian hegemony and the international order. Capital & Class, 45, 79–93. Carroll, W. K., and Greeno, M. (2013). Neoliberal hegemony and the organization of consent. In R. Fisher (Ed.), Managing democracy, managing dissent: Capitalism, democracy and the organisation of consent (pp.121–135). London, UK : Corporate Watch. Conteh-Morgan, E. (2002). Globalization and human security: A neo-Gramscian perspective. International Journal of Peace Studies, 57–73. Cox, R. W. (1981). Social forces, states and world orders: Beyond international relations theory. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 10(2), 126–155. Cox, R. W. (1983). Gramsci, hegemony and international relations: An essay in method. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 12(2), 162–75. Cox, R. W. (1987). Production, power and world order: Social forces in the making of history. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Cox, R. W. (1989). Production, the state and change in world order. In E. O. Czempiel and J. N. Rosenau (Eds.), Global changes and theoretical challenges: Approaches to world politics for the 1990s. Toronto, Canada: Lexington Book. Cox, R. W. (1995). Critical political economy. In B. Hettne (Ed.), International political economy: Understanding global disorder. London, UK : Zed Books. Cox, R. W. and Sinclair, T. J. (1996). Approaches to world order. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press. Cox, R. W. (1997). Reconsiderations. In R. W. Cox (Ed.), The new realism: Perspectives on multilateralism and world order. London, UK : Macmillan. Cox, R. W. (2007). The international in evolution. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 35(3), 513–527. Dale, R., and Robertson, S. L. (Eds.) (2009). Globalisation & europeanisation in education. Oxford, UK : Symposium Books.
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Dale, R., and Robertson, S. L. (2009). Beyond methodological “isms” in Comparative Education in an era of globalisation. In R. W. Cowen and A, M. Kazamias (Eds.), International handbook of comparative education (pp. 1113–1128). Netherlands: Springer. Gills, S. (1993). Epistemology, ontology and the “Italian school.” In S. Gill (Ed.), Gramsci, historical materialism and international relations. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press. Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. New York, NY: International Publishers. Jessop, B. (1983). Accumulation strategies, state forms, and hegemonic projects. Kapitalistate, 10, 89–111. Jessop, B. (1997). A neo-Gramscian approach to the regulation of urban regimes: accumulation strategies, hegemonic projects, and governance. In M. Lauria (Ed.), Reconstructing urban regime theory (pp. 51–73). SAGE . Jones, P. W. (2004). Taking the credit: Financing and policy linkages in the education portfolio of the World Bank. In G. Steiner-Khamsi (Ed.), The global politics of educational borrowing and lending (pp.188–200). New York, UK : Teachers College Press. Keohane, R. O. (1984). After hegemony: Cooperation and discord in the world political economy. Princeton, MA : Princeton University Press. Keohane, R. O. (1989). International institutions and state power. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Moolakkattu, J. S. (2009). Robert W. Cox and critical theory of international relations. International Studies, 46(4), 439–456 Ohmae, K. (1990). The borderless world. New York, NY: Fontana Özçelik, S. (2005). Neorealist and neo-Gramscian hegemony in international relations and conflict resolution during the 1990’s. EkonomikveSosyalAra¸stırmalarDergisi, Güz, 1, 88–114. Pass, J. (2018). Gramsci meets emergentist materialism: Towards a neo-Gramscian perspective on world order. Review of International Studies, 44(4), 595–618. Robertson, S. L. (2009). Market multilateralism, the World Bank Group and the asymmetries of globalising higher education: Towards a critical political economy analysis. In R. Bassett and A. Maldonado (Eds.), Thinking globally, acting locally. London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge. Robertson, S. (2012). World-class higher education (for whom?). Viewpoint in Prospects. Robertson, S., and Dale, R. (2015). Toward a critical cultural political economy of the globalisation of education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 13(1), 149–170. Robertson, S., Olds, K., Dale, R., and Dang, Q. A. (Eds.) (2016). Global regionalisms and higher education: Projects, processes, politics. Cheltenham, UK : Edward Elgar Publishing. Robertson, S. (2017). Making education markets through global trade agreements. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 15(3), 296–308. Shields, R. (2016). Reconsidering regionalization in global higher education: Student mobility spaces of the European Higher Education Area. Compare, 46(1), 5–23. Sinclair, T. J. (2016). Robert W. Cox’s method of historical structures redux. Globalizations, 13(5), 510–519. Strange, S. (1996). The retreat of the state: The diffusion of power in the world economy. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press. Waltz, K. N. (1979). Theory of international politics. Reading, MA Addison-Wesley.
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Regimes and Regionalism in Comparative and International Education Cooperation and Competition MARCELO PARREIRA DO AMARAL
INTRODUCTION Education today is a feature of global society. Comparative research has pointed out that the development of national education systems has paralleled the development of nation state and thus has always entailed a great degree of international mutual observation, competition, and imitation, as illustrated by the buoyant traveling literature by commissioned experts in the nineteenth-century (Noah and Eckstein, 1969). Since the early twentieth-century, however, modern education systems have been described and researched as institutions along their predominantly national character and public control (Kandel, 1933; Schneider, 1947). They were traditionally viewed as a genuine activity of the nation-state, constituting what German comparativist Mitter (2006) poignantly termed “national educational sovereignty,” very often glossing over the largely international dimension of education practice, research, and policy. Indeed, international cooperation and exchange in education have a long tradition dating from as early as the last decades of the nineteenth-century (Fuchs, 2006; 2007; Schneider, 1931/32;), culminating in an intensive “educational multilateralism” (Mundy, 1998; 1999; 2006) and “South-South” cooperation activities (Chisholm and Steiner-Khamsi, 2009; Kaiser et al., 2015; Muhr, 2015). Regimes and Regionalism represent more recent manifestations of these longstanding practices. The idea that nation-states are the central pillars of regulation and governance of education still figures prominently in a large share of the research literature on the topic. Only more recently have instances of international cooperation and competition in education been discussed as requiring conceptual and theoretical lenses that allow grasping forms of international rule-governed activity that go beyond the state-centered domain to also include non-state and/or private actors at the national as well as at interand transnational levels. Regime and regionalism approaches share attempts to conceive of and explain cooperation and competition by conceptually skewing the pitfalls of actors-centered, institutional, or rationalistic approaches when used in isolation (Parreira 265
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do Amaral, 2011). According to Ruggie (1975), regimes may be defined as a complex set of rules and conventions that regulate and coordinate the collective behavior of actors in the absence of a superordinate power in the international system. An example of regime is the international regime for the control and prevention of nuclear weapons after the Second World War. Regionalism refers to comprehensive projects of regional political and economic integration in different world regions, for instance the European Union, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) or the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR). During the past decade, scholars interested in critically understanding the relevance and impact of “globalization” and “internationalization” on education practice, research, and policy have turned to theories of international regime and regionalism to theorize and research large-scale developments in various levels of education, often focusing on the activities of International or Supranational Organizations (Jules, 2012; 2015; Parreira do Amaral, 2007; 2010; 2011; Robertson, 2010; Robertson et al., 2016; Tikly, 2017; Verger and Hermo, 2010; Zapp and Ramirez, 2019). The chapter begins by providing a brief conceptual and historical overview of theories of regimes and regionalism. Second, it elaborates on key theoretical distinctions, highlighting central analytical contributions, thereby distinguishing regime, and regionalism theories from competing approaches. In a third step, their application to comparative and international education (CIE) research is reviewed to provide a concise account of central adaptations and contributions, drawing attention to their relevance for current research in the field. The chapter is rounded out by a brief discussion of ongoing debates and critiques.
OVERVIEW Theories of regimes and regionalism: understanding cooperation and competition Theories of regimes and regionalism have been developed in different strands of political sciences, primarily International Relations and European Integration Studies to tackle issues of cooperation among states under conditions of concomitant competition and rivalry. This theorization aimed at going beyond realist assumptions of power and hegemony that were mainstream during most of the twentieth-century. The following sections briefly present the main elements of both theories in turn.
Regime Theory The conceptual origin of the term regime is semantically related to “regiment” and “government” (from latin regere) (Sellin, 1984). Regimen became current in the late fifteenth-century in the sense of a prescribed course of medical treatment, diet, or exercise for the promotion or restoration of health. It was introduced into the English and German languages around the late eighteenth-century from the French, denoting the action of governing, and often its usage was with original reference to the Ancien Régime. The original four semantic fields—(1) a dietary rule, (2) in grammar the regime of a verb, (3) in legal terminology, regime refers to the administration of confiscated goods, (4) in some monasteries, regime referred to the duration of a superior, for example, an annual or perpetual regime, etc. (Sellin, 1984)—were transferred to a variety of other contexts. While the definition of the word did not originally reference the government of state in pre-revolutionary France, the term was applied to the entirety of the legal and social order of the country after the Revolution (Sellin, 1984).
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In its vernacular usage, the term regime has taken on a rather negative connotation. Most people associate the phrase with a dictatorial and authoritarian government regime, which is perceived as being irregular or unlawful, as in “Nazi-Regime” or “Stalinist terror regime.” Related to this, the term is also often used to designate a particular government (such as in China’s communist regime). Parallel to this understanding—in particular in scholarly discourse—it is used in a more neutral sense referring to a political system, such as the parliamentary system, or describing typical configurations regulating social relations or ways of integration, such as welfare regime. Esping-Andersen (1990) defines a welfare regime along two dimensions (1) the level of decommodification, i.e., the degree to which a person can maintain a livelihood without reliance on the market, and (2) stratification, i.e., the extent to which welfare systems differ in the structuring of social relations. Based on these criteria, he identifies three ideal-type welfare regimes—liberal, conservative, and social-democratic. In contrast to the previous examples, in political sciences International Regime (IR) describe mechanisms of regulation by means of a set of rules and norms that transcend the jurisdiction of national structures; a situation poignantly phrased as “governance without government” (Rosenau and Czempiel, 1992) in the early 1990s (Hasenclever et al., 1997; Zürn, 1987). For Müller (1993), regimes “are institutions,1 that is, a permanent arrangement for interpersonal action and communication; they consist of a network of roles held together by regulations or conventions” (p. 26, author’s translation). In short, the latter meaning of regime points to configurations of formal arrangements and procedures that are stabilized by (cultural) patterns of normality, of expectations, and by power structures, all of which are constitutive of social integration, regulation, and coordination of the respective contexts. Regime theory has been widely discussed within three issue-areas in the field of International Relations: in transnational economic relations, in tackling global environmental problems, and in the field of international security (Krasner, 1983; Hasenclever et al., 1997). In general, regimes are created or evolve around specific issueareas in international politics that serve the regulation and coordination of action at the level beyond the nation-state. According to Young (1989), regimes “are [. . .] specialized arrangements that pertain to well-defined activities, resources, or geographical areas and often involve only some subset of the members of international society” (p. 13). In the field of International Relations, the term “regime” denotes an international institution understood by some as a “set of governing rules” (Keohane and Nye, 2001), by others as “institutionalized collective behavior” (Ruggie, 1975), or as rule-governed cooperation (Efinger et al., 1988), that is more than a temporary arrangement and exerts influence on the behavior of its members. IRs are thus cooperative institutions that facilitate communication and collaboration among the members of a regime. They are not synonymous with agreements or treaties; nor are they identical with international organizations since IRs exist on a lower level of materiality and often do not have formal statutes and the division of labor is less formally regulated. In contrast, international organizations are characterized by their more “physical” structures, such as
The term institution is used here in the sense of a “social order, which determines what must be done in the long term” (Lipp, 1995, p. 80); they are seen as permanent “social regulations” (Rehberg, 1994). Institutions, as well as ritual behavior, “disburden” people of ad-hoc and case-by-case decision, which would have to be taken recurrently in every social interaction (Schelsky, 1973).
1
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statutes, legal and administrative bodies, buildings, and personnel. For example, they have legal entities, a seat (building), and have employees, bank accounts, etc. Müller (1993) points out the advantages of regimes using these more “physical” organizations for their purposes since they provide stable communication channels, enable procurement and flow of information, simplification, and decision-making procedures, and expedite the supervising of the behavior of the actors belonging to the regime. In short, IRs are structures that govern the behavior of actors in specific issue-areas of International Relations. It is exactly the close association of regimes with specific issueareas that allow for a reasonably clear distinction and definition of an IR (Potter, 1980). Definitions of regimes draw on different theoretical traditions of political thought; consequently, different conceptualizations have been proposed along the debate (Hasenclever et al., 1996; see discussion below). However, notwithstanding their intellectual preferences, most scholars refer to a definition of regimes that achieved an almost consensual status in the field, provided by Krasner (1983); for him, IRs may be viewed: as sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations. Principles are beliefs of fact, causation, and rectitude. Norms are standards of behavior defined in terms of rights and obligations. Rules are specific prescriptions or proscriptions for action. Decision-making procedures are prevailing practices for making and implementing collective choice. —p. 2 Typical features of IRs include role network, converging expectations of regime members, permanent elements of order and sanctions (Müller, 1993). Regimes form the foundational structures needed to resolve conflicts between competing actors, whether they are governmental or private. While most regime members are conventionally states, nonstate actors may also be members of an IR, for example multinational companies. IRs are associated with the interconnected problems of a specific sector—economy, security, ecology, etc. (Zürn, 1987). Therefore, they address issues and conflicts related to specific international policy fields. They are limited in their processing and responsibility/ capacity to a limited number of areas, which distinguishes them from other general international orders. IRs have a cooperative character and purport to facilitate communication, contributing to the resolution of conflicts. The main function of an IR is to reduce uncertainty, which is achieved through effective communication and cooperation between actors. Persistence and permanence of the regime are key criteria for the success of cooperation. Only when these elements are present, confidence correlates with the growth and the effectiveness of a regime. In political sciences, the question of whether regimes have power or not is conceptualized using different theoretical lenses. Their degrees of institutionalization provide information about the “strength” of a regime (Hasenclever et al., 1997). In the political science debate, regime theory is closely associated with other theories that examine the interdependence between nations or the activities and influence of international organizations. Historically, this tool of analysis is rooted in functionalist considerations of transnational relations (Hasenclever et al., 1996; 1997; Krell, 2004). Notwithstanding the widely accepted definition quoted above, the varying theoretical perspectives dominant in the study of IRs arrive at different conclusions as to the effectiveness and robustness of regimes. Three significant strands of regime theory may be
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TABLE 15.1: Theories of regimes Power-based theories of regime
Interest-based theories of regime
Knowledge-based theories of regime
School of thought in political theory
realism
neoliberalism
cognitivism
Central Variable
power
interest
knowledge
Degree of “institutionalism”
weak
medium
strong
Meta-theoretical Orientation
rationalistic
rationalistic
sociological
Behavioral Model
concerned with relative gains
absolute gains maximize
role-player
Source: based on (Hasenclever et al., 1997).
distinguished in theorizations of IRs: power-based, interest-based, and knowledge-based theories (see Table 15.1). These derive from different schools of thought in political sciences, differing thus along the central variable they use to explain cooperation (power, interest, or cognition). Variance is also based on the degree of institutionalism attributed to regimes; that is, the assumptions about whether regimes matter or not in world politics. Further elements include the meta-theoretical orientation regimes espouse in terms of the perspectives on the actors of the international systems. Finally, theories diverge on the assumptions they make about the nature of actors and their motivation, that is the behavioral models they submit to. Despite the variation, it is worth noting that in comparison to other theoretical positions in the International Relations (primarily, realism/neo-realism and rational-choice) regime theories attribute in general a greater degree of influence to institutions (Krell, 2004). The following section presents and discusses theories of regionalism.
Regionalism A region may refer to an area of sub-national extent, a definition commonly used in government and planning, or it can also describe several contiguous countries, often also called “world region,” e.g., the Caribbean and South-East Asia. Although regions may be viewed as phenomena at the micro- or macro-levels, most conceptual thinking around regionalism centers upon world regions, emphasizing spatial-geographical relations and mutual interdependence among nation-states.2
Only more recently has attention been devoted to regions at sub-national level. In particular, focus is placed on relational rather than on geographical or administrative aspects. The concept of Functional Region refers to a sub-division of territories that results from the spatial differentiation and organization of social and economic relations rather than to geographical boundaries, administrative particularities, or to historical developments. In other words, Functional Regions are drawn with respect to “spatial flows or interactions of various kind (persons, goods, material, energy, information, etc.)” (Klapka et al., 2013, p. 2; see also Parreira do Amaral et al., 2019). 2
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As a topic of scholarly interest, regionalism refers to large-scale politico-economic projects of regional integration in different world regions. In the context of intensified globalization since the 1980s, the theme is discussed as part of today’s changing world order with almost all nation-states taking part in one or the other regional project—for instance, the European Union (E.U.), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the African Union (AU), the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), or the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). As a form of coordination of action under conditions of cooperation and competition, regionalism aims at creating—maintaining or modifying—the order of a world region by means of a formal institution-building project or policy. It is animated by specific ideas, values and political, economic, and social objectives, and strategies that enlist and engage participants in a common ideology and project. In terms of historical development, theorizations of regionalism are often separated by scholars with reference to different phases of regionalism. Söderbaum (2016) distinguishes four phases of regionalism—“early” (before the 1950s), “old” (between 1940s and 1970s), “new” (between 1980s and 1990s), and “comparative” (since the 2000s). His work provides a useful entry point in that it discerns between an intellectual history of the concept and a real-world history of regionalism, thus contributing to a better understanding of the origins, logic, and consequences of these processes. He argues that accounts based on rigid temporal distinctions not only overstate the role of formal regionalism (usually said to have begun in Europe after the Great Wars), they also gloss over continuities and similarities between “old” and “new” forms. Focusing on empirical, temporal as well as theoretical aspects—and bearing in mind the historical contingence of concepts and theories—he is able to provide a plausible account of the conceptual development of regionalism (Söderbaum, 2016). Briefly, “early regionalism” refers to visions of regional unification since Greek antiquity (Söderbaum, 2016). These were less formal and characterized by their programmatic nature, often spurred by common civilizational horizons. During this early phase, panEuropean regionalist ideas either aimed at protecting Europe from outward invasion (for instance, from the Turkish in the sixteenth-century), or envisioned international peace by the creation of a European League of Nations in the late seventeenth-century. In the following centuries, further plans of regional unification may be seen in the juridicalphilosophical ideas of Immanuel Kant 1724–1804 and his sketch on Perpetual Peace or in Victor Hugo’s (1802–1885) speech advocating a United States of Europe during the International Peace Congress in 1849 in Paris. Outside Europe, regionalism was winged by anti-colonial and national independence sentiments in Africa and Latin America, inspiring, for instance, the Pan-American Conferences in the late nineteenth-century that would lead to the creation of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Southern African Customs Union ([SACU], signed in 1910). Most scholars use the term “old regionalism” to refer to post-War regionalist projects between the late 1940s and the 1970s, first in Europe and then in the so-called developing world. These were characterized by (protectionist) economic development policies, aims, and strategies. The European-centered debate evolved in the context of attempts at rebuilding the continent devastated by two world wars and at preventing new ones by means of “regional integration.” Functionalist and neo-functionalist arguments were put forward that common needs, expectations, and functions would unite peoples and
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prevent war, for instance as those inbuilt in the 1951 European Coal and Steel Community or the Treaty of Rome in 1958. More structuralist versions of regionalism by means of economic development may be found in the creation of the Latin American Free Trade Association (LAFTA) or the current Southern African Development Community (SADC) and its predecessor (Söderbaum, 2016). After a phase of “Euroscepticism” in the 1970s, a period later coined as “new regionalism” reanimated the debates in the 1980s and 1990s. A common characteristic of these novel trends is their multi-dimensional qualities as opposed to the single objective schemes of previous times (such as economic development or security). Regionalist projects during this phase were propelled by global developments, such as the fall of the Iron Curtain, intensified economic/financial exchange, and attempts at stabilizing a multilateral world order (Söderbaum, 2016). Theorizations of regionalism thrived during this phase, spawning rationalist, and interpretivist perspectives. Whereas the first accepted pre-given conceptions of regions and enquired into their functions and effects, the latter is more concerned with how they are constructed and constituted. Further points of disagreement relate to the relevance attributed to state-led regionalism and the focus of attention in research—placed either on the construction of world order or on the specifics of institutions or interactions (Söderbaum, 2016). Söderbaum (2016) terms “comparative regionalism,” a fourth and latest phase or theorization of regionalism since the 2000s. A different world context characterizes this last phase, by distinct links between the various levels (national, sub-national, global) and not least by the varying forms of organization, sectoral focus, and actors involved. In terms of global context, there are various and mutually contradicting developments, such as high international mobility, war against terrorism, multipolar/multilateral world order concomitant with the quest for power by single states (China, Russia) or emerging blocs such as BRICs—Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Also, recurrent economic and financial crises affect regions and countries unevenly. Distinctive of this phase is the relationship of regional projects with other levels. Specific to this phase is also the overlapping and crisscrossed relationship of different regional projects in contemporary times. Further, while in previous times there was disagreement as to the importance of regionalism in world politics, it is now part and parcel of a complex and multilayered global governance. Recent regionalism includes both informal and formal types of organization, spread over almost all policy sectors (economy, security, environment, education, etc.) and involving an increasing number of state and non-state actors (Söderbaum, 2016). In short, the different conceptualizations of regionalism pay attention to geopolitical, cultural, and functional aspects and emphasize the multidimensional nature of the phenomena, including inter-regionalism as a pattern of interaction between world regional projects. Regionalism is seen as part of the “emerging architecture of world politics” (Acharya, 2007, p. 629) and the emphasis is given to their activities and impact on world order. Education, and in particular, higher education, has only more recently become an object of study in global regionalism, as will be discussed below. In conclusion, initially developed in the 1970s, political scientists developed regime theories to account for the existence of rule-governed behavior in an anarchic international system, that is in the absence of a superordinate power—or as the title of an influential book later phrased it, to understand international cooperation After Hegemony (Keohane, 1984). Regimes thus represent an attempt by political scientists to understand how members of the international system—primarily nation-states—coordinated their mutual interdependences under conditions of cooperation and competition in single-issue areas
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of international politics. International relations theorists also discussed regionalism as an approach to issues of interdependence among states linked together by a geographical relationship as well as by economic, political, and social interrelationships (Nye, 1968). In European Integration Studies, regionalism has been widely debated in terms of a new type of interstate cooperation that focused on integrative processes among interest groups, bureaucracies, and political parties. Regionalism was viewed here as a development arising from endogenous forces as well as from “spillover” effects of economic integration that led to political unification, which in turn required cultural and social harmonization (Haas, 1958). While much attention was devoted to Europe, more recently both focus and geographical scope were broadened and scholarly attention was placed on multidimensional integration processes across the globe. Common to both theoretical approaches are the aim to understand international relations between the state level and the global system level under conditions of concomitant cooperation and competition among nation-states. Whereas regime theories focus on issue-areas of world politics, regionalism concentrates attention on multidimensional aspects of (macro-regional) integration projects. The following section briefly discusses their applications in CIE research.
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION In the past decade and a half, the concepts of regimes and regionalism have become current in CIE research, with a strong focus on discussions around education policy and governance (see for instance on regimes: Masschelein and Simons, 2005; Kehm and Lanzendorf, 2005; Parreira do Amaral, 2007; Jules, 2018; 2019; Tikly, 2016; on regionalism see Dale and Robertson, 2002; Robertson, 2010; Robertson et al., 2016; Verger and Hermo, 2010; Jules, 2012; 2015; Tikly, 2017). Research drawing on regime theory in CIE engaged with theory building, first by importing regime theory from International Relations and making plausible its applicability to the education field. Second, scholarly work has devoted attention to identifying and analyzing different education regimes at various levels. Finally, research has pointed to an exponential expansion of regimes operative in the issue area of education and highlighted the interplay of different regimes. The next paragraphs briefly discuss these different contributions exemplarily. In terms of adopting and adapting regime theory to the CIE field, Parreira do Amaral (2007; 2010; 2011) suggests using regime theory to conceptualize the international dimension of education beyond questions of transfer, diffusion, or convergence/divergence as it was commonly viewed by alternative approaches such as world polity or externalization (see Chapter 18). Regime was proposed as a heuristic instrument to analyze global education policy, helping us to discern and analyze different (constellations of) actors, their interdependence, and the nature of orienting premises of education policy in general and of educational governance in particular. The central argument is that (1) the complex sets of rules and institutions in which education is enmeshed, (2) the high level of interdependence of the actors involved in its policy formulation, especially International Organizations, and (3) the high degree of similarity of the orienting principles of educational reforms worldwide, all points to the emergence of an international education regime (IER). An international education regime is an institution
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that builds upon, homogenizes, and reproduces standard expectations, and in doing so, stabilizes a particular order. This order, however, was not simply taken for granted as existing “out there;” instead, as Parreira do Amaral (2011) suggests, international education regimes should be seen as a complex, progressive, and historical process that command research attention to issues of power and interests as well as to discursive and cognitive aspects by combining structural and institutional analyses. The focus of attention was placed on the implications of the emergence of an international education regime for the education field; in particular in terms of the institutionalization and universalization of specific economic patterns of rationality, which in turn shifted attention away from holistic conceptualizations of (public) education and towards so-called key competences and skills for employability (Parreira do Amaral, 2011). Related to this were changes at the operational level of educational organizations, such as the shift from input to output control and governance, also impacting professional identities (including a trend of deprofessionalization) (Parreira do Amaral, 2011). Further, the consequences of this for policymaking in education are discussed in terms of their impact on changing relationships between research and policy, for instance as demonstrated by calls for “evidence-based” policy and research. The contribution is closely related to the institutionalization and development of interaction patterns of international organizations, whose activities, although not following a clearly elaborated master plan are nevertheless also not uncoordinated or unstructured. In short, Parreira do Amaral’s (2011) work questions the emergence of a new form of social organization of education and called attention to the (potential) consequences for educational practice, research, and policy, but also for society more generally. In conceptual terms, regime theory harnesses, Parreira do Amaral (2010) suggests, our ability to discern the different actors, processes, and cognitive elements involved in education policy at the level beyond the nation-state. A recent example demonstrating the analytical purchase of regime theory is Tikly’s (2017) discussion of the Education for All Initiative (EFA) as a regime of educational governance and his attempt to grasp global governance, power, and legitimacy issues in a changing world order. For him, the EFA is a global governance regime shaped “by the actions and demands of key donors” (Tikly, 2017, p. 28) that substantially changes the issue area in terms of principles and norms due to the closer intermingling of “the issue area of education and sustainable development and as a means to secure legitimacy of global governance” (Tikly, 2017, p..51). For Tikly (2016), EFA is best understood as an elemental regime that encompasses several agreements, treaties, and conventions and is populated by governmental and non-governmental institutions and networks at national, regional, and global. Tikly’s (2016) work, more generally, is also illustrative of scholarly work emphasizing the need to understand the tensions, contradictions and the effects of different kinds of power linked to broader global interests within which education, learning, or general knowledge are seen to be enmeshed. Another similar example of the use of the regime concept in education is the work of Zahavi and Friedman (2019), who examined international cooperation in the Bologna Process as an international higher education regime. In a study of regionalization with historical depth and conceptual richness, Jules (2012) productively linked the conceptual frames around regimes and regionalism to provide new tools to study their impact on education policy in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) (which he terms a trans-regional regime) by inserting some nuancing to institutionalist isomorphism lenses. By doing this, Jules (2012) convincingly argues that while some harmonization took place in the Caribbean, its different phases derived from various pressures from regional, national, and the global levels, leading to “different
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policy languages” (p. 138). In other words, what from the perspective of world polity might be viewed as plain isomorphism is explained by different national, regional, and international policy responses and (re)interpretations. Jules (2012) skillfully demonstrates how nation-states autonomously make use of regionalization projects for their own strategies, while at the same time policy convergence takes place at the “regional level between the reality of internationalization and the imagined internationality of globalization” (p. 249, emphasis in original.) In terms of recognizing the expansion and the increased complexity in educational regimes, Jules (2018) provides a valuable contribution in directing scholarly attention to the nested and overlapping nature of participation in educational regimes. For Jules (2018), regime complexity may be seen as “resulting from multiple and concurrent participation by governments in different educational agreements across various levels (supranational and global) in today’s multistakeholder governance environment” (p. 140). The notion of “regime complex(es)” is advanced as facilitating the examination of the assemblages of practices, projects, institutions, and mechanisms that characterize educational cooperation. As he writes, “regime complex(es) in education can be said to involve various entities (states, nonstate actors, substate units, international organizations, civil society organizations, private actors, public actors, and others) that are nonhierarchically linked to each other” (Jules, 2018, p. 148). A major contribution here is to be seen in calling attention to nested, overlapping or parallel regime activity at multiple level games (multistakeholderism) and in its illustrating the use of regime complex(es) as tools to grasp the shifting geometries and geographies of educational governance. Scholarly work drawing on literature on regionalism has initially focused on exploring the impact of different regional organizations on education, mostly state-led organizations. More recently, the focus has been placed on the role of higher education in the discursive construction of global regionalism itself. For example, Dale and Robertson (2002) call attention to three state-led regional organizations—NAFTA, E.U., and APEC—and their impact on education policies and politics of education. They argue that by exploring the different forms and purposes, the (hard or soft) dimensions of power, the (direct or indirect) nature of their effects, the processes and means of influence on the education system, as well as the scopes of international organizations, it was possible to discern their varying social, political, and economic consequences for education. Robertson et al. (2016) have further developed this research perspective and promoted the development of a regionalism research strand, in particular, related to higher education. They argue: that each of these organizations operates in a geographical “regional” space that is itself constructed (for instance the “Asia Pacific” or Latin America), that such regions are the deliberate creation of national governments ceding some authority and sovereignty to the bodies orchestrating and mediating their development, and that these global regionalisms differed from each other. These differences were not only the result of the kind of emphases they placed on the form of economic relations, but also because political, cultural and historical dynamics mediate the nature of their institutional forms and other social relations. —Robertson et al., 2016, p. 1 In comparative research, attention was shifted more recently to regionalism(s) and their implications and impact for higher education, a sector in which much activity may be identified during the last two decades. In this strand of research, examination of the role
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of the EU and other inter-/supranational organizations in forms of “regulatory regionalism” (Jayasuriya, 2010; Robertson, 2010; Verger and Hermo, 2010) offered insights into the insertion of higher education in regionalization projects and its constitutive role in competitive imaginations of the knowledge-based economy. Robertson and colleagues (2016) advance a new knowledge on the various—and competing—projects, processes and, most interestingly, the politics of global regionalist projects. Beyond introducing novel insights crucial for the conceptualization of the role of higher education in global regionalism, these authors call attention to the constitution of “regions” through ideas, institutions, and social norms, which are colored by the various regional projects (and their interrelations) to produce variegated regionalism. Further examinations of regional projects in higher education have focused, for instance, on four regional schemes in South America (Perrotta, 2016), on the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our America—People’s Trade Agreement (Alba-TCP) (Muhr, 2010), or on inter-regional policies between Asia and Europe (Robertson, 2008). In terms of the contributions of these research strands to CIE, both research strands yielded significant conceptual and methodological advances, in particular as to what refers to the global nature of education policy and governance. As such, they represent the field’s efforts to deal with complexity at the level of subject matter, account for a plurality of players and interests, and mechanisms involved in the processes as well as to overcome methodological nationalism and spatial fetishism (Robertson and Dale, 2017) in analyses of global phenomena. In particular, regime theory called attention to the expansion of international regimes in the field of education. More generally, attention to the international dimension of education policy led to an erasing of the dividing line between “low” and “high” politics (or domestic and international) customary in political science, thus leading to a (re) discovery of a new field (Jakobi et al., 2009). By emphasizing complexity, analyses of governance mechanisms prevalent in specific regional projects and regimes have also yielded important insights into current education policy in global times; as it has also offered to the multiplication of actors and stakeholders involved in what previously was deemed a prerogative of the nation-state (on multistakeholderism, see Jules, 2018). Moreover, studies adopting a regionalism lens offered insights into how the education sector has become central to internationalization and globalization projects, thus pointing to the geopolitical relevance of the education sector in contemporary imaginations of the (future) global economy (Moisio and Kangas, 2016). Briefly, regimes and regionalism approaches provided new conceptual lenses to examine the dynamics, interplay, tensions, contradictions and interdependent effects of international cooperation and competition in education that go beyond the convergence/divergence duality of global diffusion and national-cultural variation.
CONCLUSIONS The chapter has presented and discussed regime and regionalism theories as conceptual lenses useful in conceiving of and explaining cooperation and competition in the field of education. Essentially, they provided a novel approach to studying global education policy and governance. As discussed above, theorizations of regimes and regionalism alike were developed departing from varying ontological and epistemological positions, leading to a substantial fragmentation as well as to conceptual-methodological controversies that largely
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prevented the accumulation of knowledge so far. Further, in that they separated ideas/ cognition, actors/institutions, and interest/power, many scholars failed to grasp the complexity and multidimensionality of most social phenomena at the global level. While regime theory also points to the relevance of norms, institutions, and organizations for these processes, the most recent debates around global regionalism come closest to integrating structural elements (e.g., power differentials), state and non-state actors, discursive processes, and cognitive elements. In short, integrating ideas/cognition, actors/ institutions, and interest/power is key to pushing forward our understanding of (international) cooperation and competition in the field of education.
FURTHER READING 1. Jules, T. D. (2018). Education regime complexity: Nested governance and multistakeholderism in the fourth industrial revolution. In A.W. Wiseman (Ed.), Annual review of comparative and international education 2017 (International Perspectives on Education and Society, Volume 34) (pp. 139–158). Emerald Publishing Limited. 2. Krasner, S. D. (Ed.). (1983). International regimes. Ithaca, NY and London, UK: Cornell UP. 3. Robertson, S. L. (2010). The EU, “regulatory state regionalism” and new modes of higher education governance. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 8(1), 23–37. 4. Söderbaum, F. (2016). Rethinking regionalism. London, UK and New York, NY: Palgrave. 5. Tikly, L. (2017). The future of education for all as a global regime of educational governance. Comparative Education Review, 61(1), 22–57. 6. Verger, A., and Hermo, J. P. (2010). The governance of higher education regionalisation: Comparative analysis of the Bologna Process and MERCOSUREducativo. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 8(1), 105–20. 7. Young, O. R. (1989). International cooperation: Building regimes for natural resources and the environment. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
MINI CASE STUDY A recent exemplar of adopting Regime Theory as an analytical lens within CIE is Zapp and Ramirez’s (2019) article in comparative education on Beyond Internationalization and Isomorphism - The Construction of a Global Higher Education Regimen. For the authors, two major transformations—internationalization understood as “the increasing permeability of national higher education systems” and isomorphism identified as “their increasing similarity” in terms of discourses, policies, structures, and curricula— mutually reinforce each other producing, as they argue: increasingly similar systems and regulatory frameworks (isomorphism) [. . .] likely to reduce uncertainty for higher education institutions and fan further cross-border activities (internationalisation) in the future, which will prompt calls for shared rules of the game. Open borders [. . .], in turn, suggest facilitated transfer and adoption of external higher education models and policies spurring further convergence [. . .]. Yet, our point is that both processes cause a new phenomenon. We argue that both internationalisation and isomorphism facilitate the emergence of an overarching and integrating discursive, normative and regulative governance structure in higher education [. . .]. —Zapp and Ramirez, 2019, p. 6
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In other words: “internationalisation requires and gradual isomorphism facilitates the emergence of a global higher education regime” (Zapp and Ramirez, 2019, p. 14). The authors examine a number of trends to gather evidence for the three dimensions of the global higher education regime construction—discursive, normative, and regulatory. In terms of the discursive aspects of the regime, Zapp and Ramirez (2019) found a growing network of international organizations supporting the global agenda by means of conferences, initiatives, and programs. As to the normative isomorphism dimension, the authors found a striking increase in the number of international and national accreditation agencies, which are mutually recognized cross-nationally; further, the number of national and internationally accredited universities is suggested as an additional evidence of the normative power of the regime. In referring to the regulatory dimension of the global higher education regime, the authors suggest that the parallel increase in regional qualification frameworks as well as the wide implementation of national qualification frameworks testify to the regulatory potency of the global regime. Zapp and Ramirez (2019) conclude that these mutually reinforcing trends of the past twenty years produced integration pressures that further foster the creation of regional agreements (for instance, regimes) that focus on three intertwined issue areas: quality assurance, standardization, and recognition. Adopting the regime concept, they argue, “helps capture the complex architecture” and allows conceptualizing the “various organizations located at multiple levels and pursuing diverse missions and it direct[ing] attention to its important discursive, normative and regulative pillars” (Zapp and Ramirez, 2019, p. 14).
REFERENCES Acharya, A. (2007). Review: The emerging architecture of world politics. World Politics, 59(4), 629–652. Chisholm, L., and Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2009). South-south cooperation in education and development. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Dale, R., and Robertson, S.L. (2002). The varying effects of regional organisations as subjects of globalisation of education. Comparative Education Review, 46(1), 10–36. Efinger, M., Rittberger, V., and Zürn, M. (1988). Internationale regime in den Ost-WestBeziehungen. Frankfurt/M.: Haag and Herchen. Esping-Andersen, G. (1990). The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Cambridge, UK : Polity Press. Fuchs, E. (Ed.). (2006). Bildung International. Historische perspektiven und aktuelle entwicklungen. Würzburg, Germany: Ergon. Fuchs, E. (Ed.). (2007). Children’s rights and global civil society. Comparative Education, 43(3), 393–412. Haas, E. (1958). The uniting of Europe: Political, social, and economical forces, 1950–1957. Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press. Hasenclever, A., Mayer, P., and Rittberger, V. (1996). Interests, power, knowledge: The study of international regimes. Mershon International Studies Review, 40(2). Hasenclever, A., Mayer, P., and Rittberger, V. (1997). Theories of international regimes. Cambridge, MA : Cambridge University Press. Jakobi, A., Martens, K., Wolf, and Klaus D. (Eds.). (2009). Education in political science: Discovering a neglected field. London, UK : Routledge.
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Jayasuriya, K. (2010). Learning by the market: Regulatory regionalism, Bologna, and accountability communities. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 8(1), 7–22. Jules, T. D. (2012). Neither world polity nor local or national societies. Frankfurt/M., Germany: Peter Lang. Jules, T. D. (2015). “Educational regionalization” and the gated global: The construction of the Caribbean educational policy space. Comparative Education Review, 59(4), 638–665. Jules, T. D. (2018). Education regime complexity: Nested governance and multistakeholderism in the fourth industrial revolution. In A. W. Wiseman (ed.), Annual review of comparative and international education 2017 (International Perspectives on Education and Society, Volume 34) (pp. 139–158). Emerald Publishing Limited. Jules, T. D. (2019). Regimes theory’ as an approach to understanding educational cooperation in CARICOM and Commonwealth countries. Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Relations, 108(4), 435–44. Kaiser, T., Kriele, T., Miethe, I., and Piepiorka, A. (2015). Educational transfers in post-colonial contexts: Preliminary results from comparative research on workers’ faculties in Vietnam, Cuba, and Mozambique. European Education, 47(3), 242–259. Kandel, I. L. (1933). Comparative Education. Cambridge, MA : The Riverside Press. Kehm, B. M. and Lanzendorf, U. (2005). Ein neues governance-regime für die hochschulen— mehr markt und weniger selbststeuerung? Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 51. Jg. (50. Beiheft), 41–55. Keohane, R. O. (1984). After hegemony. Cooperation and discord in the world political economy. Princeton, NJ : Princeton UP. Keohane, R. O. and Nye, J.S. (2001). Power and interdependence. 3rd edition. New York, NY: Longman. Klapka P., Halás M., and Tonev, P. (2013). Functional regions: Concept and types. Retrieved from https://is.muni.cz/do/econ/soubory/katedry/kres/4884317/41725568/12_2013.pdf [September 23, 2019]. Krasner, S. D. (Ed.). (1983). International regimes. Ithaca, NY and London, UK: Cornell UP. Krell, G. (2004). Weltbilder und weltordnung. Einführung in die theorie der internationalen beziehungen. 3rd edition. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Lipp, W. (1995). Institution. In B. Schäfers (Ed.), Grundbegriffe der soziologie (4th edition) (pp. 80–82). Opladen: Leske+Budrich. Masschelein, J., and Simons, M. (2005). Globale immunität oder eine kleine kartographie des europäischen bildungsraumes. Zürich/Berlin, Germany: Diaphanes. Mitter, W. (2006). Bildungssouveränität und schulträgerschaft in Europa in historisch vergleichender sicht. Bildung und Erziehung, 59(1), 5–20. Moisio, S., and Kangas, A. (2016). Reterritorializing the global knowledge economy: An analysis of geopolitical assemblages of higher education. Global Networks, 16(3), 268–287. Muhr, T. (2010). Venezuela and the ALBA: Counter-hegemonic regionalism and higher education for all. Educação e Pesquisa, 36(2), 611–627. Muhr, T. (2015). South-south cooperation in education and development: The ¡Yo, Sí Puedo! literacy method. International Journal of Educational Development, 43, 126–133. Müller, H. (1993). Die chance der kooperation. Regime in den internationalen beziehungen. Darmstadt: WBG . Mundy, K. (1998). Educational multilateralism and world (dis)order. Comparative Education Review, 42 (4), 448–478. Mundy, K. (1999). Educational multilateralism in a changing world order: UNESCO and the limits of the possible. International Journal of Educational Development, 19, 27–52.
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Mundy, K. (2006). The evolution of educational multilateralism from 1945 to 2005. In Fuchs, Eckhardt (Eds.), Bildung International: Historische perspektiven und aktuelle entwicklungen (pp. 181–200). Würzburg, Germany: Ergon. Noah, H. J., and Eckstein, M. A. (1969). Toward a science of comparative education. London, UK : Macmillan. Nye, J. S. (1968). International regionalism. readings. Boston, MA : Little, Brown and Company. Parreira do Amaral, M. (2007). Regimeansatz—annäherung an ein weltweites bildungsregime. Tertium Comparationis, 13(2), 157–198. Parreira do Amaral, M. (2010). Regime theory and educational governance: The emergence of an international education regime. In K. Amos (Ed.), International educational governance (pp. 59–80). Oxford, UK : Emerald. Parreira do Amaral, M. (2011). Emergenz eines internationalen bildungsregimes? International educational governance und regimetheorie. Münster et al.: Waxmann. Parreira do Amaral, M., Lowden, K., Pandolfini, V., and Schöneck, N. (2019). Coordinated policy-making in lifelong learning: Functional regions as dynamic units. In M. Parreira do Amaral, S. Kovacheva, and X. Rambla (Eds.), Lifelong learning policies for young adults in Europe. Navigating between knowledge and economy (pp. 21–42). Bristol, UK : Policy Press. Perrota, D.V. (2016). Regionalism and higher education in South America: A comparative analysis for understanding internationalization. Journal of Supranational Policies of Education, 4, 54–81. Retrieved from https://revistas.uam.es/index.php/jospoe/article/ view/5665. Potter, W. C. (1980). Issue area and foreign policy analysis. International Organization, 34(3), 405–428. Rehberg, K. (1994). Institutionen als symbolische ordnung. Leitfragen zur theorie und analyse der institutionellen mechanismen (TAIM). In G. Göhler (Ed.), Die eigenart der institutionen (pp. 47–84). Baden-Baden, Germany: Nomos. Robertson, S. L. (2008). “Europe/Asia” regionalism, higher education and the production of world order. Policy Futures in Education, 6(6), 718–729. Robertson, S. L. (2010). The EU, ‘regulatory state regionalism’ and new modes of higher education governance. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 8(1), 23–37. Robertson, S. L., Olds, K., Dale, R., and Anh, D. (Eds.). (2016). Global regionalisms and higher education. Projects, processes, politics. Cheltenham, UK: E. Elgar. Robertson, S. L., and Dale, R. (2017). Comparing policies in a globalizing world: Methodological reflections. Educação & Realidade, 42(3), 859–875. Rosenau, J. N., and Czempiel, E. (Eds.). (1992). Governance without government: Order and change in world politics. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge UP. Ruggie, J. G. (1975). International responses to technology. Concepts and trends. International Organization, 29(3), 557–584. Schelsky, H. (Ed.). (1973). Zur theorie der institution. Düsseldorf, Germany: Bertelsmann Universitätsverlag. Schneider, F. (1931/32). Internationale pädagogik, Auslandspädagogik, vergleichende erziehungswissenschaft. Geschichte, wesen, methoden, aufgaben und ergebnisse. Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 1/2, 15–39, 243–257, 392–407. Schneider, F. (1947). Triebkräfte der pädagogik der völker. eine Einführung in die vergleichende erziehungswissenschaft. Salzburg: Otto Müller Verlag. Sellin, V. (1984). Regierung, regime, obrigkeit. In O. Brunner (Ed.), Geschichtliche grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen sprache in Deutschland (pp. 361–421). Vol. 5. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
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Söderbaum, F. (2016). Rethinking regionalism. London, UK & New York, NY: Palgrave. Tikly, L. (2016). Education for All as a global regime of educational governance: Issues and tensions. In N.S. Yamada (Ed.), Post-Education-for All and sustainable development paradigm: Structural changes with diversifying actors and norms (pp. 37–65). Bingley, UK : Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Tikly, L. (2017). The future of education for all as a global regime of educational governance. Comparative Education Review, 61(1), 22–57. Verger, A., and Hermo, J. P. (2010). The governance of higher education regionalisation: Comparative analysis of the Bologna Process and MERCOSUREducativo. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 8(1), 105–20. Young, O.R. (1989). International cooperation: Building regimes for natural resources and the environment. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP. Zahavi, H., and Friedman, Y. (2019). The Bologna Process: An international higher education regime. European Journal of Higher Education, 9(1), 23–39. Zapp, M., and Ramirez, F. O. (2019). Beyond internationalisation and isomorphism—The construction of a global higher education regime. Comparative Education. Zürn, M. (1987). Gerechte Internationale Regime: Bedingungen und Restriktionen der Entstehung nicht-hegemonialer internationaler Regime, untersucht am Beispiel der Weltkommunikationsordnung. Frankfurt/M., Germany: Haag & Herchen.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cultural Political Economy (CPE) in Comparative and International Education Putting CPE to Work in Studying Globalization1 SUSAN L. ROBERTSON AND ROGER DALE
INTRODUCTION In 2015 the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were launched, replacing a more limited set of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which had guided world development projects since 2000. Whilst education continued to be a key goal (Goal 4) in this more expansive set (now 17 goals and not 8), there were new features within Goal 4—including Target 4.7—aimed at developing global citizenship and sustainability. Given that education systems around the world continue to be national, and have a strong commitment to building national citizens, the curious researcher might well ask about the presence of Target 4.7, and its underlying politics. Closer investigation would reveal that the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) had been tasked with leading on the development of a Global Citizenship Framework to secure Target 4.7, and that this had resulted in a series of reports that were preoccupied with what it might mean to belong to a global community, why global citizenship was important, and what might be the resources that could underpin classroom activities aimed to developing cultural understandings of “the other.” A quick search would also reveal that UNESCO was not the only organization worrying about global citizenship. In 2016, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released a working paper and undertook a series of presentations concerning both why global competencies were important, what problems the competencies were to resolve, how competencies might be represented, and also how they could be measured. In 2018 it released its final framework, a more truncated version of the 2016 discussion paper that not had erased references to degrowth, and a narrower framework
1 This is a substantially revised version of our paper—Robertson and Dale (2015) “Towards a ‘critical cultural political economy’ account of the globalising of education” published in Globalisation, Societies and Education, 13 (1), pp. 149–170.
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for assessment. Like UNESCO, the OECD pointed to growing inequalities in the world, rising conflict, and new challenges as a result of technological developments. The OECD’s solution was to include a set of global competencies as part of its large-scale assessment Programme of International Student Achievement (PISA) that assesses the competences of 15-year olds across some 79 countries. It was also evident that the OECD was vying for providing the assessment framework for UNESCO’s global citizenship framework. To the budding researcher, a whole series of questions now begin to emerge as to how best to investigate such an interesting set of developments in the field of comparative and international education (CIE). These are two global agencies engaging with a set of global targets for education, yet they have very different histories, mandates, resources, and tools that are used to engage with national governments. What are the implications for UNESCO’s global citizenship framework if the OECD is the assessor? And what is behind the concern with rising inequalities across the world? Is it a case of the OECD now recognizing that its once strong commitment to a neoliberalism and human capital formation was now problematic? What new kind of global citizen is envisaged, and how can this new identity be created through a large-scale assessment tool? Most importantly, for the researcher, there are also philosophical, theoretical, and methodological considerations regarding their research that open up different ways of seeing and investigating. How might the researcher approach such a case as outlined above so as to fully engage with the ways in which new social relations, subjectivities, and social worlds are being created? Overly cultural accounts might ignore the importance of the economic and the political. Yet, veering too far in the direction of an economic account would ignore the political nature of what it means to set targets, and to seek to realize a new kind of citizen identity through education. What approaches are out there in the field of CIE that might help the researcher undertake this task?
Why a CPE approach and what does it involve? In this chapter, we will suggest that a Cultural Political Economy (CPE) approach offers significant epistemic gains for the comparative and international researcher seeking to understand education issues, events, and practices, like in the case outlined above (see, for example, Diaz Rios, 2019; Higgins and Novelli, 2020; Kedzierski, 2016; Lopes Cardoza and Shah, 2016; Shah and Lopes Cardoza, 2014). But what is CPE, when did CPE emerge, and why? CPE is a nascent and broad interdisciplinary approach aimed at extending the traditional concerns of political economy to show how they interact with cultural processes of meaning-making. Scholars engaged in the development of this approach have sought to overcome the stand-off between cultural theorists, on the one hand, and political economy theorists, on the other (Best and Paterson, 2010; Jessop, 2004; 2009; Jones, 2008; Robertson and Dale, 2015; Sayer, 2001). Jessop and Sum (Jessop, 2004; Sum and Jessop, 2013) are notable for having pioneered a distinct approach to CPE to shed light on how the meanings that actors attribute to the social world are embedded in material, political, and economic relations, and institutions. They register a cultural turn within political economy, ensuring that the ideational and discursive are taken seriously. Our work has drawn extensively upon this pioneering work, while at the same time using it to deepen the debate on the cultural as including social ontologies at the level of the community and wider civilizational projects (Robertson and Dale, 2015). We have
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also used CPE to engage with accounts of globalization and education in the field of CIE though its use can be broader than this. In the sections that follow, we will problematize globalization, look at how different researchers approach the globalization of education, and then outline the various concepts which make up our approach to CPE. Our case study at the end of this chapter takes our initial opening problematic and elaborates on what a CPE approach might involve and reveal.
OVERVIEW Problematizing globalization We begin with a reflection on globalization as a starting point. As argued elsewhere, researching the globalizing of education is not straightforward, largely as globalization itself is conceptualized differently by different researchers (Dale, 1999; 2000; Robertson, 2012). Some of these differences emerge out of whether we see it as an old or new phenomenon, whether it is a scale (global) or not, whether understood as a condition of the contemporary world order, or as a new subjectivity. Held et al. (1999) understand globalization as a newer phenomenon driven by new technologies that create extensive, intensive, and faster interconnections between people and things in global space. We are drawn to de Sousa Santos’ (2004) definition of globalization as “. . . the process by which a given entity reaches the globe by enlarging its own ambit, and by doing so, develops the capacity or the prerogative of naming as ‘local’ all rival entities” (p. 149). In this way of viewing globalization, attention is drawn to the movement of a particular entity from one location to another, and the capacity of this globalizing entity to present itself as representing universal interests. The astute researcher will also recognize the implications of using use terms such as global, globalization, and globalizing. Global tends to signal the world. Globalization suggests the completion of a project or process, as in the world has been globalized. The idea of globalizing signals a process at work. Our choice of the term “globalizing” signals our decision to understand the global as an unfolding process. We also see it as not just confined to the economy and the expansion of capitalist markets, though of course, this is part of the contemporary education story. It can, and does, involve cultural and political matters, such as the extension of a particular conception of human rights through education, or access to schooling.
Approaches to globalization and education Research students studying the globalization of education need to make a decision about their approach in relation to what is out there. We focus on the more influential of the approaches in CIE. To begin, Meyer et al. (1992) privilege a cultural account to global processes. Specifically, they use cultural institutionalism to study the globalizing of mass schooling with common curriculum categories via cultural scripts. Arnove (2009), by way of contrast, has pioneered the use of Immanuel Wallerstein’s (1930–2019) world-systems theory approach (largely political economy [see Chapter 5]) to focus on the link between education and development and the international capitalist system. CIE researchers interested in the movement of “education” and “knowledges” across national boundaries (for example, transnational policies) might draw upon Steiner-Khamsi’s (2004) work to study these processes, and in doing so ask about the consequences for local cultures.
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However, each of these approaches tends to privilege the cultural over political economy, or vice versa. But what if these were bought into conversation with each other to study education more broadly and the globalizing of education in particular? CPE promises to move beyond this impasse by proposing an approach that recognizes each of these elements as resources to understand our social worlds. What might be involved in such an endeavor?
CPE’s beginning theoretical assumptions As outlined in the introduction, our approach to CPE has been inspired by the work of Jessop and Sum (Jessop, 2004; 2009; Sum and Jessop, 2013). An important premise of CPE is the existential necessity to reduce the complexity of the social world in order to function as a social being (Sum and Jessop, 2013). This necessity is dependent upon the production of social imaginaries that, in turn, frame individual subjects lived experiences. It follows that complexity reduction involves the selection and retention of some representations over others, in turn producing practices of discursive selectivity. We now turn to the three elements which make up CPE; the cultural, political, and economic. We note that the theoretical status of each of the three elements is not evenly shared. Political economy, for instance, is a more established approach within Economics, Sociology, and Political Science departments. Cultural studies, however, emerged from the 1980s onwards (Hall, 1980), and the danger to be avoided is that of a cultural analysis that is simply added to political economy, rather than each of the three concepts being challenged to think differently as a result of their interactions with each other. We outline four cul-de-sacs which are important to avoid in understanding CPE. The first is to avoid viewing the economy as THE ECONOMY, with the result that we recognize only one form of organizing the relations of production, distribution, and exchange, as in the capitalist or market economy, over others. This is a particularly serious issue for education since it discounts non-market economic activity; for instance, the contribution of the unpaid domestic economy to the world of schooling. Moreover, it obstructs us from seeing the education sector as a complex “economy” in its own right— some of which is increasingly heavily commodified (e.g., Ball, 2012), and other parts which continue to be coordinated through relations that might well describe a gift economy (Mauss, 1954). A gift economy describes a mode of exchange where valuables are not traded or sold but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. An example here might include a teacher’s contributions to the community in which they teach, or voluntary labor in hard-to-reach education communities. Second, we aim to avoid seeing the political as POLITICS, with a focus on government and/or the state. Politics and power are contested concepts (Haugaard and Clegg, 2009). The political in education operates in a multiplicity of ways—from whose knowledge counts to how the sector is governed. Limiting our view of the political to formal institutions of government generates an incomplete account of the structuring mechanisms and processes at work as well as a limited array of contexts. Third, we aim to avoid reducing culture to discourse or semiotics, on the one hand, or as “the summits of an achieved civilisation” (Hall, 1980, p. 59), on the other. Such framings give us a limited insight into the complex nature of culture. We take the view that though culture is always mediated through discourse or semiosis, it is also multidimensional, and includes (1) meaning-making that produces life-worlds, (2) being part of a shared community, and (3) a civilizational approach which recognizes differences in
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worldviews or cosmologies—but which at the level of the individual or community these are part of a taken-for-granted, common-sense, or shared sense of reality (Cox and Schechter, 2002). Different worldviews, or civilizations have different understandings of time/space, individuality/community, and spirituality/cosmology (Cox and Schechter, 2002). As one example, Western enlightenment thought is dominated by a temporal frame that is future-oriented—manifest in ideas of progress or social mobility. This is not shared by all cultures. Similarly, there are differences between Sinic cultures and their privileging of the community over individuality as compared to European Western cultures. These differences matter to researchers concerned with globalization and education when a policy or program tries to embed itself. Finally, we aim to avoid simply adding education to the cultural, political, and economy string, in turn placing education into a subservient relationship. Rather, we see that “education” in all of its complexity—from pedagogical practices to formal knowledges and credentials—is placed at the center of our investigations to examine the ways in which social processes and relations that are simultaneously cultural (worldviews/ lifeworlds/subjectivities), political (power), and economic (exchange) mediate and shape outcomes.
The philosophical pre-suppositions of CPE Philosophically, our approach to CPE is informed by critical realism (Archer et al., 1998; Porpora, 2015; Sayer, 1992). Critical realists make a set of philosophical presuppositions about the world, including what and how it can be known. An important key assumption is “. . .the independent reality of being of the intransitive or ontological dimension—in the face of the relativity of our knowledge” or what might be called the “transitive” (Archer et al., 1998, p. x). In other words, there are events out there which exist independent of us knowing about them (intransitive), or where over time our understandings of these events or phenomena change (transitive). Critical realism seeks to combine and reconcile ontological realism, epistemological relativity, and judgmental rationality (Archer et al., 1998). Second, critical realists assume that the social world has ontological depth. That is to say, the world is differentiated and stratified, consisting not only of our experiences (perception/experiential) as a result of actual events (actual), but objects, including structures, which have powers and liabilities capable of generating events (real) (Porpora, 2015; Sayer, 1992). These powers can be activated in particular contexts and not others. It is thus useful to think about a critical realist ontology as concerned with structuring mechanisms in context, giving rise to specific outcomes (SM in C = Os). Third, saying that mechanisms have causal effects does not mean invoking a strong theory of causation (the covering law model of causal explanation—if A then B with some degree of necessity). Instead, it refers to tendencies. Critical realism conceptualizes causality as a relation between causal structures or mechanisms, and causal properties (e.g., competing, cooperating, and stereotyping) in situated, conjunctural contexts. That is, what makes things work? This requires rich description, and from there, their significance pointed to in a specialized disciplinary language (e.g., history, sociology, and so on), and thus re-signified. In other words, processes and mechanisms are real phenomena, and the work of the social analyst is to establish the presence of those entities to develop explanations as to how their structuring properties appear to work, under what conditions, and with what outcomes for whom.
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Fourth, and related to three, social systems are open and dynamic systems, and thus there is no self-reproducing closure. Where there are regularities of events, these are at best approximate and transitory. Finally, our knowledge of the world is both fallible and theory-laden, and the job of the researcher is to reflect upon their implicit theories of the world they are observing, as well as to be open to other competing explanations. In researching our social worlds, and in this case the globalizing of education, the purpose is to describe, explain, and suggest changes drawing upon a normative framework concerned with social justice.
Methodology and CPE There is also the important matter of methodology and methods. Much will depend on what it is that we are wanting to understand. Sayer (1992) also prompts us to conceptualize the notion of method, not just about how we approach the empirical world, but also our theorizing. In other words, the idea of a method of theorizing “. . . covers the clarification of modes of explanation and understanding, the nature of abstraction, as well as the familiar subjects of research design and methods of analysis” (Sayer, 1992, p. 3). In our critical CPE approach to education, which we outline in more detail below, we draw on forms of explanation—such as retroduction—as a mode of inference in which events are explained by postulating the structuring mechanisms which are capable of producing them in particular contexts (Sayer, 1992). Making sense of a global education policy agenda, like the Sustainable Development Goals, might mean the study of texts, interviews with key actors, tracing out networks of influence, or the collection of survey data and asking what structuring mechanisms (ideas, actors, institutions, resources, and devices) in particular contexts needed to be in place for this outcome to be realized (retroduction). What causal mechanisms have been activated? Again, in the analysis of the cases below, we will suggest a methodology to help the researcher generate accounts of events and explanations as to what might be the structuring mechanisms that are at work in producing these outcomes.
A CPE of/for education We now focus on education itself as a sector, experience, and outcome. Education is a complex enterprise involving an array of agents engaged in diverse activities at multiple scales, often with specialist discourses. We will now describe this enterprise as an “education ensemble.” One way of introducing what we think the concept entails can be inferred from the following quote from Connell (1995)—one of the most sophisticated and astute analysts of education, she writes: at the core of education is the creation of a network of workers and practices that sustains this second order learning capacity for both the individual members and for the collectivity. I emphasise “for the collectivity” since educators’ talk mainly locates “learning how to learn” in the development of the individual. But this means nothing if it is not sustained also as a collective property of the social world that the individual is entering. —pp. 97–98, emphasis added Here “learning” is placed at the center of anything we might know as education, as a collective and relational property of the social world and our understanding of the education ensemble represents education as also a complex collective construction of the
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social world, that is not reducible to schools, or universities, learners, and teachers, though these may be prominent forms of institutionalized activity. Rather, education involves an array of actors and other institutions beyond the obvious or our commonsense understandings whose ideas, forms of engagement, interests, and authority generate tensions and contradictions within the ensemble. In line with our critical realist ontology outlined earlier, analyzing what goes on in an education ensemble, means breaking it open. There are two moves involved which operate at different levels of abstraction. The first recognizes that what we refer to as “Education” is the outcome of sets of ideas, discourses, agents, technologies, institutional arrangements, and practices accreted over generations which, while individually irreducible to each other, can be seen to be in an internal relationship with each other in the production of the education ensemble. This means that “education” as an ensemble has to be seen as the unity of multiple, contingent, and contradictory determinations of social processes and relations involving power, forms of exchange, and meaning making. There can be no effective understanding of the individual elements of the ensemble, without an overall understanding of it collectively, and it is this that led us to refer to it as an ensemble. There are four elements that we might distinguish different education ensembles globally (1) the (different) civilizationally anchored cultural scripts through which it is constructed and mediated, (2) education’s relationship with national (or global, regional, or local) societies and communities, (3) the forms of organization that have come to characterize education as a system including the professions and unions, and (4) the relationships between education and particular forms of economic and political organization. Our next move is methodological; it draws upon what we have elsewhere called “the education questions” (Dale, 2005; Robertson and Dale, 2013), which speak back to theorizing. These education questions are ways of orienting our investigations into an education ensemble, and in revealing its stratified social ontology. These questions open up four analytically distinct, different though internally related, “moments” of what might be seen as constituting different realizations of the “education ensemble:” the moment of educational practice, the moment of education politics, the moment of the politics of education, and the moment of outcomes. The key point to note in this context is that the moment of educational practice is set up in a way that assumes a range of distributions of educational experiences, starting from the question, “who is taught what?” and then going on to link other factors affecting that distribution, such as the circumstances in which it takes place (how, where, by whom, and so on). The moment of education politics raises issues around the relationship between policy and practice, such as “how and by whom are these things decided?” (e.g., individuals, families, the state, the community, corporations, shareholders, international agencies, and so on), but always in the recognition that not everything that occurs at the moment of educational practice is a direct consequence of and response to something that happens at the moment of education politics. Indeed, elements of the moment of education politics may be taken directly from the moment of practice. Nevertheless, it does open possible windows both on why things are as they are at the moment of practice, and how they might be changed, and what impact they may have on educational outcomes. The moment of the politics of education is fundamentally concerned with social structures and with individuals and institutions occupying varying positions in those social structures that are dependent upon the conditions at play (Brenner et al., 2010).
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Again, this neither pervades nor provides the whole of the context of the moment of policy or of practice, nor is it impervious to influences and practices at the earlier moments. The moment of the politics of education is where we find the kinds of “rules of the game” or “paradigmatic settings” that set basic limits to what is considered possible and desirable from education. Here, the most significant and relevant shift for our analysis of the globalizing of education is a move in many countries, from a more “social democratic welfare state” to a competitive “neoliberal” one, that in turn set in motion a range of tendencies that have opened up education ensembles to new actors, commercial logics, and so on. Finally, the moment of outcomes of education processes includes not only the immediate consequences of educational practices, policies, and politics for those directly involved, but also wider personal/individual, community/collective, social, and economic qualities arising from globalizing processes. It allows us to ask such crucial questions in this context, such as: “How far are the successes of some achieved at the expense of others?” And, “what are the collective benefits of the conjunctions of the three moments for our analysis?”
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION It is now time to look at how CPE is being put to work by scholars of CIE. The careful reader will note that undertaking a CPE of education does not mean rigidly applying a template; rather as an approach its concepts can be selectively used, and its use can be reflected upon and taken in interesting and new directions. In other words, theory work is dynamic and also a work in progress. We highlight a few here to show the potential of CPE applied to the globalizing of education. Kedzierski (2016) uses CPE to focus on English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) in East Asia’s higher education sector, and in particular the underlying logics that have contributed to favoring EMI. Kedzierski (2016) effectively draws on each aspect of CPE—the cultural, the political, and the economic—to bring into view more than simply a cultural, or political, or economic reading of EMI. As he argues, CPE pushes the researcher to consider the three aspects together. The cultural for him is more than language learning per se but a language that generates new opportunities for meaning making. The political enables him to think about power in a richer and fuller sense, including the links between language, knowledge, and power. The economic, he shows, is concerned with value, not simply in a narrow way but more broadly in terms of the social relations of exchange. Kedzierski (2016) makes effective use of the “education ensemble” as a heuristic device. This enables him to move beyond narrow accounts of EMI toward a wider and deeper understanding of the growing role at a global level— qualitatively and quantitatively—of the English language as the key medium of transactions of all kinds—economic, political, and cultural. He points out that English, as a medium, “carries” some messages more effectively than others, and links them in particular ways, which further strengthens English’s hold over all elements of linguistic activity. This leads to the growing dominance of English, and thus the capacity of English as a medium through which the world is named and known. Similarly, Sorensen and Robertson (2018) draw upon CPE in their analysis of the OECD’s large-scale assessment directed at teachers—the Teaching and Learning
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International Survey (TALIS). TALIS is aimed at reframing teachers’ work for ensuring more effective student learning and human capital formation. In their chapter, they also make use of the idea of an “education ensemble.” They parse the idea of an education ensemble as a “TALIS ensemble,” which in turn opens up a way of seeing more complex socio-political activity at play over time. The important light this idea is able to shed on OECD activity is to make visible not just the OECD as an actor but their relation to— and dependence upon—other actors, interests, ideational projects, material capabilities, and forms of expertise that go into shaping the TALIS program itself. This way of conceiving of TALIS—as an emergent form whose properties and structuring mechanisms produce particular outcomes in particular contexts. Within the TALIS ensemble, different actors have different kinds of power and resources, which are used to shape the ongoing form of the program. In the constellation of actors within TALIS, Sorensen and Robertson (2018) show that the OECD TALIS secretariat is particularly powerful in that is has overall responsibility for managing the program. And while national governments made funds available to enable the rolling out of the data collection—it is the European Commission who happened to be the main funder of the first round of data collection. This resulted in a particular range of “European” countries being bought into TALIS, which in turn generated data that the Commission could use for its own governing purposes. Other less visible actors are also shown to be important. These included the representative bodies of senior officials in the teachers’ unions as well as experts from national governments, as well as the contractors who were to undertake the work—the International Association for the Evaluation of Achievement along with Statistics Canada. TALIS aims to be an instrument for brokering a new kind of common-sense as to who counts as a quality teacher, and how this might be realized. In short, this is a cultural, political, and economy project. Higgins and Novelli (2020) use CPE to develop a critical account aimed at rethinking education and peacebuilding in Sierra Leone. Their paper is based upon a critique of, and attempt to go beyond, the shortcomings of “uncritical idealism” to dominate the main accounts of peacebuilding. What they mean by this is that main approaches to education and peacebuilding are not theoretically grounded, but imposed from above, as forms of insufficiently theorized spheres of curriculum development and practice. Their approach to CPE insists on the need for the critical, as in critique and critical reflections, and the contribution of CPE is to help in this process of interrogation. The empirical focus of the paper is on a UNICEF funded curriculum that was developed for teachers in conflict affected Sierra Leone aimed at addressing five thematic areas: civics and democracy, gender, health and environment, human rights and learner centered pedagogy. Higgins and Novelli (2020) make particular use of four selectivities that are specified in Sum and Jessop’s (2013) approach; discursive, structural, agential, and technological. By using CPE, they argued that it is possible to make visible the taken-for-granted reputation of peace education as a panacea for conflict affected contexts. They show the partial representation of the structural causes of the conflict, in turn reinforcing unequal power relations that sanction transnational circuits of knowledge. The deployment of technologies colluded in this process in ways that regulated and controlled the population in the conflict affected country. The result is a curriculum that is deeply implicated in geopolitical and bio-political agendas of the West. Lopes Cardozo and Shah (2016) use CPE in a very systematic way to examine the multi-scalar politics of peace-building through the different “education moments” that make up the terrain of education. The importance and contribution of Lopes Cardozo
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and Shah’s (2016) analysis is its commitment to critical realism, its multi-scalar approach, and a series of analytically distinct moments of education that are stimulated by CPE’s education questions. Together they offer bold new possibilities for seeing the many sites and modalities of power that in effect are different faces of education in conflict zones. Rather than narrowing the focus, their use of CPE offers a way of expanding their foci across space and time. CPE’s various conceptual tools, the education ensemble, its methodological approach guided by a series of question-driven interrogation of moments enable exploration of complex social phenomena; its recognition of multiplicity, and complexity, is used to situate education into the social world that in turn, it shapes, as well as vice versa.
CONCLUSIONS In this chapter, we have sketched out the details of a cultural political economy of/for education to understand the globalizing of education that might be used by scholars of comparative and international education. To do this we have laid out its main assumptions, conceptual grammar, and methodology, and proposed a critical realist set of assumptions to guide the theoretical and empirical work. In relation to the latter, this means making a set of philosophical assumptions about our social worlds as comprised of structuring mechanisms in a context that produces outcomes. In our view, this is very important for any study of education, in that it is a powerful institution of cultural and social production and reproduction in societies. It, therefore, matters how it is organized, and what the outcomes or effects are for individuals and the collective. These are basic questions of social justice. We also proposed the idea of an “education ensemble” which would help “crack open” our common-sense understandings of education, as a static, homogeneous, and enduring container of social processes, relations, and identities that are similar everywhere. The point here is that an “education ensemble”—as itself a unity of multiple determinations whose constituent elements (civilizational projects; forms of local/regional/national/ global education; a common form of educational organization; and a relationship to the economy—albeit largely capitalist)—has causal powers under particular conditions. What needs to be understood by comparative and international scholars is how local rivals are reduced to being irrelevant at worst and ineffectual at best. In conclusion, we hope that researchers will find that this approach is useful in shedding light on complex education problems, in ways that enable us to see what might be revealed when we recognize the interplay of the cultural, political, and economic in mediating education worlds. From there, we suggest, it is more feasible to bring socially just changes about in ways that recognize the power of structuring mechanisms in particular contexts and what we might do differently.
FURTHER READING 1. Cox, R. W., and Schechter, M. G. (2002). The political economy of a plural world: Critical reflections on power, morals and civilization. London, UK: Routledge. 2. Dale, R. (1999). Specifying globalisation effects on national policy: A focus on the mechanisms. Journal of Education Policy, 14(1), 1–17. 3. OECD (2018). PISA: Preparing our youth for an inclusive and sustainable world. The OECD Global Competence Framework. Paris, France OECD .
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4. Porpora, D. (2015). Reconstructing sociology: A critical realist approach. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press. 5. UNESCO (2018). Preparing teachers for global citizenship education: A template. Bangkok: UNESCO Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education.
MINI CASE STUDY This case returns to the problematic that was introduced at the beginning of the chapter—a way of understanding efforts of the multilateral world to help realize the globally competent student as defined in SDG Goal 4—Target 4.7—Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship Framework. Two key international agencies are involved here; the OECD and UNESCO. The OECD has added a new element—the PISA Global Competency Framework to its Programme for International Assessment launched in 2000. The OECD’s PISA test is a large-scale international assessment tool aimed at 15-year olds. Some 80 countries are now involved that include member countries of the OECD as well as those beyond. UNESCO has taken on responsibility for the realization of SDG Goal 4—Target 4.7— Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship Framework. Its focus is on the development of a Global Citizenship Framework. Its work is aimed at teachers and schools and largely focused on the curriculum as well as the sympathetic forms of pedagogy that might be used in schools around the world to realize being a global citizen. Whereas UNESCO’s mission is broadly a cultural one aimed at mutual understanding through education, the OECD’s mission is economic development, and the role that education can and should play in this. In our account below, we start with the moment of the politics of education as this agenda frames the why and what of what it is schools should be doing in national education settings to realize this global target. According to the OECD, global competences are needed in young people to enable them to participate in a “more interconnected world but also appreciate and benefit from cultural differences” (OECD, 2018, p. 4). The OECD acknowledges that societies have become increasingly divided between a small number of those who have benefitted from globalization and those whose lives and futures are now increasingly more uncertain and precarious. Evaluating global competences means measuring them to provide system-level data to countries—which we can see at the moment of education politics. This would enable a country’s education system to develop interventions that “invite young people to understand the world beyond their immediate environment, interact with others with respect and dignity, and take actions toward building sustainable and thriving communities” (OECD, 2018, pp. 5–6). Paradoxically, the tool to govern the development of global competencies—with competition at its heart—has also been the key instigator of the divisions within the wider society that the OECD point to as problematic. Equally problematic is that the OECD’s competences draw from a particular framing of global issues, so that as a construct they are difficult to measure across settings. Many of the test items are highly complex (for example, the student is to interpret the cause of poverty). Nevertheless, it invites a response from a continuum ranging from “I have never heard of this” to “I am familiar with this and would be able to explain it well.” More importantly, the OECD has been accused of embracing a Western cosmopolitan social ontology, which is seen as being imposed on those countries with rather different common-sense views of the world. These decisions to not participate, and criticisms
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regarding the cultural worldview that is being promoted, act as competing discourses in the context of the education ensemble, leaving the outcomes wide open. Paralleling the OECD’s initiative is that of UNESCO to deliver SDG Target 4.7— global citizenship education and sustainability. The globally competent citizen at the heart of UNESCOs Global Citizenship Education (GCED) must have the skills to bridge the cultural and social diversity in the world, to examine societal orders and policies, to make informed choices to transform their communities and societies toward being more peaceful, just, and sustainable (UNESCO, 2018b). In Preparing Teachers for Global Citizenship Education UNESCO (2018b)—the moment of education politics—provides a template for teachers to help inform “the art of teaching” global citizenship education. Their template is quite open and not prescriptive, though the main areas of knowledge to be addressed are clear: globalization and interdependence, social justice and inequality, identity and diversity, sustainable development, and peace and conflict. In 2018, UNESCO (2018c) published a new development in their thinking related to GCED and how they might engage with diverse local realities around the world around deeper civilizational values. The report opts to search for similarities in other cosmologies with the French philosophical values of liberté, equalité, and fraternité. Equivalences with the three philosophical values, it points out, can be found rooted in “local cosmogonies, founding stories and national histories” (UNESCO, 2018c, p. 2), and in constitutions, national anthems, government policy documents, and the writings of historical figures (UNESCO, 2018c). We can see that the two key actors—the OECD and UNESCO—tasked with helping realize Target 4.7 are at odds with each other regarding how to realize the global in students learning through education. Because of the kind of institution each is—one with a cultural mission and the other with an economic mission, and the fact that they have no legal tools to ensure compliance-both are limited in how they can govern national education sectors politically. More than this, they are both working with limited scripts as to what might constitute cultural global outlooks and capacities—which collide with national and local understandings of what matters and what is to be done. As a result, what we find is that the moment of education politics is at the center of national and international educational agenda setting. In other words, this is the level of transnational intervention in and national response to the operation of the “global shapers and brokers” of the goals, forms, and selective processes of education across the different nations of the world to achieve Target 4.7. It is here that the goals set out some encouragement—or steering—but this is likely not to be sufficient to realize the aspirations of the policy. But national education policymakers and implementers also have other ideas regarding the global and what work it must do. As an example, Cox (2016) and Bourn et al. (2016) have undertaken a mapping across a range of countries which, show a great deal of diversity both within and across national settings reflecting very different ways of framing the key concepts. Bourn et al. (2016) also report a diverse set of agendas to which “global learning” as a solution, is likely repeated across national and subnational education landscapes globally. In sum, the attempt to create global citizens through SDG Target 4.7 and the Global Competence Framework is likely to fall short of its aspiration. This is not to say that there are no outcomes. Necessarily, of course, there are. The OECD will report on the data gathered, and those countries who choose to engage with the results will do so as a result of their own interests in the project. For our purposes, the structuring mechanisms
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surrounding the activation of notions of UNESCO’s global citizen, and the OECD’s global competences, are weak, and unpredictable, giving rise to a diversity of outcomes.
REFERENCES Alexander, R. (2008). Essays in pedagogy. London, UK : Routledge Archer, M., Bhaskar, R., Collier, A., Lawson, T., and Norrie, A. (1998). Critical realism: Interventions. London, UK : Psychology Press. Arnove, R. (2009). World systems analysis in comparative education in the age of globalisation. In R. Cowen and A. Kasamias (Eds.), 2nd International handbook of comparative education (pp. 101–119). New York, NY: Springer. Ball, S. (2012). Global Education Inc. New policy networks and the neoliberal imaginary. London, UK: Routledge. Best, J., and Paterson, M. (Eds.). (2010). Cultural political economy. London, UK and New York, NY: Routledge. Bourn, D., Hunt, F., Blum, N., and Lawson, H. (2016). Primary education for global learning and sustainability, research report. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge Primary Review Trust. Brenner, N., Peck, J., and Theodore, N. (2010). Variegated neoliberalism: Geographies, modalities, pathways: Global Networks, 10(2), 182–222. Connell, R.W. (1995). Transformative labour: Theorising the politics of teachers’ work. In M. Ginsburg (Ed.), The politics of educators’ work and life. New York, NY: Garland. Cox, R. W., and Schechter, M. G. (2002). The political economy of a plural world: Critical reflections on power, morals and civilization, pp. 176–188. London, UK : Routledge. Cox, C. (2016). Global citizenship concepts in curriculum guidelines of 10 countries: Comparative analysis. In progress reflections on current and critical issues in curriculum, learning and assessment, No. 9. Geneva, IBE-UNESCO. Dale, R. (1999). Specifying globalisation effects on national policy: A focus on the mechanisms. Journal of Education Policy, 14(1), 1–17. Dale, R. (2000). Globalisation and education: Demonstrating a “common world educational culture” or locating a “globally structured educational agenda.” Education Theory, 50(4), 427–448. Dale, R. (2005). Globalisation, knowledge economy and Comparative Education. Comparative Education, 41(2), 117–49. Diaz Rios, C. (2019). Domestic coalitions on the variation of education privatization: An analysis of Chile, Argentina and Colombia. Journal of Education Policy, 34(95), 647–68. Elias, N. (2000). The civilising process. Oxford, UK : Blackwell. Hall, S. (1980). Cultural studies: Two paradigms. Media, Culture and Society, 2, 57–72. Haugaard, M., and Clegg, S. (2009). Why power is the central concept of the social sciences. In S. Clegg and M. Haugaard (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of power. London, UK : Sage. Held, D. McGrew, A. Goldblatt, D, and Perraton, J. (1999). Global transformations. Cambridge, UK : Polity Press. Higgins, S., and Novelli, M. (2020). Re-thinking peace education: A cultural political approach. Comparative Education Review, 64(1). Jessop, B. (2004). Critical semiotic analysis and cultural political economy. Critical Discourse Studies, 1(2), 159–174. Jessop, B. (2009). Cultural political economy and critical political studies. Critical Policy Studies, 3(3), 336–56. Jones, M. (2008). Recovering a sense of political economy. Political Geography, 27, 377–399.
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Kedzierski, M. (2016). English as a medium of instruction in East Asia’s higher education sector: A critical realist cultural political economy analysis of underlying logics. Comparative Education, 52(3), 375–91. Lopes Cardozo, M., and Shah, M. (2016). A conceptual framework to analyse the multiscalar politics of education for sustainable peacebuilding, 52(4), 516–37. Mauss, M. (1954). The gift: Forms and functions of exchange. Glencoe, IL : The Free Press. Meyer, J., Kamens, D., and Benevot, A. (1992). School knowledge for the masses. London, UK : Routledge. OECD (2016). Global competency for an inclusive world. Paris, France: OECD . OECD (2018). PISA: Preparing our youth for an inclusive and sustainable world. The OECD global competence framework. Paris, France: OECD . Porpora, D. (2015). Reconstructing sociology: A critical realist approach. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press. Robertson, S. (2012). Researching global education policy: Angles in/on/out. In A. Verger, M. Novelli, and H. Altinyelken (Eds.), Global education policy and international development: New agendas, issues and practices. London: Continuum Books. Robertson, S., and Dale, R. (2013). The social justice implications of privatisation in education governance frameworks: A relational account. Oxford Review of Education, 39(4), 426–445. Robertson, S., and Dale, R. (2015). Toward a “critical cultural political economy” account of the globalising of education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 13(1), 149–170. de Sousa Santos, B. (2004). Interview with Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 2(1), 147–160. Sayer, A. (1992). Method in social science: A realist approach. London, UK : Routledge. Sayer, A. (2000). Realism and social science. London, UK : Sage Publications. Sayer, A. (2001). For a critical cultural political economy. Antipode, 33(4), 687–708. Shah, R., and Lopes Cardozo, M. (2014). Education and social change in post conflict and post-disaster Aceh, Indonesia. International Journal of Educational Development, 38, 2–12. Sorensen, T., and Robertson, S. L. (2018). The OECD program TALIS and framing, measuring and selling quality teacherTM. In M. Akiba and G. LeTendre (Eds.), International handbook of teacher quality and policy. London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2004). The global politics of educational borrowing and lending. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Sum, N-L. and Jessop, B. (2013). Toward a cultural political economy: Putting culture in its place in political economy. Cheltenham, UK : Edward Elgar UNESCO (2018a). Preventing violent extremism through education: Effective activities and impact. Paris, France: UNESCO. UNESCO (2018b). Preparing teachers for global citizenship education: A template. Bangkok: UNESCO Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education. UNESCO (2018c). Global citizenship education: Taking it local. Paris, France: UNESCO. Walker, R. (2010). Conclusion: Cultural political economy. In J. Best and M. Paterson. (Eds.), Cultural political economy. London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge.
PART FOUR
Theories of Policy and Practice This section focuses on the ways in which various theories have explained and informed policy and practice. As noted in the volume’s introduction, theories operate at various levels and aim to explain phenomena from the micro to the macro; sometimes even to the level of grand meta-narratives. The theories explored in this section largely aim to explain how policies and practices are created, implemented, translated, or appropriated at micro and meso levels, though the theories are also intimately concerned with knowledge itself, including how it is constructed and used (or ignored) by various actors and at specific points in time. All of the chapters in this section reflect more recent theoretical developments aimed at better understanding how policies and practices operate across a range of levels. As globalization has advanced, so too have ways of analyzing the ideas and commitments of individual actors and, importantly, their increased interactions together. The chapters in this section, therefore, demonstrate the emergence and flows of theories and approaches both across contexts and time. In particular, all of the chapters highlight how the various theories were built upon earlier ideas, and at some point became en vogue. The chapters also speak to the reception and translation of ideas, whether these are constructivism and learner-centeredness (Chapter 17), peace education (Chapter 20), or even the notions of reception and translation themselves (Chapter 19). Across the chapters, then, key questions concern where the ideas emerged, how they are useful in understanding phenomena, and how they gained currency with a particular audience at a specific point in time. The first chapter of this section examines constructivism and learner-centered pedagogy as both policy and practice. In Chapter 17, Matthew A. M. Thomas and Michele Schweisfurth traverse a wide territory of interrelated theories of knowledge, learning, and teaching that feature implicitly or explicitly in the study and promotion of learnercentered pedagogy (LCP). LCP as an educational concept and policy has garnered immense attention from international organizations, national governments, and CIE scholars in recent decades, even as conceptualizations of its practice remain uneven at best. Thomas and Schweisfurth, therefore, begin by exploring definitions of pedagogy, broadly, and learner-centeredness, more specifically, before examining some of the 295
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underpinning theoretical concepts that support LCP. Theoretical contributions are examined from notable scholars, such as John Dewey, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, and Paulo Freire, among others, and a series of theoretical questions are discussed that address core aspects of LCP as both policy and practice. These include considerations of the nature of knowledge, curriculum, and relationships between teachers and learners. The chapter then explores the emergence of LCP within CIE theory and practice, noting its remarkable rise to prominence since 1990. Finally, the chapter concludes with a case study highlighting the policy, implementation, and practice of LCP within Tanzanian schools. This site has been studied extensively within CIE in regards to LCP, and at present, the results seem mixed at best due to the “deeply philosophical and practical implications for constructivist teaching and learning” as well as the ways in which the “genuine application” of LCP has been limited across contexts (p. 310). Chapter 18 builds on the previous chapter to more closely explore differentiation theory and externalization. Marcelo Parreira do Amaral and Marvin Erfurth begin by noting the historical development of this theoretical approach, and further focus on sociological systems theory and differentiation as opposed to more biological understandings of systems. They then highlight a key distinction between the understandings of “systems” held by Parsons and Luhmann, two sociologists associated with sociological systems theory, noting Parsons’ emphasis on systems as representing “ways of processing meaning,” since for Luhmann “communication is the defining operation constituting of a social system” (p. 317). The chapter also describes related concepts, such as autopoiesis, operative closure, and self-reference, before examining the ways in which differentiation has been explored and conceptualized by CIE scholars in recent decades, particularly in light of increasing globalization and internationalization. Externalization, as applied by CIE scholars, is explored further, most particularly in its utility for “understanding educational phenomena and processes” as well as theorizing policymaking as an “active process” (p. 322). A case study included at the end of the chapter draws on the work of Schriewer and Martinez (2004) to examine their application of differentiation theory and externalization to a comparative study of Spain, Russia, and China. In the next chapter, Gita Steiner-Khamsi highlights theoretical perspectives that have been used in CIE and beyond to explain policy-borrowing and lending. Chapter 19 focuses specifically on three of the most common forms of policy movement: from nation to nation, from the international to the national, and from one subsystem to another. Steiner-Khamsi draws extensively on Luhmann’s sociological systems theory as a means to “understand why, when, how, and to what effect” (p. 330) policy-borrowing and lending occurs for various systems, which largely prefer to remain closed to external change. She notes, “studies on externalization investigate when systems open up, examine which other school systems are selected as reference societies, and finally trace how they ‘project,’ that is, translate the observation into their own system logic” (p. 333). The chapter also highlights an extended empirical example of how expert knowledge is translated, or not, into political knowledge that is used later in the creation and implementation of policies. Here Steiner-Khamsi shares findings from an ongoing bibliometric study of national-level White Papers in Norway and how knowledge from commissioned reports features in them, or not. This example illustrates some of the many ways in which systems function. The chapter concludes with a case study that examines international large-scale student assessments (e.g., PISA, TIMSS) and if, when, and how they cause “irritations” to various educational systems.
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Chapter 20 aims to situate peace education theoretical perspectives, research, and practices within the field of CIE. Highlighting the considerable growth of peace education as a field, Maria Hantzopolous, Zeena Zakharia, and Brooke Harris Garad note from the start of the chapter how peace education has moved “from the margins of educational policy and practice” (p. 347) to assume a central role across many educational contexts. While peace education builds on a diverse foundation of theories and practices, the authors note its general focus on “both dismantling all forms of violence and considering ways to create and maintain a more just and peaceful world” (p. 347), and they foreground important distinctions between negative and positive peace emanating from the field of peace studies. The chapter also provides a concise and useful history of peace education and its attendant theories, especially in relation to various historical periods and movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Critical peace education is a more recent emergence within the field, drawing on post-structural (see Chapter 7) and postcolonial (see Chapter 6) perspectives as it “centers context and agency as a way to mitigate asymmetrical power imbalances that are reified through totalizing discourses and practices” (p. 352). The chapter then explores the integrations of CIE and peace education, including across institutions and within specific scholars’ bodies of work. The case study provided at the end of the chapter highlights a UNICEF project that both reviewed extant literature and produced country case studies (with empirical data) to consider and advance the role of education in peacebuilding around the world. The final chapter of this section examines theories of human rights education. In Chapter 21, Monisha Bajaj and Nomsa Mabona bring together “evolving strands of theories” and concepts with “roots in legal, political, philosophical, and pedagogical aspects of education” (p. 364). Their primary point of departure is the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, from which they trace the historical trajectory of human rights education in terms of its theory, policy, and practice. The authors also carefully traverse various components of human rights education, including its emphasis on both content and processes, as well as various models to organize and structure human rights education. These models are inherently linked to underlying theories of knowledge, development, politics, society, pedagogy, etc., and Bajaj and Mabona ultimately classify human rights education approaches according to three broad theoretical paradigms (see volume introduction for more on paradigms): neo-institutional and convergence theories; Marxist, post-colonial, and critical theories; and Freirean critical consciousness. The chapter reviews the application of these paradigmatic approaches and theories within CIE, providing a robust review of recent research in the field. Finally, the case study presents a hypothetical scenario where an international selection committee reviews four research proposals before granting funding. The proposals vary in their theoretical, methodological, and practical approaches, signifying the diversity of ways in which HRE is theorized and practiced by different scholars, agencies, and governments.
REFERENCES Schriewer, J., and Martinez, C. (2004). Constructions of internationality in education. In G. Steiner-Khamsi (Ed.), The global politics of educational borrowing and lending (pp. 29–53). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Constructivism and Learner-Centeredness in Comparative and International Education Where Theories Meet Practice MATTHEW A.M. THOMAS AND MICHELE SCHWEISFURTH
INTRODUCTION “Form groups and discuss the questions on the board,” says the teacher. Such instructions can be heard in many classrooms around the world, and this act of teaching (and learning) may seem simple, perhaps even commonplace. Yet, the words and actions of this teacher (and others) are likely to reflect their understandings about knowledge itself, about social relations, and about what it means to learn, and to teach. Indeed, theories of teaching and learning undergird everything that occurs in classrooms, and this teacher is knowingly or unknowingly operating with an underlying set of beliefs and theories. In this case, the invocation of collaborative, student-led learning points to a particular set of beliefs associated with learner-centered pedagogy (LCP). This chapter presents a somewhat different perspective than some others in this volume, as it does not focus on one specific theory but instead explores a number of theories that underpin LCP as an educational concept, and as a broader global movement embedded in a range of policy and practice contexts. On the one hand, the worldwide spread and adoption of LCP is related to theories of national or systemic change and the relationships between concomitant geopolitical actors, as this approach to teaching and learning has become a “travelling policy” in educational planning, particularly in lowerincome countries. On the other hand, in contexts where LCP is promoted, at the micro level the choices that teachers make about what happens in classrooms are underpinned by a range of theoretical foundations. Many of these theories are commonly utilized in comparative and international education (CIE) as a field, even while some educators and researchers remain uncertain about the manifestations of LCP across contexts. We begin the discussion in this chapter by setting out definitions, firstly, of pedagogy itself and then of LCP, and we then explore its theoretical underpinnings. LCP is often 299
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contrasted simplistically with teacher-centered pedagogy, so we elaborate by critiquing both the assumed binary of these pedagogies as well as the ways in which instructional methods— such as placing students in groups—are sometimes perceived to be singular indicators of LCP and its attendant assumptions (Brodie et al., 2002; du Plessis and Muzaffar, 2010). We then examine the comparative appearances of LCP in educational policies and international development programs before drawing on data from a case study in Tanzania to discuss the application of LCP in a specific national and teacher education context. We conclude by raising critical questions about the continued promotion of LCP around the world as well as the roles of educational scholars, practitioners, and policymakers in advancing particular pedagogies that are considered “good” by those who have the power to promote them (Schweisfurth and Elliott, 2019; Thomas and Vavrus, 2019).
OVERVIEW Toward an operational definition Before addressing the specifics of LCP, we need to define what we mean by pedagogy. Alexander (2009) defines it as the “the act of teaching together with its attendant discourse of educational theories, values, evidence and justifications” (p. 928). This widely-cited definition of pedagogy, therefore, has theory built into it. Despite pedagogy’s immense importance in shaping the learning experiences of students and, by extension, their potential life outcomes, pedagogy is often overlooked or undertheorized in global contexts. As Schweisfurth, Thomas, and Smail (2020) suggest: When pedagogy is addressed in comparative or international studies, it is often reduced to a set of observable teaching strategies, ignoring the importance of what lies behind teachers’ choices; when pedagogy is overlooked, it remains a black box between the inputs to education (such as buildings and teaching resources) and the outcomes from it (such as exam results) (Alexander 2015; Schweisfurth 2015). This is due, at least in part, to the complexity of pedagogy as both practice and discourse, and the associated challenges of examining and analysing it. —p. 2 In the context of this complexity, one of the challenges of examining learner-centered pedagogy is the breadth of definitions that exist regarding this issue. A plethora of terms and definitions are often associated with, or pitted against, learner-centered pedagogy. Various forms of the terminology, including learner-, child-, person-, student-, and pupil-centered pedagogy (or learning/education), are often used virtually interchangeably. Other terms lumped into this category are associated with specific techniques. For example, the term “activity-based” is sometimes considered inherently tied to LCP. This pedagogical mode requires teachers to use critical thinking activities as the basis for active student learning (McCombs, 2001). Terms, such as “discovery-based,” “open-ended,” “participatory,” and “individualized,” are also often associated with LCP, though in some contexts each of these terms have other, specified meanings. Moreover, teachers, administrators, and educational theorists alike use these terms (and others) to describe a wide continuum of philosophies and methodologies associated with learner-centered pedagogy. From a philosophical perspective, themes, such as democracy and capitalism (Sriprakash, 2010; Tabulawa, 2003), modernization (Beeby, 1966), emancipation (Freire, 1972), and in some ways, even multi-culturalism (Thorton and
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McEntee, 1995), are sometimes attached to learner-centered approaches. From a perspective grounded in observable teaching methods, classroom activities linked to this approach include critical thinking activities, group work, debates, discussions, brainstorming, project work, individualized study, and openly-framed question-and-answer techniques that attempt to elicit a multitude of student responses (McCombs and Whisler, 1997). With such a vast number of concepts and terms linked to LCP, generating a concise definition of this pedagogy is not an easy task. Using psychological and educational principles as a basis, McCombs (2001) describes four teacher behaviors and values that indicate learner-centered pedagogy: 1. include learners in decisions about how and what they learn and how that learning is assessed; 2. value each learner’s unique perspectives; 3. respect and accommodate individual differences in learners’ backgrounds, interests, abilities, and experiences; 4. treat learners as co-creators and partners in the teaching and learning process. —p. 186 Although these four actions encompass LCP for McCombs (2001), other educational theorists may posit slightly different descriptions, and certainly many of these intentions, actions, and pedagogic “moves” may overlap. While there are many more examples and descriptors of LCP, this pedagogical approach is often defined in terms of what it is not. In contrast, terms associated with teacher-centered pedagogy include authoritarian, authoritative, traditional, didactic, subject-centered, formalistic (Guthrie, 2011), transmissional (Barrett, 2007), and frontal (Giordan, 1995). The phrase “whole-class instruction” is sometimes couched on this side of the debate, although, again, it is entirely conceivable that a teacher with learner-centered beliefs might utilize this type of instruction in at least part of a lesson. The most common or generic form of teaching associated with teacher-centered learning is known as the “chalk and talk,” or lecture method. This method situates the teacher as the locus of learning and the giver, provider, and controller of knowledge, a key epistemological distinction to which we will return later in the chapter. Nonetheless, three issues arise regarding the use of these definitions and terms. First, there can be inconsistencies in interpretation, as each teacher, administrator, or policymaker may take different meanings of a concept like LCP (Brodie et al., 2002; NykielHerbert, 2004; Starkey, 2019). Second, it is entirely possible that many of these modes could be incorporated into more teacher-centered forms of pedagogy (Gordon, 2009; Schuh, 2004), thus questioning the presumed mutual exclusivity of these categories (Barrett, 2007; Di Biase, 2019; Schweisfurth, 2013). For example, an authoritative teacher may value individual perspectives in discussions while adhering to a fixed contentbased curriculum and memorization-based form of assessment. Or learners may make decisions about the theme of a class lecture, only to sit silently and passively as they receive content information on the topic that they selected. Finally, because of the global status of LCP as “best practice,” policymakers and practitioners alike may be motivated to use the term discursively without engaging with LCP’s more transformative agendas. Harber and Davies (2005) have called learnercenteredness a “hooray word” for this reason: it conjures up positive associations and enthusiasm but this may not be matched in real intent or observable practice. Practitioners may be selective, ensuring that they stay within their comfort zones by choosing more
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familiar aspects of LCP, while being able to use the label indiscriminately (Schweisfurth, 2000). Policymakers may connote certain national characteristics—modernity, democracy—by invoking a discourse of learner-centeredness without seriously expecting significant change on the ground in practice (Britton et al., 2019). The connotations of these terms in contemporary education (i.e., learner-centered as positive and modern, teacher-centered as negative and old-fashioned) belie the fact that there are better and worse forms of both, and teachers can use either of them well or badly. For our purposes, we take Schweisfurth’s (2013) definition of education which is more learner-centered to be the following: “a pedagogical approach which gives learners, and demands from them, a relatively high level of active control over the content and process of learning. What is learnt, and how, are therefore shaped by learners’ needs, capacities, and interests” (p. 20). We believe this concise definition is helpful as a means to ground the research on LCP and is adequately broad enough to encompass the diverse theoretical traditions which have led to the spread of LCP around the globe.
Theoretical foundations of learner-centered pedagogy A diverse body of scholars and educators, and their concomitant beliefs, has contributed to the development of learner-centered pedagogy as we know it today. Beginning with the emphasis placed on students’ individuality in Chinese schools around 3000 B.C., Socrates’ dialogic mode of teaching in ancient Greece, and John Locke’s (1632–1704) notion of the tabula rasa, the history of learner-centered pedagogy can be traced through its varying origins in philosophy, psychology, and educational studies (Henson, 2003). For example, in eighteenth to twentieth-century Europe, the philosophy of childhood set out by JeanJacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was picked up and developed by influential educators including Maria Montessori (1870–1952), Johann H. Pestalozzi (1746–1827), and Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925). This understanding of childhood as a period of possibility, imagination and growth was a new vision, and a freer, “child centered” pedagogical movement sprang from it. In the twentieth-century, American philosopher John Dewey (1859–1952), in Experience and Education (1938) and other texts (1916), argues for a progressive pedagogy focused on students and based on relevant experiences. He further posits that education should be enjoyable and based on real-life problems or situations. This led to his moniker as the “Father of Progressivism” and his writings on democratic education continue to be widely read as well as influential in the field of education. Decades after Dewey, several prominent theorists from within psychology impacted the development and conceptualization of learner-centered pedagogy. Jean Piaget (1896– 1980) explored constructivist epistemologies and posited that learners, through their own experiences, construct new knowledge. This idea contributed to the growth of constructivism as a theory. Palincsar (1998) explains Piaget’s (1967) theories by noting that “contradiction between the learner’s existing understanding and what the learner experiences gives rise to disequilibration, which, in turn, leads the learner to question his or her beliefs and to try out new ideas” (Palincsar, 1998, p. 35). Piaget’s (1967) theories emphasized the role of the child in the learning process and the necessity to shift away from didactic, teacher-centered pedagogical modes. Lev Vygotsky’s (1896–1934) perspectives also informed the evolution and development of learner-centered pedagogy. Primary among his beliefs was the notion that the mental development of students could be measured by their ability to learn cooperatively from others, not merely what they can learn by themselves. This notion was an essential part of
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his theory of zone of proximal development, which suggests that teachers and more learned others should act as facilitators who guide students as they discover solutions to problems or complex scenarios (Vygotsky, 1978), rather than givers of knowledge who control the flow and release of information. Additionally, his educational approaches emphasize conceptual learning rather than rote memorization of facts or terms. They also contributed to the development of social constructivism, which posits that learners coconstruct knowledge as they interact and engage together. This idea of co-construction of knowledge is central in Paulo Freire’s (1921–1997) work, too. Freire (1972) believed that the so-called banking model—wherein a teacher deposits knowledge into students as empty vessels—belied the realities of teaching and learning and as a result, restricted learners’ development. Further, he argues for an emancipatory pedagogy that encouraged dialogue as a means to bring to consciousness aspects of oppression, including those that had been internalized: the theory of “conscientisation.” This line of scholarship has also supported the fields of critical pedagogy and peace education (see Chapters 21 and 20), which explore approaches to the reduction of all forms of violence while simultaneously challenging the status quo. It has also been associated with post-colonial theory (see Chapter 6). The work of many other scholars (e.g., Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Montessori) has also contributed to the formation of LCP as we know it, and readers are encouraged to explore some of their original work, as listed in the section for “Further Reading.”
Theoretical questions The above section alludes to several key questions related to LCP, and pedagogical theories, more broadly. First, pedagogical theories signify perspectives on the nature of knowledge itself, and relate deeply to core questions about ontology and epistemology (Schweisfurth, 2013; Vavrus and Bartlett, 2012). Indeed, questions about what can be known and how we can know it are embedded in the teaching and learning process. Educators, teacher educators, and policymakers, for example, might believe that there is a fixed body of knowledge (or canon) that must be transmitted to future generations and that an experienced, master teacher is best positioned to recite this information for students to memorize. In China, Tan (2017) provides one example of how the “master-disciple relationship” evident in Confucian thought and aspects of Chinese martial arts aligns with an “objectivist view of knowledge” (p. 242) where the student is not expected, nor even encouraged, to engage in knowledge (co)construction with the teacher or peers; rather, the student is to absorb as much discrete knowledge from the master as possible. Thus, as Schweisfurth (2013) suggests, the nature of knowledge could be placed on a continuum with “knowledge as fixed” on one side and “knowledge as fluid” on the other (p. 13). These differing ideas about knowledge have implications for curriculum as well. If knowledge is fluid and to be co-constructed by students and teachers in dialogue, the curriculum itself must have flexibility. Thus, strict examination-based educational systems which emphasize memorization of fixed content create washback effects on pedagogy and have proven to be considerable challenges to implementing more constructivist approaches. For example, Bartlett and Vavrus’ (2013) close analysis of examination items and questions in Tanzania highlights how “the large number of definition and description questions comes at the expense of critical, analytical thinking opportunities for students” (p. 105). They contend that, given this context and the inflexibility of the curriculum, “the content and format of the exam steers pedagogy in Tanzanian secondary schools
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away from the direction recommended in the country’s education policy and new national curricula” (Bartlett and Vavrus, 2013, p. 105). Their findings highlight a remarkable misalignment between a policy intended to encourage pedagogical flexibility and an examinations system that privileges the recitation of discrete facts. One of the more powerful critiques of learner-centered approaches is what Young (2014) calls “powerful knowledge,” a largely fixed canon framed by experts. An entitlement curriculum for the elite, it enables its holders to read and transform the world and control their futures. A classroom which ignores this in favor of a student-led curriculum disadvantages those whose backgrounds leave them with gaps and the lifelong weakness of not knowing what they don’t know. Thus, the theoretical question about the curriculum is not cut-and-dry either. Here, again, Schweisfurth (2013) offers a continuum with “fixed curriculum” at one end and “negotiated content” on the other (p. 13). For knowledge to be fluid and content to be negotiated, a unique relationship between teacher and learner must exist. This relationship would alter the strong hierarchy between teacher and learner, and position the teacher in a facilitator role. In contrast, the “chalk and talk” method outlined above is typically associated with an authoritative and often authoritarian stance by the teacher. For example, Brinkmann’s (2015; 2019) study of teacher beliefs in India found that some teachers “believe that teachers must control children through fear and discipline, rather than favouring democratic and friendly teacher-student relationships” (2019, p. 16). Here Brinkmann (2019) highlights the two ends of the classroom relationship spectrum, with authoritarian at one end and democratic at the other (Schweisfurth, 2013). This relational continuum is related to but different from the specific role of the teacher, which can be described as the “teacher as solely authoritative” on one end and “teachers as facilitators of learning” on the other. In sum, these three theoretical issues suggest the distinctions between various forms of pedagogy. They further indicate the theoretical perspectives that undergird classroom practice, whether implicit or explicit.
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION Although pedagogy has been relatively overlooked within comparative and international education (Alexander, 2015), LCP has garnered attention from multilateral organizations (e.g., UNESCO, UNICEF), bilateral aid agencies, and national governments alike, as well as analysis from a growing body of researchers. In this section, we explore some examples of its application across contexts, starting with government policy and the work of organizations, and concluding with the increasing collection of research on LCP conducted by academic scholars. In recent years many governments have reformed their educational policies and curricula to be more learner-centered. One cause of these governmental shifts has been the rise of global commitments to education, including educational access and, especially, quality. The “Education for All” initiative, adopted in 2000 as a global commitment, and the 2000 Dakar Framework for Action acted as catalysts for more systematic global movements towards LCP. As a means to advance educational quality, the Dakar Framework for Action noted that “active learning techniques” were vital to promoting educational change, and that these pedagogical forms should align with “a relevant curriculum . . . that builds upon the knowledge and experience of the teachers and learners” (UNESCO, 2000, para. 44). The World Bank (1999) was likewise compelled to promote these approaches, suggesting that,
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“since active learning is generally superior to learning by rote, countries that move strongly toward more participatory and individualized modes of learning will be at an advantage relative to those where teachers talk and write and students listen and read” (p. 8). United Nations organizations and non-government organizations active internationally have also supported shifts towards learner-centered pedagogy. Notably, UNICEF’s “Child-Friendly Schools” framework gained popularity in the mid-2000s and whilst not synonymous with LCP, it has embodied many similar sentiments. According to UNICEF (2012): child-friendly schools aim to develop a learning environment in which children are motivated and able to learn. Staff members are friendly and welcoming to children and attend to all their health and safety needs. . . It is a child-centered school—acting in the best interests of the child, leading to the realization of the child’s full potential. —para 1–2 It also references “individualized instruction” that is “appropriate to each child’s developmental level, abilities, and learning style and with active, cooperative, and democratic learning methods” (UNICEF, 2012, para 8). UNICEF’s Child Friendly Schools model has been ubiquitous in recent decades, even taking root in small states, such as the Maldives (Di Biase, 2015), a collection of islands in the Indian Ocean. Not coincidentally, in the same timeframe as these global movements, Chisholm and Leyendecker’s (2008) study of education policies across Sub-Saharan Africa from the 1990s onwards noted that learner-centeredness was the prominent policy discourse in relation to the reform of teaching and curriculum. South Africa, for example, reformed its entire system post-apartheid to be “outcomes-based,” in order to distance itself from the authoritarian, content-driven and discriminatory practices of the past. Chisholm and Leyendecker’s (2008) study suggests that almost no Sub-Saharan African national policy was untouched—at least at the discursive level—by LCP. A multitude of examples can be found around Africa, including in Botswana (Tabulawa, 2009), Guinea (Anderson-Levitt and Diallo, 2003), Malawi (Croft, 2002; Mtika and Gates, 2010), Namibia (O’Sullivan, 2004), Rwanda (van de Kuilen et al., 2019), Tanzania (Vavrus and Bartlett, 2013), and Uganda (Altinyelken, 2010; Sikoyo, 2010), among many others. While Alexander’s (2015) concern about the place of pedagogy in CIE may still resonate, there is evidence that scholars globally are engaging more intensively with the
FIGURE 17.1: Google NGram of key terms, 1965–2008. Source: created by the authors using data from Michel et al., Quantitative analysis of culture using millions of digitized books (Science, 331[6014], 2011).
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challenges of studying it. A Google NGram, which measures usage of key words in all books in their repository, highlights the rise of concepts related to LCP in recent decades. As a specific sub-set of this pattern, CIE researchers have examined LCP from various perspectives in a range of contexts, and across different policy, material, and cultural conditions. Comparative perspectives on pedagogy help to shed light on how differences between contexts shape LCP’s framing and implementation, and how global movements are manifested in different settings. These have led to some core debates and critiques about LCP, and specifically about its relationship to the local, national, and global milieu. One way of thinking about context is as a list of ingredients: historical traditions and patterns, economic possibilities and dependencies, colonial legacies, contemporary politics and policy processes, resources at system and classroom levels, teacher capacities, parental expectations, examinations systems, and so on, all of which might shape the emergence of LCP in policy and its implementation in practice. The long history of LCP implementation difficulties documented in the International Journal of Educational Development points to this kind of analysis—a traditional CIE “factors and forces” understanding of context and how the global phenomenon of LCP embeds in it. Variables, such as large class sizes, minimal teacher preparation and understanding, and the washback effects of high-stakes content-driven examinations, in isolation or combination explain the “failure” (Schweisfurth, 2011). An alternative perspective, and one gaining traction in comparative studies, is to think of each context as an ecosystem. This conceptual approach found an early voice in the work of King (1965) and more recently in the work of Hufton and Elliott (2000), Rappleye and Komatsu (2017), and Schweisfurth and Elliott (2019). This perspective brings together the two sides of Alexander’s definition of pedagogy: both the observable behavior and the theoretical assumptions that lie behind it. This perspective helps to explain why pedagogy is so difficult to move in the direction of learner-centeredness: it is not just about particular “barriers” but about how the system works as a whole and how particular aspects of it reinforce the others. So, for example, an examinations-driven system is not an isolated factor: it may reflect and reinforce, for example, particular cultural attitudes to knowledge and authority; beliefs about how learners are motivated; colonial legacies or anti-colonial drivers; a quest for equality through an entitlement curriculum and the same test for all; a political answer to the perennial “standards” debate; a resource-driven need for screening to control access to higher levels of the system; a mindset into which parents have been socialized and through which they attempt to get competitive advantage for their own children; and demands from higher education systems for students who have been prepared through hard work and who have a shared foundation of knowledge for their further studies. Therefore, it is not a simple question of removing the “barrier” to LCP implementation—its embeddedness across the system makes this not one isolated change but a systemic transformation with potentially many unintended consequences. Beyond this challenge of pedagogical change, a post-colonial perspective on LCP questions its origins and the vectors of its movement as a travelling policy. Its promotion by aid agencies and richer nations’ agenda-setting at the global level have led some scholars to argue that it is an example of cultural imperialism (Guthrie, 2011; Tabulawa, 2003), whether intended or not (Thomas and Vavrus, 2019). There is also evidence that learners learn better when they are taught in ways that resonate with their own cultures (Sternberg, 2007). The big—and empirically challenging—question, therefore, becomes whether LCP is simply not appropriate in all contexts, or whether, under the right conditions, working towards it with sensitivity to context would lead to improvements in educational quality, and outcomes of all kinds, which are worth striving for universally.
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CONCLUSIONS The discussion in this chapter illustrates how an apparently simple and appealing teaching method becomes complex, multi-faceted, and contested when seen through the prism of its underpinning theories and ideologies and evidence on the challenges of implementation. Comparative perspectives help to illuminate these and to show how context shapes all of the above. The level of scholarly interest in LCP has grown and there are early signs that even international agencies long wedded to LCP have started to step back from pedagogical prescriptions in the light of growing evidence. Apart from the increasing attention by CIE scholars, the apparently ineluctable influence of PISA tests and their ensuing global rankings raises the obvious question of whether learner-centered pedagogy leads to improved outcomes, with Finland and Canada on the one hand and Singapore and Shanghai on the other continuing to rank highly but with very different pedagogical pathways to success. Beyond the academic outcomes question lies a set of issues about the building of democratic societies and schools as fundamental building blocks for this. However, it is one thing to say that children’s fundamental rights need to be respected in the classroom; it is another to say that only learner-centered pedagogies can achieve this. The ‘yea/boo’ story of LCP’s spread is not going to resolve quickly. However, in a book about theory in CIE it is important to step back from the normative or “what works” view and to see LCP as a fascinating phenomenon, holding within it the geopolitics of globalization and asymmetries of power and influence, a rich set of theoretical traditions, and empirical challenges for understanding the relationship between context and education.
FURTHER READING 1. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York, NY: Macmillan. 2. Piaget, J. (1967). Logique et connaissance scientifique. Paris, France: Gallimard. 3. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Interaction between learning and development. In M. Cole (trans.), Mind in society (pp. 79–91). Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. 4. Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Herder and Herder. 5. Brodie, K., Lelliott, A., and Davis, H. (2002). Form and substance in learner-centered teaching: Teachers’ uptake from an in-service program in South Africa. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(5), 541–559. 6. du Plessis, J., and Muzaffar, I. (2010). Professional learning communities in the teachers’ college: A resource for teacher educators. EQUIP 1, USAID. Retrieved from www.equip123. net/docs/e1-PLCResource.pdf. 7. Schweisfurth, M. (2013). Learner-centred education in international perspective: Whose pedagogy for whose development? London, UK : Routledge. 8. Vavrus, F., Thomas, M. A. M., and Bartlett, L. (2011). Ensuring quality by attending to inquiry: Learner-centered pedagogy in sub-Saharan Africa. Addis Ababa, Éthiopie: UNESCO-IICBA .
MINI CASE STUDY Tanzania is an appropriate location in which to examine the application of constructivism and learner-centered pedagogy for two reasons. First, Tanzania is one country that, at least rhetorically, has fully embraced the shift toward LCP. Policies from the early 2000s started to include references to Education for All, UNICEF’s Child Friendly Schools, and other global commitments related to more learner-centered methods and pedagogies (Bartlett and Mogusu, 2013). A curriculum reform in 2005 also moved the policy and
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practice needle toward LCP, as teachers were now expected to “use only those participatory and learner-centered strategies” (MOEC, 2005, p. v) in their teaching. Teacher educators and tutors in teacher education programs and institutions were also supposed to implement aspects of LCP related to Schweisfurth’s (2013) spectrum noted above: “tutors will not be the sole sources of knowledge but will act as facilitators providing a broad range of learning experiences” (TIE, 2013, p. 22). Second, unlike some other nation-states where constructivism has either not been implemented or documented, Tanzania has experienced a considerable number of interventions from government agencies and NGOs as well as research explorations from academics. Many of these have explicitly analyzed the notion of LCP in situ, and the extent to which teaching and schooling are being reformed toward more constructivist and learner-centered approaches. Indeed, multiple investigations have examined the introduction and implementation of LCP across various stakeholders, including but not limited to primary school teachers (Barrett, 2007), secondary teachers (Mtitu, 2014), science teachers (Anney, 2013), pre-service teachers (Vavrus, 2009), and teacher educators (Thomas and Salema, 2017). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the proposed transformation toward LCP has largely not occurred in Tanzania. While in some instances teacher professional development has led to small pedagogical changes (Vavrus and Bartlett, 2013; Vavrus et al., 2011), systematic reform has proven to be challenging at best, due at least in part to limited modelling of LCP for pre-service teachers by teacher educators (Thomas et al., 2019), among other issues. Indeed, studies have identified multiple instances where teacher educators—having often never experienced LCP and its social constructivist principles in classrooms as students—lecture their pre-service students about the benefits of group work and the coconstruction of knowledge (Hardman et al., 2012; Ottevanger et al., 2007). These instances highlight the deeply philosophical and practical implications for constructivist teaching and learning, and some of the ways in which this global LCP phenomenon has been limited in its holistic application across contexts.
REFERENCES Alexander, R. J. (2009). Towards a comparative pedagogy. In R. Cowen and A. M. Kazamias (Eds.), International handbook of comparative education (pp. 923–941). Dordrecht: Springer. Alexander, R. J. (2015). Teaching and learning for all? The quality imperative revisited. International Journal for Educational Development, 40, 250–258. Altinyelken, H. K. (2010). Pedagogical renewal in sub-Saharan Africa: The case of Uganda. Comparative Education, 46(2), 151–171. Anderson-Levitt, K. M., and Diallo, B. B. (2003). Teaching by the book in Guinea. In K. M. Anderson-Levitt (Ed.), Local meanings, global schooling (pp. 75–97). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Anney, V. N. (2013). Supporting licensed science teachers’ professional development in adopting learner-centred pedagogy in Tanzanian secondary schools (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Waikato, New Zealand. Barrett, A. M. (2007). Beyond the polarization of pedagogy: Models of classroom practice in Tanzanian primary schools. Comparative Education, 43(2), 273–294. Bartlett, L., and Mogusu, E. (2013). Teachers’ understandings and implementation of learnercentered pedagogy. In F. Vavrus and L. Bartlett (Eds.), Teaching in tension: International pedagogies, national policies, and teachers’ practices in Tanzania (pp. 61–74). Boston, MA: Sense Pub.
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Bartlett, L., and Vavrus, F. (2013). Testing and teaching. In F. Vavrus and L. Bartlett (Eds.), Teaching in tension: International pedagogies, national policies, and teachers’ practices in Tanzania (pp. 93–113). Boston, MA : Sense Pub. Beeby, C. E. (1966). The quality of education in developing countries. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. Brinkmann, S. (2015). Learner-centred education reforms in India: The missing piece of teachers’ beliefs. Policy Futures in Education, 13(3), 342–359. Brinkmann, S. (2019). Teachers’ beliefs and educational reform in India: From “learnercentred” to “learning-centred” education. Comparative Education, 55(1), 9–29. Britton, A., Schweisfurth, M., and Slade, B. (2019). Of myths and monitoring: Learner-centred education as a political project in Scotland. Comparative Education, 55(1), 30–46. Brodie, K., Lelliott, A., and Davis, H. (2002). Forms and substance in learner-centred teaching: Teachers’ take-up from an in-service programme in South Africa. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(5), 541–559. Chisholm, L., and Leyendecker, R. (2008). Curriculum reform in post-1990s sub-Saharan Africa. International Journal of Educational Development, 28, 195–205. Croft, A. (2002). Singing under a tree: Does oral culture help lower primary teachers be learner-centred? International Journal of Educational Development, 22(3–4), 321–337. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York, NY: Macmillan. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York, NY: Macmillan. Di Biase, R. (2015). Policy, pedagogy, and priorities: Exploring stakeholder perspectives on active learning in the Maldives. Prospects, 45(2), 213–229. Di Biase, R. (2019). Moving beyond the teacher-centred/learner-centred dichotomy: implementing a structured model of active learning in the Maldives. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 49(4), 565–583. du Plessis, J., and Muzaffar, I. (2010). Professional learning communities in the teachers’ college: A resource for teacher educators. EQUIP 1, USAID . Retrieved from www.equip123.net/ docs/e1-PLCResource.pdf Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York NY: Herder and Herder. Giordan, A. (1995). New models for the learning process: Beyond constructivism? Prospects, 25(1), 101–118. Gordon, M. (2009). The misuses and effective uses of constructivist teaching. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 15(6), 737–746. Guthrie, G. (2011). The progressive education fallacy in developing countries: In favour of formalism. Dordrecht: Springer. Harber, C., and Davies, L. (2005). School management and effectiveness in developing countries: The post-bureaucratic school. London, UK : Continuum. Hardman, F., Abd-Kadir, J., and Tibuhinda, A. (2012). Reforming teacher education in Tanzania. International Journal of Educational Development, 32(6), 826–834. Henson, K. (2003). Foundations for learner-centered education: A knowledge base. Education, 124(1), 5–15. Hufton, N., and Elliott, J. (2000). Motivation to learn: The pedagogical nexus in the Russian school: Some implications for transnational research and policy-borrowing. Educational Studies, 26(1), 115–136. King, E. J. (1965). The purpose of comparative education. Comparative Education, 1(3), 147–159. van de Kuilen, H. S., Altinyelken, H. K., Voogt, J. M., and Nzabalirwa, W. (2019). Policy adoption of learner-centred pedagogy in Rwanda: A case study of its rationale and transfer mechanisms. International Journal of Educational Development, 67, 64–72.
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McCombs, B. (2001). What do we know about learners and learning? The learner-centered framework: Bringing the educational system into balance. Educational Horizons, 79(4), 182–193. McCombs, B. L., and Whisler, J. S. (1997). The learner-centered classroom and school: Strategies for increasing student motivation and achievement. San Francisco, CA : Jossey-Bass. Michel, J. B., Shen, Y. K., Aiden, A. P., Veres, A., Gray, M. K., Pickett, J. P., . . . and Pinker, S. (2011). Quantitative analysis of culture using millions of digitized books. Science, 331(6014), 176–182. Ministry of Education and Culture [MOEC]. (2005). Civics syllabus for secondary schools— Form I-IV . Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Institute of Education. Mtika, P., and Gates, P. (2010). Developing learner-centred education among secondary trainee teachers in Malawi: The dilemma of appropriation and application. International Journal of Educational Development, 30(4), 396–404. Mtitu, E. A. (2014). Learner-centred teaching in Tanzania: Geography teachers’ perceptions and experiences (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Nykiel-Herbert, B. (2004). Mis-constructing knowledge: The case of learner-centered pedagogy in South Africa. Prospects, 42(3), 249–265. O’Sullivan, M. (2004). The reconceptualisation of learner-centred approaches: A Namibian case study. International journal of educational development, 24(6), 585–602. Ottevanger, W., Van Den Akker, J., and Feither, L. (2007). Developing science, mathematics and ICT education in sub-Saharan Africa: Patterns and promising practices. Africa region human development: Working paper series. Washington, DC : The World Bank. Palincsar, A. S. (1998). Social constructivist perspectives on teaching and learning. Annual Review of Psychology, 49, 345–375. Piaget, J. (1967). Logique et connaissance scientifique. Paris, France: Gallimard. Rappleye, J., and Komatsu, H. (2017). How to make lesson study work in America and worldwide: A Japanese perspective on the onto-cultural basis of (teacher) education. Research in Comparative and International Education, 12(4), 398–430. Schuh, K. (2004). Learner-centered principles in teacher-centered practices? Teaching and Teacher Education, 20(8), 833–846. Schweisfurth, M. (2000). Teachers, democratisation and educational reform in Russia and South Africa. Oxford, UK : Symposium books. Schweisfurth, M. (2011). Learner-centred education in developing country contexts: From solution to problem? International Journal of Educational Development, 31(5), 425–432 Schweisfurth, M. (2013). Learner-centred education in international perspective: Whose pedagogy for whose development? London, UK : Routledge. Schweisfurth, M. (2015). Learner-centred pedagogy: Towards a post-2015 agenda for teaching and learning. International Journal of Educational Development, 40, 259–266. Schweisfurth, M., and Elliott, J. (2019). When ‘best practice’ meets the pedagogical nexus: Recontextualization, reframing and resilience. Special issue of Comparative Education, 55, 1–8. Schweisfurth, M., Thomas, M. A. M., and Smail, A. (2020). Revisiting comparative pedagogy: Methodologies, themes and research communities since 2000. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. Sikoyo, L. (2010). Contextual challenges of implementing learner-centred pedagogy: The case of the problem-solving approach in Uganda. Cambridge Journal of Education, 40(3), 247–263. Starkey, L. (2019). Three dimensions of student-centred education: A framework for policy and practice. Critical Studies in Education, 60(3), 375–390.
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Sternberg, R. J. (2007). Culture, instruction, and assessment. Comparative Education, 43(1), 5–22. Sriprakash, A. (2010). Child-centred education and the promise of democratic learning: Pedagogic messages in rural Indian primary schools. International Journal of Educational Development, 30, 297–304. Tabulawa, R. (2003). International aid agencies, learner-centred pedagogy and political democratization: A critique. Comparative Education, 39(1), 7–26. Tabulawa, R. (2009). Education reform in Botswana: Reflections on policy contradictions and paradoxes. Comparative Education, 45(1), 87–107. Tan, C. (2017). Constructivism and pedagogical reform in China: Issues and challenges. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 15(2), 238–247. Thomas, M. A. M., and Salema, V. (2017). Learning about teaching: A collaborative research exploration of learner-centered pedagogy in Tanzania. In C. Smith, and K. Hudson (Eds.), Faculty development in developing countries: Improving teaching quality in higher education (pp. 64–85). New York, NY: Routledge. Thomas, M. A. M., and Vavrus, F. (2019). The “Pluto problem”: Reflexivities of discomfort in teacher professional development. Critical Studies in Education DOI: 10.1080/17508487.2019.1587782. Thomas, M. A. M., Chachage, K., and Komba, W. (2019). Teacher education in Tanzania: Advancing access, equity, and quality. In K. G. Karras and C. C. Wolhuter (Eds.), International handbook of teacher education worldwide (Revised and Augmented Ed, 3, 477–493). Nicosia: HM Studies. Thorton, L., and McEntee, M. (1995). Learner centered schools as a mindset, and the connection with mindfulness and multiculturalism. Theory Into Practice, 34(4), 250–257. Tanzania Institute of Education [TIE]. (2013). Curriculum for diploma in teacher education programmes in Tanzania. Dar es Salaam: Ministry of Education and Vocational Training. UNESCO. (2000). The Dakar framework for action—education for all: Meeting our collective commitments. Paris: UNESCO. UNICEF. (2012). Life skills—Child friendly schools. Retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/ lifeskills/index_7260.html Vavrus, F. (2009). The cultural politics of constructivist pedagogies: Teacher education reform in the United Republic of Tanzania. International Journal of Educational Development, 29(3), 303–311. Vavrus, F., Thomas, M. A. M., and Bartlett, L. (2011). Ensuring quality by attending to inquiry: Learner-centered pedagogy in sub-Saharan Africa. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: UNESCO-IICBA . Vavrus, F., and Bartlett, L. (2012). Comparative pedagogies and epistemological diversity: Social and materials contexts of teaching in Tanzania. Comparative Education Review, 56(4), 634–658. Vavrus, F., and Bartlett, L. (Eds.). (2013). Teaching in tension: International pedagogies, national policies, and teachers’ practices in Tanzania. Boston, MA : Sense Pub. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Interaction between learning and development. In M. Cole (trans.), Mind in society (pp. 79–91). Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. World Bank. (1999). Education sector strategy. Washington, DC , World Bank. Young, M. (2014). The curriculum and the entitlement to knowledge. Research seminar at Magdalene College, Cambridge. Retrieved from www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/ Images/166279-the-curriculum-and-the-entitlement-to-knowledge-prof-michael-young.pdf
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Differentiation Theory and Externalization in Comparative and International Education Understanding the Intersections of the Global and the Local MARCELO PARREIRA DO AMARAL AND MARVIN ERFURTH
INTRODUCTION Social problems and phenomena investigated by comparative and international education (CIE) scholars are usually complex, reciprocally interdependent across locales and analytical levels. The myriad intersections of the global and the local that CIE scholars commonly address require diverse conceptual lenses and theories. CIE research objects are usually complex and highly diverse, ranging from educational institutions in local contexts to macro-structural social phenomena in relation to global developments. Few single theories applied in CIE research offer a variety of possible applications to such a multitude of scientific problems and social phenomena under investigation. Differentiation theory—or often also called systems theory—is one of these rather multi-faceted theories which not only contributed to theoretical debates in the past and enabled new perspectives on doing research itself, such as how comparativists (co-)construct the global phenomena they investigate, but one that to date still opens up new vistas in contemporary research. Against this backdrop, this chapter will provide a succinct introduction to differentiation theory and externalization and provide an overview of its application in CIE, but more importantly also trace its disciplinary and theoretical origins and expound some key analytical distinctions. The chapter begins with some conceptual considerations about systemic thinking and differentiation, thus linking older versions of systems theory and differentiation Theory. Second, it introduces differentiation theory and externalization and elaborates on key conceptual distinctions, highlighting central analytical contributions, thereby distinguishing these theories from competing approaches. In a third section, their application to comparative and international research in education is reviewed to provide 313
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a concise account of central adaptations and contributions, drawing attention to their relevance for current research in the field. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of ongoing debates and critiques.
OVERVIEW Systemic thinking and differentiation—some conceptual considerations Systemic thinking is an interdisciplinary approach in the natural and social sciences that aims to investigate phenomena from a holistic approach. While it can be traced back as far as to Greek antiquity with Aristotle’s notion of holism, its modern conceptual origins are linked to the nineteenth-century evolution theory of Charles Darwin (1809– 1882) and the work of European sociologists Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) and Émile Durkheim (1858–1917). In short, systemic thinking conceptualizes various types of systems. Systems are seen to display numerous features, including: (1) complexity as point of departure for system-formation, (2) a form of internal networked structures connecting system elements, (3) the interdependence of the parts of a system, (4) the relation of any structure and process in a system to its environment(s), (5) the assumption of equilibrium and continuous (re-)adaptations to environmental demands, and (6) and internal self-organization as the principal means of responding to external impulses. In general, systemic thinking shifts attention from parts to the whole and considers the observed reality as integrated and interacting. Two main variants of systems theory may be distinguished: first, general systems theory, influential primarily among biologists, chemists, physicists, and mathematicians (von Bertalanffy, 1968; von Foerster, 1981); and second, as a paradigm of sociological theory heavily influenced by the writings of Parsons (1937; 1951) and Luhmann (1984; 1997). While the terms (social) systems theory and differentiation theory may be used synonymously, it has become conventional to use the latter to refer to Niklas Luhmann’s (1984; 1997) version. This is also the case because CIE scholars tend to adopt Luhmann’s valuable contributions to the theory which are discussed below, which will then be further elaborated and referred to throughout this chapter. The term differentiation has been central in sociological systems theory since at least the 1940s, when scholars posed questions such as “what makes social order possible? What are the constituent structures of a social system? Or, what functions help it to endure?” In particular, departing from the assumption that social systems consist of structures, and then also searching for the (pre-)conditions for their stable continuance, there is a necessity to reduce complexity for making analysis possible. One way of reducing complexity when thinking about modern civilization has been conceiving them along structural-functionalist lines (see Chapter 1), which involves identifying (sub-)systems based on the specialized functions they fulfill, and then denoting analytical boundaries around/between them. Structural-functionalist thinking, which will be further elaborated below, provided a basis to conceive of society as composed of (and structured along) subsystems that developed in evolutionary processes of functional differentiation, a process we could further describe as specialization within and of a system (Parsons, 1951). Differentiation here is seen as a process by which complexity is reduced and can be dealt with by separating what belongs to a system and what counts as its environment. But, it is also a means to increase complexity since the distinction system–environment can be
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used recursively to distinguish sub-systems that are functionally defined and make connections with other sub-systems. These features make systems theory a valuable way to think about dynamic societal change and using “systems analysis to disclose the structures and processes which characterize the societal system” (Luhmann, 1982, p. 131). In line with the summary description above, differentiation in this systemic conceptual frame is to be distinguished from rather static types of differentiation, such as segmental or horizontal (in different segments), stratifying or vertical (in different hierarchies or ranks); or a combination of both, such as in center–periphery distinctions (Wallerstein, 1974). A more complex type of differentiation is called specialization or, more precisely, functional differentiation, which ascribes specific and specialized functions to particular sub-systems as will be further discussed below (Luhmann, 1997). A central difference between an older version of sociological systemic thinking— figuring prominently in the work of American sociologist Parsons (1902–1979)—and a more recent system-theoretic conception—with German sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998) as a key figure—may be seen in how these two scholars defined “system.” For Parsons (1978), a possible way of phrasing it would be “action is system” since he saw single actions as the basic units constituting a system,1 whereas for Luhmann (1984; 1997) communication is the defining operation constituting of a social system. The following section introduces briefly differentiation theory and the notion of externalization.
Differentiation theory and externalization Luhmann’s (1982) writings on a differentiation theory presupposed much of the work done by Parsons (1937; 1951), but they also changed it in important ways. Starting from a phenomenological understanding of environment led Luhmann (1984) to look for differences and contrasts, rather than simply for the multiplicity of other systems that constitute the environment of a system (as assumed by Parsons). Luhmann (1982; 1984), as pointed out by Stichweh (2011), saw systems as constituted by the very process of establishing and stabilizing a difference towards their environments. A further innovation pertains the integration of cybernetic thinking with communication theory, since for Luhmann (1982; 1984) systems represent ways of processing meaning. While cybernetic thinking refers to ways of understanding systems as closed regulatory circuits, as developed by Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) in the mid-twentieth-century investigating questions of control and communication, different strands of communication theory generally inform the different ways information and meaning are conveyed. Though meaning may be seen as selected from innumerous alternatives, those alternatives not chosen remain included in the system; communication thus is taken as constitutive of systems. And since systems—and sub-systems—specialize on certain solutions for (sub-)system-specific communication in modern society—economy, science, religion, law, education and so on—functional communication/differentiation may be seen as the guiding principle of structuration in contemporary society. According to Luhmann (1984; 1990), social stratification has been replaced by functional differentiation as the primary means of
This is exemplified by Parsons’ (1978) AGIL model of action (A= Adaptation, G= Goal Attainment, I= Integration; L= Latent).
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building sub-systems within the larger system of society. Whereas in stratified social systems (e.g., feudal societies) rank in nobility, social status, etc., was the structuring principle constituting various sub-systems, in modern, functionally differentiated societies communication not people are constitutive of systems. A comprehensive discussion of differentiation theory goes well beyond the scope of this chapter; therefore, the following paragraphs concentrate only on a few central elements of Luhmann’s (1984) differentiation theory (see for further readings Luhmann 1984, 1997, vols. 1 and 2). These include three essential elements for social systems: difference, autopoietic operative closure, and self-reference. Instead of assuming that social systems are constituted by human individuals (and their relationships) as society’s basic units, Luhmann (1984) conceptualizes the emergence of systems at the very abstract level of the establishment of difference and of communicative events. The establishment of difference refers first to the basic distinction between system and environment (as noted above) and its recursive application to distinguish sub-systems. Systems emerge from these modes of operation—and in contrast to other separated (different) operations—and create system-specific environments. The operations through which social systems emerge are described as communication, which are connected to previous communicative events in a specific manner. The uninterrupted juxtaposition of communication operations, which Luhmann (1984) terms the “communication of communication,” give rise to social systems. The operation of communication, in turn, is described as the unity of utterance, information, and understanding as selective instances and can be considered as the basic unit for the observation and assessment of the operations of social systems. Systems, in this sense, are not stable or static structures but rather consist of a multiplicity of ever-changing communicative events. As such, communication as a synthesis of the selections of utterance, information and understanding cannot be reduced to single psychic systems or individual consciousness and is seen by Luhmann (1984; 1997) as the ultimate constituent of social systems. This mode of operation—differentiation, or the distinction from other operations—is characterized by an autopoietic closed circuit. Autopoiesis refers to a complex system reproducing all its elements and all its structures in an operationally closed process, that is, using only its own elements. In this sense, the autopoietic operation communication is not simple transfer or action that depends on intentionality, but rather on a processing of selections and a synthesis of the three selective instances (Luhmann, 1984). Operative closure means that there is no direct connection between system and environment. The operations of different systems cannot penetrate or directly connect to operations of one another. This closure makes it possible for the system to create its own complexity and identity—and the more complex, the greater its ability to know its environment. This operative closure is also the reason for self-reference as a constitutive element of systems. Self-reference represents an operative mode by which systems stabilize and separate themselves completely from their environments. Self-referential systems have the ability to establish relationships with themselves and differentiate these relationships from relations with their environment. Self-reference may be illustrated by systems theory itself: from the perspective of differentiation theory, society as a social system cannot be regarded as something existing out there, which can be described and explained by a theory independent of it, but rather as comprising its own theory. Thus, the writing of such a social theory is seen as part of the society itself. Therefore, a theory of the comprehensive social system is created within society, which will be described and explained by it. Selfreference reduces the complexity of the world through selective arrangements; however,
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as mentioned above, what is not selected remains as part of the system, so to say they are included by exclusion. While the environment cannot be represented fully within the system, it is possible to establish differences within the system that respond to differences in the environment and thus enable information for the system to be generated, usually in the form of reflection theories. These instances where self-reference needs to be interrupted are referred to as externalization. This is the focus of the following paragraphs.
The notion of externalization Scholars working in the field of CIE turned to differentiation approaches to shed light on how research on globalization and internationalization differently deals with constructions of internationality and instances of diffusion/borrowing and lending of educational ideas and policy. A central debate referred to intensified processes of internationalization and globalization and their impact on education, on one hand, and to the role and function of CIE on the other. The point of departure may be seen in a long-standing line of reasoning in CIE that derived from the observation of an intensified international/global exchange in the field of education since the late nineteenth-century. While this line of reasoning serves as a function, it also serves as a justification for scientific CIE as a field to monitor and reflect upon such developments (Schneider, 1931/32). On the one hand, and in line with the differentiation theoretic foil expounded above, this could be conceived of as a differentiation process of a specific sub-system within the education system devoted to researching internationalization and globalization processes and their effects on education. On the other hand, primarily as a methodological critique, some scholars—for instance, Schriewer (2000)—challenged the usefulness of assigning to CIE “the functions of reflecting, supporting, and legitimizing ongoing processes of internationalization of educational systems and educational theory” (p. 306). According to Schriewer (2000), such an approach would only obfuscate comparative scholars with its tendency to bolster and endorse the intensification of internationalization in education. For him, the role of comparative education lies rather in its capacity to shed light on “the complexity of these interconnections” (p. 307). For the moment, scholars in the comparative branch of education research “may be assumed to actively—and, in a sense, politically—uncritically help construct the assumed ‘world-society’” (Schriewer, 2000, p. 307). Scholars do so inasmuch as they recursively adopt the semantic of world-systems, internationalization, globalization, etc., in their conceptual and methodological work. Hence, Schriewer’s (2000) focus shifted to networks of national-cultural differentiation of interrelationships said to interrupt the processes of convergence wrought by international/ global forces, while acknowledging worldwide interdependencies deemed new in contemporary history. Schriewer (2000) draws a parallel between the “classical social sciences” (p. 311) at the end of the nineteenth-century and the world-system theories in the closing of the twentieth-century. The first “saw itself as a response to the altered social reality” of the time; the latter (world-system models),2 in an analogy to the first, maintain “that social
Other models have been developed since the 1950s (e.g., with reference to dependency theory): Wallerstein (1974) elaborated an approach based on economic expansion since the Middle Ages; Meyer et al. (1992) draw from the concept of universalization of sociocultural organization patterns, particularly the nation-state; functional differentiation built the basis for Luhmann’s model of world-system. Communication—which does not make a halt before national borders—gives rise to one world-system (Luhmann, 1990).
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macrostructures” at the present time can only be fully understood if the global dimension is considered (Schriewer, 2000, p. 311). The World Society or, more precisely, the World System characterizes a theoretical construct sprung from the dimension of history-of-science, according to which paradigm shifts have, by and large, “corresponded to an inversion in the basic model of social order” (Schriewer, 2000, p. 311). The World System as “an emerging reality sui generis, ‘as a collective reality exogenous to nations’ is substantiated by findings from different fields of comparative social research” (as cited in Schriewer, 2000, p. 312). The analyses informed by World System perspectives also include the study of particular functional subsystems of society, e.g., the education system. It is exactly this “social problem area” that Schriewer (2000) suggests to analyze findings from “comparative social inquiry” (p. 312). Global expansion of education, the spread of particular models of institutionalized schooling, the wide recognition of a particular developmental and educational ideology, and the emergence of networks of scientific communication and publishing structures were taken as proof of global alignment along similar models. Schooling was viewed as an “evolutionary universal,” to use a Parsonian term, a social field oriented by universalistic interpretations, in which the “predominant prognostic models” (Parsons, 1964, p. 339) tainted problem-solving assumptions. Problem areas and solutions for these problems in the framework of world polity seemed to have been “determined by almost law-like macro-social causal or functional relationships” (Schriewer, 2000, p. 318). Nonetheless, further comparative research suggested a fair amount of variation in problem-solving patterns and strategies. Schriewer (2000) referred to those findings in order not so much to refute or dismiss the analytical claims of world culture, but rather to insert a certain dialectical viewpoint in processes of internationalization and international variation. The latter point marks a crucial difference to other conceptual frameworks of globalization and internationalization. The interrelationship networks alluded to in Schriewer’s (2000) study about the internationalization of education and the role of comparative inquiry is educed from results of three different research areas in comparative social sciences. In different countries these still seem to be pervaded by the relationship between the educational and other social policies studied (1) the intertwining of “employment and labor-market policy” and “social and educational policy,” (2) the entanglements of “vocational educational and training systems, qualification structures of the labor force, and work organization in large-scale manufacturing units,” and (3) the “connections between education, modernization, and development” (Schriewer 2000, p. 318, emphasis in original). The findings in all three strands of empiric historical-comparative inquiry showed, according to Schriewer (1999; 2000), a wide range of variation, “an observable multiplicity of varying interrelationship networks and developmental paths” (1999, p. 75; 2000, p. 322). These distinct national patterns of social relation networks have to be taken into account—a fact largely disregarded by world polity research, according to Schriewer (2000)—for they derive from distinct traditions within the national contexts and cannot be dismissed as deficits or simple idiosyncrasies. These interrelationship networks have developed in long processes of adaptation and solidification in which they proved robust. These distinct national patterns and structures prove resistant to modifications; they are likely to set bounds and limits for the integration of elements coming from connections outside the respective cultural/social unit (Schriewer, 2000). They will re-contextualize, or in terms of Luhmann’s (1984; 1997) theory of systems, translate them into the system’s
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inner-logic, and maintain a large array of “historical-cultural patterns” (Schriewer, 2000, p. 321). Schriewer (2000) argues for thorough analyses of these “interrelationship networks and developmental paths” (p. 321); instead of incorporating them in world polity perspectives; for him, their complexity should be examined in comparative long-term research. Phenomena of internationalization and persistent nation-specific patterning are not unrelated polarities. They are linked to and condition each other; this fact precludes researchers from understanding them in unilinear or evolutionistic terms (Schriewer, 2000 ). Discussions concerning processes of internationalization, globalization and the like versus indigenization, fragmentation, etc., support Schriewer’s (2000) assertions. In a similar reasoning, the dissemination of knowledge through transnational communication channels is also constrained by processes of “adaptation” and “reinterpretation” by the recipients, who select and incorporate innovations according to their own interests and adapt them to their precise local situation and needs (Schriewer, 2000). Schriewer (2000) identifies the existence of: an abstract universalism of transnationally standardized educational models which fans out into multiform structural patterns wherever such models interact [with nationspecific structures [. . .], in the course of institutional implementation, with different State-defined frameworks, legal and administrative regulations, forms of division of labor in society, national academic cultures, context-bound social meanings, and religious worldviews. In other words, the school as an “evolutionary universal” turns out to be not so much universal as socioculturally particular as soon as one systematically analyzes the multiple interrelationships between educational credentials and the privileges they bestow. —p. 326 Schriewer (2000) explores the notion of externalization, or more precisely, “the need for externalization” (p. 305). Drawing from differentiation theory, he adopts the concept of “reflection theory” and notions of self-reference and reflexivity to view educational theory as a “reflection theory of the educational system developed within the educational system” (Schriewer, 2000, p. 331). Educational reflection theory is understood as the development of self-descriptions within this functionally differentiated sub-system of society to advance the self-understanding and self-controlling competences of this system. Self-referential systems (which can only be thought of in the distinction of a system and its environment), however, need interruptions of their circular relations of interdependence. Systems open themselves to their environments and processes identified by Luhmann and Schorr (1979) as patterns of externalization take place. Three forms of externalization were identified by Luhmann and Schorr (1979) (1) the reference to apriori “general principles of scientific rationality” (p. 341), (2) the allusion to values, and (3) the reference to organization. These “externalizations to world situations” serve the purpose of stabilizing the system—in the case of the education system, education as a “demarcated” academic discipline with a particular theoretical knowledge; education can, in this way, also refrain from adopting “a priori or dogmatic assumptions” (Schriewer, 1990, p. 65, emphasis in original). In addition, recurring to values replace other justifications for its taking action. And finally, referring to organizations makes possible the externalization of responsibilities for miscarriages or negligence (Schriewer, 1990). For Schriewer (1990), describing or adopting external (in this case, international) situations comes towards
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meeting the requirement of “the structural need for externalization of reflection theories,” despite the gaps between internal organizational structure and efficiency criteria (p. 62). The consequences of these procedures are either results of an interested search for “supplementary meaning” used as points of reference in intra-systemic discussions, or part of the “borrowing/lending” strategies and policies (Schriewer, 1990, p. 64). In short, the notions of interrelationship networks and externalization suggest that the sway external/international constituencies may bear on national units is restricted, and it seems to be worth analyzing the changed constellations in the field of education and educational policy respectively. The lens is capable of providing insights into processes of structuration and structural organization in the field of education; this is reasonable and beneficial provided not only macro-social aspects are considered. In addition, a concern for the micro-level is necessary, and in this, the concept of interrelationship networks may prove valuable in laying bare the “blind spots” (blinde Flecken) of other types of systemic thinking.
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION The following section will focus on two different ways externalization has been applied to recent CIE research by scholars. First, as an analytical lens for investigating and understanding educational phenomena and processes. Second, externalization has lately also been theorized as an active process in policymaking efforts. First, an early adoption of the notion of externalization in comparative education research arguably circulates most prominently in debates about policy-borrowing and lending (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004; Steiner-Khamsi and Waldow, 2012), in which direct connections are made to Schriewer’s (1990; 2000) work (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004; SteinerKhamsi and Waldow, 2012).The reason for this is that it “frames educational borrowing. . . as an act of externalization, in which. . . an. . . other. . . is evoked as a source of external authority for implementing reforms that otherwise would have been resisted” (SteinerKhamsi, 2004, p. 203). This also means that externalization is comprehended here as an analytical lens that can be adopted in policy analysis for understanding some changes in policymaking, reform, and so forth, in which potentially closed/cybernetic systems make reference to an other—the reasons for which are being tried to make sense of by the researcher within the spectrum of borrowing-lending approaches (Rappleye, 2006; 2012; Schriewer and Martinez, 2004; Vavrus, 2004). One example for such an adoption of externalization as an analytical lens is Takayama’s (2009) study on Japanese education reform. Here, Takayama (2009) describes how Japanese policymakers made external references to successful PISA countries, and Finland in particular, as a “key discursive tool” for using Finnish education in Japanese education reform (p. 53). The author nonetheless raises the concern to advance debates about externalization in policy analysis by utilizing sociological literature on culture and modernity, arguing that the “externalization thesis [. . .] [otherwise] tends to undertheorize the question of why it works to mobilize people at a particular time in history” (Takayama, 2009, p. 68). More recent adoptions in a similar fashion can, for instance, be found in projects, such as “Policy Knowledge and Lesson Drawing in Nordic School Reform in an Era of International Comparison” coordinated at the University of Oslo, which explores Norwegian policymaker’s use of research and studies from other countries in informing Norway’s 2020 incremental school reform. In this context, externalization is highlighted
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as “a useful interpretive framework for explaining the receptiveness towards, or frequency of, regional and international references” (Baek et al., 2017, p. 11) in current education reform. Regarding the second way of adopting externalization3 in international comparative research, Damro and Friedman (2018) argue that the European Union’s higher education policy is an active form of exerting influence not only over member but also non-member states’ education sectors.4 In their analysis, the authors explore how the Bologna Process, which basically created a common higher education area cutting across European member states’ still existing educational sovereignties, generated an additional, external space to domestic higher education policy inscribed with an identifiable agency. What Damro and Friedman (2018) argue is basically twofold: first, the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) can be understood as an external dimension influencing domestic education policy efforts within the Union while education has traditionally been understood as one of the prerogatives of nation states. Second, the EHEA (and the European Commission as an actor) actively uses its power to influence higher education policymaking outside the EHEA. Both aspects are made possible by use of mainly market based governance instruments, as well as the establishment of new actors and frameworks, which the authors systematize by way of two externalization tools. The first tool that Damro and Friedman (2018) describe is “supranational externalization through funding” (p. 1404). By way of creating different funding mechanisms for higher education provision and research, of which Erasmus+ might be the most prominent one when it comes to students and staff, standards and qualifications which are being diffused within as well as beyond the EHEA: as a tool, it requires non-European applications, as well as their national HEIs [higher education institutions], to comply with European HE [higher education] policy instruments like the European Credit Transfer System and the Learning-Outcome methodology. —Damro and Friedman, 2018, p. 1404 Student exchange therefore not only serves some noble causes, such as mutual understanding and the formation of European identities, but also the purpose of enlarging the growing European higher education market environment beyond the EHEA as an active tool used for externalization. The second tool in connection with the previous one is “supranational externalization by institutional infrastructure” (Damro and Friedman, 2018, pp. 1404–1406). Here, Damro and Friedman (2018) argue in connection with Robertson’s (2010) regulatory regionalism that through the establishment of new—or the reform of existing governing/ administrative bodies—in higher education the European Union is increasingly influencing higher education policy outside the EHEA. For instance, non-member states need to comply with European quality assurance standards in case of cooperation. Furthermore, Erasmus+ offices and expert pools for higher education reform have been created and established outside the EHEA. By way of their analysis, the authors contribute a novel
This strand has also been directly and indirectly influenced by a long-term discussion about the “external dimension” of Bologna (see Zgaga, 2006; Klemenˇc iˇc , 2019). 4 For further applications to comparative research see: in higher education research Lao (2015), in teacher training reforms Höstfält and Wermke (2011). 3
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perspective on understanding externalization in CIE research—as an active process— which is different from externalization as an analytical lens adopted in borrowing-lending approaches, potentially opening up new vistas for future research.
CONCLUSIONS Differentiation theory and externalization have contributed interesting insights to the theoretical debates in CIE. In particular, it has provided an analytical lens with which not only global trends and developments could be examined but also and importantly it has contributed a perspective for the reflection of how comparativists themselves deal with constructions of internationality, how they apply conceptually and methodologically key units of the field, such as borrowing and lending or diffusion approaches. Nonetheless, as a theoretical instrumentarium that aims at consistence and general applicability, it suffers from complexity of subject matter, but even more from convoluted writing style. In general, differentiation theory and its terminology are characterized by a peculiar circularity. Luhmann’s system theory is self-referential so that an understanding of parts of System Theory usually presupposes the understanding of other parts. Yet, students who persevere and get past the initial confusion and translation difficulties of the theory are well compensated for their efforts with a richness of analytical insights. As a sociological paradigm to theorizing and researching complexity, interrelationships, self-reference, and its interruptions—all central characteristics of CIE research— differentiation theory and externalization are attractive because of their analytical universalism, allowing for a multi-faceted approach to the analysis of social systems, be they schools at local level, (sub) national systems, policies, or global developments.
FURTHER READING 1. Luhmann, N. (1995). Social systems. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 2. Parsons, T. (1977). Social systems and the evolution of action theory. New York, NY: Free Press. 3. Rappleye, J. (2012). Reimagining attraction and “borrowing” in education. In G. SteinerKhamsi and F. Waldow (Eds.), Policy-borrowing and lending in education (pp. 121–147). New York, NY: Routledge. 4. Schriewer, J., and Martinez, C. (2004). Constructions of internationality in education. In G. Steiner-Khamsi (Ed.), The global politics of educational borrowing and lending (pp. 29–53). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. 5. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2012). Understanding policy-borrowing and lending. In G. SteinerKhamsi and F. Waldow (Eds.), Policy-borrowing and lending in education (pp. 3–17). New York, NY: Routledge.
MINI CASE STUDY An exemplar of adopting differentiation theory and externalization as an analytical lens within CIE is Schriewer and Martinez’s (2004) chapter on Constructions of Internationality in Education. Here, the authors focus on what they term “the degree and the dimensions of the ‘internationalization’ of educational knowledge” (Schriewer and Martinez, 2004, p. 43). The authors build their argument by reiterating some common claims of neo-institutionalist approaches, in particular around Meyer and Ramirez (1977;
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2000) who contributed prominent works to CIE research. Schriewer and Martinez (2004) summarize their claims as an “apparently all-pervasive dissemination of world-level patterns of political and cultural organization” (p. 40). After acknowledging the value of this school’s contributions, the authors, however, contest such beliefs from a comparative historical and sociological perspective by stating that “education, just as other social sciences [. . .], inevitably is shaped by historical and cultural factors” (Schriewer and Martinez, 2004, p. 42). They argue that a potentially more useful: framework suited to taking this characteristic into account is offered by Niklas Luhmann’s theories of self-referential social systems [. . .] and of functional differentiation of society [. . .]. Within this framework, educational theorizing is understood largely, although not exclusively, as self-referential system reflection. As such, it is rooted in and determined by varying contextual conditions and particular problems and issues, and by the distinct intellectual traditions and value systems characteristic of its respective system of reference and its related context of reflection. [. . .] A core concept that needs to be emphasized in the context of our argument is that of “externalization.” —Schriewer and Martinez, 2004, p. 42 Focusing on the “internationalization” of educational knowledge, Schriewer and Martinez (2004) concentrate on two broad aspects by studying the three countries—Spain, Russia, and China—comparatively. First, they “investigate the construction and reconstruction of international reference horizons and historical interpretations as embedded in the knowledge produced by representative [. . .] education journals” (Schriewer and Martinez, 2004, p. 43), and examine the receptivity within national reform debates with potential preferences regards particular states or societies. Second, they cross-temporally and crossculturally re-examine “some of the assumptions linked with world-system theory that contend with the worldwide institutionalization of standardized models of education and educational development” (Schriewer and Martinez, 2004, p. 44). By doing this and adopting differentiation theory and externalization as an analytical lens, Schriewer and Martinez (2004) are able to focus on intra-societal reflection processes, which then highlight idiosyncratic meanings within different national contexts. Based on their empirical material, the authors illustrate strong fluctuations of the patterns of retaining international reference horizons in national discourses, and then translations into educational reforms between the 1920s and 1990s. Here lies one of the strengths of their analytical lens, which enables them to provide a fine-grained analysis of such processes, opening up new insights into selection-retention processes across countries comparatively, and challenging the “all-pervasive dissemination of world-level patterns” (Schriewer and Martinez, 2004, p. 29), thus substantiating their argument for the existence of what they term “multiple worlds” instead. The authors themselves conclude: “these findings convincingly point out how educational knowledge, reform policies, and development models elaborated and disseminated at a transnational level are refracted by each society’s internal selection thresholds and needs for interpretation” (Schriewer and Martinez, 2004, p. 50).
REFERENCES Baek, C., Hörmann, B., Karseth, B., Pizmony-Levy, O., Sivesind, K., and Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2018). Policy learning in Norwegian school reform: A social network analysis of the 2020 incremental reform. Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 4(1), 24–37.
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Damro, C., and Friedman, Y. (2018). Market power Europe and the externalization of higher education. Journal of Common Market Studies, 56(6), 1394–1410. Darwin, C. (1859). On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London, UK: John Murray. Durkheim, E. (1933). The division of labor in society. Translated by George Simpson. New York, NY: The Macmillan Company. Höstfält, G., and Wermke, W. (2011). Bildungsreform zwischen nationaler politik und internationalen prozessen. Die schwedische lehrerbildung und Bologna. Beiträge zur Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung, 29(1), 27–38. Klemenˇc iˇc , M. (2019). 20 years of the Bologna Process in a global setting: The external dimension of the Bologna Process revisited. European Journal of Higher Education, 9(1), 2–6. Lao, R. (2015). A critical study of Thailand’s higher education reforms. The culture of borrowing. Abingdon, UK: Routledge/The HEAD Foundation. Luhmann, N. (1975). Die weltgesellschaft. In Soziologische aufklärung 2. Aufsätze zur theorie der gesellschaft (pp. 51–71). Opladen: Westdt. Verlag, Luhmann, N., and Schorr, K. E. (1979). Reflexionsprobleme im erziehungssystem. Frankfurt/M., Germany: Suhrkamp. Luhmann, N. (1982). The differentiation of society. New York, NY: Columbia UP. Luhmann, N. (1984). Soziale systeme. Grundriß einer allgemeinen theorie. Frankfurt/M., Germany: Suhrkamp. Luhmann, N. (1986). The individuality of the individual: Historical meanings and contemporary problems. In T. C. Heller, M. Sosna, and D. E. Wellbery (Eds.), Reconstructing individualism. Autonomy, individuality, and the self in western thought (pp. 313–325). Stanford, CA: Stanford UP. Luhmann, N. (1990). The world society as a social system. In N. Luhmann, Essays on selfreference (pp. 175–190). New York, NY: Columbia UP. Luhmann, N. (1997). Die gesellschaft der gesellschaft. Vols. 1 & 2. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. Luschei, T. F. (2004). Timing is everything: The intersection of borrowing and lending in Brazil’s adoption of Escuela Nueva. In G. Steiner-Khamsi (Ed.), The global politics of educational borrowing and lending (pp. 154–167). New York, NY: Teachers College Press, Meyer, J. W. and Ramirez, F. O. (1977). The world educational revolution, 1950–1970. Sociology of Education, 50, 242–258. Meyer, J. W., Ramirez, F. O., and Soysal, Y. N. (1992). World expansion of mass education, 1870–1989. Sociology of Education, 61(2), 128–149. Meyer, J. W., and Ramirez, F. O. (2000). The world institutionalization of education. In J. Schriewer (Ed.), Discourse formation in comparative education (pp. 111–132). Frankfurt, Germany: Lang. Parsons, T. (1937). The structure of social action. New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Parsons, T. (1951). The social system. New York, NY: Free Press, Parsons, T. (1964). Evolutionary universals in society. American Sociological Review, 29(3), 339–357. Parsons, T. (1978). Action theory and the human condition. New York, NY: Free Press Rappleye, J. (2006). Theorizing educational transfer: Toward a conceptual map of the context of cross-national attraction. Research in Comparative and International Education, 1(3), 223–240. Rappleye, J. (2012). The political production of attraction and “borrowing”: Introducing a political production model. In G. Steiner-Khamsi and F. Waldow (Eds.), Policy borrowing and lending in education (pp. 121–147). New York, NY: Routledge.
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Robertson, S. L. (2010). The EU, “regulatory state regionalism” and new modes of higher education governance. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 8(1), 23–37. Schneider, F. (1931/32). Internationale pädagogik, auslandspädagogik, vergleichende erziehungswissenschaft. Geschichte, wesen, methoden, aufgaben und ergebnisse. Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 1/2, 15–39, 243–257, 392–407. Schriewer, J. (1990). The method of comparison and the need for externalization: Methodological criteria and sociological concepts. In J. Schriewer and B. Holmes (Eds.), Theories and methods in comparative education (pp. 25–83). Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Peter Lang. Schriewer, J. (1999). Vergleich und erklärung zwischen kausalität und komplexität. In H. Kaelble and J. Schriewer (Eds.), Diskurse und entwicklungspfade: Der gesellschaftsvergleich in den geschichts- und sozialwissenschaften. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Campus Verlag. Schriewer, J. (2000). World systems and interrelationship networks: The internationalization of education and the role of comparative inquiry. In T. A. Popkewitz (Ed.), Educational knowledge: Changing relationships between the state, civil society, and the educational community (pp. 305–343). New York, NY: SUNY Press. Schriewer, J., and Martinez, C. (2004). Constructions of internationality in education. In G. Steiner-Khamsi (Ed.), The global politics of educational borrowing and lending (pp. 29–53). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Spencer, H. (1867). First principles. London, UK: Williams and Norgate. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (Ed.). (2004). The global politics of educational borrowing and lending. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2004). Blazing a trail for policy theory and practice. In G. Steiner-Khamsi (Ed.), The global politics of educational borrowing and lending (pp. 201–220). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Steiner-Khamsi, G., and Waldow, F. (Eds.). (2012). Policy-borrowing and lending in education. London, UK: Routledge. Stichweh, R. (2011). Systems theory. In B. Bertrand et al. (Eds.), International encyclopedia of political science, Vol 8 (pp. 2579–2582). New York, NY: Sage. Takayama, K. (2009). Politics of externalization in reflexive times: Reinventing Japanese education reform discourses through “Finnish PISA success.” Comparative Education Review, 54(1), 51–75. Vavrus, F. (2004). The referential web: Externalization beyond education in Tanzania. In G. Steiner-Khamsi (Ed.), The global politics of educational borrowing and lending (pp. 141–153). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. von Bertalanffy, L. (1968). General system theory: Foundations, development, applications. New York, NY: George Braziller. von Foerster, H. (1981). Observing systems. Seaside: InterSystems Pubblication. Wallerstein, I. (1974). The modern world system. New York, NY & London, UK: Academic Press. Zgaga, P. (2006). Looking out: The Bologna process in a global setting. On the “external dimension” of the Bologna process. Norwegian Ministry of Education Research. Retrieved from www.aic.lv/ace/ace_disk/2005_07/Reports/0612_Bologna_Global_final_report.pdf
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Policy-Borrowing and Lending in Comparative and International Education A Key Area of Research GITA STEINER-KHAMSI
INTRODUCTION The expectation that one may learn “something” from experiences in other educational systems or “borrow” innovative ideas from the international data banks that compile, review, or advocate for “best practices,” is inextricably linked to the field of comparative and international education (CIE). In fact, it has been put forward for over two hundred years as an argument for why rigorous comparative studies of educational systems are needed (Cardoso and Steiner-Khamsi, 2017). In 1808, French Professor César-Auguste Basset (1780–1828) urged the university to dispatch a researcher to “foreign countries” to “observe, compare, and present the facts” (Brickman, 2010, p. 47) concerning their educational systems and methods of instruction. Two centuries later, international comparison has become standardized and routinized. The Programme in International Student Assessment (PISA), for example, “focuses on providing data and analysis that can help guide decisions on education policy” (Schleicher, 2017, p. 115). The question is: Under which circumstances are policy actors likely to engage in lesson-drawing? Formulated in terms of sociological systems theory, the same question may be rephrased more narrowly: When do systems learn? That is, when are they receptive to change? Given the focus on theory in this chapter, it is an opportune moment to embed comparative research on policy-borrowing in its larger conceptual framework. In this chapter, I examine the topic across national boundaries (borrowing from other school systems), beyond national boundaries (borrowing from the absent or the globalized other, i.e., the world society), and between sectors or function systems (borrowing from other function systems, such as, for example from the economy or from the science function system). A comparative method of inquiry is indispensable for examining policy transfer processes across and beyond national boundaries as well as between function systems. For this reason, some of us use the terms policy-borrowing research and comparative policy studies interchangeably (Waldow and Steiner-Khamsi, 2019).
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OVERVIEW The operative closure of systems A theory determines, or rather guides, how we see, analyze, and interpret phenomena. It is an instrument of sense-making. A myriad of questions emerge when phenomena surface which are at first sight non-sensible and, upon closer examination, complex. For example, the proliferation of global education policies which, on the surface, suggests that national school systems—i.e., the different ways schools are regulated and what is taught in them—are converging towards a singular model of schooling. Yet, examined on the ground, test-based accountability, public–private partnerships, and other traveling reforms mean something entirely different even though they sail under the same reform label. In my own work, I have adopted key notions of sociological systems theory for the comparative study of education policies. The theory helps us to understand why, when, how, and to what effect policy-borrowing occurs. In this chapter, I explain a few key concepts of Niklas Luhmann’s (1927–1998) sociological systems theory, including the notion of externalization, first applied in comparative education in 1990 (Schriewer, 1990; Schriewer and Martinez, 2004). Systems theory is difficult to understand for a variety of reasons. Perhaps most challenging of all, Luhmann (1990; 1995) moves imperceptibly back and forth between three levels of analysis: the macro (system), meso (organizational), and micro (interactional) level. In order to comprehend systems theory, readers must also kick the habit of intuitively inserting the adjective “national” whenever they come across the term “the educational system.” For Luhmann (1990; 1995), there is only one universal system of (world) society and only one universal economy, science, legal, political, or education function system. This is not to downplay differences (sometimes vast) in how these different function systems are organized at national levels. In the functional system of education, for example, the normative beliefs of how schools should be organized and what should be taught in them vary widely. Contextual or national differentiation at the organizational (meso) level is acknowledged but ultimately is of little interest to sociological systems theory. Luhmann (1990; 1995) is concerned primarily with understanding how a system works and how it interacts with its environment; that is, how it deals with the interdependence of systems. Catapulting Luhmann’s (1990; 1995) intellectual project into the contemporary language of actor-network theory (see Chapter 25), it would be accurate to say that sociological systems theory explores the performativity of systems. In an attempt to refine his theory but also to make his reading better understood, Luhmann (2002) applied his interpretive framework to several function systems of society. His elaboration on the system of education ranked among his very last writings. The book Das Erziehungssystem der Gesellschaft (Society’s System of Education), published after Luhmann’s death, contains a succinct three-page summary of sociological systems theory, written by Luhmann himself. In the summary, he lists key features of systems, of which the following are relevant for this particular article: operative closure, communication, functional differentiation, self-referentiality, and production of meaning. By definition, a system is a closed social entity that constantly enforces and reproduces its boundaries towards other systems. For a system, other systems constitute an environment. In a constant movement between inclusion and exclusion, a system solidifies its identity by means of boundary setting; that is, it distances and thereby distinguishes itself from other systems. Change occurs as a result of functional differentiation. In fact,
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one of the prominent features of modern society is functional differentiation. Differentiation also occurs internally, leading to inequality or social and ethnic stratification within a system. Society then consists of functionally differentiated systems; all operating with their own codes, identity, and modes of regulation. The function systems are closed vis-à-vis other function systems, but they are interdependent. For example, even though the education system has its own (socialization) function, its own organizations (schools), its own actors (teachers, students), and its own modes of regulation (until recently driven more by moral and legal rather than market considerations), the function system of education both depends on and contributes to the functioning of other function systems. For example, it depends on the financial resources made available in the economic system, and it contributes to preparing students to become law-abiding, moral, and civic-minded citizens. Since societies are stratified, the system of education also teaches students the myth of meritocracy very effectively, making them believe that one’s position in society is determined by credentials and hard work. Relevant for the study of policy-borrowing is the concept of “autopoiesis” (selfreproduction) and “self-referentiality,” two key features of systems that result from their operative closure (Luhmann, 1990). At certain moments, systems open up or externalize. In the quest to reduce uncertainty, interruption, and perturbation, a system receives and translates demands for change in a self-referential manner. At such moments of uncertainty, it temporarily opens up to other function systems or to the generalized other (“the world”), only to then reframe or translate these external impulses in its own code and logic (Luhmann, 1995; 1997a; 1997b). In other words, function systems observe and react to each other, but are not able to communicate with each other, because each one of them is bound by its own code or language of communication. Finally, systems are not only self-referential but also self-reflective and self-aware. They are able to communicate what other function systems expect to hear. The education system, for example, communicates that it is at all times and in all places committed to supporting the wellbeing of the child. In the last few paragraphs, I attempted to capture in very broad strokes and with purposefully sparse use of systems-theoretical jargon, the logic of systems.
The phenomenon in need of theorizing Once we acknowledge that systems are in general operatively closed but, every now and then, open themselves up towards external impulses (“irritations”), the timing of that opening up (known as externalization) becomes the focus of study. Strikingly, the temporal dimension of the global spread of ideas is also widely used in the diffusion of innovation studies and social network analysis (Watts, 2003). The epidemiological model of diffusion theory traces the deterritorialization process of a reform over time. It distinguishes between early and late adopters of an innovation. In the early stages, only a few educational systems are “infected” by a particular reform. Adopters make explicit references to lessons learned from other educational systems, especially those that they are specifically seeking to emulate. At a later stage of explosive growth, however, the policy is globalized or deterritorialized, and the traces to the “original” are eased. In network analyses, the diffusion of innovation model takes on the shape of a lazy s-curve (Watts, 2003). Several outstanding dissertations have been produced in the field of CIE at Teachers College, Columbia University which examine the local policy context to understand why a global education policy has been adopted at a particular time and how it was
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subsequently translated to fit the local context. Three examples may suffice here: Morais da Sa e Silva (2017) examined the global spread of conditional cash transfer programs, Janashia (2015) the spread of per-capita financing in the post-Soviet education space, and Lao, (2015) the global dissemination of quality assurance (QA) policies in higher education. For example, Lao (2015) has produced a fascinating international comparative study on the global diffusion of QA in which she examines in which year higher education systems established formal QA institutions that were separate from ministries of education. As shown in Figure 19.1, her analysis of the higher education literature demonstrates that at least 48 countries had adopted QA policies over the period 1983–2010 QA reforms in higher education. The pioneers were the governments of Britain, France, England, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. Starting in the early 1908s, they institutionalized QA by developing distinct policies, putting mechanisms in place, and appointing agencies in charge of QA in higher education. Within the former socialist world system, Poland and the Czech Republic are considered early adopters of quality assessment in higher education. Lao’s (2015) analysis resembles the lazy S-curve, depicted by Watts (2003). In line with the diffusion of innovation studies, she differentiates between three stages of global reforms: slow growth, exponential growth, burn out. She identifies the decade of the 1990s as the exponential growth phase of QA. In the new millennium, the adoption of QA is still occurring but at a slower pace; mostly because the higher education landscape is already saturated with QA reforms.
FIGURE 19.1: The global spread of quality assurance policy. Source: R. Lao, The culture of borrowing: One hundred years of Thailand higher education reforms (London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge, 2015).
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The lazy s-curve is helpful for understanding why it becomes obsolete to assume crossnational or bilateral policy-borrowing. A traveling policy, such as conditional cash transfer programs (Morais, 2017), per-capita financing (Janashia, 2015) or quality assurance in higher education (Lao, 2015) becomes deterritorialized and decontextualized at a takeoff point, when several countries adopt the policy or the policy tool, respectively. Eventually, it becomes everyone’s and nobody’s reform at the stage of explosive growth, thereby further increasing its attractiveness to the late adopters.
Externalization: global education policies and ILSAs The group of researchers in CIE that applies the externalization thesis to the study of school reforms has grown visibly over the past few years (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004; SteinerKhamsi and Waldow, 2012; Waldow and Steiner-Khamsi, 2019). As mentioned in the previous section, the thesis relates specifically to Luhmann’s (1995; 1990; 1997a) work on self-reference and reference to “world” and is firmly grounded in the key concepts closure, self-reproduction (autopoiesis) and self-referentiality of systems. As with other conceptualizations, the ecological orientation of systems theory comes to bear here. Since systems are considered to be operatively closed social entities, everything around them is environment and therefore observable. As a corollary, reference is an act of observation that serves the system to distinguish itself from the other. In the same vein, systems also observe themselves from a quasi-external perspective in order to better communicate their distinct logic, mode of operation, and regulation to themselves and to others. Both selfreference and other-reference (German: Fremdreferenz) are intrinsically linked to the act of observation. As Luhmann (1997b) asserts: “[t]he system reproduces itself in the imaginary space of its references and uses the differences between self- and other-references as an impetus to reproduce itself ” (p. 98). As expected with coherent interpretive frameworks, a multitude of research questions open up: At what particular moments do systems externalize, that is, open up, observe, and reference others? Whom, or rather what, do they choose as their object of observation? What do they do with the observation or reference—that is, how do they (back-) translate it to fit their own (system) logic? To sum up, studies on externalization investigate when systems open up, examine which other school systems are selected as reference societies, and finally trace how they “project,” that is, translate the observation into their own system logic. Meant to pique the reader’s curiosity, these questions merely represent a small sample of questions that arise when the concepts of system closure, self-referentiality, and observation/reference are applied to concrete examples from comparative policy studies, presented in the following sections. My preoccupation with externalization—later in my work captured with the dual term reception and translation—began with the intellectual desire to understand a phenomenon that at first seemed to be odd. In my early work on multicultural education policies (Steiner-Khamsi, 1992), I noticed that some education policies travel from one country to another thereby generating global reform movements. Inspired by the anti-Apartheid movement and embraced by the New Left in the United Kingdom, a progressive movement spread at the time within Europe which demanded to drop the lopsided notion of multicultural education (which culturally exoticized disenfranchised minorities and in effect meant assimilation and compensatory education programs for immigrants) and replace them with more politicized and combative anti-racist policies which targeted the elimination of structural discrimination. I found it fascinating to see that not all school
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systems were open to this discursive shift, and even if they were, implemented the elements of the transnational anti-racist education policy selectively. It did not come as a surprise that policies get implemented differently than planned. What was notable, however, was policymakers’ explicit references to other countries. Progressive policy makers insisted that they borrowed the concept even if their own contextualized variant barely resembled the original model that they supposedly had emulated. They were eager to signal their sense of belonging to a larger (Western) European space that tackled discrimination and inequality in schools. What was more: externalization, or the recourse to Europe or the world, occurred whenever policy makers were under political pressure to justify the introduction of controversial reforms. As I started to differentiate between diffusion (passive) and reception/translation (active), it became apparent that reforms do not simply travel from one country to another. A more agency-oriented explanation was needed; one that acknowledged the active role of policy actors in importing, borrowing, or adopting a traveling reform. My keen interest in understanding the politics of policy-borrowing in multicultural Europe gained a new momentum when, inspired by German systems theorist Radtke (Dittrich and Radtke, 1990; Radtke, 2014). I started to draw my attention to the local policy context rather than to the policy itself. It became of secondary importance to study the features of the policy or “best practice” that went global; what mattered more was a focus on why, how, or when externalization—references to other countries or to the “world”— occurred. In retrospect, it was a wise decision to drop the “what question” and investigate instead the reasons, processes, and timing of transnational policy transfer. Clearly, it would have been a fruitless exercise to study each reform that went global, especially because the number has increased exponentially over the past few years. Following the third-order policy changes (Hall, 1993) during the Thatcher-Reagan era, an avalanche of new policies was put in motion, such as the introduction of a national curriculum, school choice, and standardized exams. Upon closer examination, it is clear that these policies were all part and parcel of a larger “globally structured educational agenda” spreading around the globe, better known as neoliberalism (Dale, 2000; Robertson and Dale, 2015). In policy-borrowing research or comparative policy studies today, we differentiate between two broader interpretive frameworks that complement each other but use different angles to examine the effects of globalization on education. In one camp are scholars who have adopted a bird’s eye view in order to prove the worldwide diffusion of global scripts, whereas scholars in the other camp analyze the local context to understand why policy actors are at a particular moment receptive to adopting the global script. The first set of frameworks rests on longitudinal sociological analyses to prove the existence of similar patterns, ideas, and values across a wide range of countries. Of course, there are several theoretical approaches within each of the two camps. The first camp hosts neoinstitutionalists at one end of the spectrum and political economy theorists on the other end. The group with affinity to neo-institutionalism tends to focus on positively connoted global scripts, such as the global spread of human rights education or gender equality (Bromley and Meyer, 2015; Lerch et al., 2016; see critique by Carney et al., 2012) whereas the group affiliated with political economy emphasizes the neoliberal agenda underlying the rapid spread of global education policies (Dale, 2000; Jules, 2016). Similarly, it is important to differentiate between various groups within the second camp. The theories of scholars with a keen interest on reception and translation include both sociological systems theory (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004; Steiner-Khamsi and Waldow, 2012) and historical institutionalism (Verger et al., 2016). Ultimately, their research agendas are
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similar: both systems theorists and historical institutionalists attempt to identify the different reasons or historical paths for why one and the same global script (e.g., the spread of accountability reforms, privatization in education, etc.) has resonated in a particular context, and how it has been adopted and translated locally. For innocent bystanders, the two interpretive frameworks may come across as dismissive vis-à-vis one another because neo-institutionalist theory considers the local variations of the global script (the main focus of sociological systems theory) simply as loose coupling and therefore irrelevant for further scrutiny. Analogously, system theorists find the preoccupation with identifying global scripts (the main focus of neoinstitutionalism) futile given the semantics of globalization and the ubiquitous and inflationary use of “international standards” and “best practices.” The two approaches are, however, not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, precisely because the various interpretive frameworks differ in terms of focus or object of study, they complement one another. Our group of scholars with affinity to sociological systems theory tends to investigate the timing and the local context in which externalization occurs, because we expect to find reasons for why a temporary system opens up to the “world” by making references to “best practices,” “international standards” broadly defined, or experiences in other countries. For this chapter, I confine myself to presenting the most recent studies on reception and translation of International Large-Scale Assessment (ILSA) results, carried out in collaboration with Waldow and a long list of accomplished contributing authors (Steiner-Khamsi and Waldow, 2018; Waldow and Steiner-Khamsi, 2019). The spectacular growth of countries participating in ILSAs is noticeable and deserves theorizing. In terms of PISA alone, 43 countries participated in 2000, 72 countries and territories in 2015, and 80 administrative entities in 2018. In analyzing the explosive growth of PISA and other ILSAs, researchers have proposed several explanations, ranging from broad ones, such as globalization and the political pressure to be part of a larger international educational space, to very concrete ones, such as an ever-increasing number of evidence-driven policy actors who rely on international comparison for measuring the quality of their educational system (Addey et al., 2017; Verger et al., 2019). Once the demand has been created and governments start “seeing like PISA” (Gorur, 2016), global actors sell their tests for an ever-increasing number of subjects, grade levels, and educational systems. In addition to PISA, we now have PISA-D (PISA for Development), PISA for Schools, and a proposed “Baby PISA” (International Early Learning and Child Well-Being study), that are administered all three years worldwide. Learning portals for policymakers, such as, for example, the one developed by UNESCO-IIEP, or other global platforms that disseminate quantifiable or evidence-based “best practices” have mushroomed over the past decade.
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION Borrowing across function systems: the case of political translation The two key concepts of policy-borrowing research—reception and translation—may also be applied to transfer processes between function systems. In sociological systems theory, the term structural coupling is used to denote the interpenetration of two systems.
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In educational research, two recent forms of tight structural coupling have become objects of intense scrutiny: the tight coupling between the education and economic system (often referred to as the quasi-market model in education), and the tight coupling between the science and political system, discussed here in greater detail. As mentioned above, systems absorb complexity and irritations by making sense of them in a system-logical, meaningful manner. As a result of tight structural coupling, the education system has become more economized, and vice versa; the (knowledge) economy nowadays takes into account “effective years of schooling” (one of the indicators of the Human Capital Index) as a predictor of economic productivity (Steiner-Khamsi and Waldow, 2018; Waldow and Steiner-Khamsi, 2019). Similarly, as a result of the tight structural coupling between the science and political systems, an additional type of knowledge production has emerged: “mode 2 research.” In contrast, “mode 1 research” represents the traditional type of knowledge production, also known as foundational research or basic research (Nowotny et al., 2003). Unsurprisingly, policy analysts and politicians are enamored with the applied mode 2 research, because they find it relevant and useful. In fact, the current political system tends to explain and justify its political decisions with a recourse to “evidence” and makes (political) arguments based on a scientific rationality. Even though there is a general agreement on the mutual transformation process—the politicization of science and the scientization of politics—a systemstheoretical perspective may help to dig deeper by asking: has the political system indeed become more scienticized, and if it has, how does the government translate scientific knowledge into political action? Thus, the focus is on knowledge production and utilization. The changing nature of the relationship between politics and science has preoccupied comparative policy studies for a while. One of the early, important comparative studies exploring the interpenetration of the two function systems was the research project “the role of knowledge in the construction and regulation of health and education policy in Europe: convergences and specificities among nations and sectors,” abbreviated as Knowandpol, and funded in the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission (Fenwick et al., 2014; Maroy, 2012). Among other foci, the Knowandpol research project examined the changing role of the state in the wake of new public management reforms and knowledge-based regulation. The changes have indeed been substantial. The role of the state has changed from being a provider of educational programs to a standard-setter and monitor of learning outcomes. As a result, a multitude of providers, including businesses, have nowadays entered the school market as providers of educational programs. Knowledge-based regulation also enlarged the radius of individuals contributing to policyrelevant educational knowledge. The open-access policies that both governments and research councils have put in place in recent years need to be seen as an early indication of changes that occurred in knowledge production and sharing. In fact, the system theorists Weingart and Lentsch (2008) consider such open-access policies to be part and parcel of a democratization of expertise. Arguably, ad-hoc expert commissions, which review policies and make recommendations to the government, lend themselves for the study of tight coupling between the science and politics systems. According to Weingart and Lentsch (2008), these government-appointed commissions experienced three distinct shifts over the past seventy years. During the early period of scientific policy advice (the 1950s to 1970s), the ad-hoc expert commissions insisted on being autonomous and independent from the government. As a corollary, their reports amassed foundational studies (mode 1 scientific knowledge) that policy actors
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could or could not use, respectively. In a second phase, the commissions became increasingly politicized (the 1970s to 1990s) because they were charged with the task of producing policy-relevant scientific knowledge. In the current, third phase, governments in many countries have experienced a shift from “knowledge-based legitimacy” to “participationbased legitimacy.” Governments are under pressure to “democratize” scientific policy advice by 1) providing open access to reviews and expertise; 2) expanding the definition of “experts” (including nowadays, both producers and users/consumers); and 3) insisting that the knowledge products are useful, that is, provide a clear foundation for stop/go policy decisions. Researchers of structural coupling have introduced compelling new terminologies to capture the trend towards evidence-based governance. They have astutely pointed out that this type of structural coupling, often framed as a democratization of expertise, has led in practice to a (pseudo) rationalization or sciencetification of political decisions (Maasen and Weingart, 2005), is driven by, and at the same time exacerbated by, governance by numbers (Grek, 2008; Ozga, 2009) and steering at a distance (Rose and Miller, 1991). The façade of rationality has been thoroughly dismantled in policy studies and includes critics who shed doubts on whether governance by numbers is less political or more rationale than other modes of regulation. Finally, a few scholars have examined the impact that this particular type of structural coupling has had on the relations between different levels of bureaucracies within a state. Most recently, Piattoeva et al. (2018) convincingly argue that the governments of Brazil, China, and Russia (the objects of their study) resort to “governance by data circulation” in an effort to reach out to district authorities. As presented above, even though many have critically examined evidence-based policy planning, the focus has very much been on educational researchers who carry out commissioned work for the government and therefore are suspected to manufacture evidence in line with their political mandate. In contrast, whether government officials produce and use scientific knowledge, is somewhat under-explored. Our research group intends to fill this gap in policy-borrowing research—especially the transfer of policy knowledge from a scientific space (government-appointed expert commissions) to a political space (government-issued policy documents)—in a five-year comparative research project, based at the University of Oslo. We use bibliometric network analysis to examine the use of “evidence” in policy knowledge over time, across levels (national, regional, international), across national contexts, and across function systems (scientific and political). The comparison over time consists of an investigation of policy knowledge produced and references over three distinct school reform periods in Norway (reforms of 1996, 2006, and 2020).1 The primary data source are the governmentproduced policy documents, issued by the Ministry of Education and Research to explain a school reform, as well as the reports of government-appointed expert commissions preceding the reform. The first type of documents represents White Papers and the latter are Green Papers. We entered the references, listed in the reference section of the
More information on the research project Policy Knowledge and Lesson Drawing in Nordic School Reform in an Era of International Comparison may be found on the following website: www.uv.uio.no/iped/english/ research/projects/sivesind-policy-knowing-and-lesson-drawing/index.html. The project is funded by the Norwegian Research Council, project number 283467. I am able to be so closely involved in the project because of UTNAM funding, which enables me to be serve as a part-time Visiting Professor or R2 Professor at the University of Oslo.
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documents, in endnotes or embedded in the actual text, into the database. Thus, our bibliometric database consists of White Papers (government-issued policy documents), Green Papers (reports of government-appointed expert commissions), as well as the references listed in White and Green Papers. One of the findings is directly related to the topic of borrowing across function systems: the small amount of shared knowledge between government (reflected in White Papers) and its expert commissions (Green Papers). We explored the political translation process, that is, the transfer from scientific knowledge (produced by expert commissions) to political knowledge (produced by government) by asking: from all the references listed in the Green Papers (produced by the government-appointed expert commission), how many are also shared, that is, cited in the White Papers (produced by the Ministry of Education and Research)? In other words, we examined the political translation of expert knowledge. The finding was unexpected: the Ministry of Education and Research uses surprisingly little of the knowledge produced in its expert commissions. Of the 469 texts that the five commissions cited in their Green Papers, only 22 of them were also referenced in the two ministerial White Papers. This means that 95 percent of the commissions’ body of knowledge was lost in (political) translation. The disregard of knowledge amassed in Green Papers is not to be underestimated. The Green Papers of the 2006 reform range from zero references (Green Paper 2646) to 172 references (Green Paper 172). Figure 19.2 visualizes the nexus between expert and political knowledge. This also means that the Ministry of Education and Research does come up with its own sources of (political) knowledge. In fact, only 9.5 percent of the references (22 references) in the two ministerial White Papers (number 2140 and number 58) are identical with those listed in the commissioned Green Papers. Of course, not all commission reports or Green Papers carry the same political weight. The government-issued White Papers have the greatest ratio of shared knowledge or references, respectively, with the Green Paper In the First Row (NOU 2003; marked as
FIGURE 19.2: The political translation of scientific expertise in the 2006 school reform. Source: G. Steiner-Khamsi, B. Karseth, and C. Baek, Between science and politics: Commission reports and their political translation (forthcoming).
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Green Paper 57). As shown in Figure 19.2, 20 references of the Green Paper 57 were also listed in the bibliographical section of the two White Papers (see top row). With the exception of Green Paper 2646, which does not contain any references, the other three Green Papers (GP 5596, GP 35, GP 59; see bottom row), either share one or zero references with the White Papers. Not only are the references from the Green Paper 57 In the First Row cited the most, they are cited in both White Papers (White Paper WP 2140 and 58; see top row), thereby serving as a “network broker” (Menashy and Shields, 2017) connecting the knowledge networks of the two White Papers. There is a need to explain why Green Paper 57 In the First Row (NOU 2003) was the only report that carried a political weight. Concretely, it was the only report, produced by a government-appointed expert commission, that drew on a similar body of knowledge as the government-issued White Papers. According to our study (SteinerKhamsi et al., forthcoming), the important role of the Green Paper 57 can be explained by its specific mandate, the composition of the commission, and its focus on OECD knowledge. The commission was tasked with producing an overall analysis of the education system and producing recommendations regarding how to improve the quality of education. Strikingly, the report focuses very much on recommendations from the OECD and the DeSeCo project (Definitions and Selections of Competencies) and makes a case for a competency-based curriculum. In addition, it reconfirms the need for a national testing system that would allow for monitoring quality improvement in schools. The global language of the OECD is not to be overheard, and the report comes across as an “indigenization” or a national adoption of OECD education policies. Both recommendations of the Green Paper (NOU, 2003)—the shift toward competency or outcomes-based curriculum reform and the introduction of test-based accountability— carry features of school reforms that the OECD has propelled globally, including in Norway, and merit the label “global education policy” or in this particular case “OECD education policy.” The Green Paper In the First Row (NOU, 2003) may be regarded as a typical example of externalization; references to experiences in other countries and to the authority of the OECD are made to justify the need for fundamental reform at home. The focus on political translation brings to light that the Ministry of Education and Research produces its own scientific knowledge. The interpenetration of the two function systems has not only politicized knowledge-production of researchers, but also vice-versa; it has sciencitized political decisions made by government officials. In justifying the 2006 school reform, the Ministry of Education and Research of Norway clearly favored the scientific authority of the OECD over the evidence produced by its own, national expert commissions, as discussed above (see Figure 19.2). To come back to the earlier elaboration on mode 1 and mode 2 research, the structural coupling of science and politics accounts for a new type of research—research that must be applied, policy relevant, and if possible multi-disciplinary. The Norwegian study on the political translation of scientific knowledge, summarized in this article, demonstrates that mode 2-type of knowledge (Nowotny et al., 2003) is produced both by the expert commissions and by the government itself. As may be expected, systems nowadays have to cope with an “over-production of evidence” (Lubienski, 2019). In this new policy environment, intermediaries assume great discursive power. The intermediaries—including the private sector—broker knowledge, fill the space between science and politics, and translate knowledge from one function
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system to another in a self-referential manner, ultimately serving their own business interests.
Translating system-theoretical concepts into theories of the policy process Arguably, it does matter a great deal which interpretive framework is used to examine policy-borrowing, whether discursive or real, and whether the transfer is within a system, between systems, or to the world society. In sociological systems theory, the system is the unit of analysis for understanding why there is an openness to externalize and how the borrowed discourse or policy is subsequently adapted to fit the system. The dual focus on receptiveness (reasons why an operationally closed system temporarily opens up) and translation (adaptation to the code or language of the system) represents a genuine systems-theoretical approach to the study of policy-borrowing. Naturally, the sky is the limit for understanding recent phenomena in education policy with the analytical tools of policy-borrowing research. At the same time, it is important to bear in mind that several systems-theoretical concepts may also be found in other interpretive frameworks that theorize the policy process. Explaining how they are used in the other conceptual frameworks, may help sharpen the understanding of how they are used in sociological systems theory. A good case in point is the concept of “pathways,” used in historical institutionalism. It is similar to how system theorists use the terms system logic and, applied to national contexts, “socio-logic” (Schriewer and Martinez, 2004). Verger and his associates trace the pathways to privatization in different countries (Verger et al., 2016). They identify six different pathways, ranging from pathway one (e.g., in Chile and the United Kingdom), where the state was systematically restructured along market lines and services previously provided by the public sector were outsourced to the private sector to pathway six, labeled “privatisation by catastrophe” where policy actors use the chaos during catastrophe to advance their privatization agenda (e.g., in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, aftermaths of wards in El Salvador and Iraq). Verger et al. (2016) intend to demonstrate that the global neoliberal wave of privatization has encountered varied degrees and variants of privatization that already existed in various national contexts. The receptiveness or resistance towards the new neoliberal wave of privatization can only be captured adequately against the backdrop of past adaptations of privatization. National policy actors buy into global education policies, such as privatization in education, for different reasons. In systems theory, the terms reception or resonance, rather than pathways, are used to explore why national policy actors demonstrate an openness towards privatization and other global school reforms. Similarly, the timing of policy change is a well-known unit of analysis in the multiplestreams approach, formulated by Kingdon (1984) and taken up by other scholars, including by Zahariadis (2014). Kingdon (1984) coined the term “policy window” to identify favorable conditions for policy change. He found that the convergence of the following three streams is likely to produce change: the problem stream (recognition of a problem), the policy stream (availability of solutions), and the political stream (new developments in the political realm such as, for example, recent change in government). It is important to point out, however, that the multiple-streams approach does not take into account the impact of transnational interaction or transfer for problem recognition and policy solution (see critique of Baek, 2019). In an era of globalization transnational policy-borrowing, whether rhetorically or factually, is the norm and not the exception.
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Thus, the policy stream tends to be available to politicians and decision makers at all times in the form of “best practices,” “international standards,” or lessons learned from other educational systems. In fact, the pressure to borrow is great to the extent that policy analysts are frequently placed in the awkward position of having to retroactively define the local problem that fits the already existing global solution or reform package. Finally, the concept of punctuated equilibrium—related to the systems-theoretical concept of operative closure—is widely used in policy studies (Baumgartner and Jones, 1993; Jones and Baumgartner, 2005). Policies remain uncontested and policymaking is idle, resting in an equilibrium stage, until they are challenged and destabilized profoundly. As a corollary, punctuated equilibrium scholars draw their attention to agenda-setting. How do policy actors manage to prevent problems put on an agenda for reform, and inversely, how do they manage to generate a coalition that helps them to generate reform pressure, when deemed necessary? The latter focus is systematically pursued in Sabatier’s Advocacy Coalition Framework (1988). In a similar vein, system theorists consider systems to be operatively closed or in a punctuated equilibrium. Therefore, the attention is drawn to the moments of change, reform, or “interruptions in relations of interdependence” (Schriewer and Martinez, 2004, p. 31).
CONCLUSIONS Comparative education research has dwelled for too long on the traditional area of borrowing research—cross-national policy attraction and transfer between two or more school systems—thereby neglecting other transfer processes, notably, the orientation towards “best practices” or “international standards” and the transfer between different function systems (science and politics, economy, and education, etc.). It is perhaps for this overly narrow focus that other scholars have rightfully recommended a spatial turn (Larsen and Beech, 2014), more nuanced definitions of globalization (Robertson and Dale, 2015), and a multi-scalar perspective for analyzing policy-borrowing (Jules, 2012). The multi-scalar orientation also prevails in sociological systems theory. From a systemstheoretical perspective, the (world) society is omnipresent. In fact, a system’s observation of, or reference to world society, constitutes a momentum for change. The examples presented in this chapters merely represent a small fragment of studies in which policy-borrowing has been examined. Strikingly, with every new case of policyborrowing, the theory itself becomes refined. This too needs to be interpreted as a continuous process of differentiation, albeit a differentiation of the theoretical kind.
FURTHER READING 1. Jules, T. D. (2016). The global educational policy environment in the fourth industrial revolution. Bingley, UK : Emerald. 2. Morais da Sa e Silva, M. (2017). Poverty reduction, education, and the global diffusion of conditional cash transfers. New York, NY: Palgrave. 3. Steiner-Khamsi, G., and Waldow, F. (Eds). (2012). Policy-borrowing and lending. London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge. 4. Verger, A., Fontdevila, C., and Zancajo, A. (2016). The privatisation of education: A political economy of global education reform. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. 5. Waldow, F., and Steiner-Khamsi, G. (Eds.). (2019). Understanding PISA’s attractiveness: Critical analyses in comparative policy studies. London, UK : Bloomsbury.
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MINI CASE STUDY A good case in point to illustrate the attention to context and the focus on local encounters with global forces is the system-theoretical research on reasons for engagement with PISA, TIMSS, or other international large-scale student assessments. Comparative education researchers, with an affinity to sociological systems theory, have made it their intellectual project to understand the rapid growth of standardized international comparisons against the backdrop of what is debated, contested, or at stake in a local policy context. As a corollary, the focus lies on exploring the system logic in policy reception and translation processes. Several system theorists use the rapid growth of standardized international comparison as an opportunity to understand why PISA resonates, or does not resonate, and how PISA results are translated or interpreted in various policy contexts. Finally, we do not assume that PISA has a priori a salutary effect on national school reform but we rather analyze why, how, and when national policy actors open up, are receptive to, and in fact at times welcome, “irritations” caused by PISA, or by any other ILSA, and how policy makers subsequently translate these external impulses into the language of the system. The focus on the idiosyncrasies of a system and its national forms of organization brings a fascinating phenomenon to light that at first sight appears to be contradictory: despite the widespread rhetoric of learning from “best performing” school systems, there is no universal consensus on why some school systems do better than others on tests, such as PISA. On the contrary, there is great variation in how national governments, media, and research institutions explain Finland’s, Shanghai’s, or Singapore’s “success” in PISA or TIMSS. However, there is a pattern in these varied, sometimes diametrically opposed, explanations, which is best captured by the term “projection” (Steiner-Khamsi and Waldow, 2018; Waldow, 2017). The reception and translation of ILSA results reflect controversial policy issues in a country’s own policy context, rather than the actual organizational features of the league-leaders. “Finnish success” is a good case in point. There is a long list of explanations for why Finnish students do well on ILSAs. Depending on what the controversial policy issue is for which policy actors seek a (internally produced) quasi-external source of authority, Finland’s success is attributed to its strong university-based teacher education system, the system of comprehensive schooling with minimal tracking of students, or the nurturing environment in schools where students ironically are exposed to very few high-stakes standardized tests. The same applies for the league-leaders themselves: depending on the timing, notably whether the positive results are released at the end or the beginning of a reform cycle, the policy actors tend to take credit for the positive results or, on the contrary, belittle the success and proclaim that the students performed well for all the wrong reasons, including private tutoring, stressful school environments, and teaching to the test (see Waldow and Steiner-Khamsi, 2019).
REFERENCES Addey, C., Sellar, S., Steiner-Khamsi, G., Lingard, B., and Verger, A. (2017). Forum discussion: The rise of international large-scale assessments and rationales for participation. Compare, 47(3), 434–452. Baek, C. (2019). Understanding windows for global policy: An examination of the free-semester programme in Korea. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education.
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CHAPTER TWENTY
Situating Peace Education Theories, Scholarship, and Practice in Comparative and International Education MARIA HANTZOPOULOS , ZEENA ZAKHARIA, AND BROOKE HARRIS GARAD
INTRODUCTION Over the last few decades, peace education has emerged from the margins of educational policy and practice to become increasingly mainstreamed in various educational settings worldwide. Peace education is frequently mentioned in approaches to education and peacebuilding adopted by international organizations, UN agencies, Ministries of Education, localized non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and other types of educational institutions, including grassroots movements and spaces for community justice and activism. Overall, peace education is a far-reaching field of practice and scholarship that is both viewed as a vehicle to dismantle violence in its various forms (e.g., direct, cultural, and structural), as well as to build conditions for a just and sustainable peace. Informed by myriad philosophies, epistemologies, and theories, including the academic field of peace studies, varied local community traditions, and practices, and/or different religious beliefs and systems, peace education is not something that can be reduced to a singular definition. Given its global stretch and varied origins, peace education is often described as a field that is fluid and not bound by singular definitions (Bar-Tal, 2002; Danesh, 2006; Hantzopoulos, 2011). Despite its variegated forms, there is general agreement that peace education is concerned mainly with both dismantling all forms of violence and considering ways to create and maintain a more just and peaceful world (Bajaj and Hantzopoulos, 2016). Peace education research and practice, which is informed by its parent field of peace studies, adopts the teleological concept of “peace” to consider and imagine a world in which all forms of violence are absent, and positive and negative peace co-exist (Galtung, 1969; Hantzopoulos, 2011; Harris and Morrison, 2003; Reardon, 2000). Though described more robustly later in the chapter, negative peace assumes the absence of direct violence, whereas positive peace assumes a world in which societal conditions allow for justice and equity to prevail. Together, these central concepts of peace education form 345
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comprehensive peace (Reardon, 2000). Peace education is therefore a means by which to impart the requisite skills and knowledge to move towards this idealized state of peace (Bajaj, 2008; Harris, 2008; Reardon, 1988), and includes considerations of pedagogy, policy, and practice (Bajaj, 2008; Galtung, 1969; Hantzopoulos, 2011; Reardon, 1988; Toh, 2006). In recent years, peace education has found a niche in many societies and fields of education, including in comparative and international education (CIE), which is a natural fit. For instance, in comparative and international education: Issues for Teachers (Bickmore et al., 2017), the authors describe comparative education as the endeavor of looking beyond one’s society for ideas about developing systems and practices of education. Comparative education is also about contextualizing knowledge within global and localized histories, policies, and conditions. As Hayhoe et al., (2017) note, comparative education “also challenges us to think broadly about the link between local practices and global issues and to explore the overlapping values and social systems that underpin the educational enterprise itself ” (p. 2). Peace as an overlapping value, and peace education as a form of scholarship, practice, and pedagogy, is a vibrant starting point for interrogating contemporary issues in education. As the text above exemplifies, scholars in the field of CIE are concerned with (re)forming schools; responding to issues of (in)justice; and enriching research and practice with global perspectives. Peace education scholars have taken these and other issues to task in diverse situations and educational settings around the world. The following chapter considers more closely the intrinsic linkages between peace theories and peace education, and more specifically, the development of peace education as a field across the globe. Specifically, we trace the foundations, the histories, and the pedagogies that have informed the field, and consider competing theories and debates within it. We also illuminate its place and contributions to CIE specifically as many CIE scholars have contributed to its development and have made linkages in their work to the field of CIE.
OVERVIEW Development and history of peace education While peace education can trace its roots as a legitimate field back to the early nineteenthcentury, it discursively gained popularity in the post-World War II period when many Western nations and peoples sought ways to prevent more large-scale conflicts and wars that they had seen and experienced in the first half of that century. Nonetheless, peace education was not necessarily new, nor was it Western. Many non-Western and indigenous societies across the globe were grounded in religious and spiritual teachings and traditions that sought to educate and lead people to more peaceful and just worlds. As Harris (2008) points out, the teachings of Moses, Buddha, Mohammed, Lao Tse, Baha’u’llah, and Jesus Christ, all have scriptures that advance peace. Though violence always existed alongside teachings of peace, there is no question that peace studies, and by proxy peace education, have been informed by these myriad traditions (Hantzopoulos and Williams, 2017). The proliferation of peace education in Western Europe paralleled both the growth of peace movements and the realities of increased intra-nation strife and class conflict at
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that time (Harris, 2008). For instance, in the nineteenth-century, the development of peace movements within civil society were in direct response to increased armament (from Napoleonic Wars), mass industrialization (resulting in wealth inequities and class conflict), and eventually the rise of the nation-state (which led to internal strife, alliances, and borders among nations). Further, Europe was also engaged in inhumane violence outside of its “borders” through the colonization of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America, and its participation in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In other words, the growth of peace movements in parts of Europe concurrently blossomed during some of its darkest and most violent times (Hantzopoulos and Williams, 2017). In other regions of the world, peace movements and/or educative approaches continued to flourish in their localized contexts—often in direct opposition to European imperial brutality. While the development of peace education in the twentieth-century takes multiple forms and trajectories, depending on specific geographical and historical contexts, the paradox of the prospect of violence continued to thrust peace studies and peace education forward. According to Harris (2008), the period before and then immediately after the Second World War brought forth more peace activity from macro-level entities through the establishment of the Nobel Peace Prize and the League of Nations (though again, Europe was engaged in colonial atrocities outside of its borders even in these moments of peace). Moreover, within Europe, segments of the population began to question the dominant realist frameworks that sought to achieve peace through war or armament rather than through justice, nonviolence, and equality. It was during this time that disarmament movements and societies formed, and in some cases, peace education began to be integrated informally and formally in schools. Specifically, teachers began to consider a more global lens to social studies curriculum, explicitly considering with students how inter- and intra-national cooperation might contribute to a more peaceful world order. Progressive pedagogical and philosophical approaches to education and society that challenged exclusionary nationalism (via Dewey, Montessori, Adams, etc.,) also emerged in this intra-World Wartime. These theories emphasized shared community, democracy, and inter-dependence over individualism and self-interest, transcending national and regional borders. Unfortunately, the Second World War ushered in the worst of rigid nationalism; yet, there was a renewed commitment to world peace and global citizenry in its wake, most evident in the formation of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Hantzopoulos and Williams, 2017; Harris, 2008; Reardon, 2000). In both the Global South and among marginalized populations in the Global North, the quest for freedom, liberation, and self-determination from imperial and colonial rule contributed significantly to the evolution of peace theories, movements, and education. According to Hantzopoulos and Williams (2017): from the Civil Rights Movement in the United States to the anti-apartheid organizing in South Africa, many movements began to adopt non-violent approaches as a central tool for decolonization and liberation. While not all movements against colonial, neo-colonial, settler-colonial and imperial empires at the time were non-violent, many of these uprisings resulted in more socially just practices under new regimes that emphasized positive peace through literacy campaigns, social and national welfare programs, public health and equitable housing policies. —p. 2
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These radical visions and considerations of alternative ways of being and living more justly in the world, stemming from resistance to oppression, truly influenced the development of peace theories and education. The realities of the Cold War also added another dimension that eventually contributed to peace theories and movements of that era. Geopolitical and international relations at the time were grounded in realist notions of world order; specifically, the interests of the nation-state and the security and protection of the citizens within the respective borders served as the catalyst and rationale for state-decision-making (Snauwaert, 2008). The nuclear arms race and the threat of nuclear war between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the United States (U.S.) (and the involvement of allied nations on either side) was a direct result of such realist political thinking. However, this was in direct conflict with cosmopolitan beliefs that considered a more global approach to human (rather than national) security. Thus, the arms race led many to advocate for nuclear disarmament and world peace. It was really during this time that peace research began to be codified as an academic field to think through solutions in direct response to the prospect of human-inflicted global annihilation. The binary of peace and violence informed the trajectory of the work. It was during the Cold War, and in the wake of Korea and Vietnam, that Galtung (1976), one of the leading theorists of peace research, began to distinguish between and among different forms of violence to conceptualize various types of peace. Initially, peace research focused on direct violence, both personal and beyond, defining peace as the absence of violence and war. This type of peace—negative peace— was explicitly concerned with security, or stopping violence from happening. In other words, negative peace is in response to direct violence with an identifiable perpetrator (i.e., ceasefire after a war, treaties, security, or defense apparatus, or interpersonally, physical, or behavioral violence towards another). Peace research, however, began to consider the root and structural causes of violence, leading to a more nuanced understandings of violence beyond the obvious direct and physical to consider how a genuinely peaceful world might be realized (Galtung, 1969). For instance, while the concept of direct violence included how physical, behavioral, or direct violence affected individuals, groups, or a nation; structural violence considered how social and economic systems produced inequity; political violence considered how opposition forces are silenced, marginalized, and abused; and cultural violence examined how groups of people are denied dignity, rights, and opportunities based on their ascribed identities (Hantzopoulos and Williams, 2017, p. 3). By centering systemic and structural forms of violence, peace researchers introduced the concept of positive peace, one that relies on not only the absence of direct violence, but also the pursuit of justice, human rights, and societal well-being. In this regard, the attainment of peace is contingent upon the pursuit of both negative and positive peace— or what has been termed comprehensive peace (Reardon, 1988). Galtung (1976) further identified five problems that interfered with the attainment of negative and positive peace, which included direct violence or war, inequality, injustice, environmental degradation, and alienation. He argues that a genuinely peaceful world could only be attained when non-violence, economic welfare, social justice, ecological balance, and civic participation are realized. Peace research was also strengthened by and indebted to feminist scholarship in the 1970s and 1980s that examined the relationships among violence, militarism, and patriarchy. Scholars like Brock-Utne (1989) and Reardon (1985; 1988; 2000) argued that peace (both positive and negative) could only be attained by employing a gendered lens
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that aimed to dismantle patriarchy. Their analyses led to the importance of education, and specifically peace education, in helping to re-socialize people and communities away from masculine ideals of militarism, war, competition, and violence towards more trusting, collaborative, peaceful, just, and sustainable futures. Given that peace studies gained a foothold in academia, peace education now became more legitimized as a scholarly field. Like its parent in peace studies, peace education developed as a way to grapple with and work towards dismantling growing worldwide poverty alongside extreme wealth, the destruction of the environment, the persistence of violent conflicts, the increase in terrorism (including state-sponsored), and rampant racism, sexism, and xenophobia (Hantzopoulos and Williams, 2017). Scholars and practitioners began to lay out frameworks and pathways to transform populations and societies from violent to peaceful. In particular, Reardon (1988) laid out the three conceptual and fundamental pillars of the field: planetary stewardship, global citizenship, and humane relationships, as the basis of an endeavor to educate for peace. Others, like Hicks (1988) began to identify how particular skills, knowledges, and attitudes, provided the means by which to impart peace education. The works of many prominent educational theorists, including John Dewey (1859– 1952), Paulo Freire (1921–1997), and Maria Montessori (1870–1952), became instrumental in inspiring the pedagogy of peace education (Bajaj, 2008; Hantzopoulos and Williams, 2017). These theorists promoted pedagogies and forms of education that were not only less hierarchical and more student-centered and directed, but also reflected broader visions for which humans, in general, should interact with the earth, each other, and their broader communities more generally (see also Chapter 17). For instance, Dewey’s (1916) progressive and experiential educational pedagogy, which mainly focused on learning by doing, forging connections across disciplines, the consideration of context, and applicable and collaborative problem-solving, was also rooted in broader progressive ideals about democracy, society, and the world. Dewey (1916) believed that education in this manner would also lead to a healthy democracy, global connectivity, and sustainable world peace (Howlett, 2008). Similarly, Montessori’s pedagogical focus on children’s passions and directions, also related to larger concepts of peace-building and peaceful living (Montessori, 1916). Because she believed that child-directed pedagogy would foster independence and critically reflective thinking, she also concluded that these skills would build more cooperative relationships among students, their teachers, and their communities, and ultimately a more peaceful and democratic world (Duckworth, 2008). Finally, the pedagogy of peace education was informed by Freire’s (1972/2003) reframing of student–teacher relationships as more egalitarian. Freire (1972/2003) believed that hierarchical student–teacher relationships mirrored the relationships of the oppressed and the oppressor. By equalizing both parties’ role in the co-construction of knowledge, and also positing that no knowledge is neutral, Freire (1972/2003) not only believed that student and teacher could work towards each other’s liberation, but also move towards a more just and equitable society grounded in collective freedom. Central to this process was the endeavor of problem-posing (conscientization), in which the “learner” critically reflects on their world, and the world around them, and then takes critical action to transform it. Freire’s (1972/2003) explicit commitment to dismantling structural violence dovetailed with the same goal of peace education (Bartlett, 2008; Hantzopoulos and Williams, 2017). By the 1980s, other fields and forms of education inherently intersected with the broader practices, pedagogies, and ideals of peace education (Hicks, 1988). For instance,
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human rights education, which contends with the issue of human dignity, security, and the attainment of entitled rights, connected with the concepts of violence, non-violence, and sustainable futures in peace education. Conflict resolution programs that became popular in schools in the 1980s became a subset of peace education, as both were concerned with preventing and addressing violence—both interpersonally and globally. Similarly, the growth of multicultural education as a means to address and engage pluralism also intersected with the goals of peace education. Finally, while global concerns about environmental degradation, pollution, and climate change led to the fields of environmental studies and environmental education, peace education also addressed these concerns in its foundational premise of planetary stewardship and quest for ecological security as part of a just and sustainable peace (Hantzopoulos and Williams, 2017; Reardon, 1988). Indeed, by the twenty-first century, many questioned why peace education should be treated as a subset of education, or as a prescription for peace, claiming it instead as a guiding educational paradigm (Synott, 2005). During the 1990s and into the 2000s, peace education moved beyond K-12 practice in schools to become integrated into college and university level curricula that sought to prepare teachers. Reardon helped found a renowned graduate level specialization in peace education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the University of Peace in Costa Rica, while the European Peace University in Austria began conferring degrees and specializations in peace education. Although degrees in peace studies had been increasing since the 1970s, this new era legitimized peace education and its focus on training educators and scholars to help build a “culture of peace.” Moreover, The Journal of Peace Education, launched in 2004, began ushering in a new era and form of distinct peace education scholarship. More recently, CIE scholars working in diverse geographic and sociopolitical contexts have called for greater attention to “critical peace education,” something that emerged in the 1970s but has been reinvigorated as an approach to peace education in recent years (Bajaj and Brantmeier, 2011; Diaz-Soto, 2005). Specifically, in response to post-structural and post-colonial critiques that raised questions about the universal, normative, and decontextualized foundational notions about peace and how to attain it (Gur-Ze’ev, 2001; Hantzopoulos, 2010; Kester and Cremin, 2017; Zembylas and Bekerman, 2013), critical peace education centers context and agency as a way to mitigate asymmetrical power relationships that are reified through totalizing discourses and practices (Bajaj and Brantmeier, 2011; Bajaj and Hantzopoulos, 2016; Hantzopoulos, 2016). More specifically, critical peace education hones in on context-specific structural inequities to illuminate how localized experiences may shape perceptions of peace. In particular, it magnifies the role of critical pedagogy in this process, so that participants in peace education programs ostensibly have more room to cultivate a sense of transformative agency specific to their localized contexts (Bajaj and Brantmeier, 2011; Hantzopoulos, 2011; 2016). Thus, critical peace education acknowledges not only the importance of local context, but also how this local context engages with global phenomena like migration, climate change, and neoliberal economic policies that widen the gap between rich and poor, and regional and civil wars. Moreover, scholars like Shirazi (2011), Williams (2016), Zakharia (2017), and Zembylas (2018), have pushed for placing post-colonial theory in conversation with critical peace education efforts to understand how colonial legacies, both past and present, factor into how societies may conceptualize both peace and violence and the contributions of education therein. While this approach expands upon the emphasis on power—and its analysis—found in critical peace education, the post-colonial lens provides
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more fertile terrain for societies still grappling with the effects and realities of imperial and colonial violence to imagine more just futures specific to their histories and contexts. It also pushes scholars to consider how larger structural, material, and political realities serve to mediate value biases in peace research (Zakharia, 2017). Overall, these varied directions and approaches to peace education over time detail its nonlinear trajectory. As previously explained, peace education’s legacy and impact in CIE are also indebted to its intersections with related subfields, such as human rights education, global citizenship education, education for sustainable development, and conflict resolution. While still evolving and transforming, recent calls for more empirical studies (Bajaj and Hantzopoulos, 2016) and evaluation (Del Felice et al., 2015) will only strengthen the field for more robust theory and practice.
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION The fields of peace education and CIE have informed each other in theoretical, conceptual, and practical ways. As mentioned earlier, CIE scholars made a significant breakthrough in advancing peace theory and peace education through their articulation of critical peace education. It demanded more careful contextual analyses of the drivers of conflict and the possible entry points and conditions for peace within a geopolitical reality that shapes the material conditions and experiences of individuals and groups. It also demanded analysis embedded in localized understandings and histories of peace. At the same time, peace education contributed fundamental ideas to the field of CIE about peace and violence in schools, non-formal educational spaces, global education policy, and society more generally. The intersection of these two fields concurrently straddled the theory–practice nexus, making possible bold contributions from diverse contexts affected by direct, structural, and cultural violence to theoretical developments, as well as informing CIE peace scholarship to influence policies and practices at the global, national, and subnational levels. In this way, peace education provided a theoretical tool for scholars and practitioners in CIE to consider the role of violence (and peace) in shaping educational policy and programming and enabled them to provide more nuanced understandings of the possibilities and limitations of educating in their specific localized context. In this section, we explore the relevance of peace education to CIE, focusing first on the ways that peace education has gained prominence in CIE and next on the crucial themes in CIE scholarship that have informed thinking around violence, peace, and peacebuilding in schools and within the context of teaching and learning worldwide.
Origins and prominence in CIE As mentioned earlier, peace education found an academic home in the United States through the establishment of the Center for Peace Education by Reardon and the subsequent creation of a graduate-level degree concentration at Teachers College, Columbia University. While there were some peace education programs in other parts of the world (and many conflict resolution programs both within and beyond the United States), this particular peace education program in New York not only anchored itself to a renowned academic institution that drew scholars from around the globe, but also
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situated itself within a prominent program in comparative and international education. CIE as an umbrella seemed appropriate, as issues of peace and violence (and their impact on schooling) were certainly worldwide in scope. As a result, many of the faculty and students that came through this peace education program at Teachers College also collaborated with students and faculty who were situated in other disciplines and subfields of CIE as well, such as policy and governance, educational development, humanitarian issues, urban education, and bilingual education. At the same time, peace education had gained traction as a field through the establishment of the International Institute on Peace Education (IIPE) at Teachers College. While organized from New York, the IIPE is an annual gathering held in different cities around the world for peace scholars, educators, and activists. In facilitating exchanges of theory, practice, and pedagogy, the IIPE “operates as an applied peace education laboratory that provides a space for pedagogical experimentation; cooperative, deep inquiry into shared issues; and advancing theoretical, practical, and pedagogical applications” (www.i-i-p-e.org). Now housed within the National Peace Academy, the IIPE had a profound influence on the work of emerging CIE scholars worldwide. Soon, CIE scholars from other institutions, such as the University of Maryland, Concordia University, Nova Southeastern University, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto, and the Open University of Cyprus all began to integrate peace education and peacebuilding into their graduate programs. This contributed significantly to the prominence of peace education in the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES). In 2005, CIES established a Peace Education Special Interest Group (SIG) to “bring together members of the Comparative and International Education Society with common interests in the study of peace and conflict, human rights, and social justice in education” (http://sigs.cies.us/peace/). As a result, the SIG has a robust membership body of interdisciplinary scholars, practitioners, and students. The Peace Education SIG has, in turn, raised the profile of peace education and peacebuilding in the Society through its many panels, presentations, workshops, site visits, and papers, as well as through collaboration on cross-cutting themes and problems of practice with other scholarly subfields and SIGs.
CIE scholarship CIE peace education scholars have made tremendous contributions to the fields of both peace education and CIE. In addition to conceptualizing critical peace education (Bajaj, 2015; Bajaj and Brantmeier, 2011; Diaz-Soto, 2005; Hantzopoulos, 2011), its post-structural critiques (Hantzopoulos, 2010; Kester and Cremin, 2017; Zembylas and Bekerman, 2013) and its post-colonial forms (Shirazi, 2011; Williams, 2013; Zakharia, 2017; Zembylas, 2018), CIE peace education scholars have expanded on Galtung’s (1969) construct of violence (Williams, 2013), and have demonstrated the elasticity of the concept of peace within conflict-affected contexts (Novelli and Smith, 2011; Zakharia, 2016). For example, Williams’s (2013) ethnographic study of “violences” in schools in Trinidad and Tobago builds on Galtung’s (1969) seminal ideas on direct, structural, and cultural violence by introducing the concept of discursive violence, whereby youth emerge as the “main analytic unit in the discourse around school violence” (p. 40). Meanwhile, the structural role of the school as a driver of violence within a bifurcated and classstratified school system, which is a vestige of colonial governance, is often ignored. This
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focus on individual students, according to Williams (2013), is an exemplar of discursive violence and serves to preclude “neo-colonial structures, processes, and practices from substantive critique” (p. 55). Williams (2016) writes of how myopic understandings of school violence lead to ineffective approaches to violence reduction. Prevailing discourse about school violence focuses on the youth as perpetrators of violence, but Williams (2016) highlights how adults perpetuate violence under the guise of schoolsanctioned interventions. Conversely, he notes that teachers’ “nascent praxes of care” may be understood as forms of peace education (Williams, 2017), an issue also addressed by Bermeo (2016) who demonstrates how teachers negotiate their roles as agents of peace within the context of Ecuador’s violent drug trade. Other CIE scholars, like Chubbuck and Zembylas (2011) have also made significant contributions to the literature on school violence from a peace perspective, noting the ideological link between definitions of school violence and approaches toward nonviolence and peace education in schools. Similarly, Hantzopoulos (2016) writes about the importance of care as a central form of peace education praxis in response to larger issues of structural violence facing youth in urban schools. Scholars in the field of CIE have also demonstrated how violence—within the context of schooling—is varied and complex. For example, Chubbuck and Zembylas’s (2011) research focuses on the role of teachers in creating opportunities for nonviolence and peace learning within the classroom and curriculum. The authors describe how everything from class sizes, building policies, approaches to discipline, and assessments can be examples of violence in schools. Bickmore’s (2011) study of bullying in schools highlights how school violence is situated within a social context. The school and classroom environments, the community’s shared ideas about bullying, and previous reactions to incidents of bullying contribute to the complexity of the problem. Given the link between definitions of school violence and approaches toward peace education, Bickmore’s (2011) study suggests the need for 1) well-informed, critical, meta-analyses of violence in schools and 2) anti-violence initiatives that are comprehensive, long-range, and focused on developing new skills among students, administrators, and teachers. This growing body of scholarship has contributed to dynamic conceptual understandings of violence in schools and within the context of teaching and learning, informing global efforts to end all forms of violence in schools (e.g., UNICEF, 2018). Moreover, CIE peace scholars have demonstrated how schools and education can address contemporary direct and cultural violence in broader society by unmasking the ways they maintain it. For example, Duckworth (2015) shows how U.S. schools superficially and a-historically remember and teach about the attacks on the Twin Towers in NYC on September 11, 2001. The author argues for more nuanced and historicized approaches, rather than merely commemorative ones, in order to build a critically engaged citizenry for peace. Naseem and Arshad-Ayaz (2017) similarly consider how education—both in schools and beyond—often serve to foster violent extremism through its hidden and narrow curriculum. They consider how teachers and their pedagogies can disrupt these processes to foster inclusive and authentic participation and public discourse on issues related to extremism and radicalization. Another significant body of scholarship focuses on contexts of relative “peace,” looking at peace education initiatives, programs, and whole school approaches that actively work to counter structural violence. This work shares space with scholars whose stories are underrepresented. For example, Hantzopoulos (2011; 2016) looks at critical peace
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education in public school settings and within the context of urban school reform, providing concrete examples for the realization of whole-school approaches to peace education. Among other key themes, the research highlights the importance of building flattened relationships among students and between students and teachers; consideration of physical space in schools and its role in community building; and non-punitive, alternative approaches to discipline where multiple perspectives (including those of students) are welcome. Similarly, Brantmeier (2011) argues for the role that peace education plays in shaping teachers and their practice, and in particular, calls for schools of education to “openly embrace some of the broader and holistic purposes of education, such as the promotion of peace and social justice” (p. 350). Other scholars have focused on education for peace and reconciliation in conflictaffected contexts (McGlynn et al., 2009) and within global education policy (Novelli and Smith, 2011). These have included global and state-sponsored programs (Shah et al., 2016; Zakharia, 2016), teaching and learning competing historical narratives (Zembylas and Bekerman, 2013; Bellino, 2017), youth encounter programs (Ross, 2017; Hantzopoulos, 2010), integrated schooling (Bekerman, 2016; McGlynn, 2009), and everyday school structures and programming (Zakharia, 2017). To the extent that violence assumes many forms, examples of peace and peace education are context-specific and complex. Critical peace education has moved the field forward by pushing for continuous acknowledgment of the complexities in studying and articulating peace and violence. Couched within a discussion about the intersections of post-colonial and post-structural theory, decolonization, and peace education (Hantzopoulos, 2010; Kester and Cremin, 2017; Shirazi, 2011; Williams, 2016; Zakharia, 2017; Zembylas, 2018; Zembylas and Bekerman, 2013), Bajaj and Hantzopoulos (2016) point out that approaches toward peace education do not always produce intended outcomes, despite good intentions. However, the field requires critical reflection before, during, and after the implementation of peace education initiatives. Moreover, additional empirical research is needed to help develop theory and explicate the practice of critical peace education. Overall, these different meanings of peace and peace education contribute to the diversity of perspectives and practices necessary for the field to move forward. Just like schools, informal educational spaces can play host to peace teaching and learning because “peace education can happen anywhere” (Bajaj and Hantzopoulos, 2016, p. 6). Additional directions in peace education speak to the rich diversity in definitions of peace and peace education, including a focus on the intersection with indigenous scholarship and decolonization (Huaman, 2011), contemplative holistic and spiritual perspectives and practice (Lin et al., 2013), grassroots initiatives (Ross, 2017), and the sociopolitics of multilingualism and language education (Bekerman, 2016; Zakharia and Bishop, 2013).
CONCLUSIONS Peace Education has moved the field and scholarship of CIE forward, providing theoretical and practical tools for identifying, critically analyzing, and shaping educational endeavors around the world. As we have noted, scholars in the field of CIE have long been concerned with building and reforming schools; engaging in justice-oriented research and teaching; and benefiting from the knowledge and expertise of educators around the world to build more just, healthy, and sustainable futures. Scholars of peace studies and specifically peace educators share these concerns and the scholarship from CIE and peace education are intertwined and mutually beneficial.
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The challenges ahead for peace education are both similar and distinct to the ones that have already been discussed in this chapter: (un)natural disasters brought about by human-made climate change; increased xenophobia and racism exemplified in the surge of hate crimes and the rise of fascism globally; ongoing effects of colonialism and settler colonialism on indigenous and native populations; the perpetual war on terror that has destabilized regions; protracted civil and nationalist war and strife; and gender-based violence that continues to terrorize women and people who identify as LGBTQI and gender fluid. With each iteration of the problems of each new era, there remain the sui generis circumstances specific to the context that help forge the road ahead for the field. It is within these challenges that new possibilities for educating for, and creating, a more just, equitable, and peaceful world emerge.
FURTHER READING 1. Bajaj, M. (2008). The encyclopedia of peace education. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. 2. Bajaj, M., and Hantzopoulos, M. (2016). Peace education: International perspectives. New York, NY: Bloomsbury. 3. Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, peace, and peace research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167–191. 4. Reardon, B. (2001). Education for a culture of peace from a gendered perspective. Paris, France: UNESCO. 5. Trifonas, P. and Wright, B. (Eds). (2011). Critical issues in peace and education. New York, NY: Routledge.
MINI CASE STUDY CIE scholars have applied peace theories and peace education in a number of ways to understand a broad range of issues globally and at the national and subnational levels in education. Research has included multi-country studies, national case studies, school ethnographies, and analyses of various educational policies, programs, and interventions. Research has also sought to inform the practices of global bodies, international organizations, governments, non-state actors, schools, and individuals concerned with education for peace. In 2011, UNICEF commissioned an important study that sought to understand the role of education in peacebuilding in conflict-affected countries. As part of the Education and Emergencies and Post-Crisis Transition (EEPCT) programme (2006–2011)—a partnership between UNICEF, the Government of the Netherlands, and the European Commission—the study consisted of two phases that would eventually serve as the basis for UNICEF’s most ambitious program of research, policy, and practice on education and peacebuilding worldwide: the Peacebuilding, Education, and Advocacy (PBEA) in Conflict-Affected Contexts Programme, also known as “Learning for Peace” (2011–2016). In the 2011 study, CIE scholars drew on conceptions of both negative and positive peace, paying attention to the drivers of conflict, as well as direct and structural forms of violence to delineate the various entry points to education for peace. The first phase of the study yielded an extensive review of the scholarly and programmatic literature on the role of education in peacebuilding (Smith et al., 2011), producing an analytic framework for the second phase, which involved three country studies (Lebanon, Nepal,
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and Sierra Leone). Each case study involved extensive document analysis, accompanied by in-country fieldwork, including interviews, focus groups, observations, site visits, and other consultations with a wide range of actors. The review found that the theoretical literature on peacebuilding integrates the key distinction between negative peace and positive peace and suggests the need for a transformative approach to education. However, peacebuilding theory has not had a strong influence on education programming in general, and most education programming is not planned in advance from a peacebuilding perspective (Smith et al., 2011). Peacebuilding takes place over generations through multiple sectors, including developments in social, political, economic, and security arenas in conflict-affected contexts. The education sector represents a key entry point for this transformative process, and with exceptional potential for positive or negative impact. Thus, peacebuilding requires more attention to education sector reform (Smith et al., 2011). Furthermore, the country studies suggested that education is perceived as a central vehicle for building sustainable peace (Novelli and Smith, 2011). Taken together, the literature review and country studies provided strong evidence for supporting programming in the education sector in conflict-affected contexts, both in terms of educational structures or sector reform, and in terms of educational content or the values and ideas communicated through the education system. Importantly, the study emphasized the transformative potential of education in conflict-affected contexts (positive peace), rather than a security approach (negative peace). The study also concluded that education programming should be informed by ongoing conflict analysis that takes into account the evolving conflict dynamics of local contexts, in terms of both direct and structural violence. Furthermore, the study suggested that peacebuilding efforts in education should be mindful that social transformation takes place over several generations and that the more intrusive and externally driven the interventions, the less likely for the outcomes to be self-organized and sustainable over the long term. Perhaps most significantly, and in line with the critiques advanced by critical peace education scholars, the study found that the primary agency for driving transformative processes in education must rest with the conflict-affected societies themselves (Novelli and Smith, 2011). A set of implications were derived from the findings to inform UNICEF’s strategic direction in this area. As a result, in 2012, UNICEF launched its most ambitious program of research and programming to date, involving 14 country studies undertaken by a team of CIE scholars around the world. Unlike under the EEPCT, peacebuilding was the primary objective of the PBEA/Learning for Peace program and the education sector was the primary entry point, “with the goal of strengthening resilience, social cohesion, and human security” (Shah et al., 2016, p. 8). Funded by the Government of the Netherlands, and informed by CIE peace scholars, UNICEF country offices, governments, partner organizations, educators, and activists, the program is UNICEF’s largest global education for peacebuilding program. It constitutes an unprecedented effort to integrate peace theories in education, with demonstrable impact, and attests to the means through which education can be harnessed to build peace.
REFERENCES Bajaj, M. (2008). The encyclopedia of peace education. Charlotte, NC : Information Age Publishing.
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Bajaj, M., and Brantmeier, E. (2011). The politics, praxis, and possibilities of critical peace education. Journal of Peace Education, 8(3), 221–224. Bajaj, M. (2015). “Pedagogies of resistance” and critical peace education praxis. Journal of Peace Education, 12(2), 154–166. Bajaj, M., and Hantzopoulos, M. (Eds.). (2016). Peace education: International perspectives. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing. Bar-Tal, D. (2002). The elusive nature of peace education. In G. Salomon and B. Nevo (Eds.), Peace education: The concept, principles and practice in the world. Mahwah, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum. Bartlett, L. (2008). Paulo Freire and peace education. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Encyclopedia of peace education. Charlotte, NC : Information Age. Bekerman, Z., and Zembylas, M. (2011). Teaching contested narratives: Identity, memory, and reconciliation in peace education and beyond. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press. Bekerman, Z. (2016). Experimenting with integrated peace education: Critical perspectives in the Israeli context. In M. Bajaj and M. Hantzopoulos (Eds.), Peace education: International perspectives. London, UK : Bloomsbury Bellino, M. J. (2017). Youth in postwar Guatemala: Education and civic identity in transition. Rutgers, NJ : Rutgers University Press. Childhood Studies Series. Bermeo, M. J. (2016). Teaching for peace in settings affected by urban violence: Reflections from Guayaquil, Ecuador. In Bajaj, M. and Hantzopoulos, M. (Eds.), Peace education: International perspectives (pp. 157–174). London, UK : Bloomsbury Publishing. Bickmore, K. (2011). Policies and programming for safer schools: Are “anti-bullying” approaches impeding education for peacebuilding? Educational Policy, 25(4), 648–687. Bickmore, K. (2014). Peacebuilding (in) education: Democratic approaches to conflict in schools and classrooms. Curriculum Inquiry, 44(4), 443–448. Bickmore, K., Hayhoe, R., Manion, C., Mundy, K., and Read, R. (Eds.). (2017). Comparative and international education: Issues for teachers, 2nd Edition. Toronto, Canada: Canadian Scholars’ Press. Brantmeier, E. (2011). Towards mainstreaming critical peace education in US teacher education. In C. S. Malott and B. Porfillo (Eds.), Critical pedagogy in the twenty-first century: A new generation of scholars (pp. 349–375). Charlotte, NC : Information Age Publishing. Brock-Utne, B. (1989). Feminist perspectives on peace and peace education. New York, NY: Pergamon Press. Chubbuck, S. M., and Zembylas, M. (2011). Toward a critical pedagogy for nonviolence in urban school contexts. Journal of Peace Education, 8(3), 259–275. Danesh, H. B. (2006). Towards an integrative theory of peace education. Journal of Peace Education, 3(1), 55–78. Del Felice, C., Karako, A., and Wisler, A. (Eds.). (2015). Peace education evaluation: Learning from experience and exploring prospects. Charlotte, NC : Information Age Publishing. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York, NY: MacMillan. Diaz-Soto, L. (2005; Fall-Winter). How can we teach peace when we are so outraged? A call for critical peace education. Taboo. Duckworth, C. (2008). Maria Montessori and peace education. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Encyclopedia of peace education. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Duckworth, C. (2015). 9/11 and collective memory in US classrooms: Teaching about terror. New York, NY: Routledge. Freire, P. (1972/2003). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum.
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Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, peace, and peace research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167–191. In Peace, war, and defense: Essays in peace research (Vol. 2). Prio Monographs, Issue 5. Copenhagen: Christian Ejlers. Gur Ze’ev, I. (2001). Philosophy of peace education in a post-modern era. Educational Theory, 51(3), 315. Galtung, J. (1976). Three approaches to peace: Peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peacebuilding. In Peace, war and defense: Essays in peace research; Vol. 2. Copenhagen: Ejlers. Hantzopoulos, M. (2010). Encountering peace: The politics of participation when educating for co-existence. In Trifonas, P. and Wright, B. (Eds.), Critical issues in peace and education. (pp. 21–39). New York, NY: Routledge. Hantzopoulos, M. (2011). Institutionalizing critical peace education in public schools: A case for comprehensive implementation. Journal of Peace Education, 8(3), 225–242. Hantzopoulos, M. (2016). Beyond American exceptionalism: Centering critical peace education in US school reform. In M. Bajaj, and M. Hantzopoulos (Eds.), Peace education: International perspectives (pp. 177–192). New York, NY: Bloomsbury. Hantzopoulos, M., and Williams, H. (2017). Peace education as a field. In M. Peters (Ed.), Encyclopedia of educational philosophy and theory. Singapore: Springer. Harris, I. M., and Morrison, M. L. (2003). Peace education. Jefferson, NC : McFarland and Company. Harris, I. M. (2008). History of peace education. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Encyclopedia of peace education. Charlotte, NC : Information Age Publishing. Hayhoe, R., Manion, C., and Mundy, K. (2017). Why study comparative education? In K. Bickmore, R. Hayhoe, C. Manion, K. Mundy, and R. Read (Eds.), Comparative and International Education: Issues for teachers, 2nd edition (pp. 2–26). Toronto, Canada: Canadian Scholars’ Press. Hicks, D. (1988). Education for peace: Issues, principles, and practice in the classroom. Abingdon, UK : Routledge. Howlett, C. (2008). John Dewey and peace education. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Encyclopedia of peace education. Charlotte, NC : Information Age. Huaman, E. S. (2011). Transforming education, transforming society: The co-construction of critical peace education and indigenous education. Journal of Peace Education, 8(3), 243–258. Kester, K., and Cremin H. (2017). Peace education and peace education research: Toward a concept of poststructural violence and second-order reflexivity. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 49(14), 1415–1427. Lin, J., Oxford, R., and Brantmeier, E. J. (Eds.). (2013). Re-envisioning higher education: Embodied paths to wisdom and social transformation. Charlotte, NC : Information Age Publishing. McGlynn, C. (2009). Negotiating cultural differences in divided societies: An analysis of approaches to integrated education in Northern Ireland. In C. McGlynn, M. Zembylas, Z. Bekerman, and T. Gallagher (Eds.), Peace education in conflict and post-conflict societies: Comparative perspectives (pp. 9–25). New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan. McGlynn, C., Zembylas, M., Bekerman, Z., and Gallagher, T. (Eds). (2009). Peace education in conflict and post-conflict societies: Comparative perspectives. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan. Montessori, M. (1949). Education and peace. (H. R. Lane, Trans). Chicago, IL : Henry Regenry. Naseem, M. A. and Arshad-Ayaz, A. (2017). Creating “invited” spaces for counter-radicalization and counter-extremism education. Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, 11(1), 6–16.
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Novelli, M., and Smith A. (2011). The role of education in peacebuilding: A synthesis report of the findings from Lebanon, Nepal, and Sierra Leone. New York, NY: UNICEF. Reardon, B. (1985). Sexism and the war system. New York, NY: Teachers College. Reardon, B. (1988). Comprehensive peace education: Educating for social responsibility. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Reardon, B. (2000). Peace education: A review and projection. In B. Moon, S. Brown, and M. Ben Peretz (Eds.), International companion to education. New York, NY: Routledge. Ross, K. (2017). Youth encounter programs in israel. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Shah, R., Maber, E., Lopes Cardozo, M., and Paterson, R. (2016). UNICEF programme report (2012–2016): Peacebuilding, education and advocacy in conflict-affected contexts programme. New York, NY: UNICEF. Shirazi, R. (2011). When projects of “empowerment” don’t liberate: Locating agency in a “post-colonial” peace education. Journal of Peace Education, 8(3), 277–294. Snauwaert, D. (2008). The moral and spiritual foundations of peace education. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Encyclopedia of peace education. Charlotte, NC : Information Age Publishing. Smith, A., McCandless, E., Paulson, J., and Wheaton, W. (2011). The role of education in peacebuilding: Literature review. New York, NY: UNICEF. Synott, J. (2005). Peace education as an educational paradigm: Review of a changing field using an old measure. Journal of Peace Education, 2(1), 3–16. Toh, S. H. (2006). Education for sustainable development and the weaving of a culture of peace: Complementarities and synergies. Paper presented at the UNESCO Expert Meeting on Education for Sustainable Development. UNICEF. (2018). An everyday lesson: #ENDviolence in schools. New York, NY: UNICEF. Williams, H. M. A. (2013). Post-colonial structural violence: A study of school violence in Trinidad and Tobago. International Journal of Peace Studies, 18(2), 39–64. Williams, H. M. A. (2016). Lingering colonialities as blockades to peace education: School violence in Trinidad.” In M. Bajaj and M. Hantzopoulos (Eds.), Peace education: International perspectives (pp. 141–156). London, UK : Bloomsbury Publishing. Williams, H. M. A. (2017). Teachers’ nascent praxes of care: Potentially decolonizing approaches to school violence in Trinidad. Journal of Peace Education, 14(1), 69–91. Zakharia, Z., and Bishop, L. M. (2013). Towards positive peace through bilingual community education: Language efforts of Arabic speaking communities in New York. In Bilingual community education and multilingualism: Beyond heritage languages in a global city. Bristol, UK : Multilingual Matters. Zakharia, Z. (2016). Peace education and peacebuilding across the conflict continuum: Insights from Lebanon. In M. Bajaj and M. Hantzopoulos (Eds.), Peace education: International perspectives (pp. 71–88). New York, NY: Bloomsbury. Zakharia, Z. (2017). Getting to “no”: Locating critical peace education within resistance and anti-oppression pedagogy at a Shi’a Islamic school in Lebanon. Research in Comparative & International Education, 12(1), 46–63. Zembylas, M. and Bekerman, Z. (2013). Peace education in the present: Dismantling and reconstructing some fundamental theoretical premises. Journal of Peace Education, 10(2), 197–214. Zembylas, M. (2018) Con-/divergences between post-colonial and critical peace education: Towards pedagogies of decolonization in peace education. Journal of Peace Education, 15(1), 1–23.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Theories of Human Rights Education in Comparative and International Education From Declarations to New Directions MONISHA BAJAJ AND NOMSA MABONA
INTRODUCTION Human rights education (HRE) has created a lot of change in the school itself. Earlier, there was this big tree behind my school and if you take a stick from that tree, and hit someone on the hand or anywhere, the place will swell up a lot. We used to get beaten black and blue with those sticks before human rights education. Once we got the book and HRE started, our teachers came and told us, “hereafter, we are not going to touch the stick.” That really took us aback and we were shocked, in fact. That increased our interest and curiosity about the entire [HRE] book because they became so different. . . . The teachers became so friendly that we could go and even stand close to them, which we couldn’t do earlier because you would not know what kind of mood they are in, and if they were just going to hit you and take it out on you. Now we even go into the staff room and ask any questions we have. . . . So, we really like school now. —Madhu, eighth-grade student respondent from India, as cited in Bajaj 2012, p. 116 I was cut at seven years old. I remember it as if it was yesterday . . . . the pain was indescribable. I didn’t understand what was happening. After I was cut, I hemorrhaged for three days. I loved school, but I missed a lot while I was recovering . . . . As I grew older, I learnt that being cut is an ancient practice that meant girls would be respected in the community . . . . Years later, we took part in a basic three-year education program in our language, thanks to a grassroots organization [Tostan]. We learnt so much about human rights and responsibilities. Even though we had been questioning it on our own, it took us a long time to speak openly about female genital cutting (FGC). It was difficult, but once we did, we learnt that most Muslim women in the world aren’t cut. We also learnt that FGC is a violation of our human right to health. We spoke to religious leaders and found that this tradition is not an obligation of Islam or any religion . . . . After our education program, we made a community-wide decision to 361
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end FGC together! . . .Now, I volunteer with others in the communities traveling to villages to share why we chose to abandon FGC. After much discussion, many villages joined the movement too. —Assiata’s Story, from Tostan, 2018 Human rights education (HRE) has emerged as a global field of scholarship practice since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 in the aftermath of the devastating Second World War that claimed the lives of more than 60 million people. Over the past 70 years, differing definitions and forms of practice have been developed in distinct contexts (as in the examples of HRE from India and Senegal presented above), each of which is undergirded by its own theories about human rights and social change. This chapter provides an overview of the theories that underpin scholarly approaches to human rights education and practice and how they are applied in the field of comparative and international education (CIE).
OVERVIEW There is no single fixed theory of HRE, but rather evolving strands of theories that reflect the depth of the field’s research, which has roots in legal, political, philosophical, and pedagogical aspects of education. These different theoretical approaches offer distinct perspectives of HRE and, therefore, constitute a complex field of study.1
Historical overview and development of the field Despite its initial mention in the 1948 the UDHR, human rights education as a global movement only gained considerable momentum after the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. Article 26 of the UDHR identifies first the right to education, and second the right to an education directed toward “the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms” (UDHR, 1948, para 2). The 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child—which has since become the most widely ratified piece of international human rights law— further enshrines all children’s right to an education that is culturally affirming and fosters their free expression. Although there were many antecedents to HRE in individual initiatives and community-based efforts spanning several centuries, the 1993 United Nations World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna was a watershed moment for HRE. The resulting Vienna Declaration stated that “human rights education, training and public information is essential for the promotion and achievement of stable and harmonious relations among communities and for fostering mutual understanding, tolerance and peace” (Vienna Declaration, 1993, para 78). The Vienna Declaration and Program of Action resulting from the Conference had an extensive subsection on HRE and called for a United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education, which subsequently ensued from 1995–2004 and which brought policymakers, government officials, activists, and educators into more sustained conversation.
1 The overview section draws from a previously published introductory chapter of the book Human rights education: Theory, research, praxis (Bajaj, 2017).
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While there are many different approaches to human rights education, there is broad agreement about certain core components. First, most scholars and practitioners agree that HRE must include both content and processes related to teaching human rights (Bajaj, 2011; Flowers, 2003; Mentjes, 1997; Tibbitts, 2002). Second, most literature in the field discusses the need for HRE to include goals related to cognitive (content), attitudinal or emotive (values/skills), and action-oriented components (Tibbitts, 2005). Amnesty International’s Human Rights Friendly Schools framework weaves together the intended outcomes of HRE by highlighting three prepositions linking education and human rights in a comprehensive manner: education about human rights (cognitive), education through human rights (participatory methods that create skills for active citizenship), and education for human rights (fostering learners’ ability to speak out and act in the face of injustices) (Amnesty International, n.d.). As the UN Decade on HRE came to a close, the UN World Programme for Human Rights Education was established in 2005 and housed within the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). In 2011, the UN General Assembly adopted the UN Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training (UNDHRET), further highlighting the importance of HRE at the level of national policy and reform. As defined by the United Nations (UNDHRET, 2011): Human rights education can be defined as education, training and information aiming at building a universal culture of human rights through the sharing of knowledge, imparting of skills and molding of attitudes directed to: (a) The strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms; (b) The full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity; (c) The promotion of understanding, tolerance, gender equality and friendship among all nations, indigenous peoples, and racial, national, ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups; (d) The enabling of all persons to participate effectively in a free and democratic society governed by the rule of law; (e) The building and maintenance of peace; (f) The promotion of people-centered sustainable development and social justice. Emphasized in the United Nations definition of HRE is knowledge about human rights and tolerance/acceptance of others based on such knowledge. UN initiatives are largely directed toward member states and attempt to foster adoption of national plans of action for integrating HRE into their educational systems. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community-based organizations have also long been active in human rights education and utilize human rights discourses as a strategy to frame the demands of diverse social movements—a more bottom-up approach to HRE. At the grassroots level, HRE has often taken the form of popular education or community education to mobilize constituencies for expanding social movements (Kapoor, 2004). In Latin America, for example, many efforts aimed at HRE blossomed immediately after the end of dictatorships, when NGOs that had fought for human rights turned their attention to education as a tool for reconciliation and the prevention of a return to authoritarian rule (Magendzo, 1997). As such, human rights education efforts are seen as both a political and pedagogical strategy to facilitate democratization and active citizenship.
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In practice and implementation, human rights education can take a variety of forms. In formal schooling, human rights can be integrated into textbooks or other subjects, such as civics or social studies (Meyer et al., 2010). Teaching about children’s rights occurs all over the globe, and has been enacted through youth assemblies and children’s parliaments in places as diverse as India, Scotland, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In some contexts, direct instruction in a “human rights” class is mandated or offered as an elective at the secondary level in both public and private schools. In universities, undergraduate and graduate programs in human rights and, increasingly in human rights education, are emerging and becoming institutionalized (Suárez, 2006). More commonly, elective programs either during the school day, after-school through clubs or co-curricular programs, or through summer camps and other programs offer students exposure to human rights. In professional settings around the globe, human rights training—either optional or required, ad-hoc or sustained—has been offered for judges, police officers, military personnel, health professionals, social workers, teachers, among others (Reichert, 2001; Wahl, 2014). Additionally, non-formal HRE is flourishing in community-based settings worldwide. Further, the types of rights brought into focus (civil, political, social, economic, cultural, or a cross-section of equality rights for a specific group) depends on the context and the approach. Thus, human rights education varies in content, approach, scope, intensity, depth, and availability. Drawing on the promise of grassroots level efforts to impact awareness about human rights, Amnesty International (2015) defines HRE as: a deliberate, participatory practice aimed at empowering individuals, groups, and communities through fostering knowledge, skills, and attitudes consistent with internationally recognized principles. . . Its goal is to build a culture of respect for and action in the defense and promotion of human rights for all. —p. 1 The Amnesty International’s (2015) definition places greater responsibility on human rights learners becoming activists for human rights through the process of HRE by sharing information with others and actively working to defend human rights. Both social change as an outcome, and learners becoming agents of this process of claiming their own rights and defending others’ rights, is central in this definition. Differences in the way individuals or organizations approach HRE account for the ways it is conceptualized as an education reform or strategy.
Existing models As is the case with fields in development and in motion, many articulations of models and approaches emerge—rooted in distinct theoretical orientations—to understand phenomena and chart the boundaries of a field; HRE is no exception. Similar to the folktale of a group of blind men who seek to describe an elephant by touching its various parts and who disagree about its nature based on their positioning (e.g., touching the tusk, trunk, feet, tail, etc.), human rights education may look differently depending on the angle and perspective one takes. More recent articulations have elaborated the definition of what HRE must include in different contexts—beyond the teaching of international human rights norms and standards—and have cited a variety of goals and learners. HRE models provide productive schemas for theorizing its emergence, conceptualization, and implementation across the globe. Tibbitts (2017) created a three-tiered model for
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human rights education that explores differing levels of implementation by distinct actors. Tibbitts (2017) differentiates between the socialization approach of values and awareness of human rights that can be utilized in formal and non-formal settings to socialize learners into basic knowledge about human rights; the accountability or professional development approach for those working directly with victims of rights abuses (e.g., police, health workers); and the more activist transformation approach which offers a holistic understanding of human rights knowledge, attitudes, and actions. Bajaj (2011) argues elsewhere for the importance of following the varying ideologies of human rights education initiatives as they have proliferated across the globe. Depending on relationships to power and conditions of marginalization, the perceived and actual outcomes of human rights education may differ based on social location (Bajaj, 2012). Some programs, particularly those adopted at national and international levels or in sites of relative privilege, may discuss global citizenship as an outcome. In conflict settings, coexistence and respect for difference may be prioritized. In disenfranchised communities, HRE may be a strategy for transformative action and empowerment (Bajaj, 2011; Tibbitts, 2002; 2017). Recent critiques (Keet, 2007) have noted that the overly “declarationist” approach of HRE which anchors itself in normative standards limits its emancipatory potential since it fails to consider broader debates in the field of human rights. Initiatives working towards human rights education tend to fuse Freirean notions of consciousness-raising with the philosophical tradition of cosmopolitanism (Bajaj, 2014; Bajaj et al., 2016; Mentjes, 1997; Osler and Starkey, 2010; Tibbitts, 2002). Freire’s (1970) notion of conscientization results from individuals—often those from disadvantaged groups—analyzing collectively conditions of inequality and then acting and reflecting to inspire new action in a cyclical fashion in order to overcome situations of oppression and subordination. Cosmopolitanism is a philosophical position that posits a shared human community and a global notion of citizenship and belonging (Appiah, 2007). Pairing these philosophical orientations together results in local action and critical analysis (a la Freire) informed by global solidarity and connection (as is posited in some versions of cosmopolitanism). Some scholars have termed this type of HRE “transformative human rights education” (THRED) and have documented its principles and components across formal and non-formal settings (Bajaj et al., 2016). For such transformative HRE approaches, a basic theory of change—drawing on Freire’s (1970) notions and cosmopolitan ideas of global citizenship—that might unite the purpose of human rights education for empowerment efforts (in its ideal form though in practice it may look different) could be posited as follows: 1. Learners (in formal or non-formal settings) learn about a larger imagined moral community where human rights offers a shared language; 2. Learners question a social or cultural practice that does not fit within the global framework; 3. Learners identify allies (teachers, peers, community activists, NGOs) to amplify one’s voice along with other strategies for influencing positive social change. (Bajaj, 2017) While the theory of change posited above can account for the way in which transformative human rights education is conceptualized, there are often many tensions and contradictions in actual practice. What has yet to be elaborated fully is the need for strategies to deal with the unintended consequences of human rights education (Osler and Yahya, 2017;
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Mejias, 2017) and corresponding action as well as the co-optation of rights language for entirely different ends (see Bajaj, 2012; Wahl, 2001). Additionally, nation-states and policymakers have diverse reasons to take on human rights education—that may or may not include a transformative vision. These are areas that the field of human rights education must continue to engage and contend with. Whether offering prescriptive insights, models for engagement, research findings or analyses of global trends, scholars of human rights education have employed various theoretical orientations to contribute to ongoing scholarly discussions of globalization, citizenship, and education.
Theoretical underpinnings of human rights education scholarship There are diverse theoretical underpinnings to the field of HRE. As with the different HRE models discussed above, these different theories examine HRE from distinct vantage points, depending on what side of the “elephant” one is looking at following up on the metaphor introduced before. As a way of visualization, Table 21.1 represents an overview of the different strands of theories of HRE. As shown in the Table 21.1, human rights theories can be categorized in three sets, which may or may not overlap depending on the focus of a given study. Scholars of neoinstitutional and convergence theory argue that human rights education is a result of educational convergence (Meyer et al., 2010; Ramirez et al., 2007; Suárez, 2007): a process that reduces local distinctions within education systems. This means that policy discourse and textbooks converge towards human rights frameworks. In their research, scholars make cross-national analyses of the extent of institutionalization of the field, for example by examining the proliferation of HRE publications, the emergence of HRE policies and organizations, and the representation of human rights in textbooks as well as curricula. In a recent study, Russell and Suárez (2017) conclude that “the human rights education movement has evolved from a global discourse linked to the international human rights framework to a broader education movement incorporating concrete policy changes and actions in national and local contexts across diverse nations” (pp. 30–31). Therefore, they make the point that “HRE gains international traction because of widely held cultural scripts about progress, justice, and the individual” (Russell and Suárez, 2017, p. 10). Scholars committed to the second set of theories foreground cultural or historical context in their analysis of human rights education. Another common feature of studies conducted by Marxist, post-colonial, and critical theorists is their investigation of power imbalances, particularly in their questioning of the universality of human rights and their emphasis on the importance of cultural and historical context when teaching human rights. Al-Daraweesh and Snauwaert (2015) elaborate on this fundamental argument as follows: the relational and hermeneutic epistemology is based on the idea of contextualizing the domain of knowledge, in general, and with regard to human rights, in particular. Contextualizing knowledge requires an understanding of culture and how cultures function within as media to transmit knowledge conducive to human rights. It is through culture that a commitment to human rights protection and dissemination can be cultivated. —p. 49
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TABLE 21.1: Theoretical underpinnings of human rights education scholarship Focus of HRE
Key Concepts
Theoretical Underpinnings
Fundamental Argument
Scholars
Law; Policy; Textbooks; Educational Systems
Policy; declarations; discourse; convergence
Neo-institutional theory; convergence theory
Bromley Meyer Ramirez Russell Suárez Tarrow
Discourse Ideology; Knowledge Production
Historical analysis; asymmetries of power; decolonization of HR and HRE
Marxist theory; critical theory; post-colonial theory
Classrooms; Communities; Schools; Professions
Transformation; Critical theory; empowerment; Freirean critical praxis-oriented; consciousness dialogue; agency, collective Action
Human rights seen as global legal and moral consensus; education systems and textbooks converge towards these frameworks. Culture, context, and historical relations of power need to mediate any and all forms of HRE and schooling. HRE should be driven by local actors, rooted in community, and contextually adapted in order to foster individual and collective transformation.
Al-Daraweesh & Snauwaert Coysh Keet Zembylas
Bajaj Hantzopoulos Holland & Martin Katz Magendzo Osler & Starkey Spreen Tibbitts
In Power and Discourse in Human Rights Education, Coysh (2018) breaks down the interconnectedness of power, discourse, and (human rights) knowledge as follows: “discourse is the site where meanings are contested and power relations determined, and it is through examining the ways that certain systems and institutions control discourse and meaning, that we can understand how power is operating to regulate knowledge” (p. 53). Coysh (2018) further argues that because HRE has become a global institution, its discourse has become dominant and thus, it is failing to be truly transformative and challenge oppression. Scholars who utilize theories in the third set of perspectives base their studies on the concept of Freirean critical consciousness (Freire, 1970), which builds on a collaborative approach to education where learning is a dialogical cycle of reflection and humanizing action in order to achieve liberation from social and political oppression. Therefore, these scholars conceptualize human rights education as an emancipatory and transformative process that is focused on dismantling local power asymmetries through grassroots activism. In their recent publication, Spreen et al., (2018) advocate for transformative HRE pedagogy that “must focus on relating the context to critique and then to social
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change, with various opportunities for students to learn about, deeply reflect on, and then transform their lived experiences;” further, the authors add that “part and parcel of this model of transformative HRE are notions of reconciliation, social solidarity, social cohesion, inclusivity and antidiscrimination which provided the basis for the rationale, purpose, and structure of (what we argue) is a more socially just HRE curriculum” (p. 220). Studies that emerge from this set of theories are classroom- and communitybased and focus on the immediate and specific issues communities are facing. While all of the HRE categories in Table 21.1 explain different aspects of the same phenomenon of HRE, theories and scholarship in the first strand focus on policies, documents, and texts relevant to HRE; theories from the second strand are more contextoriented bringing into focus and critiquing the Western character of rights discourses; and theories from the third strand are classroom-based, examining pedagogy and possibilities for transformation. Scholarship rooted in different theories and worldviews tackle an academic field whose complexity arises from the legal, political, philosophical, and pedagogical dimensions of HRE, as well as the changing nature of human rights issues, which call for continuous adjustment and flexibility of theoretical concepts.
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION CIE scholars have developed a substantial literature exploring civic education and political socialization, specifically the role and purpose of schooling as part and parcel of nationbuilding in diverse regions (Boli et al., 1985; Fagerlind and Saha, 1989; Fuller and Rubinson, 1992; Torney-Purta et al., 1999). In contrast, HRE implies that students will develop allegiance to a supra-national system of norms developed through international human rights law and that they will, in effect, claim global citizenship in addition to national citizenship (Bajaj, 2012; Soysal, 1994; Suárez and Ramirez, 2004). One of the first books to develop a comprehensive framework for the nexus of human rights and education within CIE was Human Rights and Education published by scholar Norma Tarrow in 1987. This edited volume, with an epilogue by John Humphrey (1905–1995)— a Canadian jurist who was one of the original drafters of the UDHR in the 1940s— covered diverse global issues ranging from the right to education in sub-Saharan Africa to disability rights in Europe and Asia, to human rights education in schools and teacher preparation. Around this same time the first Education for All meeting was held in Jomtien, Thailand (1990) and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child entered into force (1989) codifying the most elaborate framework for children’s rights to date in international law; in all of these global meetings and international documents, a marked shift in language occurred from access to education as a functional means to increasing human capital towards a universal right for all children to access free, basic education. Human rights and education have been connected by three prepositions: education as a human right; education with human rights; and education for human rights (Bajaj, 2012). All three of these branches from the nexus of human rights and education concern CIE scholars, and they have had wide-reaching impact on CIE research and practice. Education as a right underpins the issue of access to education, a topic that is extensively researched and the focus of much policy and practice in the field. The second area— education with human rights—is concerned with quality education, the eradication of
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bias, discrimination, corporal punishment, and other forms of marginalization in schools and other educational settings. The third area is where human rights education squarely sits with examinations of different types of human rights education offered in different formats (formal/non-formal, explicit/implicit) and settings, with different approaches, and in educator preparation, curricular development, or focused on outcomes and reforms at the grassroots, regional, national, and/or international levels. With increasing attention to issues of human rights and education, in the 1990s and early 2000s, multiple books and articles were published by scholars in the field pertaining to teachers and human rights education (Osler and Starkey, 1994; 2010); handbooks for human rights education implementation particularly with its proliferation after the 1993 Vienna Declaration that codified a global mandate for a focus on human rights literacy in all sectors as mentioned earlier in this chapter (Bajaj, 2017b; Flowers, 2003); and a seminal book, more than 600 pages long, documenting scholarly approaches to HRE and cataloguing different HRE programs globally called Human Rights Education for the Twenty-First Century edited by Andreopoulos and Claude (1997). Since the early 2000s, scholars in the field have explored the rising global convergence towards human rights in textbooks and policy discourses globally; these scholars utilize neo-institutionalist theory as discussed in Table 21.1 as well as in Chapter 12 of this book. In these studies, distinct rights (e.g., women’s rights; disability rights; children’s rights; environmental rights) or topics (e.g., social justice; Holocaust education) are examined cross-nationally (Meyer el al., 2010; Ramirez et al., 2007; Russell and Suárez, 2017; Suárez, 2007). Another strand of neo-institutional scholarship applied to human rights education has tracked the textbook changes of individual countries over distinct periods of time and are mapped onto regional and global political shifts and linkages (Suárez, 2008). These forms of scholarship can be rooted in modernist theoretical assumptions about the rise and convergence of the best forms of education, and in this case, HRE would constitute a path to modernization of educational systems; on the other hand, scholars could also point to convergence of educational approaches as a form of hegemony and coercion with a more Marxist analysis, as discussed in Chapter 3 of this book. Similarly, at the policy or organizational level, scholars in the field have explored crossnational data and/or networks to understand how actors and organizations connect across time and space to influence how HRE is enacted. For example, in the edited textbook that was published in recent years, Human Rights Education: Theory, Research, Praxis (Bajaj, 2017a), Pizmony-Levy and Jensen (2017) examine in their chapter how international organizations over the past decade have advocated for the protection of LGBTQI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and/or Intersex) individuals who face persecution in their home countries. Utilizing data from an exit survey collected in seven different locations (namely: India, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Malaysia, Senegal, and Turkey), their chapter engages with the participants in training programs aimed at helping United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) personnel and NGO workers engage with LGBTQI individuals. In her scholarship, scholar Sirota (2017) explores how human rights education has expanded through grassroots efforts— particularly through the formation of networks in the United States and South Africa demanding policy shifts in each national context, with varying degrees of impact. Over the past two decades, other scholars in CIE primarily have looked at localization (Bajaj, 2012; Hantzopoulos, 2016), vernacularization (Bajaj and Wahl, 2017; Merry, 2006), and resistance (Mejias, 2017; Wahl, 2017). Such studies tend to be qualitative in their methodological approach and examine HRE in a particular context in great depth
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over a sustained period of time. For example, in Hantzopoulos’ (2016) study of human rights education in a high school in New York City, she examines how dignity—a core conceptual foundation of the human rights framework—infuses the operations of the school from content to pedagogy to discipline to the layout of the physical building. In Wahl’s (2017) study of police officers partaking in a human rights certificate program in northern India, the co-optation of rights concepts for other agendas demonstrates how globally circulating discourses get modified and reinvented at the local level in distinct contexts. Bajaj’s (2012) longitudinal work in India examines how one non-governmental organization (NGO) has incorporated a three-year human rights education curriculum in thousands of schools across the country and the transformative impacts of such learning for Dalit (formerly called “untouchable”) and Adivasi (indigenous) young people at the very margins of a “rising” and stratified Indian economy. Cislaghi et al., (2017) examine the NGO Tostan and its community empowerment program that provides human rights non-formal education to communities across West Africa; in these programs, gender issues have been debated and renegotiated by men and women in thousands of villages, many of which have afterwards abandoned the practice of female genital cutting in their communities (as discussed in Assiata’s story in the epigraph to this chapter). In Katz and Spero’s (2015) edited book Bringing Human Rights to U.S. Classrooms, case studies of educators utilizing human rights education in classrooms and communities are presented and analyzed to highlight grounded practice in the field. Such approaches privilege local experiences and anchor the cosmopolitan vision of human rights in Freirean approaches to critical consciousness raising for transformative learning (Bajaj, 2017b), rooted in critical social theory and resistance theories (Freire, 1970; Giroux, 1983); in their focused analysis of local settings, such scholarship pushes human rights education forward into new conceptual terrain where possibilities, tensions, and new directions emerge. Scholars in the field have argued that the mere insertion of human rights content into textbooks absent larger efforts for deepening learners’ affective and action-oriented dispositions is a superficial form of HRE (Tibbitts, 2017). Current trends in the field include expanding the definitions of transformative human rights education that require deep engagements with the content and pedagogy of formal and non-formal education programs (such as those exemplified at the outset of this chapter) (Bajaj et al., 2016; Hantzopoulos, 2016); critical human rights education that questions some of the very foundations of Western education and modernist assumptions about liberal human rights (Keet, 2018); and decolonial approaches to human rights education (Williams, 2018; Yang, 2015; Zembylas, 2017a) that “advance the project of re-contextualising human rights in the historical horizon of modernity/coloniality” in order to achieve “a less Eurocentric outlook and thus a more multiperspectival and pluriversal understanding of human rights—one that recognizes the histories of coloniality, the entanglements with human rights, and the consequences for social justice projects” (Zembylas, 2017a, p. 487). Critical debates and juxtapositions include the relationship of human rights education to citizenship education, peace education, social justice education, and global citizenship education, particularly as each form has its proponents, dispositions, and theoretical orientations that slightly distinguish one from the other. For example, human rights education within the United States—given legacies of American exceptionalism in examining rights issues—is often structured as a form of international education as opposed to a way to critically examine injustices within the United States and engage students in action around such issues, as is the charge of social justice education. In
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settings of conflict, peace education may be seen as a form building capacity for coexistence and fostering reconciliation, such as in the Education for Peace program in the former Yugoslavia (Danesh, 2006) or the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research’s educational program in Cyprus (Zembylas and Kambani, 2012). A challenge for human rights education is making itself flexible enough to be meaningful in diverse locations, yet not so open that it becomes just another buzzword that signals the latest educational trend with few common definitions or shared understandings across settings. Critiques of HRE within the field of CIE have argued the incompatibility of divergent actors’ agendas within state-run schools and the emancipatory vision of human rights education. For example, in his chapter on Politics, Power and Protest: Rights-Based Education Policy and the Limits of Human Rights Education, scholar Mejias (2017) draws on his extensive ethnographic research in a London secondary school to discuss gaps between the vision, implementation, and outcomes of Amnesty International’s global whole-school human rights education initiative, Human Rights Friendly Schools (HRFS). Mejias (2017) discusses how rather than aligning school practices with HRE, the school used the program and affiliation with it as a political tool to showcase during national inspections. Later, HRE was utilized by disgruntled teachers and students to destabilize the school’s leadership team and ultimately the school itself. The promise of HRE was held out in the face of a wide gap between rights and actual realities in a contested school setting. Through an examination of the “micropolitical” activity in the school, Mejias (as cited in Bajaj, 2017c) explores some of the limits of human rights education discourse when co-opted by various actors for divergent purposes. Other critiques of human rights education have paralleled critiques of the field of human rights as a whole for its liberal and individualistic orientations that have been seen to preclude more collective forms of social organization that might radically restructure asymmetrical power relations to be more just. For example, scholar Hopgood (2014) argues that popular grassroots movements that once formed the forefront of the human rights movement have been co-opted by funding and agendas advanced by the U.S. government and other Western powers: after decades of obscurity, global human rights advocacy has secured a foothold at the very highest level in the foreign policies of Western states and at the United Nations. This is a total transformation from the 1970s, when the language of human rights was new at the level of popular discourse, and the 1980s when a concern with sovereignty made even the UN reluctant to identify too fully with the human rights demands of a growing number of activists worldwide. . . . Human rights advocacy is funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year and human rights now form part of the discourse of humanitarian intervention. . . . This is the Global Human Rights Regime. I capitalise it to illustrate the distinction I want to make between the vast array of local human rights struggles that use various strategies . . . to advance demands for protection and progress. There is, I maintain, a significant difference between this less institutionalised, more flexible, more diverse and multi-vocal level, where social movements operate, and the embedded Global Human Rights Regime where law, courts, money, and access to power in New York and Geneva are more familiar terrain. Lower-case human rights may help, alongside other forms of social mobilisation, in changing the world in myriad small and positive ways, but they will never revolutionise global politics which is what Human Rights advocates aspire to do. —pp. 12–13
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Human rights education stems from a presumed value in human rights, a concept that has been contested by some scholars as limited at best, and neo-colonial and oppressive at worst (Mutua, 2008). These critiques challenge human rights education scholars and practitioners who root themselves in resistance theories that seek to advance transformative and decolonizing approaches to HRE to work alongside community organizations/movements; such alignments can ensure that “human rights” education (in lowercase) remains true to the vision of advancing greater equity, justice, and freedom rather than merely being part of the discursive flexing of nation-states, with limited benefit to the individuals and communities who face the brunt of human rights violations in their daily lives.
CONCLUSIONS As a young field and one in constant motion, the theories of human rights education are evolving. Diverse theoretical and conceptual underpinnings inform different actors, scholars, and practitioners in the field, and offer insight into the way that human rights education has been popularized and expanded into a global movement. A specific search for “human rights education” in Google Scholar produces nearly 30,000 entries; without the quotation marks, over 3 million unique citations appear. As one of the founding mothers of the field of HRE, Flowers (2017), has noted in the afterword to a recent book: entitled Human Rights Education: Theory, Research & Praxis would have made no sense thirty years ago when I first encountered human rights education (HRE). There was no theory then, only aspiration; no research, only supposition. And although magnificent praxis was taking place—the People Power Revolution in the Philippines, popular education to oppose military dictatorships in Latin America—educators in other parts of the world learned about and from these heroic efforts only after the fact. Indeed, this book in itself demonstrates the phenomenal growth of HRE since then, with scholars and educators from around the world contributing to a textbook to serve the needs of students in the field. Originally there were no students and no “field” as such. —p. 317 In this chapter, we have provided an overview of the history of the field, summarized the theories that have informed core scholarship and models of HRE, and offered analysis of how HRE has been taken up by scholars of CIE, including key debates and critiques currently being engaged. While some theories presented in this book are fixed and enduring, the theories of human rights education are continually being advanced and expanded upon with new research; an exciting proposition for new scholars in the field to contribute to the theoretical dimensions of this young and growing field. Given the nature of the field of HRE—one that posits a utopic vision for a global community in which basic needs are met and rights fulfilled—all theories of HRE are, to some degree, “theories of change.” Even scholarship that describes the rise of the field or engages in the analysis of micropolitics of contestation, at some basic core, begins inquiry with a basic belief in the value of such efforts and their need for greater clarity and precision. Since the first global mention of human rights education in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights over 70 years ago to the present day where it is an established field of inquiry,
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study, and practice, the future theoretical directions of HRE can further unify its many strands towards greater dignity, equity, and justice in settings near and far.
FURTHER READING 1. Path to dignity: The power of human rights education (2012). [Film]. Dir. Ellen Bruno (2012). Retrieved from www.path-to-dignity.org 2. Amnesty International (2017). Human rights friendly school toolkit. London, UK: Amnesty International. Retrieved from www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/ POL3266092017ENGLISH.PDF 3. Bajaj, M., Cislaghi, B., and Mackie, G. (2016). Advancing transformative human rights education. Annex to G. Brown (Ed.), The global citizenship commission report the universal declaration of human rights in the twenty-first century: A living document in a changing world. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers. Retrieved from www.openbookpublishers. com/shopimages/The-UDHR-21st-C-AppendixD.pdf 4. Bajaj, M. (Ed.). (2017). Human rights education: Theory, research, praxis. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. 5. Bajaj, M. (2012). Schooling for social change: The rise and impact of human rights education in India. New York, NY: Bloomsbury.
MINI CASE STUDY The key considerations around HRE in CIE are illustrated in the following hypothetical scenario. Philanthropic agencies have come together to launch a grant competition to fund research on human rights education in any sector that advances knowledge and will be published in a book to honor the tenth anniversary of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training (UNDHRET) in 2021.2 After an initial review of the hundreds of proposals submitted, an international selection committee convenes at the UNESCO regional office in Dakar, Senegal to discuss four of the finalists. Each proposal asks different questions, utilizes different methodological approaches, and represents a different conceptual lens or way of making sense of social phenomena. As a member of the selection committee, how would you rank these proposals from one to four? (Hint: your ordering might indicate your theoretical leanings). Proposal A: A team of researchers will be gathering textbooks produced before and after 2011 when the UNDHRET was first adopted. Textbooks will be sought from as many countries as possible and will be analyzed for any changes vis-à-vis human rights content occurring since the 2011 Declaration. These changes will then be discussed with regards to each country’s role in the global community and any global linkages and policies that may have influenced the adoption or reforms related to human rights in national educational systems. Different forms of rights emphasized in distinct contexts will also be analyzed (LBGTQI rights, women’s rights, disability rights, linguistic rights, etc.). Global trends will also be analyzed to understand how education reforms occur cross-nationally.
This is a hypothetical situation written by the authors of this chapter.
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Proposal B: A team of researchers will be collecting materials and data from Human Rights Friendly Schools that are part of Amnesty International’s network to better understand their programs (curriculum, pedagogy, after-school, and summer programs, teacher training, etc.). Since such schools operate in 22 countries, the team has decided to do surveys with educators, activists, and members community organizations that participate in the program in all 22 countries, and conduct case studies of five focal schools (with observations and interviews of students, parents, and teachers) in different countries (Ghana, Hungary, Mongolia, Australia, and Colombia) through one-week visits to each site. Data will be analyzed to understand if this program is tailored to its context and is effective in meeting its stated goals. Opportunities for cross-learning across context will also be discussed in analysis of the data. Proposal C: After an inordinate amount of police killings of unarmed individuals of marginalized ethnic and racial groups in the United States, a team of researchers has decided to study the way that police officers are trained in three different cities across the country, including one city that has included human rights training for incoming officers. Methods include observations (of trainings, and via “ride-alongs” with officers); interviews with officers, sergeants, and community members; focus groups; and review of training materials and incident reports. The research will be utilized (1) to write up scholarly findings about any observed differences between those officers receiving human rights training and those not receiving such training, (2) to challenge the secrecy around the release of any data related to police violence, and (3) to advocate for reforms in the training process if findings point to greater respect for due process and dignity through the incorporation of human rights. Proposal D: A decades-old social movement in the Philippines has incorporated Freirean-inspired popular education around human rights into programs for indigenous community members (young and old) who have very little access to formal education. Such communities face land grabs and other violations of their individual and collective rights, particularly with an (elected) authoritarian regime in power. A team of researchers proposes to work in collaboration with community members through an extended ethnographic project that also includes local capacity building wherein the research team will train members of the local community as co-researchers. Key research questions include: What are the most salient human rights issues for local community members and how can solidarity-based international research partnerships be developed? How can human rights education align with social movements to advocate for greater social justice and resistance to state-sponsored violence/violation?
REFERENCES Al-Daraweesh, F., and Snauwaert, D. T. (2015). Human rights education beyond universalism and relativism: A relational hermeneutic for global justice. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Amnesty International, Human rights education. Retrieved from www.amnesty.org/en/humanrights-education. Amnesty International, A. (n.d.). Human rights friendly schools. Retrieved from www.amnesty. org/en/human-rights-education. Andreopoulos, G. J., and Claude, R. P. (1997). Human rights education for the twenty-first century. Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press. Appiah, K. A. (2007). Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.
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Bajaj, M. (2011). Human rights education: Ideology, location, and approaches. Human Rights Quarterly, 33, 481–508. Bajaj, M. (2012). Schooling for social change: The rise and impact of human rights education in India. New York, NY: Bloomsbury. Bajaj, M. (2014). Human rights education: A path towards peace and justice. San Diego, CA: Peace and Justice Studies Association. Bajaj, M., Cislaghi, B., and Mackie, G. (2016). Advancing transformative human rights education. Annex to G. Brown (Ed.), The global citizenship commission report: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the twenty-first century: A living document in a changing world. Cambridge, UK : Open Book Publishers. Retrieved from www.openbookpublishers. com/shopimages/The-UDHR-21st-C-AppendixD.pdf Bajaj, M., and Wahl, R. (2017). Human rights education in post-colonial India. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Human rights education: Theory, research, praxis (pp. 147–169). Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press. Bajaj, M. (Ed.). (2017a). Human rights education: Theory, research, praxis. Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press. Bajaj, M. (2017b). Introduction. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Human rights education: Theory, research, praxis (pp. 1–16). Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press. Bajaj, M. (2017c). Human rights education for social change: Experiences from South Asia. In K. Bickmore, R. Hayhoe, C. Manion, K. Mundy, and R. Read (Eds.), Comparative and international education: Issues for teachers (pp. 211–233). Toronto, Canada: Canadian Scholars Press. Boli, J., Meyer, J., and Ramirez, F. (1985). Explaining the origins and expansion of mass education. Comparative Education Review, 29, 145–170. Cislaghi, B., Gillespie, D., and Mackie, G. (2017). Expanding the aspirational map: Interactive learning and human rights in Tostan’s community empowerment program. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Human rights education: Theory, research, praxis (pp. 251–266). Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press. Coysh, J. (2018). Exploring power and discourse in human rights education. In A. Keet and M. Zembylas (Eds.), Critical human rights, citizenship, and democracy education: Entanglements and regenerations (pp. 51–66). London, UK : Bloomsbury. Danesh, H.B. (2006). Towards an integrative theory of peace education. Journal of Peace Education, 3(1), 55–78. Fagerlind, I., and Saha, L.J. (1989). Education and national development: A comparative perspective. Oxford, UK : Pergamon Press. Flowers, N. (2003). What is human rights education? Hamburg: Bertelsmann Verlag. Retrieved from www.hrea.org/erc/Library/curriculum_methodology/flowers03.pdf. Flowers, N. (2017). Afterword. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Human rights education: Theory, research, praxis. (pp. 317–334). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum. Fuller, B., and Rubinson, R. (Eds.). (1992). The political construction of education: The state, school expansion, and economic change. New York, NY: Praeger Publishers. Gibson, M. L., and Grant, C. A. (2017). Historicizing critical educational praxis: A human rights framework for justice-oriented teaching. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Human rights education: Theory, research, praxis (pp. 225–250). Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press. Giroux, H. (1983). Theory and resistance in education: A pedagogy for the opposition. London, UK : Heinemann.
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Hantzopoulos, M. (2016). Restoring dignity in public schools: Human rights education in action. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Holland, T., and Martin, J. P. (2017). Human rights education’s role in peacebuilding: Lessons from the field. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Human rights education: Theory, research, praxis (pp. 267–290). Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press. Hopgood, S. (2014). The endtimes of human rights. In D. Lettinga and L.V. Troost (Eds.), Debating the endtimes of human rights activism and institutions in a neo-westphalian world. Retrieved from https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/21546/1/debating_the_endtimes_of_human_rights.pdf Kapoor, D. (2004). Popular education and social movements in India: State responses to constructive resistance for social justice. Convergence, 37(2), 55–63. Katz, S., and Spero, A. M. (Eds.). (2015). Bringing human rights education to US classrooms: Exemplary models from elementary grades to university. New York, NY: Palgrave Keet, A. (2007). Human rights education or human rights in education: A conceptual analysis, MA diss. University of Pretoria, Pretoria. Keet, A. (2018). Crisis and critique: Critical theories and the renewal of citizenship, democracy, and human rights education. In A. Keet and M. Zembylas (Eds.), Critical human rights, citizenship, and democracy education: Entanglements and regenerations (pp. 17–34). London, UK : Bloomsbury. Magendzo, A. (1997). Problems in planning human rights education for reemerging Latin American democracies. In G. Andreopoulos and R. P. Claude (Eds.), Human rights education for the twenty first century (pp. 469–83). Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press. Mejias, S. (2017). Politics, power, and protest: Rights based education policy and the limits of human rights education. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Human rights education: Theory, research, praxis (pp. 170–194). Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press Mentjes, G. (1997). Human rights education as empowerment: Reflections on pedagogy. In G. Andreopoulos and R. P. Claude (Eds.), Human rights education for the twenty first century (pp. 64–79). Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press. Merry, S. (2006). Human rights and gender violence: Translating international law into local justice. Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press. Meyer, J. W., Bromley, P., and Ramirez, F. O. (2010). Human rights in social science textbooks: Cross-national analyses, 1970–2008. Sociology of Education, 83(2), 111–134. Mutua, M. (2008). Human rights: A political and cultural critique. Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press. Osler, A., and Starkey, H. (1994). Fundamental issues in teacher education for human rights: A European perspective. Journal of Moral Education, 23(3), 349–359. Osler, A., and Starkey, H. (2010). Teachers and human rights education. UK : Trentham Books. Osler, A., and Yahya, C. (2017). Challenges and complexity in human rights education: Teachers’ understandings of democratic participation and gender equity in post-conflict Kurdistan, Iraq. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Human rights education: Theory, research, praxis (pp. 119–146). Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press. Pizmony-Levy, O., and Jensen, M. (2017). Contentious human rights education: The case of professional development programs on sexual orientation and gender identity–based refugee protection. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Human rights education: Theory, research, praxis (pp. 195–223). Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press. Ramirez, F., Suárez, D., and Meyer, J. (2007). The worldwide rise of human rights education. In A. Benavot, C. Braslavsky, and N. Truong (Eds.), School knowledge in comparative and historical perspective (pp. 35–52). Netherlands: Springer.
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Reichert, E. (2001). Move from social justice to human rights provides new perspective. Professional Development: The international journal of continuing social work education, 4(1). Russell, S. G., and Suárez, D. (2017). Symbol and substance: Human rights education as an emergent global institution. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Human rights education: Theory, research, praxis (pp. 19–46). Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press. Sirota, S. (2017). The role of human rights education in social movements: Case studies in South Africa and the United States. In J. Zajda and S. Ozdowski (Eds.), Globalisation, human rights education and reforms (pp. 111–125). New York, NY: Springer. Soysal, Y. (1994). Limits of citizenship. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Spreen, C. A., and Monaghan, C. (2017). Leveraging diversity to become a global citizen: Lessons for human rights education. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Human rights education: Theory, research, praxis (pp. 291–316). Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press. Spreen, C. A., Monaghan, C., and Hillary, A. (2018). From transforming human rights education to transformative human rights education: Context, critique, and change. In A. Keet and M. Zembylas (Eds.), Critical human rights, citizenship, and democracy education: Entanglements and regenerations (pp. 209–223). London, UK : Bloomsbury. Suárez, D., and Ramirez, F. (2004). Human rights and citizenship: The emergence of human rights education. Retrieved from https://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/publications/human_rights_ and_citizenship_the_emergence_of_human_rights_education Suárez, D. F. (2006). The institutionalization of human rights education. In D. P. Baker and A. Wiseman (Eds.), The impact of comparative education research on institutional theory (pp. 95–120). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Suárez, D. F. (2007). Education professionals and the construction of human rights education. Comparative Education Review, 51(1), 48–70. Suárez, D. F. (2008). Rewriting citizenship? Civic education in Costa Rica and Argentina. Comparative Education, 44(4), 485–503. Tarrow, N. (1987). Human rights and education. New York, NY: Pergamon Press. Tibbitts, F. (2002). Understanding what we do: Emerging models for human rights education. International Review of Education, 48(3–4), 159–71. Tibbitts, F. (2005). Transformative learning and human rights education: Taking a closer look. Intercultural Education, 16(2), 107–13. Tibbitts, F. (2017). Evolution of human rights education models. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Human rights education: Theory, research, praxis (pp. 69–95). Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press. Torney-Purta, J., Schwille, J., and Amadeo, J. (1999). Civic education across countries: Twentyfour national case studies from the IEA civic education project. Amsterdam: IEA Secretariat. Tostan. (2018). Choosing a world free from female genital cutting: Aissata’s true story. Retrieved from www.tostan.org/aissatas-story-fgc/ UNDHRET. (2011). United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training. Retrieved from www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Education/Training/Compilation/Pages/ UnitedNationsDeclarationonHumanRightsEducationandTraining(2011).aspx UDHR . (1948). Universal declaration of human rights. Retrieved from www.un.org/en/universaldeclaration-human-rights/ Wahl, R. (2014). Policing, values, and violence: Human rights education with law enforcers in India. Oxford Journal of Human Rights Practice, 5(2), 220–42. Wahl, R. (2017). Just violence: Torture and human rights in the eyes of the police. Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press.
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Williams, H. M. A. (2018). A pluriversal imperative: A decolonial conversation between human rights education and peace education. Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Human Rights Education, Sydney, Australia. Yang, W. (2015). Afterword: Will human rights education be decolonizing? In S. Katz and A. M. Spero (Eds.), Bringing human rights education to US classrooms: Exemplary models from elementary grades to university (pp. 225–235). New York, NY: Palgrave. Zembylas, M., and Kambani, F. (2012). The teaching of controversial issues during elementarylevel history instruction: Greek-Cypriot teachers’ perceptions and emotions. Theory & Research in Social Education, 40(2), 107–133. Zembylas, M. (2017a). Re-contextualising human rights education: Some decolonial strategies and pedagogical/curricular possibilities. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 25(4), 487–499. Zembylas, M. (2017b). Emotions, critical pedagogy, and human rights education. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Human rights education: Theory, research, praxis (pp. 47–68). Philadelphia, PA : University of Pennsylvania Press.
PART FIVE
Interdisciplinary and Emerging Approaches As an interdisciplinary field, comparative and international education (CIE) is constantly incorporating, adapting, and contextualizing theoretical perspectives developed in other academic disciplines. In addition, as other interdisciplinary fields have developed their own bodies of theory, these have also worked their way into CIE. Moreover, as the introduction to the volume notes, an increasing constellation of issues (e.g., the fourth industrial revolution, rising populism/nationalism, and global pandemics) will present themselves as issues with which CIE scholars and practitioners will engage. The result of these trends is a theoretical repertoire that is continually updated, renewed, and expanded. This section discusses interdisciplinary and emerging theoretical perspectives in the field of CIE. It combines diverse theoretical perspectives that largely constitute the cutting-edge theoretical innovation in the field of CIE. As such, some are considerably more developed than others. Working at the forefront of theorizing means that the body of research and knowledge upon which to draw may be scant, particularly if one is focused exclusively on research within CIE. Yet, the interdisciplinary and emerging approaches included in this section, and in some other sections as well, are vital for consideration as the field of CIE continues to grow and evolve. In their chapter on theorizing race and racism in CIE, Sharon Walker, Arathi Sriprakash, and Leon Tikly make the insightful observation of a “notable absence” of research on racism in CIE. While race “does not meaningfully exist biologically, it nevertheless becomes attached socially to people and communities in ways that give rise to racism” (p. 382). The relative absence of racial analysis within CIE, which the authors contend has lagged behind both other social science disciplines and mainstream educational research, therefore presents a critical problem with/in the field. Thus, Chapter 22 aims to introduce race as a social construct meaningfully, highlight its connections to other theoretical perspectives, such as Marxism, and decolonization, and illustrate how it adds depth to our understanding of international education policy and practice. Concepts addressed include racial formation, racialization, intersectionality, racial capitalism, decolonization, critical race theory, and more. As with race and racism, Christian Bracho begins his chapter “Queering CIE” with the astute observation that research on sexual diversity in CIE has been sorely lacking, particularly when compared to other fields. Yet, recent movements to launch a special 379
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interest group within the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) focused on issues of sexual orientation as well as calls for increased submissions to the Comparative Education Review focused on this area of research suggest that the field may be queering, albeit slowly. Bracho defines this “as a process that includes making space for queer theories and experiences, for challenging normative assumptions within the field, and for expanding the visibility of queers within the organization itself ” (p. 402). The chapter introduces queer theory as a way to address this gap, locating its origins in movements for gay and lesbian rights, and identifying its core strategies of questioning heterosexual norms and gender binaries. Bracho further suggests queering can be best understood as a dynamic and fluid process, and he traces a process of greater inclusion of LGBTQ scholarship within educational research, broadly, and in CIE, most specifically. Finally, Bracho offers a case study of international and local organizations across eight African nations that foregrounds some of the complex tensions existing between global and local interpretations of sexuality and gender identities. Another important emerging approach is discussed in Tavis Jules’ chapter on transitologies, which understands education policy and practice by studying larger political transitions (e.g., from authoritarian rule to democracy). In Chapter 24, Jules highlights how transitologies emerged largely as a response to modernization theory (see Chapter 4) but focuses more closely on the preconditions to democratization or marketization of national economies. The Arab Awakening of the 2010s and other recent revolutions have “led to a resurgence in the transitologies literature as scholars are seeing new insights to explain the different types of transitions that are taking place” (p. 419). The chapter further examines the work of Robert Cowen, who worked extensively with transitologies within CIE, and uses Tunisia as a case study to illustrate how transitologies aids in understanding the “policyscape” (Carney, 2009), along with the cultural, economic, and educational changes that occur as political movements take shape. While well-established in social research more broadly, the application of actor network theory (ANT) to CIE is a relatively recent development. In Chapter 25, Jason Beech and Alejandro Artopoulos draw on work by Bruno Latour and others to help introduce key aspects of ANT: its view of social structure, the concept of assemblages, and its unique position as an “anti-theory.” They show its unique relevance to CIE in its ability to describe localized practices without adhering to rigid categories. Using an example of an individual person learning something new, they also show how ANT requires an ontological reorientation, where: there is no difference between an individual who learns and the “context” in which there is conditions for her to learn. The “actor” and “context” collapse into a heterogeneous network, and actor-network, composed of human and non-human entities that generate learning as an effect. —p. 434 Moreover, the chapter outlines the post-humanist understanding of non-human elements, which, according to ANT, also have agency and power. The chapter concludes with a case study of ANT that has been used by CIE scholars to analyze global governance and international large-scale assessments. Beech and Artopoulos also point out that although it sounds similar, ANT is quite distinct from Social Network Analysis. Chapter 26, then, examines social network analysis (SNA), which is often confused and associated with actor-network theory (see Chapter 25) but should be considered distinct due to their different philosophical, epistemological, and ontological commitments.
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In this chapter, Oren Pizmony-Levy introduces key perspectives used in SNA, which is rooted in sociology and anthropology, including understanding a social system as the links or relationships between its actors. Pizmony-Levy notes, “the key premise of SNA is that relationships between actors determine in part what happens to a group of actors as a whole” (p. 452). The chapter also develops an innovative and extended example, using SNA to study the field of CIE by looking at the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) as a network. Administrative data from CIES are utilized to explore links (i.e., relationships) between various special interest groups of the society and the extent to which their members are connected. A case study of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), employing SNA, is included at the end of the chapter to highlight further its value as a theory, method, and approach within CIE. Finally, in Chapter 27 Joan DeJaeghere and Melanie J. Walker discuss one of the most seminal social theories of the twentieth-century, Amartya Sen’s capabilities. Sen’s capabilities approach (CA) is interdisciplinary in that it draws upon both theories of social justice and the field of economics to establish a way to understand the goals of human development. Unlike some other perspectives discussed in this section, the CA has been applied extensively in the field of CIE to understand education as an outcome of development and a means to facilitate development in other ways (e.g., social participation, employment, gender equity). As the authors note, it “is attractive to educational researchers concerned with transformative change for persons and societies” (p. 462). The chapter explores its core concepts and debates, including how capabilities are defined and operationalized, and by whom. DeJaeghere and Walker further explore how education is perceived through the lens of the CA and what the CA can lend to the analysis of education. This former angle is explored extensively in the chapter, with examples from across early childhood, basic, secondary, non-formal and vocational, and higher education. Calitz (2018) research on pedagogy within South African higher education serves as a case study to examine how the CA can both shed light on inequalities and suggest their solutions. Viewed collectively, the interdisciplinary and emerging approaches in this fifth and final section offer new ways of thinking about CIE that hold the potential to drive the field forward. They identify novel theorizing about the interconnected ways in which power, oppression, and inequality manifest, and constitute considerable explanatory power for both understanding how various phenomena work and considering new avenues for actions. As noted, many of these theories are underdeveloped in the CIE literature, and therefore represent an ideal topic on which to close the Handbook and to consider future possibilities for research in CIE.
REFERENCES Calitz, T. (2018a). Enhancing the freedom to flourish in higher education: Participation, equality and capabilities. Abingdon, UK : Routledge Carney, S. (2009). Negotiating policy in an age of globalization: Exploring educational “policyscapes” in Denmark, Nepal, and China. Comparative Education Review, 53(1), 63–88.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Theorizing Race and Racism in Comparative and International Education SHARON WALKER, ARATHI SRIPRAKASH, AND LEON TIKLY
INTRODUCTION As public commentator and academic Malik (1996) has observed, “race seems to be both everywhere and nowhere” (p. 1). What Malik (1996) captures here is the idea that understandings of race permeate how we talk and think about others, as well as how we treat others in relation to ourselves. Race structures every aspect of social life from housing, to education, health, and employment, determining who (individuals and communities) has access to which social resources. Such inequalities are global, finding different expression across historical and geographical contexts. And yet, there is also a struggle over the meaning of race and the willingness to talk about it in public discourse and in academic research. For example, there are those who view race as a defunct social category consigned to the past; suggesting that contemporary societies are “post-racial.” There are others who believe that categories of social analyses should be “color-blind” or focus on culture or economic difference (see Murji and Solomos, 2015, for a recent overview). There are also concerns that talking about racism gives credence to the notion that “race” exists as a biological fact (see Baber, 2010, for a critique of this position) or that it is a “divisive” discourse that unsettles liberal appeals to a universal humanism. As we have argued elsewhere, there has been a notable absence of research on race and racism in the field of education and international development (EID) (Sriprakash et al., 2019). Even though “race” does not meaningfully exist biologically it nevertheless becomes attached socially to people and communities in ways that give rise to racism. Critical scholars of race have variously called the processes of filling race with social meaning “racialization” or “racial formation” (Baber, 2010; Goldberg, 1993; Omi and Winant, 2015). Such social processes have profound, often violent, consequences for communities, and these expressions of racism and inequality work in and through education (Hartigan, 2010; Montagu, 1964). As such, researchers in comparative and international education (CIE) ought to pay far greater attention to matters of race and racism than they have to date. Racism is multi-faceted, so we need to understand its full ontology in order to address it systemically. This chapter introduces some key ways of theorizing race and 383
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racism and reflects on the implications of these ideas for research in CIE. It explores how racism is articulated with other forms of social domination, such as capitalism and patriarchy, and how it is contextually contingent. As cultural theorist Stuart Hall (1932–2014) has said, race is a “floating signifier;” its meaning is never fixed, and thus we need to track and challenge the specific contexts and social processes that give rise to racism (Jhally, 1997). If the mantra of “context matters” among comparativists holds true (Crossley and Jarvis, 2001), the field should be well placed to attend to the specificities, differences, and effects of racial domination in education. Our attempt in this chapter is to offer some theoretical tools with which readers can take up this task more fully.
THEORIZING RACE AND RACISM Race as a social construct Race is a social construct: it is not a natural biological category found in human bodies. Indeed, scientific research in genetics has shown more genetic variation within social groups than between them (Machery and Faucher, 2005). The construction of race occurs not through biological process but through a “social and political reality” (Hill, 2008, p. 13). Recognizing race as a social construct requires us to be attentive to how its “definition” is produced and transformed, and with what effects, over time. Critical race theorists, Delgado and Stefancic (2001) express race as social construct as follows: social construction thesis holds that race and races are products of social thought and relations. Not objective, inherent, or fixed, they correspond to no biological or genetic reality; rather, races are categories that society invents, manipulates, or retires when convenient. —p. 7 Historians generally agree that human populations did not always differentiate each other in terms that might be understood at the outset as explicitly “racial.” But there have been ongoing processes of categorizing and differentiating populations that produce ideas of “innate” differences between groups that can come to be “racialized.” For example, in Ancient Greece and Rome, human difference was often described in relation to notions of civilized and uncivilized (Cartledge, 2002). Such categorizations of populations installed discriminatory practices in terms of access to goods and power. However, ideas wherein human populations were seen as distinct races, classified by physical differences in rigid and even hierarchical frames, were not in circulation (Cartledge, 2002; Snowden, 1970). Recognizing race as a social construct requires understanding how racial determinism (the belief that biological racial differences in humans leads to essentialized differences in character and behavior) itself is a social project tied to systems of domination. European colonialism across the globe was a profound force in the invention, spread and establishment of racial categorizations. A critical element of this project was the development of biological accounts of race. These took hold in the eighteenth-century as pro-slavery advocates piggy-backed on the new faith in Enlightenment scientific knowledge. New accounts of human difference were needed in order to justify the existence and continuance of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Shored up by Carl Linnæus
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(1707–1778) and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s (1752–1840)1 racial taxonomies, in which human populations were categorized based on immutable phenotypic markers, such as skin color and hair type (Omi and Winant, 2015), categorization moved beyond physical markers with these outer attributes used as explanations for differences in areas, such as intelligence, temperament, sexuality, and culture (Omi and Winant, 2015; Quijano, 2000). Difference was represented hierarchically, with white Europeans placing themselves as the superior “race” and the height of human civilization (Omi and Winant, 2015; Wade, 2002). The use of “race sciences” manifested in the practice of eugenics— selecting “desirable” heritable characteristics in human populations—bolstered the atrocities of Nazi Germany and continues to resurface in academic and political debate, including in fields of genetics, medicine and forensics (Omi and Winant, 2015), and in the use of IQ tests to explain educational inequalities (Rushton and Jensen, 2005; Gillborn, 2016, for a critique). While efforts to dismantle notions of biological racism, especially since the Second World War, have turned to ideas of race as a social construct, we note that other markers of group difference, namely “culture,” have been used to produce and maintain racial determinisms (Lerner, 1981). For example, Barker (1981) traces the ideological shift to concepts such as culture and nation as a substitution for race in his discussion of Commonwealth immigration in British politics during the 1970s and 1980s. Similarly, Hall (2006) has shown how notions of ethnicity have been coupled with those of nationalism, imperialism, racism, and the state to construct a supposedly “natural,” “White” English ethnicity. As we see in the next section, processes of racialization circulate markers of difference, including culture and ethnicity, to justify the subjugation of populations. Thus, it is always important to critically examine the social and historical processes through which race—and its “proxies,” such as “culture” and “ethnicity”—is formed, reproduced, and transformed. The theory of “racial formation,” as we discuss below, offers a methodological resource for this work.
Racial formations The now classic theory of “racial formations” from sociologists Omi and Winant (2015) draw attention to how race has no fixed meaning, and instead represents an ongoing project of “making up people” (passim). That is, race is not a fact of nature or biology, but the result of complex processes of meaning making by human populations. To explain the complex ways in which people construct racial meanings, Omi and Winant (2015) offer the concept of “racial formations” to describe the “sociohistorical process by which racial identities are created, lived out, transformed, and destroyed” (p.109). They argue that this process of creation, transformation and destruction occurs at the “crossroads” where racial significations meet with social structures and institutions (economic, political, and cultural). This is a dynamic process as structures and significations are in a constant state of change. To further conceptualize the processes that occur at the crossroads, Omi and Winant (2015) use the concept of “racial projects.” Racial projects do the “work” of articulating
1 Carl Linnæus’s work, Systema Naturae, first published in 1735 with subsequent editions, classified homo sapiens into four subspecies: white Europeans, red Americans, yellow Asians, and Black Africans. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s interest in species variation also led him to conclude that there are five varieties of humans: Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan, Ethiopian, and American.
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the point at which racial meanings and social structures meet. As we summarize, “racial projects simultaneously interpret, represent, or explain racial identities and meanings within particular discursive and ideological practices, whilst organising and distributing resources (economic, political, and cultural) along racial lines” (Sriprakash et al., 2019, p. 6). They are varied, can conflict, and can operate at different scales, such as the local, national, or global. Where we see meanings of race struggled over, we can begin to recognize where racial projects are at work; for example, in Black civil rights movements, anti-colonial movements or in government policy outlawing or supporting racial discrimination and segregation. These examples show us that not all racial projects are racist. Rather, Omi and Winant (2015) point out that a racial project is defined as racist when it “creates or reproduces structures of domination based on racial significations and identities” (p. 128). Occurring in the context of the U.S. with its specific history of racial politics, Omi and Winant’s (2015) discussion may tempt a focus on a binary Black–White racial divide. However, integral to their description of racial formations is the concept of “racialization” which takes us beyond this binary position to consider, not only the connected experiences of groups, for example, indigenous populations, Latinx, and Asians (Solóranzo and Yosso, 2002), but also to address how processes of racialization operate to “other” populations along religious, ethnic and cultural lines. Racialization refers to the “extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice or group” (Omi and Winant, 2015, p.13). Racialization occurs beyond phenotypical features—visually observable features, such as skin color, hair, and facial features—with groups racialized through the deployment of other criteria, such as religious, national, and linguistic. This means, for example, that the systematic discrimination of religious groups through processes of “racialization,” such as Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, are forms of racism. Al-Saji (2010) elucidates this in her discussion of the Muslim veil. She shows how the symbolic meanings attached to the veil by White Europeans through a field of vision structured, in this instance, through a colonial experience, render the veil as a visible sign of difference resulting in the essentialization of Muslims as different. Seen in this way, we can identify the divisions between groups in different contexts; for example those based on cultural or linguistic differences, as a form of racialization that can lead to racism. In his piece Racism Without Races, Baber (2010) further illuminates the conceptual importance of “racialization” for understanding the contextual specificities of racisms, globally. He suggests: an important aspect of the concept of “racialization” is that it allows one to capture the dynamic processes through which human groups are categorized, their differences are sought to be naturalized or imparted some biologically inherent properties and to apprehend precisely how this categorization—enforced by institutional structures of power—generates specific structures of inequality. —Baber, 2010, p. 245 Significantly, an analytic focus on racial formations and racialization helps address the potential blind-spot of post-colonial theory which can often center around East/West or North/South distinctions. As Virdee (2019) argues, the tendency of post-colonial theorizing “towards homogenizing Europe (and Whiteness) obscures a consideration of the multiple routes through which racism was made, carrying with it the danger that we continue to underestimate racism’s full significance and material force in the making of
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the modern world” (p. 6). For example, in highlighting the production and naturalization of difference, particularly beyond phenotypic characteristics, Baber (2010) shows how the systematic discrimination of groups—such as, Dalits in South Asia and Burakumin in Japan—are forms of racism that need to be recognized as such. Baber (2010) discusses how, at the 2001 UN “Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance,” there were heated debates about the inclusion of “casteism” as a form of racism. Some critics argued that caste in South Asian society is not akin to race, and thus should not be included in global discussions of human rights and anti-discrimination. However, as Baber (2010) shows, this argument is based on a dangerous conceptual slippage; it assumes that caste and race exist themselves as fixed biological categories. It also detracts from addressing the material contexts through which casteism—as a form of social domination—occurs. As Natrajan and Greenough (2009) argue, “it is not that caste is not race, but that racism and casteism have comparable effects; they are both processes of oppression that depend on the ‘naturalization’ of race and caste” (p. 18). In calling for greater attention to matters of race and racism in CIE, we do not presume that categories of group difference (such as, linguistic background, ethnic identifications, or caste-categories) are fixed or given. Rather, we underscore the need to examine how hierarchical classifications of difference within societies are continually produced, contested, and naturalized in and through educational systems (see for example Ress, 2019). These are the complex processes of racial formation and racialization that give us insights into the production of “racism without races.” This perspective shines a light on the different forms of oppression across contexts, including the ways in which casteism, and religious and cultural discrimination, are forms of racism.
Intersectionality As we have seen, understanding race, racism, and racialization as a process of racial formation provides a means of interrogating how social domination operates along racial, cultural, and ethnic lines. However, it is important to recognize that racial significations do not interact independently from other social structures. Rather, they intersect and in many ways are reinforced through their relationship to other processes of social domination, such as class, gender, and sexuality. Intersectional thinking and approaches have been significant in informing how these processes of domination play out in different contexts—historically and geographically. Intersectionality oscillates between being understood as a theory, an interpretative frame, or a type of prism through which one can view the social world. It is important to acknowledge its development within a framework of social justice and transformation. In other words, intersectional thinking did not begin as an academic project but to bring about grassroots social change. Broadly, intersectionality can be defined as: the critical insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but as reciprocally constructing phenomena that in turn shape complex social inequalities. —Hill Collins, 2015, p. 2 Put simply, lives are always made up of multiple relations of social domination. As Hill Collins (2015) argues that the purpose of intersectionality, in other words, its analytical and political importance, is its “attentiveness to power relations and social inequalities” (p. 3).
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In general, commentators attribute the emergence of intersectional thinking and approaches to social analysis with the experience of African-American women (Puar, 2011). The distinctive experience of African-American women gained from their unique standpoint in U.S. society underpins Black feminist thought where race is theorized in relation to other social categories (or markers of difference), such as gender, class, sexuality, and citizenship. Across the centuries, feminist thinkers, whilst not necessarily naming their contributions explicitly in terms of an “intersectional” approach, have emphasized the combined oppression of African-American women. This includes writers, authors, and activists, such as Sojourner Truth (1797–1883), Maria W. Stewart (1803–1879), Anna Julia Cooper (1858–1964), Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862–1931), Toni Morrison (1931–2019), Angela Davis, and bell hooks (Hill Collins, 1999; 2015). For example, Jones (1949), a Black socialist feminist in the early to mid-twentieth-century, shows how notions of intersectionality, whilst not necessarily named, have permeated feminist thought. She refers to the exploitation of Black women by referring to their “triple oppression” within systems of domination characterized by the intersecting oppressions of gender, race, and class (Daniels, 2008). While this body of intellectual and activist work by Black women is distinct and significant, other movements of Indigenous women and women of color also “rais[ed] claims about the interconnectedness of race, class and gender, and sexuality in their everyday lived experience” (Hill Collins, 2015, p. 7). It is not until the late 1980s that Crenshaw (1989; 1991) coined the term “intersectionality” to describe the phenomenon. All of these feminist thinkers emphasize the mutually reinforcing form of different axis of oppression; oppression cannot be reduced to any one particular type (Hill Collins, 1999). Since the coining of the term, “intersectionality,” there has been growing methodological interest in the approach across sectors—in the academy, by practitioners, such as teachers, lawyers, social workers, and community organizers, and by those involved in grassroot social justice organizations (Hill Collins, 2015). It has also been applied in educational research. For example, Mirza (2009) uses an intersectional lens to discuss the experiences of Black and Asian women in UK higher education. In examining race and gender inequality, Mirza (2009) shows how an intersectional analysis helps to shed light on the historical specificity of their experiences as they negotiate White spaces and changing academic and educational discourses. Within comparative education, intersectional analysis and methodologies have been applied to address a range of issues. For instance, Unterhalter (2012) deploys intersectional analysis to critique and offer an alternative conception of the then Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). She argues that current practices of categorization and boundary setting, for example the distinction between areas of social policy on poverty (MDG1), education (MDG2) and gender (MDG3), elides the complex ways in which these areas of social relations are connected and how inequalities are reproduced. Unterhalter (2012), argues that intersectionality offers an important analytical tool for challenging existing sites of power by interrogating how these boundaries have come about; why and to what end; and what social categories are understood as connected by policy makers and implementors. While recognizing the potential of intersectionality, Unterhalter (2012) highlights the contestations that have arisen over its use, in part fueled by its growing popularity. Davis (2008) particularly illustrates the “slippage” over its meaning and use by suggesting that intersectionality has become a meaningless “buzzword.” This concern has been further exemplified in questions about its theoretical and methodological parameters. Choo and
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Ferree (2010) respond to critiques by offering reflections on how intersectionality might be better applied in sociological research. By interrogating published studies, they show how researchers often fail to clearly theorize their use of intersectionality resulting in reduced analytical effect. They suggest three “levels” of analysis: group-centered, process-centered, and system-centered. These are not proposed as fixed or hierarchal but rather as a means of training attention to the complex dimensions of an intersectional approach. Linked to the popularity of intersectionality and its reach beyond female African American contexts, are observations by Tomlinson (2013) and Hill Collins (1999) of the Europeanization of the approach which at best problematizes the centrality of the contributions of Black women and Black feminists, and at worst, presents a new, European (read White) intersectional account that dismisses race as an analytical category. Cutting through these contestations, Mohanty (2003) discusses intersectional analysis as integral to a broader feminist critique encompassing the local experiences of intersecting oppressions, with the collective, interconnected experiences of women across all contexts—Black/white, global north/south etc. For Mohanty (2003), this type of feminist scholarship adopts a comparative stance that is attentive to power, and to the intertwined histories of communities of women. She describes this as a “solidarity perspective,” which “requires understanding the historical and experiential specificities and differences of women’s lives as well as the historical and experiential connections between women from different national, racial, and cultural communities” (Mohanty, 2003, p. 52). This calls for feminist scholarship across boundaries—across waves of feminist thinking, locations, and experiences—to unify feminist resistance. Far from being ignorant of the monopoly of white feminist epistemologies and the economic and political hegemony of the “First World,” it is a solidarity which proposes possibilities for cross-cultural feminist work that enriches understanding of women’s experiences in an increasingly globalized world.
Racial capitalism Theories of racial capitalism, emerging from the Black radical tradition, offer a powerful lens through which to understand how racism and capitalism work together. In his landmark text, Black Marxism, Robinson (2000) traced how the processes of racialization and capitalism are entwined. As Robinson (2000) outlines, “the development, organization, and expansion of capitalist society pursued essentially racial directions . . . As a material force, then, it could be expected that racialism would inevitably permeate the social structures emergent from capitalism” (p. 2). Robinson’s (2000) ideas of racial capitalism offer a correction to theories of capitalism that are blind to the functioning and effects of racism as a fundamental part of capitalist procedures of accumulation and expropriation. It is important to recognize his work as part of a larger concern in the Black radical tradition: the imperative for people of African origins and descent to “reassemble social bonds” (Melamed, 2015, p. 70) that had been violently destroyed through slavery as a specific articulation of racial capitalism. The term racial capitalism refers to the structures of racism and capitalism that divide people and societies; divisions that both dehumanize and mark out human value. In a recent exposition of Rethinking Racial Capitalism: Questions of Reproduction and Survival, Bhattacharyya (2018) suggests, “racial capitalism helps us to understand how people become divided from each other in the name of economic survival or in the name of economic well-being” (p. x). The notion of dehumanization is key in Bhattacharyya’s (2018) analysis of racial capitalism. She explains, “capitalism cannot function if we are all
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allowed to become fully human. Dehumanization seems to be an unavoidable outcome of the processes of capitalist development” (Bhattacharyya, 2018, p. x). Bhattacharyya (2018) makes a nuanced distinction within ideas of racial capitalism. She suggests that racial capitalism is not “an account of how capitalism treats different ‘racial groups,’ but it is an account of how the world made through racism shapes patterns of capitalist development” (Bhattacharyya, 2018, p. 103). The latter position foregrounds the ways in which racism and capitalism interlock structurally. As Melamed (2015) illustrates, racial capitalism carries a definitional power over what makes life meaningful. This has profound implications for understanding the social effects of education; it draws our attention to how educational priorities and practices are tied up with social norms that define “success” and, indeed, meaningfulness, in life. These are practices which, through differential allocations of opportunity, filter, and sort “human capital.” Think about who gets to go to school and who does not; how one’s life chances are bound up with what kinds of educational access are available. In the context of increasingly marketized, differentiated education systems, differential educational opportunities and outcomes are increasingly stark. How educational inequalities and exclusions service contemporary forces of racial capitalism is an important, yet underexamined, line of inquiry in CIE. Indeed, while there has been much research in comparative studies on the relationship between education and capitalism, most notably critiques of contemporary neoliberalism, much less has been explicitly written on the ways this relationship is racialized. As Melamed (2015) argues, the framework of racial capitalism “requires its users to recognize that capitalism is racial capitalism” (p. 77). She goes on to explain: capital can only be capital when it is accumulating, and it can only accumulate by producing and moving through relations of severe inequality among human groups— capitalists with the means of production/workers without the means of subsistence, creditors/debtors, conquerors of land made property/the dispossessed and removed. These antinomies of accumulation require loss, disposability, and the unequal differentiation of human value, and racism enshrines the inequalities that capitalism requires. —Melamed, 2015, p. 77, emphasis added Melamed (2015) draws attention to the ways in which racism can legitimize unequal opportunities and outcomes of education. Moreover, differential educational opportunities and outcomes are often ascribed to the “fictions of differing human capacities” (Melamed, 2015, p. 77) rather than on the structures of racism. As Virdee (2019) recently sets out, racism became “one of the principal mechanisms through which inequality and hierarchy could be intellectually legitimized in an age which had proclaimed its belief in human equality” (p. 19). Racial capitalism structures white supremacist capitalist development (e.g., slavery, colonialism and so on), but Melamed (2015) reminds us that it is also important to recognize the ways in which liberal notions of “inclusion” contain the same logics. For example, capitalist development goals of “incorporating” children into systems of mass formal schooling is also a form of valuing and devaluing humanity differentially “to fit the needs of reigning state-capital orders” (Melamed, 2015, p. 77; see also Moeller, 2018). Whilst not usually deploying the lens of racial capitalism explicitly, comparative and development educationalists have long shown how “inclusion” in mass schooling in the service of “economic development” has also served assimilationist agendas; for example through the denial of livelihoods, cultural practices, and mother-
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tongue language. The framework of racial capitalism helps to more directly identify such educational practices as a denial of humanity. How education might disrupt or challenge the logics of racial capitalism remains too an urgent area of inquiry and practice.
Decolonization and racial justice As noted above, European Colonialism was a constituting force of systems of racial domination. Education played a key role in legitimizing and reinforcing colonial rule and its legacies. Although there were differences in the forms of schooling promoted by English, French, Portuguese, and other colonizing powers (Altbach and Kelly, 1978; White, 1996), in general access to basic education focused on inculcating Christian values and basic literacy in order to prepare the colonized for their subservient role in the colonial economy. Secondary and higher education were the preserve of a small number of the colonized population who would go on to staff the colonial bureaucracy. In countries such as South Africa with significant white settler communities, education was also highly racially segregated with a gulf in the quality of education between that available to whites and to members of different racial groups. In all cases, the curriculum was highly Eurocentric in nature, and served to valorize European ideas, values, religions, and languages at the expense of non-European cultures and ways of understanding the world. Whilst colonial education was often successful in inculcating Western religions and ideas, it was also contradictory in its effects. In particular, many of the leaders of anticolonial struggles were products of colonial education. In Africa, anti-colonial struggles were often informed by pan-Africanist thinking. With its origins in the anti-slavery movement of the 1800s and the campaigns of Black intellectuals in Africa and the diaspora in the early twentieth-century, pan-Africanism developed as a world view that sought unity amongst all peoples of African descent and the promotion of African cultures, values, and languages in the fight against colonialism and racism (Adi, 2018, for a discussion of pan-Africanism). Pan-Africanism took a variety of forms and was implicit in a range of liberation projects from African socialism as espoused by Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) in Ghana, and Kenneth Kuanda in Zambia (Ackah, 1999), to self-reliance and ujamaa advocated by Julius Nyerere (1922–1999) in Tanzania. Questioning the so-called universality, objectivity and “truth” of Western knowledge has also been a key feature of anti-colonial struggles and pan-Africanist thought from inception. Anti-colonial activists from Julius Nyerere (1922–1999) and Walter Rodney (1942–1980) to Steve Biko (1946–1977) have provided a trenchant critique of the role of colonial education in legitimizing Western rule through the valorization of Western forms of knowledge and the systematic undermining of African knowledge systems, languages, and cultural values. The negritude movement in the 1930s, under the influence of thinkers such as Aimé Césaire (1913–2008) and Léopold Senghor (1906–2001) drew attention to the racializing effects of Western colonial discourse and sought to challenge this through the projection of positive conceptions of Black identities. Bringing into conversation with each other ideas from psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and Marxism, the Martinique psychoanalyst, and revolutionary Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) drew attention to the damaging and dehumanizing consequences for the Black psyche that arise as a consequence of internalizing racialized identities transmitted through Western language and culture (Fanon, 1961). In his book Black Skins White Masks, for example, Fanon (1967) points to the processes through which Black people, who are subjected to racism under colonial rule, develop an inferiority complex in relation to their Black identities and seek to
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appropriate and imitate the culture of the colonizer. For Fanon (1961), the only way to overcome this inferiority complex is through the act of revolution against white oppression. Fanon’s (1961) work was in turn influential on the thinking of Steve Biko (1946–1977) and other leaders of the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa (Biko, 1978). In his book, I Write What I Like, Biko (1978) emphasizes the central importance of Black self-organization in the fight against racism. In recent years anti-colonial and post-colonial thought and scholarship has found expression in debates about decolonizing the curriculum. As with previous eras of anticolonial struggle, these debates are rooted in grass roots protests such as those instigated by students at the University of Cape Town in 2015 as part of the Rhodes Must Fall movement. At the heart of these movements are issues of epistemic justice (de Sousa Santos, 2017). In the case of the Rhodes Must Fall and Why is My Curriculum White movements, the issues are to do with the hegemony of Western knowledge in curricula. A key figure whose ideas continue to resonate in debates about decolonizing the curriculum is the Kenyan writer and dramatist Thiong’o. Thiong’o (1986) challenged the role of Western languages in African higher education and emphasized the potential of African languages as a means for countering hegemonic Western ways of knowing the world (Thiong’o, 1986). Other demands to decolonize the curriculum have been given intellectual impetus through the work of scholars, such as de Sousa Santos (2002; 2007; 2012; 2017), Mbembe (2016), Dei (2017); Dei and Kempf, 2006) and Connell (2007; 2012; 2014). In the case of de Sousa Santos (2017) and Mbembe (2016) the emphasis has focused on a critique of the assumption at the heart of Western knowledge and Western science, in particular that it represents a universalizing truth. For these authors, despite its claims to objectivity, Western science since the Enlightenment has been linked to particular interests and in particular to those of European colonialism and the development of global markets. They also link the dominance of Western knowledge to the marketization of education and the commodification of knowledge which they argue detracts from the role of the university in promoting critical, independent thought (de Sousa Santos, 2017; Mbembe, 2016). This has led in de Sousa Santos’ (2012) terms to the “epistemicide” of non-Western cultures. For Mbembe (2016), a key goal in decolonizing the curriculum must be to challenge the very basis of Western humanism itself, which he claims lies in the separation of subject from object, nature from culture and human beings from other species. Rather, through education “a new understanding of ontology, epistemology, ethics and politics has to be achieved. It can only be achieved by overcoming anthropocentrism and humanism, the split between nature and culture” (Mbembe, 2016, p. 42). For both de Sousa Santos (2017) and Mbembe (2016) this involves a more fundamental shift in the way that the role of the university is perceived. For de Sousa Santos (2017) it involves protecting the idea of the university as public good. The process of decolonizing the curriculum must also entail bringing the disciplines as enshrined in the university curriculum into conversation through forms of knowledge production with grass roots movements and with indigenous knowledge. For de Sousa Santos (2017) the aim is to develop a “pluriversity” based on a recognition of multiple ways of “knowing” the world that can benefit social and environmental justice. For Mbembe (2016) and Dei (2016) it means developing diasporic intellectual networks that can transform the curriculum to reflect the experiences of Africans in Africa and the diaspora. It also means engaging with and challenging new configurations of racism and in particular “to explore the emerging nexus between biology, genes, technologies and their articulations with new forms of human destitution” (Mbembe, 2016, p. 44).
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The struggle over knowledge and epistemology is clear and applies as much to the field of comparative education as to any site where knowledge is contested. It is now twenty years since Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) drew attention to this struggle and the entanglement of academic research with European colonial ways of knowing. Similarly, Goldberg (1993) argues that Western ways of knowing, and by extension research conducted in the name of comparative education, are intricately engrained with racialized discourses (Sriprakash and Takayama, 2018). The field of CIE must address its “white gaze” (Pailey, 2020) and build approaches that are committed to tackling racial justice. Social justice without racial justice is no justice at all.
Critical race theory Despite significant work on racial formations, racial capitalism, and intersectionality that have shown the enduring forms of racial domination, social commentary, policy, and academic research often overlooks or erases the significance of racism. One such way in which this erasure occurs is through color-blind politics and claims that we are living in a “post-race” age. Concerned by these positions, critical race theorists, a movement of academic scholarship and activists committed to understanding and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power (Delgado and Stefancic, 2001), have gained an increasing presence over the last few decades, presenting a challenge to the foundations of the liberal order, highlighting racism as institutional and systemic, and giving voice to marginalized people of color. Critical race theory (CRT) grew out of the U.S. judicial system in the 1970s as a challenge to color-blind approaches to social policy and law. Discontented with what they viewed as a regression in the gains from the civil rights era of the 1960s, critical legal scholars, lawyers, and activists organized to critique, challenge and agitate against the liberal order based on the European Enlightenment notions of individual liberty, equality, and rationalism (Delgado and Stefancic, 2001). In fact, faced with incremental steps towards racial equality, in a political climate that spoke of progress and faith in the legal system, CRT is “marked by a deep discontent with liberalism” (Delgado and Stefancic, 2000, p. 1). These early theorists and activists were concerned with the U.S. Supreme Court’s claim of upholding a color-blind constitutionalism whereby individuals, regardless of their race, are treated equally under the law. CRT critiques argued that this color-blind conception of equality, and apparent neutral approach to law making and practice, “function[s] as a racial ideology. . .[that] fosters white racial domination” (Gotanda, 1995, p. 257). This is because, by ignoring race, judicial decisions can ignore race and racism as a factor in cases brought before the court. Bonilla-Silva (2017), elaborates on the ways in which color-blind racism operates as a “new racism.” For Bonilla-Silva (2017) color-blind racism operates through four frames: 1. Abstract liberalism applies liberal concepts, such as equal opportunities and notions of fairness. These concepts are used by white people to present a rational and moral stance on race-related issues whilst barring concrete attempts to deal with the reality of racial inequalities in society. 2. Naturalization allows whites to explain racial phenomena as natural occurrences. For example, in explaining where people live, one might comment that people prefer to live or socialize with their “own kind.” This couches apparent human behavior and choice in biological terms, and it is seen as acceptable since nonWhite people also congregate together.
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3. Cultural racism allows whites to shift the language of biological race in talking about non-white people to that of culture (interchangeable with ethnicity—see Omi and Winant’s, 2015, discussion of ethnicity). Within this frame, race becomes a matter of culture. In other words, racism is framed in cultural terms, for example: “Mexicans do not put much emphasis on education” or “Blacks have too many babies” (Bonilla-Silva, 2017, p. 56). The more physical, phenotypical racist references are set aside, substituted by descriptions of an individual’s or a community’s, “natural” qualities. 4. Minimization of racism describes when discrimination is no longer viewed as a major factor effecting the lives of non-white populations; discrimination is not the cause of unequal experiences. Through this frame, Black and Brown populations can be accused of using the “race card” as the onus is placed on them to succeed and to stop complaining. Bonilla-Silva (2017) argues that this position allows only extreme discriminatory acts to be noted whilst permitting whites to accuse Black and Brown people of causing a fuss over their lot in life even when faced with police brutality and inadequate government support; for example, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katerina which struck the east coast of America in 2005—those affected were predominantly African American. The idea that we live in a post-race age, where the significance of race has been diminished ideologically and materially (St Louis, 2014, for a discussion of post-race and its putative nature) is fueled by the idea of color-blind racism. Contrary to such claims, the international and multi-disciplinary expansion of CRT attests to the continuing stronghold of race and racism as scholars seek to reveal the ways in which racism is reproduced as “common-sense” knowledge and “exists” undetected whilst permeating social systems and ways of thinking. Integral to this expansion is the extensive application of CRT perspectives and approaches to education. In a comprehensive overview of CRT in education, Gillborn (2018) explains how CRT has been applied to tackle issues as diverse as classroom practice, educational policy, and long-standing issues, such as the “achievement gap” in attainment between students from different ethnic backgrounds. Theorists have applied and developed a range of methodological approaches including the principle of interest convergence, intersectionality and counter-story telling whilst ensuring accounts that avoid an ahistorical approach and which recognize the experiential voice of marginalized communities (Dixson et al., 2018). In challenging color-blind racism as a process through which white domination is maintained, CRT theorists draw attention to the ways in which color-blind racism occurs. The political philosopher, Mills’ (1997), conceptualization of “White ignorance” is relevant here. Mills (1997) argues that racism is at the heart of the social contract. In other words, racism is not an anomaly to an otherwise just political system; rather, it is fundamental to social relations. Mills (1997) argues that in order for racism to reproduce itself within any social or political system, silence and ignorance about racism is required by the social contract. Mills (1997) describes this silence and ignorance as purposeful in that “one has an agreement to misinterpret the world. . . one has to learn to see the world wrongly, but with the assurance that this set of mistaken perceptions will be validated by white epistemic authority. . .” (p.18, emphasis in original). Mills (2015) refers to the process whereby racism is normalized as an “epistemology of ignorance” through which white people are able to maintain dominance. We argue that the concept of “White ignorance” is significant in understanding the ways in which racism operates in the field of education for international development,
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and CIE more broadly (see our discussion of the “global learning crisis;” Sriprakash et al., 2019). There is a long-standing silence in the field about racism and its production of inequality, including in knowledge production, despite a resurgence of activism and scholarship on a global scale aimed at confronting issues of racism in education and more widely. This has been witnessed in the emergence of movements such as Rhodes must Fall, Why is My Curriculum White (as mentioned earlier), and Black Lives Matter. This silence also ignores a longer history of resistance against racist ideologies, practices and policy seen in anti-colonial and indigenous activism, and in the growth of post-colonial scholarship.
CONCLUSIONS As this chapter has shown, there are rich theoretical resources available to identify and analyze the forms and effects of racial domination that both shape educational systems and practices, and are reproduced through them. These theoretical resources are alive to the mutability, relationality, and contextual specificity of racism. They can thus be illuminating and generative for research in CIE to address racial justice as a central feature of the field. The resources profiled here are, of course, partial; a mere snapshot of theorizing that has emerged from anti-racist and anti-colonial activism and struggle. Through collective efforts of engaging more fully with these movements in specific contexts, Comparative Educationalists must make space for this knowledge in their projects of research, policy, and practice. As we go to press, the Black Lives Matter movement is reaching all corners of the globe, telling us in no uncertain terms that this task is well overdue.
FURTHER READING 1. Mills, C. (2015). Global white ignorance. In M. Gross and L. McGoey (Eds.), Routledge international handbook of ignorance studies (pp. 217–227). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. 2. Pailey, R.N. (2020). De-centring the ‘white gaze’ of development. Development and Change, 51, 729–745. 3. Omi, M., and Winant, H. (2015). Racial formation in the United States. 3rd edition. New York, NY: Routledge. 4. Mohanty, C. T. (2003). Under western eyes revisited: Feminist solidarity through anticapitalist struggles. Signs, 28(2), 499–535. 5. Sriprakash, A., Tikly. L., and Walker, S. (2019). The erasures of racism in education and international development: Re-reading the ‘global learning crisis.’ Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education.
REFERENCES Ackah, W. (1999). Pan-Africanism: Exploring the contradictions: Politics, identity and development in Africa and the African diaspora. London, UK: Routledge. Adi, H. (2018). Pan-Africanism: A history. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic. Al-Saji, A. (2010). The racialization of Muslim veils: A philosophical analysis. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 36(8), 875–902. Altbach, P., and Kelly, G. (1978). Education and colonialism. New York, NY: Longman. Baber, Z. (2010). Racism without races: Reflections on racialization and racial projects. Sociology Compass, 4(4), 241–248.
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Barker, M. (1981). The new racism: Conservatives and the ideology of the tribe. Frederick, MD: Aletheia Books. Bhattacharyya, G. (2018). Rethinking racial capitalism. Questions of reproduction and survival. London, UK: Rowman & Littlefield. Biko, S. (1978). I write what I like: Selected writings. London, UK: Bowerdean Press. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2017). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America (5th edition). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Boyce Daniels, C. (2008). Left of Karl Marx: The political life of black communist Claudia Jones. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Cartledge, P. (2002). The Greeks: A portrait of self and others. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Choo, H. Y., and Ferree, M. M. (2010). Practicing intersectionality in sociological research: A critical analysis of inclusions, interactions, and institutions in the study of inequalities. Sociological Theory, 28(2), 129–149. Connell, R. (2007). Southern theory: The global dynamics of knowledge in social science. London, UK: Allen and Unwin. Connell, R. (2012). Just education. Journal of Education Policy, 27(5), 681–683. Connell, R. (2014). Using southern theory: Decolonizing social thought in theory, research and application. Planning Theory, 13(2), 210–223. Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Level Forum, 1989(1) Article 8, 139–167. Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299. Crossley, M., and Jarvis, P. (2001). Context matters. Comparative Education, 37(4), 405–408. Davis, K. (2008). Intersectionality as buzzword. Feminist Theory, 9(1), 67–85. Dei, G. and Kempf, A. (Eds.). (2006). Anti-colonialism and education: The politics of resistance. Rotterdam, Amsterdam: Sense Publishers. Dei, G. (2017). Reframing blackness and black solidarities through anti-colonial and decolonial prisms. New York, NY: Springer International. Delgado, R. and Stefancic, J. (Eds.) (2000). Critical race theory: The cutting edge (2nd edition) Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Delgado, R., and Stefancic, J. (2001). Critical race theory: An introduction. New York, NY & London, UK: New York University press. Dixson, A.D., Gillborn, D., Ladson-Billings, G., Parker, L., Rollock, N., and Warmington, P. (Eds.). (2018). Critical race theory in education: Major themes in education. London, UK: Routledge. Fanon, F. (1961). The wretched of the earth. London, UK: Penguin. Fanon, F. (1967). Black skins, white masks. New York, NY: Gove Press. Gillborn, D. (2016). Softly, softly: Genetics, intelligence and the hidden racism of the new geneism. Journal of Education Policy, 31(4), 365–388. Gillborn, D. (2018). Introduction to volume I. In A. D. Dixson, D. Gillborn, G. LadsonBillings, L. J. Parker, N. Rollock, P. Warmington (Eds.), Critical race theory in education: Major themes in education. Routledge. Goldberg, D.T. (1993). Racist culture: Philosophy and the politics of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Gotanda, N. (1995). A critique of “our constitution is color-blind.” In K. Crenshaw, N. Gotanda, G. Peller, and K. Thomas (Eds.), Critical race theory: The key writings that formed the movement (pp. 257–275). New York, NY: The New Press.
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Hall, S. (2006). New ethnicities. In K. H. Chen and D. Morley (Eds.), Stuart Hall: Critical dialogues in cultural studies (pp. 442–451). London, UK: Routledge. Hartigan, J., Jr. (2010). Race in the 21st century: Ethnographic approaches. Oxford, UK and New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Hill, J. H. (2008). The everyday language of white racism. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Hill Collins, P. (1999). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness and the politics of empowerment (2nd Edition). New York, NY: Routledge. Hill Collins, P. (2015). Intersectionality’s definitional dilemmas. Annual Review of Sociology, 41, 1–20. Jhally, S. (1997). Race, the floating signifier. London, UK: Goldsmith’s College. Jones, C. (1949). An end to the neglect of the problems of the Negro woman! New York, NY: National Women’s Commission, C.P.U.S.A. Lerner, N. (1981). New concepts in the UNESCO declaration on race and racial prejudice. Human Rights Quarterly, 3(1), 48–61. Malik, K. (1996). The meaning of race: Race, history and culture in western society. New York, NY: New York University Press. Machery, E., and Faucher, L. (2005). Proceedings of the 2004 biennial meeting of the philosophy of science association part I: Contributed papers. In M. Solomon (Ed.), Philosophy of Science, 72(5), 1208–1219. Mbembe, A. (2016). Decolonizing the university: New directions. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 15(1), 29–45. Melamed, J. (2015). Racial capitalism. Critical Ethnic Studies, 1(1), 76–85 Mills, C. (1997). The racial contract. New York, NY: Cornell University Press. Mills, C. (2015). Global white ignorance. In M. Gross and L. McGoey (Eds.), Routledge international handbook of ignorance studies (pp. 217–227). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Mirza, H. S. (2009). Post-colonial subjects, black feminism, and the intersectionality of race and gender in higher education. Counterpoints, Postcolonial Challenges in Education, 369, 233–248. Mohanty, C.T. (2003). Under western eyes revisited: Feminist solidarity through anticapitalist struggles. Signs, 28(2), 499–535. Moeller, K. (2018). The gender effect: Capitalism, feminism and the corporate politics of development. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Montagu, A. (1964). Man’s most dangerous myth: The fallacy of race (4th edition). Cleveland, OH & New York, NY: The World Publishing Company. Murji, K., and Solomos, J. (2015). Introduction: situating the present. In K. Murji and S. Solomos (Eds.), Theories of race and ethnicity: Contemporary debates and perspectives (pp. 1–23). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Natrajan, B., and Greenough, P. (Eds.). (2009). Against stigma: Studies in caste, race and justice. Hyderabad, India: Orient Blackswan Press. Omi, M., and Winant, H. (2015). Racial formation in the United States. 3rd edition. New York, NY: Routledge. Pailey, R.N. (2020). De-centring the “white gaze” of development. Development and Change, 51, 729–745. Puar, J. (2011). “I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess”: Intersectionality, assemblage, and affective politics. Eipcp multilingual webjournal. Retrieved from http://eipcp.net/ transversal/0811/puar/en Quijano, A. (2000). Colonality of power and eurocentrism in Latin America. International Sociology, 15(2), 215–232.
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Ress, S. (2019). Internationalization of higher education for development: Blackness and postcolonial solidarity in Africa-Brazil relations. London, UK: Bloomsbury. Robinson, C. (2000). Black Marxism: The making of the black radical tradition. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Rushton, J. P., and Jenson, A. R. (2005). Wanted: More race realism, less moralistic fallacy. Psychology Public Policy, and Law, 11(2), 328–336. de Sousa Santos, B. (2002). Towards a multicultural conception of human rights. In B. Hernández-Truyol (Ed.), Moral imperialism. A critical anthology (pp. 39–60). New York, NY: New York University Press. de Sousa Santos, B. (2007). Beyond abyssal thinking: From global lines to ecologies of knowledge. Review, 30(1), 45–89. de Sousa Santos, B. (2012). The public sphere and epistemologies of the South. African Development, 37(1), 43–67. de Sousa Santos, B. (2017). Decolonising the university: The challenge of deep cognitive justice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Snowden, F.M. Jr. (1970). Blacks in antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Solorzano, D. G., and Yosso, T. J. (2002). Critical race methodology: Counter-storytelling as an analytical framework for education research. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), 23–44. Sriprakash, A. and Takayama, K. (2018). The racial projects of Comparative and International Education: Contested histories and possible futures. Retrieved from www.worldcces.org/ article-5-by-sriprakash--takayama. Sriprakash, A., Tikly. L., and Walker, S. (2019). The erasures of racism in education and international development: Re-reading the “global learning crisis.” Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, Online First. St Louis, B. (2014). Can race be eradicated? The post-racial problematic. In K. Murji and J. Solomos (Eds.), Theories of race and ethnicity: Contemporary debates and perspectives. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Thiong’o, N. (1986). Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature. London, UK: James Currey. Tomlinson, B. (2013). Colonizing intersectionality: Replicating racial hierarchy in feminist academic arguments. Social Identities, 19(2), 254–272. Tuhiwai Smith, L. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples (1st edition). London, UK and New York, NY: Zed Books. Unterhalter, E. (2012). Poverty, education, gender and the millennium development goals: Reflections on boundaries and intersectionality. Theory and Research in Education, 10(3), 253–274. Virdee, S. (2019). Racialized capitalism: An account of its contested origins and consolidation. The Sociological Review, 67(1), 3–27 Wade, P. (2002). Race, nature and culture: An anthropological perspective. London, UK & Virginia: Pluto Press. White, B. (1996). Talk about school: Education and the colonial project in French and British Africa (1860–1960). Comparative Education, 32(1), 9–26.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Queer Theory in Comparative and International Education How Queer is CIE? CHRISTIAN A. BRACHO
INTRODUCTION In 2018, the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) launched a special interest group (SIG) focused on sexual orientation and gender identity and expression, known as SOGIE. The recent date is notable, given that the American Educational Research Association, the world’s largest educational research organization, launched its Queer SIG in 2002. That CIES has only recently carved out a specific theoretical and research space for the exploration of gender identity and sexualities suggests that the organization might be queering: a process that includes making space for queer theories and experiences, for challenging normative assumptions within the field, and for expanding the visibility of queers within the organization itself. The lack of research in this area was remarked upon in the Fall 2017 issue of CIES Perspectives, when editor Nordtveit (2017) reflected on the tenure of the most recent editorial team. In a short article titled Sexual Diversity, Marginalization, and the Comparative Education Review, Nordtveit (2017) lamented that not one manuscript, to his knowledge, had been submitted or published “discussing sexual minorities and educational access and/or marginalization” (p. 7). That literal dearth, argues Nordtveit (2017), compels those within comparative and international education (CIE) to “re-map” and “revitalize” the field, through research on diverse sexual and gender identities and practices, a consideration of its conventional paradigms, and the incorporation of queer methodologies and theories. Nordtveit’s (2017) call surfaced in another article a year later, in the Winter 2018 issue of CIES Perspectives, celebrating the launch of the SOGIE SIG, with Pizmony-Levy of Teachers College, Moland of American University, and Kosciw from the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Educators Network serving as the SIG’s inaugural leaders. The article reported that CIES’ first panel on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) youth was in 2008, and cast the event as the incipient seed that blossomed into a full-fleshed SIG ten years later. Given these symbolic and material shifts in the last decade, leading toward the integration of LGBTI issues within CIE, it is a good time to ask: What would it truly 399
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mean to queer CIE? To address this question, the chapter begins with an overview of queer theory, examining its origins and how it has been applied to a variety of disciplines and fields. The discussion emphasizes queer theory’s use of queer as a verb, i.e., as an active process of interrogation, subversion, and potential transformation of the normativities that undergird the coherence of any discipline, field, or practice. The chapter will showcase how various fields and disciplines have been queered, offering examples of how CIE could make queer theory more relevant and value its potential contributions in research, theory, and practice. This potential will be highlighted via a mini case study probing how queer theory could be used in an analysis of LGBT discourses at non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Africa, as part of a larger project on global LGBT NGOs led by members of the SOGIE SIG.
OVERVIEW What is queer theory? Jagose (2009) argues that trying to create a singular narrative for the origins of queer theory is counter to the very notion of queer, i.e., to the notion of instability, non-linearity, or incoherence. Although queer theory’s origins do indeed traverse a variety of disciplines and historical moments, many scholars posit the 1990s as the decade in which queer theory emerged prominently, following two decades of gay and lesbian activist movements in the United States and the rise of post-structuralist frameworks within academe (see Chapter 7). Jagose (2009) and others point to Teresa Tde Lauretis’ 1991 book as coining the phrase “queer theory;” the text called for new theories and narratives that resist simple categorizations, such as gay and lesbian, and embracing instead heterogeneous conceptualizations that celebrate the potentiality of sexual and gender identity expressions. In the three decades since de Lauretis’ (1991) work, queer theory has provided researchers and practitioners a variety of strategies or lenses for examining the social world; for example, Shlasko (2005) characterizes queer theory as operating on three main fronts: as examining the lives and histories of queer subjects; as signifying a politics of resistance or subversion; and as representing a particular aesthetic sensibility. Similarly, Rodriguez (2016) describes queer theory as a mode for critiquing normative models of identity, for proposing conceptualizations that are more fluid and multidimensional, and for destabilizing the very notion of subject positions or identity categories. Butler’s (1990) work on gender identity, most vividly in the text Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, is generally regarded as central to the study of gender as a social construct and learned behavior. Butler (1990) calls on the work of Paul Michel Foucault (1926 to 1984) to examine how gender and sexuality operate within a “heterosexual matrix” that compels women to perform in ways that accord with cultural norms, as well as broader social systems that uphold the notion of a stable, singular identity. Queer theory draws on Butler’s (1990) analysis to highlight the ways sexual orientations or identities are linked to particular formations of gender, and the ways queers (such as drag queens) subvert gender identities by revealing their artifice. Queer theory in this sense troubles binaries, insisting on the creative agency of individuals to express identities in between or beyond traditional or normative categories. This is visibly manifest in queer theory’s rigorous dismantling of heteronormativity, which can be defined as the ways that heterosexuality and its attendant institutions and principles (e.g., gender expression, marriage, chastity, national identity) are propped up and deeply
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rooted in many aspects of social life. Sedgwick (1990)’s seminal work, Epistemology of the Closet, is specifically cited for calling attention to the historically contingent and social constructed manners through which heteronormativity has become naturalized in societal notions of personal and national identity, in matters of law and ethics, and even in biological studies of the body and mind. Queer theorists like Sedgwick (1990) and Jagose (1996) focus on the historical construction of heterosexuality as a way of challenging the notion that homosexuality ought to be the object of queer theory, because it is heterosexuality that is taken as normal, despite the evidence (both historically and in contemporary contexts) that sexual behavior manifests differently and varies considerably in diverse locales and moments. Indeed, queer theorists have argued that “heterosexuality is not a thing” (Berlant and Warner, 1998, p. 552), but rather a social construct of twentieth-century modernity that now operates as a given within Western conceptualizations of self and identity, and fundamental to formations of state, nation, and citizenship.
Origins of queer theory A canon of queer theory mainly consolidated in the 1980s and 1990s, as increased LGBT activism and scholarly interest in academic circles merged to showcase the increasing visibility of LGBT people in the United States. The term queer highlighted the complexity and fluidity of gay and lesbian identities, preferring it as an umbrella term for nonnormative gender and sexual identities rendered in opposition to heteronormative constructs, such as male/female, masculine/feminine, or homosexual/heterosexual. Poststructuralist critiques of identity as a stable, coherent, and universal concept informed queer theory’s insistence that terms like gay or lesbian are false categories that serve only to uphold heteronormative assumptions about sexual identity. In that vein, many queer theorists point to Paul Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality (1978) as a significant point of departure, arguing that his assertion that homosexuality was socially constructed through a variety of discursive and material practices in the nineteenth-century is still central to analyses of sexual and gender subjectivities in the twenty-first century. Foucault’s work suggests that it was through discursive practices that the idea of “the homosexual” became constructed and naturalized, making sexual activity a central or defining aspect of one’s identity, as opposed to historical precedents in which sex was seen as a transitive act (Berlant and Warner, 1998). Foucault’s demonstration that sexuality is a constructed category that became normalized through a variety of social practices and discourses is essential to understanding queer theory’s principal interest in dismantling normative assumptions or categories around sexuality and gender. Drawing on Foucault’s (1978) assertions, queer theorists resist reifying the category of “homosexual” by dismantling how its apparent opposite, the heterosexual, operates normatively, without inspiring epistemological curiosity or concern. In other words, by challenging how discourses uphold the homo-hetero binary, queer theory has illuminated greater shades of difference, arguing for a more fluid and dynamic concept of identity that is constructed on personal terms rather than by collective or historicized ontologies. Activism has also been a central component of queer theory’s historical evolution. Jagose (1996), like Sedgwick (1990), looks to the gay liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and to the rise of lesbian feminisms in the 1980s, as significant moments that inform queer theory’s stout mode of resistance. The AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s also cultivated a sense of urgency to mobilize in the face of an existential threat to the gay community. Queer theory built on the LGBT community’s political mobilizations by
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articulating the dangers and injustices of homophobia and heterosexual privilege, particularly in the context of the Reagan administration’s indifference to the epidemic. Studies since the 1990s have mapped the complex relationships between presidential administrations (e.g., Bill Clinton and George W. Bush) and LGBT communities, and some scholars described the tensions and contradictions of queer activism—an ostensibly radical politic—in the context of a rapidly growing national campaign to legalize marriage, a heteronormative institution, for same-sex couples (Johnson, 2002; Taylor et al., 2009; Valelly, 2012). Jagose (1996) questions how the destabilizing and anti-normative dimensions of queer activism and theory can be reconciled with the increased assimilationism of gay and lesbian communities, which are circumscribed as “natural” through social policies like multiculturalism or biological paradigms that explicate sexual identity as a pre-determined genetic trait. This ongoing tension is due in part to queer theory’s fundamental desire to defy identity as a stable or natural construct, and the theory’s rejection of grand narratives to cohere a diverse set of signs, lived experiences, and identifications.
Expanding the queer lens One of the most generative articulations regarding queer theory’s power comes again from Shlasko (2005), who argues that the queer in queer theory can refer to three grammatical functions: as a noun, “about queers and queerness;” an adjective, “modifying theory, so that the phrase describes the theory itself as occupying a queer position;” and a verb, “to look at [one’s theory] from a different perspective such that its shortcoming, underlying assumptions, and possibilities become visible” (p. 125). Indeed, a wealth of studies focus on queer in the first mode, as a noun, documenting the lived experiences and histories of queer people. In its earliest manifestations, queer studies focused on the experiences of white, middle-class gay men and lesbian women; this was partially rectified in the late 1990s and early twenty-first century as queer theory incorporated robust analyses of race, class, national identity, citizenship status, and disability. Efforts to link LGBT/queer identities with Chicana and Black feminism (e.g., Lorde, 1984; Moraga and Anzaldua, 1981), Latino studies (Hames-García and Martínez, 2011), and Asian-American communities (Eng, 1997), illustrate how queer theory can be expanded or revised to make space for more complex racial, ethnic, or class identifications. Queer theory has also evolved to highlight the experiences of queers of color and queer subcultures, such as punks and Latinx1 drag queens, as well as looking globally to experiences of non“heterosexual” people in locations such as Latin America, Asia, and Oceania. These studies reveal queer to be a capacious term incorporating a wide range of sexual and gender identities and expressions, not simply those who may label themselves as “gay.” Some queer studies also question the universalization of gay as an identity marker, and document long-standing cultural flows that explain how and why terms like gay or queer have been differently adopted, rejected, or expressed in local and global contexts. Queer theory’s interest in mapping global flows and local identities has thus underpinned a wide range of studies related to cultural and economic globalization, human rights frameworks, artistic performance, migration, and law, among others. 1 The term “Latinx” is an evolution of the terms “Latino” or “Latina,” with the “x” used as a non-gendered signifier. The term has been used as a way to open up the ethnic category, both to be inclusive of queer or gender non-conforming individuals and avoid favoring the masculine “Latino” as the normative/default term. The term has met with some controversy; see de Onís (2017) for further discussion.
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Theoretical and empirical encounters between queer theory and race, class, nationalism, and ethnicity have made queer theory substantively intersectional (see Crenshaw, 1990), i.e., examining how interlocking systems of oppression intersect in the lived experiences of individuals belonging to or identifying with multiple affinity groups or labels. Ferguson’s (2004) elaboration of queer of color analysis is fundamental in this regard; he argues that QOC analysis “presumes that liberal ideology occludes the intersecting saliency of race, gender, sexuality and class in forming social practices. . . . [it] has to debunk the idea that race, class, gender, and sexuality are discrete formations. . .” (pp. 3–4). Ferguson (2004) considers queer of color analysis as an intervention aimed at queering traditional ideologies, such as historical materialism and liberal pluralism, in order to draw out how race, gender, and sexuality have influenced capitalism and nationalism. Queer of color analysis dismantles one-dimensional analyses by insisting on multiple identifications and complex relationships, moves that also “queer” the basic tenets and positivist norms of what Ferguson (2004) calls canonical American sociology. This type of critique also manifests in Smith’s (2010) call for Native Studies to adopt a queer of color approach, so that Native Studies and queer theory itself confront their own normative assumptions about settler colonialism and nationalism—which Smith considers as still underpinning many academic approaches to the study of marginalized or minoritized communities. To that end, queer of color analysis also provides methodological tools—such as ethnography and autobiography—to analyze queer performances and embodiments, in local, regional, national, and diasporic contexts (Gopinath, 2005; Muñoz, 1999).
Queering as a process Shlasko (2005) asserted that the queer in queer theory can operate as a verb, i.e., as animating a set of processes for surfacing the unstable foundations and incoherencies within discourses, fields, institutions, and spaces. Whitlock (2010) similarly defines the process of queering as “creating spaces of resistance to normative, normalizing practices, contexts, and discourses” (p. 97). In these ways, queering can refer to actively deploying an anti-normative stance in the examination of a phenomenon, documenting fluid/ complex identities, and analyzing what is queer within spaces traditionally considered “non-queer.” For instance, Doan and Higgins (2011) examine the “demise of queer space” (p. 6), exploring how gentrification and the commodification of LGBT identities in American consumer culture have tended to assimilate gays and lesbians into heteronormative models (such as marriage), calling into question the need for or viability of “gayborhoods,” neighborhoods characterized as safe and celebratory for LGBT people. Tongson (2011) also applies a queer lens in a discussion on queer urbanism, an approach that challenges normative understandings about suburbanization and white flight in the United States. Her study challenges conventional tropes that cast the metropolis as the destination for “fleeing” gays and lesbians looking to assert their identities as a matter of activism or resistance, and claims that queer theory can intervene to surface queer of color regionalisms in suburban neighborhoods through the country. In these examples, normative assumptions about nationalism, gender, capitalism, and domestic migration are troubled by queering the ways researchers study or analyze a topic. Other queer studies have decentered the United States as the primary locale for theorizing about queer intersections and lived experiences, with some authors describing processes of global queering: “the transnational proliferation of new same-sex and transgender identities and cultures” (Jackson, 2009, p. 15). Fields, such as international
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law and international relations have engaged queer theory generatively, looking at “global queering” to unpack normative assumptions about liberal democracy and neoliberal globalization (Richter-Montpetit et al., 2017). For example, Gross (2013) has queered the study of human rights documents, such as the Yogyakarta Principles, which describe the universal rights and dignities of human beings to freely express sexual orientations and gender identities. Gross (2013) considers the Principles as a globalizing framework intended to protect LGBT communities around the world, yet warns against the effects of imposing a universalizing discourse that inscribes “gay” and “lesbian” in terms defined by Western societies. If queerness is indeed about “transgressing borders and divides” (Gross, 2013, p. 115), then a global framework actually reifies categories, such as gay and lesbian; rather than protect people’s “freedom of” sexual orientation and gender identity expression, it denies “freedom from” such categories of identity in the first place (Gross, 2013, p. 127). Other studies point to the 2002 arrest of dozens of gay men at a boat party in Egypt (Wilde et al., 2007), as a manifestation of the legal tensions between Western concepts of sexual identity and expression (what Massad [2002] has called the “Gay International”) and local contexts where sexual activity may not necessarily be considered a core aspect of one’s social identity; it is the adoption of a Western “gay” identity that is seen as criminal or unacceptable. This question of translation and commensurability is central to Liu’s (2015) article on Chinese Queer Theory, in which the author examines whether Western conceptions of queerness can be converted into corresponding terms in China, where queer studies are couched in science, rather than theory, and “queer theory” itself is described as an out-of-touch American discourse. Global queering and queer globalization studies thus document how local actors interact with global discourses, undermining the notion of a single or universal gay identity and troubling Western hegemonic constructions of gender and sexuality (Glick et al., 2003).
Queer theory in education Educational research has proven to be especially fertile ground for scholars interested in queering topics related to teaching and learning, across a wide range of contexts and institutions. Gibson-Graham (1999) asserts that, “Queering our pedagogy means making differences visible and calling normative impulses and forms of social closure into question” (p. 83), a claim borne out in extensive research volumes, such as Queer Theory in Education (Pinar, 1998) and Critical Concepts in Queer Studies in Education (Rodriguez et al., 2016). These anthologies, along with diverse studies in journals and other collections, document the heuristic possibilities of queering educational practices, concepts, and spaces, as a means of challenging norms and resolving erasures. For example, Mizzi (2016) documents heteroprofessionalism, noting how teachers grapple with heteronormative expectations for their personal and professional behavior, while Grace and Hill (2001) similarly unpack heteronormativity in adult education practices as a means of “building cultural democracy and social justice” (p. 1). Some scholars interrogate how LGBT /queer discourses have been assimilated into multicultural curriculum in schools (Carlson, 1998; Whitlock, 2010), and argue that such integration works against the more radical edge of queer theory. Rottmann (2006) illustrates how queering educational leadership could “destabilize normative visions of leadership. . . by blurring boundaries that occur between inside/outside and leader/ follower” (p. 13); queering could also lead to dismantling other boundaries, such as public and private, or rational and emotional, and promote the incorporation of more LGBT perspectives into
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educational leadership practices and scholarship. Renn (2010) likewise applies a queer lens in an examination of research in higher education, and finds the approach useful for practitioners interested in campus climate and student life, especially as transgender individuals become more visible and compel universities to look beyond gay and lesbian toward more expansive views of sexuality and gender expression. This focus on student identity is imperative to Miller’s (2016) queer literacy framework, which offers K-12 educators a set of concepts for supporting the self-identification of queer students, embracing the “in-between, the incommensurable, the open, and the yet-to-be defined. . .” (p. 267). To conclude, queer theory, originating as a post-structuralist discourse and method for challenging heteronormativity, has expanded its scope by taking on increasingly intersectional and global lenses in explorations of diverse sexualities and gender expressions, and has queered other fields by providing conceptual tools for dismantling “regimes of the normal” (Glick et al., 2003, p. 123). The theory’s openness to redefinition, and to self-interrogation of its own normativities, has also galvanized its power as a theoretical and conceptual framework, and offers tools that CIE could embrace, in the interest of telling more stories about queers and queerness, using queer theory meaningfully, and queering the field itself, challenging the normative assumptions that continue to underpin its theories, research, and practices.
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION This chapter began by noting that the Comparative and International Education Society recently launched a special interest group around sexual orientation/gender identity expression (SOGIE SIG), as a remedy to the lack of research and scholarship about these topics within the field. Given that much CIE research has dedicated its focus on such themes as human rights, gender, globalization, policy transfer, and access to education, it is indeed curious that so few studies have explored LGBT issues in a comparative or international education context, and that only a few have touched upon or used queer theory significantly. To understand the distance between CIE and queer theory, it is useful to examine how CIE has evolved since its twentieth-century inceptions. Wiseman and Matherly (2009), in an extensive article exploring the professionalization of CIE, focus on the evolution of two organizations, CIES and the National Association of Foreign Student Advisers (NAFSA: the Association of International Educators). Both organizations find their roots in a post-Second World War moment, as Cold War imperatives galvanized the growth of area studies and study abroad/exchange programs boomed. Comparative education departments at universities sprung up in the United States, and these programs were strongly rooted in social sciences (such as sociology and economics) aimed at documenting social change and development. Wiseman and Matherly (2009) argue that these moves changed the boundaries of comparative education research, as the field’s engagement with international education practices and institutions deepened. That entanglement led the Comparative Education Society (CES, founded in 1956) to change its name to the Comparative and International Education Society in 1968, a move that “suggest[ed] an ambiguity regarding both the legitimacy of the knowledge base and the professional association of those working in the field of Comparative and International Education” (Wiseman and Matherly, 2009, p. 340). Such ambiguities were not resolved
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in the 1970s, as modernization and development theories fell out of favor in the face of growing inequality between the West and the “Third World.” Wiseman and Matherly (2009) argue that the historical decline of social science theories in CIE aligned with the ascent of “critical theory, post-structuralism, postmodernism, and various feminist theories” (p. 341) along with innovations in qualitative methodologies. The authors write: the paradigmatic struggles in the field of Comparative Education essentially mirrored what was happening in other fields of social science, further indicating the extent to which Comparative Education had become multidisciplinary. The social sciences, with which Comparative and International Education was now firmly aligned, experienced a flowering of perspectives: critical race theory, Marxism, feminism, queer theory. But concomitant with the excitement of these new approaches also came a withering of established authority. New people entered the field without deference to the existing expertise, since all perspectives were valid, and increasingly there was no fixed star by which to measure expertise anyway. Authority gave way to competing theories. In abandoning its humanistic origins, Comparative Education was now subject to the fits, fancies, and hysterias of other social sciences. —Wiseman and Matherly, 2009, p. 341 The authors lament the loss of “deference to the existing expertise” and the “withering of established authority,” as critical approaches challenged the assumptions and norms of former frameworks, such as structural functionalism and modernization (Wiseman and Matherly, 2009, p. 341). The changes within CIE occurred at the same time that other fields questioned grand narratives and theories, paving the way for alternative voices— such as women, people of color, and scholars from the “Global South”—to have their perspectives acknowledged and understood. As such, the singular or “fixed stars” that guided traditional modes of inquiry or practice needed to be remapped as multiplicity and multivocality were embraced within the social sciences and humanities, which the authors seem to view skeptically, describing the entrance of such theories as “the fits, fancies, and hysterias of other social sciences” (Wiseman and Matherly, 2009, p. 341) terms that connote distrust of the critical ideas emerging in the last 30 years. Conversely, former CIES President Steven Klees (2008), in his Presidential Address entitled “Reflections on Theory, Method, and Practice in Comparative and International Education,” celebrates the introduction of more critical theories and approaches into the field. Like Wiseman and Matherly (2008), Klees (2008) historicizes CIE, but couches larger developments within his own experiences as a practitioner and scholar, and he also describes CIE as a multidisciplinary field, incorporating diverse methods and concepts. His reflections likewise articulate the difficulty in clearly mapping a “knowledge base” for new students and scholars, yet Klees (2008) values the “border crossings” within comparative education, making the field far more robust, especially as “alternative theories” have challenged previously dominant theories of modernization and development: today, I see an even stronger and more remarkable confluence of critical perspectives than ever before. While they cross disciplines and applied fields, these alternative theories, such as the following, are very much interrelated: dependency, world systems, critical, neo-Marxist, progressive economic, economic reproduction, cultural reproduction, resistance, feminist standpoint, gender and development, socialist feminist, critical race, queer, intersection, critical postmodern, poststructural, post-colonial, and critical
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pedagogy. And this does not include all the related critical theories within each social science and applied field. I am not saying that these theories offer identical perspectives, just that they share essential commonalities with respect to addressing the two major questions social theories face: How do we understand our social world? and What can we do about it? —p. 309 Klees (2008) includes queer theory as part of a longer list of “critical perspectives” he largely ascribes as emerging from the Left, in opposition to approaches that conceive of capitalism and economic development as normative. In locating queer theory within other theories that question dominant ideologies, resist hegemonic structures, and challenge the coherence or truth of grand narratives or structures, Klees (2008) marks queer theory as a viable strategy for critique within CIE, capable of challenging longstanding norms and visions of the “social world” and our place within it. A critical approach in CIE, according to Klees (2008), would empower researchers and scholars to better understand marginalization and inequality, and to document human agency at both individual and collective scales (p. 309). Klees’ (2008) comments suggest an openness to the process of queering described earlier in this chapter: a critical interrogation aimed at uncovering normativities, contradictions, and incoherencies, in the aims of expanding the field’s possibilities and imagining its future.
What’s queer in CIE? CIE has had a long history of exploring the dynamics of gender and education at local, regional, national, and global scales; sex and sexuality has been a more recent topic of research. This is evidenced in the annual “Bibliography” released by CIES between 1959 and 2015 in the Comparative Education Review, the official journal of CIES and which, as far back as the 1980s, has included a specific “Gender” category with several pages of references to follow. Notably, within the 2000 bibliography (Raby, 2001) is an article by Grace and Benson (2000) from the International Journal of Inclusive Education, examining the methodological use of “queer life narratives” to examine teachers’ lives and beliefs, as well as an article about queer Asian diasporas in Australia (Yue, 2000), published in the journal Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. In the same 2000 bibliography, another category, “Ethnicity, Race, Class, and Sexual Orientation,” appears to conceive of sexual orientation as analogous to the other categories, in line with a multiculturalist paradigm for mapping human identities and lived experiences. Within this short list, the articles focus primarily on questions of racism, anti-racist pedagogy, and ethnic identity, with none specifically dedicated to discussions of sexual identities or gender expression, or adopting a queer theory approach. By 2009, the CER Bibliography had been revised, with the category “Gender and Sexual Orientation” listing almost eight pages of references. Many articles in the larger bibliography focused on education related to sex or HIV/AIDS, but none clearly cast its focus on LGBT communities or queer theory, while in the Gender and Sexual Orientation category, four of the 125 texts listed clearly focus on topics related to LGBT issues. These include a study by Ellis (2009) on the experiences of LGBT students in the United Kingdom, an article by Grace and Wells (2009) exploring “queer critical praxis” in Canada, another about homophobia in Hong Kong (Kan et al., 2009), and a study on queer politics in India (Mikkil, 2009). Notably, none were published in the Comparative Education Review, suggesting that queer/LGBT topics remained somewhat on the fringe
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of CIE research. A few years later, in the 2013 CIES Bibliography (n.a., 2014), the list of 145 articles in the renamed “Gender and Sexuality” category included several studies examining the lives of gay and lesbian teachers in Australia (Ferfolja, 2013), England (Gray, 2013), and Ireland (Neary, 2013), while another explored Muslim teachers’ attitudes towards homosexuality in Australia (Sanjakdar, 2013). One notable study by Ingrey (2013) adopted a queer theory approach, calling on Paul Michel Foucault and Judith Butler to present critical examinations of sex education and gender binaries, in the interest of disrupting heteronormativity. As in prior years, none of the mentioned studies appeared in CER itself. Some researchers have found space for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) scholarship in journals, such as International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education and the Journal of LGBT Youth. Studies by Lundin (2011; 2016) explored heteronormativity in the Swedish school system, using interviews with gay male teachers to examine how schooling upholds particular masculine/ heterosexual ideas. Lundin (2016) calls on Sedgwick’s (1990) work on “the closet,” and to Judith Butler’s (1990) work on gender performance, to discuss how LGB teachers exercise agency in their public and professional performances; he earlier offered “anti-oppressive pedagogies” as a potential remedy to the homophobia and discrimination faced in schools. In a more recent study (Magnus and Lundin, 2016), the authors turn their lens to Swedish teacher education candidates and examine how these individuals explain “diversity” and “heteronormativity” vis-à-vis their personal experiences as students and student teachers. What is notable is that none of these studies explicitly draw on queer theory in their analyses, although they are conceptually grounded in queer theory’s assault on heteronormativity as a dominant discourse manifest in standardized practices and rationalized systems. On the whole, then, it appears that CIE has increasingly demarcated space for sexual orientation and gender identity/expression, primarily as a topic of research or empirical concern. In that sense, CIE has queered itself somewhat, demonstrated in the inclusion of a few queer studies in its annual bibliography, yet, like the Ingrey (2013) study, queer theory could be utilized in a more substantive manner to explore the normativities that underpin CIE as a theoretical field and practice. For example, queer theorists could challenge the field’s focus on nation-states or regions as normative territorial units, or interrogate its longstanding relationships with organizations, such as USAID and UNESCO. Researchers could also trouble the ways CIE continues to draw on developmental rhetoric or modernization theories in its promotion of educational policies or programs. Queer theory might also meaningfully inform studies about local–global dialectics, adding to CIE research a nuanced understanding of local autonomy and agency that does not presuppose the dominance of Western epistemologies or global discourses. Moreover, queering the field could lead to more intersectional analyses that examine how sexuality interacts with race, gender, nationalism, citizenship, and diasporas in various regional contexts or via transnational flows of people and ideas.
CONCLUSIONS Queer theory and its related queer studies fields make space for ongoing critique, i.e., for revisiting themes or ideas that have become normative within queer theory itself. It is queer theory’s capacious and evolving nature that galvanizes its re-invention, to accord with changing debates and contexts. While this aspect of queer theory has left it up for critique by other scholars who seek conceptual clarity, to do so would be to deny queer
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theory’s epistemological and ontological origins as anti-normative and polyvocal, celebrating complexity, fluidity, and incoherence. One important debate continuing to shift how queer theory is conceptualized has to do with the increasing relevance of intersectional approaches to the study of identity, society, and other phenomena. For instance, the shift toward queer of color analysis is an excellent example of how queer theory’s original emphases on theorizing identities of white, middle-class gay man opened it up to critiques that insisted on examining sexuality and gender expressions in relation to other dimensions, such as class, race, and more recently, citizenship status. Notably, studies of queer migration in the United States, such as those led by Luibhéid and Cantú (2005), examine how immigrants of color negotiate queer identities while also reconciling citizenship status and border crossing. More recently, scholars have looked at how undocumented queer people in the USA grapple not only with being in the closet—the term theorized by Sedgwick—but also in the shadows, i.e., hiding their undocumented status (Cisneros and Bracho, 2018). Analyses of this sort challenge normative assumptions about coming out as a developmental trajectory from fragmentation to integration, arguing instead that the intersectional analysis via queer of color critique reveals more complex reasons for undocuqueers to stay in the closet or shadows. One way researchers have captured such complexities is to elevate autobiographical narratives (Quesada et al., 2015), a methodology that queer theorists argue challenges the normative aspects of quantitative or traditional qualitative research. Whitlock (2010) states this succinctly: “if queering creates spaces of resistance to normative, normalizing practices, contexts, and discourses, queer autobiographical methodologies offer a means for the self to trouble the self. . .” (p. 97). Another important debate within queer theory has to do with the relative “radicalism” of queer activism and queer social movements. Jagose (1996) tracked how the gay liberation and lesbian feminist movements of the 1970s and 1980s transformed into movements for legitimacy and stabilization, wherein gays and lesbians became cast as another affinity community within pluralist frameworks celebrating multiculturalism and diversity. Jagose (1996) notes that the adoption of the term Queer had a radical connotation in the 1990s, operating as a more inclusive and transgressive term that was anti-normative and anti-systemic. Cohen (1997) adds that queer activism has not led to “truly radical or transformative politics” (p. 438), but rather reinforced the dichotomy of heterosexuality and all things “queer,” i.e., not “heterosexual.” In continuing to lump together gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals, and any other individuals who identify outside heteronormative paradigms for sexual orientation or gender identity expression, queer activism and theory engages old paradigms that favor what Cohen (1997) views as a homogenized identity, instead of defining a new politics focused on power relations in culture and society. Cohen (1997) illustrates that, although the term Queer was useful in the 1990s as a challenge to the normative categories “gay” or “lesbian” had constructed, the use of “queer” in more recent times has also become static, eliding difference and buttressing heteronormativity. Contributions from queer of color critique likewise confront the ways “queer” operates as a hegemonic or homogeneous term still rooted in whiteness, and push for more radical analyses—suggesting that queer theory itself must constantly be queered, if it will remain true to its radical origins. For example, Rodriguez’s (2016) chapter on Trans Generosity is especially important given more recent cultural and political interest in transgender identities, rights, and protections, and calls on researchers and activists to think more closely about how trans lives and experiences are incorporated or supported within the broader queer community.
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FURTHER READING 1. Ferguson, R. A. (2004). Aberrations in black: Toward a queer of color critique. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 2. Jackson, P. A. (2009). Global queering and global queer theory: Thai [trans] genders and [homo]sexualities in world history. Autrepart, 1, 15–30. 3. Muñoz, J. E. (1999). Disidentifications: Queers of color and the performance of politics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 4. Pinar, W. (Ed.). (1998). Queer theory in education. New York, NY: Routledge. 5. Rodriguez, N. M., Martino, W. J., Ingrey, J. C., and Brockenbrough, E. (Eds.). (2016). Critical concepts in queer studies and education. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
MINI CASE STUDY A forthcoming study by Moland and Pizmony-Levy examines how international and local organizations in eight African countries contend with the “global culture wars” related to human rights movements for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people. Moland and Pizmony-Levy (forthcoming) draw on a few theoretical frameworks for their analysis, such as critical humanist scholarship, cultural globalization, and civil society literature, and offer an overview of how global efforts to expand LGBTI rights are met with local resistance in countries where homosexuality is outlawed, criminalized, or illegal. In many locations, public opinion generally sees homosexuality as something that should not be accepted, and such beliefs are bolstered by national politicians and leaders, who often cast their resistance within larger anti-colonial or anti-imperial sentiments directed at the West. These leaders also critique global aid or governance organizations that link financial or material support to provisions for decriminalizing homosexuality or protecting the rights of LGBT individuals. The authors interrogate the common refrains in sub-Saharan Africa that homosexuality is “un-African,” or the belief that it is imported by the West, and draw on survey data as well as interviews to map how LGBTI activists in African non-governmental organizations push back against such claims and offer their own counter-narratives. Some participants in the study drew on historical cases to surface indigenous homosexuality on the continent, or pointed to contemporary figures, to show that homosexuality is indeed a part of African culture, while others cast culture as mutable, capable of changing to make space for new social and cultural formations and identities. Though the study does not explicitly draw on queer theory to analyze the data or construct its primary arguments, the study’s premises and findings mirror some of the dynamics raised in this chapter: e.g., the tensions between global and local forces in defining gay and lesbian identities, the purported coherence of sexuality as a normative component of individual identities, and the dominance of heteronormativity within Western culture and related ideologies, such as liberal pluralism and human rights. Like the Jackson (2009) article on Thai formations of gender and sexuality, Moland and Pizmony-Levy (forthcoming) illustrate how processes of global queering lead to the transnational proliferation of new paradigms for same-sex and transgender identities and cultures, in this case in relation to human rights frameworks and policies disseminated through international aid organizations. The study clearly documents the tug between local and global forces in defining what sexual activity means in the context of individual and collective identities, and demonstrates the ways that LGBTI groups challenge
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heteronormativity through myriad discursive tactics. The data could be analyzed through a queer theory lens to examine how such discursive tactics challenge normative assumptions about sexuality in Africa, but also how the same tactics reify categories, such as gay and lesbian in ways that mimic global/Western formations of those terms. Likewise, the analysis could add to queer of color critique by investigating how race, class, and religion interact with gender and sexuality in African contexts, while also interrogating the legacies of colonialism in relation to the performance of sexual identities and politics (see Muñoz, 1999).
REFERENCES Berlant, L., and Warner, M. (1998). Sex in public. Critical Inquiry, 24(2), 547–566. Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York, NY: Routledge. Carlson, D. (1998). Who am i? Gay identity and a democratic politics of the self. In W. Pinar (Ed.), Queer theory in education (pp. 107–119). New York, NY: Routledge. CIES (2014). Bibliography 2013. Comparative Education Review, 58(3), 1–165. Cisneros, J., and Bracho, C. (2018). Coming out of the shadows and the closet: Visibility schemas among undocuqueer immigrants. Journal of Homosexuality, 1–20. Cohen, C. J. (1997). Punks, bulldaggers, and welfare queens: The radical potential of queer politics? GLQ: Gay and Lesbian Quarterly, 3, 437–465. Crenshaw, K. (1990). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. In M. A. Fineman and R. Mykitiuk (Eds.), The public nature of private violence (pp. 93–118). New York, NY; Routledge (1984). De Lauretis, T. (1991). Queer theory: Lesbian and gay sexualities. Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press. de Onís, C. M. (2017). What’s in an “x”?: An exchange about the politics of “Latinx.” Chiricù Journal: Latina/o Literature, Art, and Culture, 1(2), 78–91. Doan, P. L., and Higgins, H. (2011). The demise of queer space? Resurgent gentrification and the assimilation of LGBT neighborhoods. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 31(1), 6–25. Ellis, S. J. (2009). Diversity and inclusivity at university: A survey of the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) students in the UK . Higher Education, 57(6), 723–739. Eng, D. L. (1997). Out here and over there: Queerness and diaspora in Asian American studies. Social Text, 52/53, 31–52. Ferfolja, T. (2013). Sexual diversity, discrimination and “homosexuality policy” in New South Wales’ government schools. Sex Education, 13(2), 159–171. Ferguson, R. A. (2004). Aberrations in black: Toward a queer of color critique. Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota Press. Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Gibson-Graham, J. K. (1999). Queering capitalism in and out of the classroom. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 23(1), 80–85. Glick, E., Garber, L., Holland, S., Balderston, D., and Quiroga, J. (2003). New directions in multiethnic, racial and global queer studies. GLQ: Gay and Lesbian Quarterly, 10(1), 123–137. Gopinath, G. (2005). Impossible desires: Queer diasporas and South Asian public cultures. Durham, NC : Duke University Press.
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Grace, A. P., and Benson, F. J. (2000). Using autobiographical queer life narratives of teachers to connect personal, political and pedagogical spaces. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 4(2), 89–109. Grace, A. P., and Hill, R. J. (2001). Using queer knowledges to build inclusionary pedagogy in adult education. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Adult Education Research Conference, Lansing, MI . Grace, A. P., and Wells, K. (2009). Gay and bisexual male youth as educator activists and cultural workers: The queer critical praxis of three Canadian high-school students. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 13(1), 23–44. Gray, E. M. (2013). Coming out as a lesbian, gay or bisexual teacher: Negotiating private and professional worlds. Sex Education, 13(6), 702–714. Gross, A. (2013). Post/colonial queer globalisation and international human rights: Images of LGBT rights. Jindal Global Law Review, 4(2), 98–130. Hames-García, M., and Martínez, E. J. (Eds.). (2011). Gay Latino studies: A critical reader. Durham, NC : Duke University Press. Ingrey, J. C. (2013). Troubling gender binaries in schools: from sumptuary law to sartorial agency. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 34(3), 424–438. Jackson, P. A. (2009). Global queering and global queer theory: Thai [trans]genders and [homo] sexualities in world history. Autrepart, 1, 15–30. Jagose, A. (1996). Queer theory: An introduction. New York, NY: NYU Press. Jagose, A. (2009). Feminism’s queer theory. Feminism & Psychology, 19(2), 157–174. Johnson, C. (2002). Heteronormative citizenship and the politics of passing. Sexualities, 5(3), 317–336. Kan, R. W. M., et al. (2009). Homophobia in medical students of the University of Hong Kong. Sex Education, 9(1), 65–80. Klees, S. J. (2008). Reflections on theory, method, and practice in Comparative and International Education. Comparative Education Review, 52(3), 301–328. Liu, P. (2015). Queer Marxism in two Chinas. Durham, NC : Duke University Press. Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider: Essays & speeches. Berkeley, CA : Crossing Press. Luibhéid, E., and Cantú Jr, L. (2005). Queer migrations: Sexuality, US citizenship, and border crossings. Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota Press. Lundin, M. (2011). Building a framework to study the hetero norm in praxis. International Journal of Educational Research, 50(5–6), 301–306. Lundin, M. (2016). Homo- and bisexual teachers’ ways of relating to the heteronorm. International Journal of Educational Research, 75, 67–75. Magnus, C. D., and Lundin, M. (2016). Challenging norms: University students’ views on heteronormativity as a matter of diversity and inclusion in initial teacher education. International Journal of Educational Research, 79, 76–85. Massad, J. A. (2002). Re-orienting desire: The gay international and the Arab world. Public Culture, 14(2), 361–385. Mikkil, N. (2009). Shifting spaces, frozen frames: Trajectories of queer politics in contemporary India. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 10(1), 12–30. Miller, S. J. (2016). Queer literacy framework. In N. M Rodriguez, W. J. Martino, J. C. Ingrey, and E. Brockenbrough (Eds.), Critical concepts in queer studies and education (pp. 259–272). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Mizzi, R. C. (2016). Heteroprofessionalism. In Critical concepts in queer studies and education (pp. 137–147). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Moland, N., and Pizmony-Levy, O. (forthcoming). Contesting claims that homosexuality is un-African: The counter-claims of LGBTI NGO activists.
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Moraga, C., and Anzaldua, A. (1981). This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color. New York, NY: Kitchen Table- Women of Color Press. Muñoz, J. E. (1999). Disidentifications: Queers of color and the performance of politics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Neary, A. (2013). Lesbian and gay teachers’ experiences of “coming out” in Irish schools. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 34(4), 583–602. Nordtveit, B. (2017). Sexual diversity, marginalization, and the Comparative Education Review. Fall 2017. Retrieved from https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.cies.us/resource/collection/111E04883E6F-4A6D-849E-2D5BFD509636/Newsletter,_Perspectives_2017_(3)_Fall.pdf Pinar, W. (Ed.). (1998). Queer theory in education. New York, NY: Routledge. Quesada, U., Gomez, L., and Vidal-Ortiz, S. (Eds.). (2015). Queer brown voices. Austin, TX : University of Texas Press. Raby, R. (2001). Comparative and International Education: A bibliography (2000). Comparative Education Review, 45(3), 435–474. Raby, R. (2010). The 2009 Comparative Education review bibliography: Patterns of internationalization in the field. Comparative Education Review, 54(3), 415–427. Renn, K.A. (2010). LGBT and queer research in higher education: The state and status of the field. Educational Researcher, 39(2), 132–141. Richter-Montpetit, M., Weber, C., and Thompson, W. R. (2017). Queer international relations. Oxford research encyclopedia of politics, 1–39. Rodriguez, N. M. (2016). Trans generosity. In Critical concepts in queer studies and education (pp. 407–420). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Rodriguez, N. M., Martino, W. J., Ingrey, J. C., and Brockenbrough, E. (Eds.). (2016). Critical concepts in queer studies and education. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Rottmann, C. (2006). Queering educational leadership from the inside out. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 9(1), 1–20. Sanjakdar, F. (2013). Educating for sexual difference? Muslim teachers’ conversations about homosexuality. Sex Education, 13(1), 16–29. Sedgwick, E. K. (1990). Epistemology of the closet. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Shlasko, G. D. (2005). Queer (v.) pedagogy. Equity & Excellence in Education, 38(2), 123–134. Smith, A. (2010). Queer theory and native studies: The heteronormativity of settler colonialism. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 16(1–2), 41–68. Taylor, V., Kimport, K., Van Dyke, N., and Andersen, E. A. (2009). Culture and mobilization: Tactical repertoires, same-sex weddings, and the impact on gay activism. American Sociological Review, 74(6), 865–890. Tongson, K. (2011). Relocations: Queer suburban imaginaries. New York, NY: NYU Press. Valelly, R. M. (2012). LGBT politics and American political development. Annual Review of Political Science, 15, 313–332. Whitlock, R. (2010). Getting queer: Teacher education, gender studies, and the crossdisciplinary quest for queer pedagogies. Issues in Teacher Education, 19(2). Wilde, R., Otto, D., Buss, D.E., Shalakany, A., and Gross, A. (2007). Queering international law. In American society of international law. Proceedings of the annual meeting (p. 119). Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press. Wiseman, A. W., and Matherly, C. (2009). The professionalization of Comparative and International Education: Promises and problems. Research in Comparative and International Education, 4(4), 334–355. Yue, A. (2000). What’s so queer about happy together? aka queer (N) Asian: Interface, community, belonging. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 1(2), 251–264.
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Transitologies in Comparative and International Education Transformation and Metamorphisms TAVIS D. JULES 1
INTRODUCTION With our world in constant flux from one fad to another as new economic models are put forward, studying the impact of political and socioeconomic evolutions on national educational systems merits a unique type of theoretical framework that problematizes political, social, and economic transitions, be they macro or meso, centralized or decentralized, and vertical or horizontal structures of national educational systems, geographies, and trajectories. Today’s world is currently in transition from one thing to the next. Engendered by the effects of capitalism, market fundamentalism, and technological innovation, the global society is going through a period of transition, which warrants our attention and a deeper understanding of the term “transitologies.” First emerging from as a particular reference to understand the political, economic, and cultural problems of Southern Europe and Latin America in the 1970s and 1990s respectively, the term transitologies has also been widely used to describe and analyze the movement from one governance archetypal (be it historical, political, economical, ideological, and sociological) within socialist, communist, and authoritarian countries, with the aid of institutional restructuring, to various types of democratic governance models (Cowen, 1999; 2000a; Löwenhardt, 1995; Silova, 2010). The term “transitologies,” therefore, can be defined as the study of the process of change from one political regime to another, mainly from authoritarian regimes to democratic ones. As Mohamedou and Sisk (2013) suggest, transitologies, a subfield of political science, is composed of a “body of literature that has comparatively and through case-study analysis examined common patterns, sequences, crises and outcomes of transitional periods” (p. 11). Nonetheless, the framework of transitologies (a cuprous of comparative and analytical data that surveyed shared patterns, sequences, catastrophes, I’m grateful for the research support provided by Syed Amir Shah and Pravindharan Balakrishnan in compiling this chapter.
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and aftermaths of transitional periods) has been applied to the educational context to unpack the complexities “of the transition from pre-modern to modern and late-modern educational systems” (Cowen, 2014, p. 163; see also Figure 24.1). In the post-Arabic Awakening period, the word “transitology” has taken on new meaning, and it has been used to explore how national educational systems are transiting from the authoritative rule and bargaining agreements toward democratic practices (Jules and Barton, 2014; 2018; Fryer and Jules, 2013). More recently, under the Obama administration, when relief was given to Cuba, the transitologies literature looked as though it presented a robust set of conceptual tools to understand education’s role in the transition from Cuban communism to democracy. Much of the research on educational transitologies has investigated ways through which the post-soviet countries have transitioned towards democratic educational systems (Silova, 2010); sought to replace Sovietology research2 by examining ideological differences (Cowen, 2000a; Millei, 2013); and the financing of education during transitory periods (Bray and Borevskaya, 2001). In what follows, this chapter will first explain the historical origins of transitologies as a theory as well as its core thinkers and theoretical components. The next section details its application to comparative and international education (CIE). The chapter concludes with overall insights for CIE and provides a case study that illustrates how education is a double-edged sword during times of transition.
OVERVIEW The origins of transitologies theory can be traced to transitions that took place in predominantly Catholic countries from dictatorship or authoritarianism to some form of democracy in the second half of the twentieth-century across European, Asian, and Latin American and the Caribbean countries (Diamond et al., 1988; Hadenius, 1992; O’Donnell and Schmitter, 1986). Transitologies emerged from “theories of economic transformation from a centrally planned economy towards a market economy” (Hoen, 2013, p. 135) that examines the transition to a market economy. Reddaway and Glinski (2001) argue that “the science of ‘transitologies’ was another influential offspring of the modernization paradigm” (p. 64) that “has exerted an undue—and unconstructive—influence on students of post-communism” (Gans-Morse, 2004, p. 321). Transitologies is viewed as a rupture from the sequential nature of modernization theory (see Chapter 4), with its presumed linear progression of economic, social, and (eventually) political evolution. Thus, the transitologies literature was primarily born out of a response to modernization theory. Dankwart Rustow’s (1924–1996) process-oriented actor-centric framework found in the text Transitions to Democracy (1970) is often cited as the forefather text of transitologies with its call from a set of economic and social preconditions to enable the development of democracy. This work formed the foundation for Guillermo O’Donnell (1936–2011) and Philippe Schmitter’s Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions About Uncertain Democracies (1986), which established core tenets of the “transitions literature” and “transitologies,” more broadly. The inexplicable link between transition and democratization is steeped in its political science heredity and the work of Huntington (1991), who identified three long waves of
The study of politics and policies of the Soviet Union and former communist countries.
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democratization. The first wave commenced in the 1820s with the self-determination of twenty-nine states and was followed by the first “reversal wave” in 1942 that saw a shrinkage to twelve democracies. The second wave, from 1945–1962, saw the blossoming of thirty-six young democracies and was followed by the second reversal wave in the 1960s and 1970s. The third wave, from 1974–1990, saw the doubling of democracies to approximately sixty sovereign nation-states. Some scholars have suggested a fourth wave of democratization, starting with the events in 2011, which began with the self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor causing al-sahwa (the uprising or Jasmine Revolution)3 and the ensuing Arab Awakening that toppled regimes in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen; cultivated uprisings in Bahrain and Syria; caused major demonstrations in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Oman; and aided minor rebellions in Lebanon, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Western Sahara. These global events have led to a resurgence in the transitologies literature as scholars are seeing new insights to explain the different types of transitions that are taking place following these various global awakenings. As such, the transitologies literature is now being used to understand the difficulty of democratic consolidation as countries move from authoritarianism (monarchical, republican, military, and liberalized) to democracy. Embedded in this discussion were questions concerning what role, if any, education should play in the democratic consolidation of postauthoritarian regimes. At its core, the study of transition—from dictatorship or authoritarianism—focuses on reconstruction during the drawn-out process of transformation that begins before a new regime takes power and continues long after they are in control. Since under dictatorships or authoritarian regimes the state is central, the evolution towards a civil society model of governance from below is rooted in political change. During such changes, education becomes a political project tied to social change. Transitions are “multilayered chess game[s]” (Löwenhardt, 1995, p. 16) steeped in uncertainty as situations are constantly evolving and fluid, as regime change is “accompanied by crisis symptoms” (Löwenhardt, 1995, p. 16) as time is compressed, decisions made hastily, and political players not defined. In essence, transitions begin “at the launching of the process of dissolution of an authoritarian regime” (Löwenhardt, 1995, p. 17) and the transition to democracy is achieved by design or default for lack of possibilities. Transitory periods have no clear rules since their central goal is the establishment of something different from the past. In short, transitions are political acts that begin with the disillusionment of the previous regime, and there is no clear end in sight. Thus, transitological research in education provides a conceptual scaffolding around: Insights gleaned from generalisable findings about the conditions under which authoritarian regimes are vulnerable to popular challenge, patterns of mass mobilisation and elite pact making, pivotal or choice moments, such as electoral processes, and experiences rewriting the rules of the political game through constitution-making; Understandings about the uncertainty, turbulence, and volatility of regime-to-regime transitions, often raising trade-offs between conflict management, transitional justice and democratisation as such;
While several Western terms—“Arab Spring,” “Arab Awakening,” “Arab Uprisings,” “Arab Renaissance,” and “Arab Revolutions” have been used to describe the events beginning with the self-immolation of street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, here I use the Arabic word that Tunisian use to describe their experiences.
3
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Grappling with the centrality of the transnational aspects of these changes, or the strong effects of international-domestic interactions; and Identifying new directions in transitology, such as the changing role of communication and participation, largely through social media. —Mohamedou and Sisk, 2013, p. 10 emphasis in original By the 1990s, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, transitologies research was applied to the post-communist Russian colonies of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) who sought to transition to democracy. In this way, the transition from communism to some type of democratic regime was viewed as a historical linear process, but the core requirements (institutions, actors, and bureaucracies) and temporal trajectories were unclear. After the collapse of the USSR, countries from Central and Eastern Europe became part of Europe and Sovietology was “recast as transitologies” to study what became known as post-socialism. As part of the recovery from socialism, these countries went through a period of profound political transition, which best exemplifies the process of educational transitologies. However, missing from the earlier analysis of democratic transitions was the role that education played during transitions. Such an angle allows education to be placed at the center of transition, rather than politics, to decenter the patterns of modernization. However, in CIE Cowen (1999; 2000a; 2009b) turned to transitologies to comparatively study the “time-present” (the austere breakdown and rebuilding of societies and educational systems); to explain regime change resulting from the concurrent collapse and rebuilding of political visions of the future; to examine the state apparatuses (police, army, bureaucracies, political institutions); to discuss economic and socio stratified system(s); and to investigate the reconstruction of the educational system after deliberate reform and restructuring. Transitologies is used in CIE as “a tool in tracing the way in which differences in geography, tradition, and trauma modify the working of general regularities” (Löwenhardt, 1995, p. 48). Or as Cowen (2009a) asserts, the transition has a specific shape, and therefore education is a “deliberate part of the transitological process” (p. 319) in that it carries a vision of progress or modernity that is often associated with the transition from ideal-type model to another. Thus, the educational transitological process contains mobility of ideas which “create the grammar of change which deconstructs the older forms of education” (Cowen, 2009a, p. 319) as the transition occurs. In his conceptualization, transitologies could free up comparative education from new epistemological and methodological explorations. Transitologies should be part of a comparative education of the future, not merely because we do not understand them but because transitologies act for comparative education as lightning storms do on dark days. Thus, the shifts that occur as time and space collapse also illuminates the “expression of social power (economic, political, cultural) in the ‘educational system’” (Cowen, 2009b, p. 1287). Transitologies are dramatic; they occur at remarkable speeds and often with stunning suddenness. They reveal to us, behind their excitement and their rhetoric, the educational patterns that are usually, in ordinary daylight as it were, difficult to see. In this way, educational patterns are derived from the objects and actors who shape-shift as transfer, translation, and transformation (the compression of social, economic, and cultural power in educational forms) occurs during transitological moments (Cowen, 2009b). Thus, “transformations are the metamorphoses which the compression of social and economic power into education in the new context imposes on the initial translation: that is, a range
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of transformations which cover both the indigenisation and the extinction of the translated form” (Cowen, 2006, p. 566). Therefore, transitologies in education are steeped in the relation between educational patterns and the historical expression of social power derived from them. Educational patterns are the same as educational codings, which are the “interplay of the domestic and the international in the construction of educational patterns” (Cowen, 2000a, p. 399). Thus, educational codes are made most visible in transitologies, which often occurs “when there is a collapse (and rapid redefinition) of the international political boundary, of the political regime and of political vision” (Cowen, 2000a, p. 341). However, Cowen (1996) argues that “evolution [of transitologies are] not linear—it is not possible to assume that shifts from pre-modern to modern to late-modern educational patterning are routinely predictable—embedded within an automatic historical sequence” (p. 162). Instead, transitological shifts are at the whims and fancies of local conditions. For Cowen (1996), pre-modern education patterns, found in Babylon, Egypt, Athens, Sparta, Rome, and China, were “primarily devoted to the administration of the political empire; some were secular, and others were centered around religious belief ” (Cowen, 1996, p. 156; see Figure 24.1). Modern educational pattern is best exemplified in “many of the principles of the enlightenment agenda, including a stress on predictability, science, and rationality” and is “primarily created by and around the interests of the state: as a political ideology they hypothesized the nation” (Cowen, 1996, p. 156; see Figure 24.1). The late-modern educational pattern is a statist production around the ideas of modernity and is part of “a political ideology [that] hypothesized the nation” and “reflected many of the principles of the enlightenment agenda, including a stress on predictability, science, and rationality” (Cowen, 1996, p. 156; see Figure 24.1). For Cowen (1996), the latemodern educational system has three dimensions: “the roles and moral message system of the central state, educational contents and structures and the international relations of the educational system” (p. 160). An example of recasting the state’s role in late modern pattern is one where the state is driven by diversification with an eye towards viewing “citizens as consumers of education” where the state’s message changes and it “becomes the agent which certifies the providers, through its control of qualification structures and licensing arrangements” (Cowen, 1996, p. 160). Under the second dimension, the historical purpose, and goals of education changes to facilitate the new discourse that the state adopts as part of its diversification strategy. An example of this is the use of the discourse of “choice” as part of market-driven reforms. The third and final dimension works in tandem with the other two by linking the global to the local. Thus, the three patterns are often linked to transitological moments. While educational patterns during this period are subjected to distortions, such as colonialism, regime change, and expansion of market fundamentalism, such distortions are vital in facilitating transitological moments. Such moments, as in the fall of the Berlin Wall and failures of the Tiananmen Square protest, can be seen as transitological moments. However, “these moments of major metamorphosis, permit Comparative Education to escape from incorporating into the future one of the key concepts which it took for granted in its pastthe concept of equilibrium and equilibrium theorizing” (Cowen, 2000a, p. 339). Thus, the role of education during transitological moments is “to construct not sequential equilibrium conditions but more transitologies” (Cowen, 2000a, p. 339). Transitologies are often two-prong historical events that simultaneously annihilate the past while redefining the future and thus create educational coding, which stems from the compressing of political and economic power into educational forms (Cowen, 2000a). Thus, educational codings emerge from a careful historical reading of the “global” and
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FIGURE 24.1: Visual representation of Cowen’s ideal-type models and transitologies. Source: J. Rappleye, Compasses, Maps, and Mirrors: Relocating Episteme(s) of Transfer, Reorienting the Comparative Kosmos. In M. A. Larsen (Ed.), New Thinking in Comparative Education: Honouring Robert Cowen (Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Brill Publishers, 2010, p. 68).
transitologies to discern how the construction of educational patterns stemming from the interplay of the local and global. With transformation brought about by globalization and the ensuing compression of time and space and the concurrent homogenization of cultural, socio-economic, and political forms, Cowen (1996) calls for the reading of the global given that the global economy is responsible for educational changes. In the reading of the global and transitologies, Cowen (2000a) suggests that the three types of transitions (premodern, modern, and late-modern) give rise to the collapse and reconstructing of “(a) state apparatuses; (b) social and economic stratification systems; and (c) political visions of the future; in which; (d) education is given a major symbolic and reconstructionist role in these social processes of destroying the past and redefining the future” (p. 338). Such a reading of educational patterns places an emphasis “on international political and economic and cultural relationships” (Cowen, 2000a, p. 338). In this way, as Rappleye (2010) argues, transitologies provide a compass to assist us in finding our bearings about time and space. Thus, educational patterns become visible during transitological moments, which are often sudden and violent, in that they destroy the past while defining the future. There is, however, no clear consensus as to how long transition needs to take root. For example, Bray and Borevskaya, (2001) suggest that transitions should not be defined while Cowen (1999), argues that it should be limited to “a short period; operationally say ten years” (p. 84). Transitions are viewed as completed with the installation of democratic rule, or a return to some form of authoritarianship (Löwenhardt, 1995). However, what is clear is that educational transitologies can be expressed as the shifts in the compression of social power (political, economic, and cultural) into educational form.
APPLICATION TO COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION The focus on socialist studies in CIE arose in tandem with area of studies aimed at “keeping the United States ahead of the Soviet Union through education” (Noah, 2006, p. 10) and funding through the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) which promoted
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the study of languages and regions deemed relevant to American strategic interests. In deciphering the complexity of the fall of the so-called “development turn” Steiner-Khamsi (2006), which placed Sovietology at the center of CIE research, Cowen’s (2000a) work focuses on redefining the relations between transitologies and CIE by focusing on “reading the world” to understand the “educational processes and systems” (p. 334) that give rise to “moments of educational metamorphosis” (p. 333). In doing this, the aim is to recognize that there are multiple comparative educations and therefore “educational reform itself helps to construct not sequential equilibrium conditions but more transitologies . . .” (Cowen, 2000b, p.11; see also Manzon, 2011). Much of the earlier work in transitologies focused on the link between economics and political transitions (Darvas and Tibbitts, 1992; McLeish, 1998; Pastuovic, 1993), while other research concentrates on the linearity of transformation from authoritarianism to democracy in post-socialist societies (Anweiler, 1992; Birzea, 1994; 1997; McLeish, 1998; Mitter, 1992; Rado, 2001). However, Cowen’s (1996) application of transitologies focuses on paying attention to ideal-typical approaches of transitions which can be viewed as “types of educational patterns which might called pre-modern to modern and latemodern educational systems and that the general relations of these educational patterns can be understood against major themes of political, economic, and cultural formation” (p. 155; see Figure 24.1). In other words, his application of the concept to education drew attention to education as a political project rather than the politics of social and political revolutions. He argues that as countries go through the transition from one stage to another (pre-modern to modern and late-modern), so too does its educational system by continuing the presence and some types of the previous step. In short, transitions are not only social, economic, and political, but they are educational as well. In other words, the application of transitologies to educational systems highlights questions of why and what by paying attention to which areas of reforms are given emphasis. Thus, as countries transition from one period to another, consideration is given to how the past is used and informs the present. In some cases, the educational transition may be a simple transfer from one period to another, while in other instances, it can involve destruction and reconstruction of the “cultural model of what it was to be educated” (Cowen, 1996, p. 164). Cowen’s (2002a) work identifies a set of transitological moments that symbolically mark the beginning of transitologies. The transition from pre-modern to modern education is often fought with difficulty, and it is never a linear evolution. While countries, such as the USSR after the communist revolution, China after the Cultural Revolution, South Africa after Apartheid, and the United Kingdom after Thatcherism successfully transitioned to modern educational systems, their educational transitological processes involved destruction and reconstruction of the system as reform emphasis was placed on different hereditary norms. In other words, the collapse of regimes and their reconstitution “provide us with new ways of thinking about time-present that has been fractured and ruptured in sudden and immediate ways” (Larsen, 2010, p. 4). Cowen (1996) used Brazil as an example to illustrate how its modern educational system, commencing in 1964 with the takeover of the state by generals, is a product of a mild transition to republicanism, which was borrowed from France. However, Cowen (1996) goes on to suggest that while the political transition was mild, “the Brazilian educational modernisation project was distinctly unclear in its goals, its legitimation proposals and its embracement of equality of educational opportunity” (p. 164). Thus, in the Brazilian case study, the political, economic, and social transformations led to
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education reform at the secondary and university levels, thus creating a modern educational system, which was vastly different from the previous pre-modern system. The modern system did not disregard the core tenets of the pre-modern system but inoculated them into the new system as well as took into consideration other global elements. The shift from pre-modern to modern to late-modern educational patterns is not monolithic, since it is not “embedded within an automatic historical sequence” (Cowen, 1996, p. 162). Thus, educational patterns emerge as the political forces of the transition are influenced by “the structural socioeconomic conditions [and] ideological projects” since transitologies “places the state and its educational and social projects at the heart of a late-modern Comparative Education” (Cowen, 1996, pp.165–166). In so doing, the late-modern draws attention to earlier and current reforms by situating them within a specific historical context. Scholars argue that the decline of communism in Central and Eastern Europe was an inevitable eventuality, and therefore, education will play a central role. McLeish (1998) outlines a five-stage framework for the studying of educational transition as countries move from authoritarian rule to democracy. This five-prong framework draws attention to the role of ideological ambiguity (phase I), elucidation and construction of national policies (phases II & III), the development of innovative education regulation (phase IV), and the execution of new regulations and policies at the school level (phase V). This model sees transitions as phased and linear and assumes transitological uniformity (Silova and Magno, 2004). Yet, critics cite “that the transitological approach to the study of post-communism is infused with a teleological perspective based on the assumption of a single endpoint to historical progression, namely, liberal democracy” (Gans-Morse, 2004, p. 321). When Sovietology was recast as transitologies in the post-Cold War era to study the progress that former socialist societies were making toward the Western ideals of democracy (often presumed to be linear and preordained), Silova (2010) uses transitologies as a conceptual tool to unearth and unmask the multifaceted transformational (historical, political, economic, ideological, and sociological) “processes of destroying the past and redefining the future” (Cowen, 2000a, p. 338). In this way, scholars relying on the transitologies literature in education talk about “multiple post-socialist spaces, places, and times” (Silova et al., 2017, p. S77) that are part of a geopolitical, social construct that exists within an epistemological and social construct. Such studies have highlighted that educational transitologies are “retardation” (Mitter, 2003) and “mutation” (Cerych, 1997), which are steeped in “education-specific legacies” (Silova, 2009) and stems from the transformation processes. In his later work, Cowen (2006; 2009) suggests that the three moments of transfer, the “movement of ideas,” translation (“shape-shifting of educational institutions”), and transformation (“compression of social and economic power into education”) (p. 566) are moments of significant progress. For example, post-colonialism (and education) is an outstanding illustration of transformation “which are occurring from the base of initial imperial ‘transfers’ and ‘translations’—with one crucial point of departure for comparative purposes being who was doing the initial translations” (Cowen, 2009, p. 325). In fact, this movement from one moment to another allows for educational reforms to take place. While transfer and translation are straightforward processes, transformations are forms of resistance emerging from regime collapse and extinction. Thus, transformations are lengthy and complicated “indigenisation phase[s] in which things freeze, morph or disappear” (Cowen, 2006, p. 56). In this way, transitologies present an ideal-type for us to experience the morphing of transfer, translation, and transformation, which arise through time-compression
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as political boundaries and visions collapse and are redefinition. As Cowen (2009) asserts, transfer, translation, and transformation are the dramatical moments of transitologies. Rappleye (2010; 2012) employs Cowen’s (1996; 2000) ideal-types transitologies to make visible the moment in which education transfer occurs during the transition from one educational pattern to another. By drawing attention to the transitological metamorphosis, Rappleye (2012) suggests that education transfers (references to elsewhere) are used at different transitological moments to initiate or amplify education reform debate as the system is being deconstructed or reconstituted. Rappleye (2010) also suggests that during transitological moments, there are numerous reactions by educational policy officials that range from closure and impenetrability to reaction and adjustment. The reactions ultimately determine and reveal different educational patterns and educational codings. The core takeaway from Rappleye’s (2010) work is that countries transition at different times and speeds from one educational pattern to another, and this is anchored in their respective historical contexts. Another body of work used ideal-types transitologies to study education transitions in Tunisia. As political, social, and economic pressures compress, Jules and Barton (2018) argue that during times of educational reform, “education transitions” or “education transitologies” are vital in shaping and sustaining different political regimes. In chronicling educational reforms over 3,000 years, Jules and Barton (2018), in focusing on the historical impact of Tunisia’s political transitologies on educational governance activities, suggest that Tunisia has undergone numerous waves of educational transitological moments that have been anchored in authoritarian bargaining or the “dictator’s dilemma” (Tullock, 1987; Wintrobe, 1990; 1998; 2007), which refers to the principal instruments— repression and loyalty. They draw attention to how education has been used as a political tool by different Tunisian dictators during different transitologies. Their work focuses on investigating (1) the types or models of national education systems that post-authoritarian regimes and post-revolutionary regimes seek to (re)construct, (2) which reform areas are given priorities, (3) what pre-revolutionary and authoritarian elements of the previous system are retained, and (4) how new education reforms are justified (Jules and Barton, 2014). This work illustrates how different dictators and regimes use education and its ensuing institutions to deploy different authoritarian bargaining agreements. In essence, during education transitologies, as education reforms occur, varying power relations arise during the coordination of activities, actors, and agents across different scales. The recognition of the changing role of the nation-state implies that we need to develop a different empirical approach to position the new geopolitical-educational architecture of power in a globalizing world. Thus, transitologies has contributed a framework to the CIE literature that accommodates: “(i) the historical contingency of particular forms of educational systems, (ii) the cultural variations within those forms and (iii) the various transitions from one major historical paradigm to the next” (Rappleye, 2012, p. 52). In other words, transitologies give us “new and meaningful insights into the interconnectivity of politics, history and culture across localities at a time when these three elements are often dismissed as outmoded” (Carney, 2009, p. 69). It pays attention to the educational spaces that are created and the opportunities that arise during transitions.
CONCLUSIONS Transitologies occurs at astonishing speeds and often with startling suddenness. They are essential in determining new epistemological and methodological directions that could free
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up comparative education by shining a light on different educational patterns that are not always observable. In other words, educational patterns, which are themselves educational codings are revealed as political and economic pressures, are compressed during transitologies. Or, as Cowen (1996) argues, “educational forms themselves are politics compressed” (p. 341). Transitologies are easier to locate in political rather than social transformations. Transitologies are composed of educational patterns (pre-modern, modern, and late-modern) that can be discerned from the transition literature, and these must be understood against the cultural, political, and economic formation of societies. These shifts are subjected to local conditions, historical trajectories, and unpredictable patterns since they are not linear. However, it is within these shifts that new educational codings are located as a political, and economic power is compressed into educational forms. Transitologies, as a body of literature, has been developed through the study of democratizing regimes and the move to market economies and has taken on multiple meanings. Processes of transition and transformation are conceptualized through the study of political, economic, and social change. In essence, the transition is difficult, and often time during transitologies, the previous educational reforms for the regime are kept, and the education system continues to function as though nothing has happened. It is only with time; that gradual educational reform takes place.
FURTHER READING 1. Cowen, R. (1996). Last past the post: Comparative education, modernity and perhaps post-modernity. Comparative Education, 32(2), 151–170. 2. Jules, T. D., and Barton, T. (2018). Educational transitions in post-revolutionary spaces: Islam, security and social movements in Tunisia. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Press. 3. Löwenhardt, J. (1995). The reincarnation of Russia: Struggling with the legacy of communism 1990–1994. Harlow, UK: Longman. 4. Rappleye, J. (2012). Educational policy transfer in an era of globalization: Theory— history—comparison. Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang.
MINI CASE STUDY A modern-day case studying that illuminates the educational transition from pre-modern to modern to late modern is Tunisia. For Cowen (2000a), the transition from “pre-modern to modern and late-modern educational systems” (p.163) is essential to deciphering transitologies (the study of transitions) that emerge with “major social turbulences” (Cowen, 1999, p. 84). Thus, contemporary Tunisia can be seen as having different transitological post-spaces commencing with (1) post-independence policyscape,4 (2) post-Bourguiba policyscape (first authoritarian president), and (3) post-Ben Ali policyscape (second authoritarian president) that has ultimately allowed education to be used during different transitological moments that strengthen dictatorial regimes. These post-spaces stem from some form of regime change and internal uprisings and have eventually shaped Tunisia’s transitologies.
4 Following Carney (2009) policyscapes can be viewed as “constructions of field, place, and site” (p. 70) that are situated between the nexus of the global and local history, politics, and culture.
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In highlighting the authoritarian bargaining that dictators use to survive and stay in office, Jules and Barton (2018) argue that education reform has been used by different dictatorial regimes, dating back some 3,000 years in Tunisia to consolidate power and strengthen the transition from one dictator to another. At its core, authoritarian bargaining “reflects the ‘contract’ between dictators and different constituencies whereby the latter acquiesce to constraints on their political participation and liberties in exchange for economic security” (Desai et al., 2007, p. 5). In the Tunisian context, since independence, Tunisia’s two dictators held sway over the people under a tightly woven authoritarian bargaining agreement that was endorsed by the elites in the coastal cities and viewed as necessary for access to the middle class. For example, this meant that after the bloodless political coup d’état led by President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (from 1987 to 2011) against Habib Ben Ali Bourguiba (president from 1957 to 1987) in 1987, education reforms took center stage in cementing loyalty to the new regime. Thus, education reforms focused on “reshap[ing educational] structures according to a rational approach that takes into account the national reality, inspired of success instances worldwide” (MOHESRT, 2008, p. 71). As political power compressed under le Changement (the Change) and all government activates became dominated by le Pacte National (the National Pact)—political and economic reforms that encouraged foreign investment (Borowiec, 1998), education was made obligatory for all citizens until the age of sixteen and aimed at “cultivating . . . fidelity and loyalty in students to Tunisia” (MOET, 2002, p. 5). In short, education was used as a way of cultivating skills in (1) practical (mathematics, science, computer science, and technology), (2) strategic (organize, analyze, and find correct info), (3) initiative (spirit of creativity), and (4) behavioral (senses of responsibility, self-reliance, and cooperation) (MOHESRT, 2008) to cement the regime’s legitimacy. Just as Bourguiba used education in 1958 to transform the nation as it transitioned from colonialism to democratic rule and later dictatorship, so too did Ben Ali use education to cement a smooth political, economic, and social transition in 1987. In other words, several transitological patterns have emerged in education as Tunisia has transitioned from one dictator to another. Different transitological moments that have acquired these transitological patterns in education have emphasized particular types of reforms over others. The Tunisian case shows that while contemporary regime collapse (as in cases from colonial rule to Bourguiba, then from Bourguiba Ben Ali in the form of a medical coup, and from Ben Ali to Rached Ghannouchi through al-sahwa in 2011) transitologies cannot be anticipated and have different consequences as economic, political and social pressure compress. In Tunisia’s case, while the transitions were completed with the return to some form of authoritarianship both under Bourguiba to Ben Ali, with regards to education, the transition was used to cement and legitimate the status quo. Before power was consolidated under both Bourguiba to Ben Ali, education was used as an instrument of compliance and regime support. Thus, Tunisia’s various transitions allow us to locate breaks, discontinuities, and ruptures in time. The impact on educational practices and processes stemming from political changes enables us to think about the time-present that has been fractured and ruptured by sudden and immediate changes. While Tunisia has followed the pattern of transition from one form of authoritarianship to another, with the 2011 al-sahwa this pattern was broken. Tunisia’s transition from authoritarian rule to democratic consolidation following al-sahwa has followed the orthodoxy that Löwenhardt (1995) suggests, in that once the dust had settled from al-sahwa the move from autocracy to liberalization was followed by the development of civil society, private economic initiative, and the development of human rights. This
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entity led to the 2014 Constitution that is seen as the most liberal constitution in the Arab world. In education, the liberalization led to the proliferation of Quranic kindergartens, which uses the Wahhabi doctrine as its core educational technique of enlightening Tunisia’s next generation (Zbiss, 2013). Periods of open liberalization can act as a doubleedged-sword for regime configuration as it may lead to lawless and a vacuum that has unintended consequences. Regarding the Tunisia Constitution, it is one of the first constitutions in the world to offer academic freedom as a right to be protected explicitly. In Tunisia in 2011, as social, political, and economic compression occurred during the transition to democratic rule and constitution reform, this period of liberation led to the recruitment of best and brightest students by Daesh (Islamic State) under the auspices of waging war on the Western infidels. However, what remained central through all of Tunisia’s transitologies (over the last 3,000 years) is that during the transition from one dictator to another education remained the primary concern and it was used both as a carrot and stick at a different time during different transitologies.
REFERENCES Anweiler, O. (1992). Some historical aspects of educational change in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Oxford Studies in Comparative Education, 2(1), 29–40. Birzea, C. (1994). Educational policies of the countries in transition. Strasbourg, France: Council of Europe Press. Birzea, C. (1997). The dilemmas of the reform of Romanian education: Shock therapy, the infusion of innovation or cultural decommunization? Higher Education in Europe, XXII (3), 71–80. Borowiec, A. (1998). Modern Tunisia: A democratic apprenticeship. Westport, CT: Praeger. Bray, M., and Borevskaya, N. (2001). Financing education in transitional societies: Lessons from Russia and China. Comparative Education, 37(3), 345–365. Carney, S. (2009). Negotiating policy in an age of globalization: Exploring educational “policyscapes” in Denmark, Nepal, and China. Comparative Education Review, 53(1), 63–88. Cerych, L. (1997). Educational reforms in Central and Eastern Europe: Processes and outcomes. European Journal of Education, 32(1), 75–97. Cowen, R. (1996). Last past the post: Comparative Education, modernity and perhaps post-modernity. Comparative Education, 32(2), 151–170. Cowen, R. (1999). Late-modernity and the rules of chaos: An initial note on transitologies and rims. In R. Alexander, M. Osborn, and D. Phillips (Eds.), Learning from comparing: New directions in comparative education research (Volume 2—Policy, professionals, and development) (pp. 73–88). Oxford, UK : Symposium Books. Cowen, R. (2000a). Comparing futures or comparing pasts? Comparative Education, 36(3), 333–342. Cowen, R. (2000b). Fine-tuning educational earthquakes. Education in times of transition: World yearbook of education 2000. London, UK : Kogan Page. Cowen, R. (2002a). Moments of time: A comparative note. History of Education, 31(5), 413–424. Cowen, R. (2006). Acting comparatively upon the educational world: Puzzles and possibilities. Oxford Review of Education, 32(5), 561–573. Cowen, R. (2009a). The transfer, translation and transformation of educational processes: And their shape-shifting? Comparative Education, 45(3), 315–327.
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Cowen, R. (2009b). Then and now: Unit ideas and Comparative Education. In R. Cowen and A. M Kazamias (Eds.), International handbook of comparative education (pp. 1277–1294). New York, NY: Springer. Cowen, R. (2014). Comparative Education: stones, silences, and siren songs. Comparative Education, 50(1), 3–14. Darvas, P. and Tibbitts, F. (1992). Educational change in central and eastern Europe: Tradition, context and new actors, the case of Hungary. In A. Tjeldvoll (Ed.), Education in east/central Europe 1991, special studies in Comparative Education, No. 30. Buffalo, NY: Graduate School of Education Publications. Desai, R. M., Yousef, T., and Olofsgård, A. (2007). The logic of authoritarian bargains: A test of a structural model. Washington, DC : Brookings Institution. Retrieved from www.brookings. edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/01globaleconomics_desai.pdf Diamond, L., Linz, J. J., and Lipset, S. (1988). Democracy in developing countries. Boulder, CO : Lynne Rinner. Fryer, L. G, and Jules, T. D. (2013). Policy spaces and educational development in the Islamic Maghreb region: Higher education in Tunisia. In A. W. Wiseman and C. C. Wolhuter (Eds.), The development of higher education in Africa: Prospects and challenges (pp. 401–425). Bingley, UK : Emerald Publishing. Gans-Morse, J. (2004). Searching for transitologists: Contemporary theories of postcommunist transitions and the myth of a dominant paradigm. Post-Soviet Affairs, 20(4), 320–349. Hadenius, A. (1992). Democracy and development. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hoen, H. (2013). Transitology: The revival of geographic-economic research on transition in central and eastern Europe. Economic and Environmental Studies, 13(2), 135–152. Huntington, S. P. (1991). The third wave: Democratization in the late twentieth century. Norman, OK and London, UK: University of Oklahoma Press. Jules, T. D., and Barton, T. (2014). Educational governance activities and the rise of educational contagion in the Islamic Maghreb: The case of Tunisia. InterDisciplines. Journal of History and Sociology, 5(2). Jules, T. D., and Barton, T. (2018). Educational transitions in post-revolutionary spaces: Islam, security and social movements in Tunisia. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Press. Larsen, M. A. (2010). New thinking Comparative Education editorial introduction. In M. A. Larsen (Ed.), New thinking in honouring Robert Cowen education: Honouring Robert Cowen (pp. 1–15). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sage Publications. Löwenhardt, J. (1995). The reincarnation of Russia: Struggling with the legacy of communism 1990–1994. Harlow, UK : Longman. Manzon, M. (2011). Comparative Education: The construction of a field. Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media. McLeish, E. (1998). Processes of educational transition in countries moving from authoritarian rule to democratic government. Oxford Studies in Comparative Education, 8(2). Millei, Z. (2013). Memory and kindergarten teachers’ work: Children’s needs before the needs of the socialist state. (April), 37–41. Mitter, W. (1992). Education in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in a period of revolutionary change. Oxford Studies in Comparative Education, 2(1), 15–28. Mitter, W. (2003). A decade of transformation: Education policies in central and eastern Europe. In M. Bray (Ed.), Comparative Education: Continuing traditions, new challenges, and new paradigms. London, UK : Kluwer.
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MOET (Ministry of Education and Training) (2002). Education Act, 23 July. Tunis: MOET. Mohamedou, M-M, O and Sisk, T. D. (2013). Bringing back transitology: Democratisation in the 21st century. Geneva: Geneva Centre for Security Policy. MOHESRT (2008). The fiftieth anniversary of the Tunisian university, 1958–2008. Tunis, Tunisia: Government of Tunisia. Noah, H. (2006). U.S. social and educational research during the cold war: An interview with Harold J. Noah by Gita Steiner-Khamsi. European Education: Issues and Studies, 38(3), 9–18. O’Donnell, G. and Schmitter, P. C. (1986). Transitions from authoritarian rule: Tentative conclusions about uncertain democracies. Baltimore, MD and London, UK: The John Hopkins University Press. Pastuovic, N. (1993). Problems of reforming educational systems in post-communist countries. International Review of Education, 39, 405–418. Rado, P. (2001). Education in transition. Budapest: Open Society Institute. Rappleye, J. (2010). Compasses, maps, and mirrors: Relocating episteme(s) of transfer, reorienting the comparative kosmos. In M. A. Larsen (Ed.), New thinking in comparative education: Honouring Robert Cowen (pp. 57–81). Rotterdam: Brill Publishers. Rappleye, J. (2012). Educational policy transfer in an era of globalization: Theory—history— comparison. Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang. Reddaway, P. and Glinski D. (2001). The tragedy of Russia’s reforms: Market Bolshevism against democracy. Washington, DC : United States Institute of Peace Press. Rustow, D. A. (1970). Transitions to democracy: Toward a dynamic model. Comparative Politics, 2(3), 337–363. Silova, I. and Magno, C. (2004). Gender equity unmasked: Revisiting democracy, gender, and education in post-socialist central/southeastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Comparative Education Review, 48(4), 417–442. Silova, I. (2009). Varieties of educational transformation: The post-socialist states of central/ southeastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In R. Cowen and A. Kazamias (Eds.), International handbook of Comparative Education (pp. 295–320). Netherlands: Springer Publishers. Silova, I. (2010). Rediscovering post-socialism in Comparative Education. In Post-socialism is not dead: (Re)reading the global in Comparative Education (pp. 1–24). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Silova, I., Millei, Z., and Piattoeva, N. (2017). Interrupting the coloniality of knowledge production in Comparative Education: Postsocialist and postcolonial dialogues after the Cold War. Comparative Education Review, 61(1), S74–S102. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2006). The development turn in Comparative Education. European Education: Issues and Studies, 38(3), 19–47. Tullock, G. (1987). Autocracy. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic. Wintrobe, R. (1990). The tinpot and the totalitarian: An economic theory of dictatorship. American Political Science Review, 84(03), 849–872. Wintrobe, R. (1998). The political economy of dictatorship. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press. Wintrobe, R. (2007). Dictatorship: Analytical approaches. In C. Boix and S. Stokes (Ed.), Oxford handbook of comparative politics (363–394). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Zbiss, H. (2013). Quranic kindergartens in Tunisia: Breeding a Wahhabi elite. ARIJ Website, 20.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Actor-Network-Theory and Comparative and International Education Addressing the Complexity of Socio-Material Foundations of Power in Education JASON BEECH AND ALEJANDRO ARTOPOULOS
INTRODUCTION Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) is an approach to the social sciences that originates from the sociology of science and technology in France in the late 1970s. The publication of Life in the Laboratory: The construction of scientific facts, by Latour and Woolgar (1979), was one of the key founding moments of this approach that has quite recently extended to many other areas of the social sciences, including the study of education. One of the main characteristics of ANT is that it aims to overcome binary distinctions, such as micro–macro, local–global, individual–collective, subject–object, social–natural, material– cultural, human–non-human, among others. This anti-essentialist epistemological move has made ANT especially attractive for researchers trying to understand the complexity of the socio-material world and makes it particularly relevant to address the challenge of what is usually referred to as the global–local puzzle in comparative and international education (CIE). This chapter presents the main features of ANT and its relevance to the field of comparative education. We start by introducing the key traits of the socio-material approach to the social sciences. We then discuss how these ideas have been used in educational research, and we present a review of some recent work that has used ANT in comparative education. Finally, we reflect upon the potential of ANT to address some of the most relevant intellectual challenges in comparative education.
OVERVIEW An overview of the main features of Actor-Network-Theory ANT is not easy to grasp for neophytes. This difficulty is partly because ANT implies a significant philosophical and epistemological shift away from some principles that have 429
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become common sense in the social sciences, and it is partly because ANT has travelled in many different directions and has taken diverse forms since its inception. Consequently, it is very difficult, at least for us, to define and explain this alternative social theory in a single chapter. In what follows, we shall aim to present and develop our own interpretation of some of its main propositions, primarily based on the book Reassembling the Social: An introduction to Actor-Network-Theory in which Latour (2005) presents the “intellectual architecture” of ANT (p. IX). The point of departure is an epistemological displacement: from the perspective of ANT, the existence of “the social” as a separate domain should be questioned. It is quite common to read in the social sciences that “social, cultural, and political” aspects should be considered, for example, when analyzing how a policy that has been transferred from one place to another is being enacted. Does this mean that there is such a thing as a “social context in which non-social activities” (Latour, 2005, p. 4) take place? Can the notion of social context or social structure “be used as a specific type of causality to account for the residual aspects that other domains (psychology, law, economics, etc.) cannot completely deal with?” (Latour, 2005, p. 4). For ANT, social structure is not a noun but a verb (Law, 1992). Social structure or social forces are not a given thing that can explain reality. Social structure itself needs to be reassembled. In ANT, society, nature, empire, globalization, neoliberalism are no longer explanans (concepts that can explain certain phenomenon). They become an explanandum (a phenomenon that is to be explained). In other words, concepts such as social structure, neoliberalism, or globalization that exert their power on organizations and individuals should be empirically demonstrated. Or, using Latour’s (2005) language, context or social structure are no longer a matter of fact that can explain reality, but rather a matter of concern that has to be proven empirically. It is the task of the social scientist to reassemble the ties that construct global forces making a teacher act in a certain way. Power cannot be assumes. As Law (1992) says: structure is not free-standing . . ., but a site of struggle, a relational effect that recursively generates and reproduces itself . . . no version of the social order, no organization, and no agent, is ever complete, autonomous, and final . . . notwithstanding the dreams of dictators and normative sociologists, there is no such thing as “social order” with a single center, or a single set of stable relations. Rather there are orders, in the plural. And of course, there are resistances. —p. 5 These plural “social orders” are composed of networks of heterogeneous elements. The aim of ANT is to characterize these networks or assemblages to understand empirically how it is that they come together to generate effects, such as organizations, inequalities, education policies, and power (Law, 1992). Seeing the social as a series of overlapping assemblages implies two radical claims. For ANT, action is never an individual issue. Action is always dislocated and distributed, in the sense that no one acts alone. An actor is part of a network of elements that makes it act. If we take the example of a teacher in a classroom, they are not acting alone. Who else is acting is an empirical question that is open to investigation, but for the sake of argument we can say that while teaching, teachers are not only interacting with other humans, but also with textbooks, a curriculum, a blackboard, a projector, and certain theories on how students learn. These elements constitute an assemblage generating effects such as teaching. This implies a second radical claim: that the social is not only comprised of humans, but also of non-human entities
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that connect with humans in actor-networks. This principle—known as the principle of symmetry—is one of the most notorious aspects of ANT, and probably one of the most banalized too. Both ANT’s notion of the actor-network and the principle of symmetry will be further explored in the next sections. Another aspect of ANT that is especially relevant for comparative education is the idea that the task of the social sciences is to reassemble these assemblages that generate power effects. From this perspective, power is contingent, local, and variable. Thus, the point of departure of the researcher should be to focus on localized practices that must be addressed with a blank slate. This slate then has to be imprinted upon by the researcher through a process of following ties between the elements that constitute assemblages. ANT avoids approaching the locus of action with a priori categories in which the empirical world has to be tidied up. It is not “tied to the axiological myth of a top and of a bottom of society” (Latour, 1996, p. 5) and makes no assumption about a given element being global, local or regional, macro or micro. In that sense ANT it is an anti-theory. It does not claim that it can explain the world. It rather suggests a way of addressing the challenge of trying to understand the world, avoiding as much as possible meta explanations that, in many cases, become ways of artificially ordering empirical realities into simple (sometimes binary) categories that are reassuring for the researcher but become a way of avoiding complexity. ANT is a way of approaching the analysis of the social, a series of sensibilities “that honor the mess, disorder and ambivalences that order phenomena, including education” (Fenwick and Edwards, 2010, p. 1). Given its emphasis on following the ties that constitute assemblages, ANT is especially useful to research social change and innovation. When a given assemblage of human and non-humans becomes stable, it is black-boxed, the network recedes into the background and actors become less aware of the ties that constitute the assemblage of which they are part. For example, the grammar of schooling with its specific material substrate was taken for granted for many decades. The ties between teaching practices, desks facing the front, blackboards, and chalk were not easily visible because they were taken for granted. In other words, they had become black-boxed. However, new demands on schooling and new theories of teaching and learning destabilized these assemblages. When promoting new aims for education (such as creativity, collaboration, and autonomy), the sociomaterial arrangements of the classroom become visible as new assemblages with open learning spaces and flexible working stations are deployed with the ultimate aim of changing teaching and learning practices. It is in these moments of innovation and change that the socio-material arrangements of the classroom become visible. Thus, innovation is revealed as a permanent and contingent process of construction and reconstruction; or, using ANT’s concepts, processes of assemblage and re-assemblage (Latour, 2005). Accidents and breakdowns generate another type of situation in which socio-material ties become suddenly visible. Nobody notices the socio-material arrangements of the lecture room until the projector stops working, and the speaker cannot show the audience the beautifully crafted graphs with the data s/he had prepared nor follow the narrative that was skillfully outlined in the slides. Non-human actors are ignored and made invisible until something is broken, or is missing, or fails. It is at this point that the nude body of the assemblage, just like the body of the emperor, is revealed. Thus, using ANT implies a very specific notion of action and agency that is combined with a particular way of using the concept of network to produce the idea of actornetworks. It also involves acknowledging the principle of symmetry that avoids separating
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non-human entities from the domain of the social, and defines the role of social scientists as tracers of ties with the aim of reassembling the networks of heterogeneous entities that generate power effects. In the next sections, we will discuss in more detail ANT’s concept of agency, the principle of symmetry, and the methodological moves involved in reassembling the social. Given ANT’s advantages to chart and understand social change and innovation, we suggest that ANT can be a very useful theoretical tool to address the challenge of understanding the trajectories of education policies and overcome binary notions of the global/local and macro/micro in comparative education. Consequently, we will focus the third section on two moves that Latour (2005) promotes when using ANT: localizing the global and redistributing the local.
ANT’s notion of agency: the actor-network For ANT, action is always distributed and dislocated, not transparent. It is a puzzle, a source of uncertainty. There is no such thing as isolated individuals that act alone. An actor is what is made to act by many others (Latour, 2005; 2011). It is a node of a network of multiple sets of agencies that the researcher tries to follow to understand how they come together. “An ‘actor’ in the hyphenated expression actor-network is not the source of an action but the moving target of a vast array of entities swarming towards it” (Latour, 2005, p. 46). So, an actor is a network of heterogeneous relations (Law, 1992). For example, learning is an attribute that we normally associate with a human being. We usually conceptualize learning as an individual action. We might understand it as an action that happens in a given social context: an organization like a school, a group of peers, teachers, etc. We might even be alert to a material dimension in the context: the textbook, the blackboard, desks, pencils, and computers. ANT implies an ontological shift in which there is no difference between an individual who learns and the “context” that generated the conditions for her to learn. The “actor” and the “context” collapse into a heterogeneous network, an actor-network, composed of human and non-human entities that generate learning as an effect. The challenge of ANT is to consider at the same time the actor and the network in which it is embedded (Latour, 2005). In this way, learning is construed as dislocated and distributed in networks that “pass through and ramify both within and beyond the body” (Law, 1992, p. 4). Mulcahy (2011) refers to this kind of conceptualization of learning as a matter of “seeing double:” seeing double is a matter of taking associations or connections or relations into account. Rather than discrete and singular categories, knowledge and learning demonstrate the characteristics of an assemblage . . . in which elements put together are not fixed in shape, do not belong to a larger-pre-given list but are constructed at least in part as they are entangled together. —p. 4 Of course, that the notion that action is not an individual attribute is nothing new in the social sciences. What is specific about ANT is that it avoids the temptation of integrating all of the diverse agencies that overtake action into a single overreaching agency, such as social structure, globalization, or neoliberalism. Rather than explaining action as being overtaken by one of these grand “social” constructs, ANT aims at mapping the detailed network of entities that act. At this point it becomes important to shift attention to the second concept in the hyphenated actor-network, since “network” has a very specific meaning in ANT. The
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notion of a network has been used to denote many different things. It can refer to a technical arrangement, such as electricity, trains, or computer networks. It is also used to refer to forms of human organization (Granovetter, 1985). Castells (2000) has combined both when he used it to define a mode of organizing human activities—the network society—that depends on the development of technical, mostly informational, networks (Latour, 2005). However, in ANT the notion of network is not used to designate a specific mode of organization or technical arrangement. It is a conceptual term that defines a mode of inquiry used to trace and list the heterogeneous elements that come together to produce effects (Latour, 2011). A “network is not made of nylon thread, words or any durable substance but is the trace left behind by some moving agent” (Latour, 2005, p. 132). The concept of network is used in ANT to redistribute action and to deploy the attributes of an entity (Latour, 2011). ANT has also been referred to as the sociology of translation (Callon, 1986b; Law, 1992). Translation in ANT is the process through which actors come together to form a network or an assemblage to perform certain goals (Callon, 1986a). In this sense, the core of ANT is: a concern with how actors and organisations mobilise, juxtapose and hold together the bits and pieces out of which they are composed; how they are sometimes able to prevent those bits and pieces from following their own inclinations and making off; and how they manage, as a result, to conceal for a time the process of translation itself and so turn a network from a heterogeneous set of bits and pieces each with its own inclinations, into something that passes as a punctualised actor. —Law, 1992, p. 6 Through a successful process of translation, an assemblage can become stable, taken for granted, and black-boxed. However, translations can also fail, producing weak connections, and unstable networks (Fenwick and Edwards, 2010). Thus, translation in ANT focuses on micro connections that generate ordering effects, and is based on the notion that these are always dynamic and open to negotiation, resistance, seduction, and change (Law, 1992). Thus, the use of the notion of network is very different in ANT when compared with empirical methods, such as Social Network Analysis (SNA) (see Chapter 26), which is aimed at mapping connections usually between humans (individuals and organizations) (Larsen and Beech, 2014; Pinheiro, 2011). In SNA, networks are represented in social network diagrams, where nodes are characterized as points and ties are depicted as lines. Roldán and Schupp (2005) have used SNA in comparative education to analyze the dissemination of the monitorial system of schooling in early nineteenth-century Hispanic America. Ball (2012) and colleagues have used it to examine the global education industry by mapping the connections between edu-business, transnational advocacy networks, and policy entrepreneurs. They have also mapped the more specific network of organizations and individuals that promote low-fee private schools in Africa and Asia (Ball and Junemann, 2012). Actor-networks differ from SNA mainly in three aspects. The first is the inclusion of non-human entities. The second is that while SNA maps connections, in ANT connections are not enough. ANT is aimed at understanding action and effects. So not all actors that are connected are included in the account of the assemblage, only those that make a difference. Latour (2005) distinguishes between intermediaries and mediators. Intermediaries are entities that transport meaning or power without transformation. You
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can deduce its output from its input. On the other hand, mediators “transform, translate, distort and modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry” (Latour, 2005, p. 39). If an element is a mediator or an intermediary is one of the main sources of uncertainty in ANT. If an entity is simply a passive intermediary that makes no difference, it is not an actor and it is not included in the actor-network. If it is not substitutable, it is an actor. Thus, if in SNA the limits to the network are defined by connections, in ANT they are defined by traces that are left by mediators. The final difference between these two notions of network is the way they deal with representation. While SNA usually uses diagrams that visually represent the connections that constitute the “social network,” ANT is usually represented in written accounts. Visual graphs can be useful as part of the process, but they are never enough to render the traces left by the social visible in the alternative topography of ANT.
Humans and non-humans: the principle of symmetry One of the most radical aspects of ANT is the way it conceptualizes non-human objects as actors. This is based on a critique of the ontological and artificial difference between society and nature in science. Latour (1993) argues that modern science is based on the idea that “it is not men who make Nature; Nature has always existed and has always been there; we are only discovering its secrets” (p. 30), while human beings construct society on their own, completely separated from non-human objects. Latour (1993) refers to the distinction as the work of purification. However: everything happens in the middle, everything passes between the two, everything happens by way of mediation, translations, and networks, but this space does not exist, it has no place. It is the unthinkable, the unconscious of the moderns. —Latour, 1993, p. 37 Again, we have to return to the main claim of ANT: that power has to be demonstrated, action is distributed, and the network that generates effects has to be made visible. From this perspective, it becomes quite evident that humans not only need other humans to act, but also objects. Power is never made up in the abstract. It is deployed through nonhuman entities, such as money, guns, texts, and even germs and gods. The social is a hybrid of heterogeneous elements. Thus, ANT is based on a post-humanist radical conception of society when it assumes that non-human objects have agency because “without the nonhuman, the humans would not last for a minute” (Latour, 2004, p. 91). Most (if not all) of our interactions with other people are mediated by non-human objects (Law, 1992). Objects are not neutral; they exert force, they seduce, they repel, they can join with other things and with humans and change in the process (Fenwick and Edwards, 2010). Fenwick and Edwards (2010) illustrate this point with the case of a textbook that connects policymakers, experts, publishers, teachers, students, parents, contents and theories, conceptions of how people learn, a curriculum, etc. Through the textbook all of these actors are exerting power on the classroom, and contributing to define what should be learnt and how. If the textbook is replaced by another textbook a new assemblage is created, changing power relations and effects such as teaching and learning. In response to critiques from humanist positions, Law (1992) makes a distinction between ethics and sociology. The assertion that there is no essential difference between humans and non-humans is analytic, and does not imply that people should be treated as
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machines, objects, or animals. However, even when dealing with ethical questions about the rights and duties assigned to humans, it might be necessary to address analytical issues about the “special character of the human effect—as, for instance, in difficult cases as life maintained by virtue of the technologies of intensive care” (Law, 1992, p. 4). Analytically, ANT promotes the idea that what counts as a person is an effect generated by a network of heterogeneous elements that extends beyond the body. In addressing issues of learning, for example, it is quite evident that as humans, our brains interact with external and collective memories and artifacts that contribute to our computational capacities. In addition, issues such as access to formal education depend on the possession of certain material objects, such as an identity card. In these cases, having or not having certain material objects can make a huge difference in terms of how a person is conceptualized and treated by others. Thus, ANT proposes to move away from the modernist centering in the human(istic) subject to be able to address the complexity of the socio-material.
Reassembling the global and the local As we have argued elsewhere (Beech and Artopoulos, 2015; Larsen and Beech, 2014), one of the biggest challenges of comparative education and the social sciences in general, is to revise available notions of space, searching for alternatives to take into account connections, mobilities, and circulation of power that cannot be made visible with territorial conceptualizations of space. Some authors emphasize the need to overcome methodological nationalism, defined as the assumption that the nation-state has become the naturalized element used to classify space, and the taken for granted unit of analysis of social science research (Beck, 2011; Dale and Robertson, 2009; Wimmer and Glick Schiller, 2002). Beck (2011) argues that methodological nationalism governs our sociological imagination, standing in the way of the capacity of the social sciences to grasp the dynamics of processes of globalization. He adds that “national organization as a structuring principle of societal and political action can no longer serve as the orienting reference point for the social scientific observer” (Beck, 2011, p. 19). Another challenge in conceptualizing space in the social sciences is the need to overcome binary views of the global and the local. The global is usually associated with the abstract, the ubiquitous, something out there, out of control and inevitable. While the local is the source of experience, meaning, and belonging. It is associated with authenticity and security. There are many problems with this binary conception of the global and the local (Beech and Larsen, 2014). One analytical problem is that the global is implicated in the local and the local in the global. Beck (2006) refers to a cosmopolitan reality to denote that most people experience cosmopolitan encounters in their daily lives. In addition, the most pressing issues for humanity, such as equity, justice, security, and sustainability cannot be interpreted as a purely local, nor global phenomenon. Thus, this “everyday cosmopolitanism” creates a horizon of experience and expectations that combines global and local sources in complex ways (Skrbis and Woodward, 2013). On the other hand, the binary global/local also has political effects when the global is seen as a ubiquitous force that is out of human control and oppresses local places, that are construed as victims or heroic resistors. However, global influences can liberate and oppress at the same time, while local places are not necessarily the locus of security and stability. They can also be oppressive (Beech and Larsen, 2014).
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Thus, the notion that the local and the global are ontologically different should be overcome. The concept of globalization has lost much of its edge as a theoretical tool, and has become a comfortable way of avoiding complexity, and an obstacle to understand new geographies of power/knowledge in contemporary education (Beech and Artopoulos, 2015; Tarc, 2012). Globalization must be brought down from its pedestal. It has to be dissected to understand who are the actors that create the effects that we usually associate with globalization, and which are the networks through which they exert their power. Globalization should become a matter of concern, rather than a matter of fact. We suggest that ANT, with its emphasis on reassembling the ties that connect different human and non-human entities to produce effects, can be a very productive approach to address both these challenges. Latour (2005) refers to two moves that he considers key for ANT studies: localizing the global and redistributing the local. Latour (2005) suggests that social scientist have to avoid getting trapped either in “local interaction” or in “global context.” Every interaction “seems to overflow with elements which are already in the situation coming from some other time, some other place, and generated by some other agency” (Latour, 2005, p. 166 emphasis in original). How to consider these elements that exceed the local scene? What should be avoided is a jump from the local to a single overreaching agency such as social structure, globalization, or neoliberalism. These grand “social” constructs are much too abstract to do anything. “Context stinks” (Latour, 2005, p. 148). “At Context, there is no place to park” (Latour, 2005, p. 167). Even though globalization is not acceptable as an explanation per se in ANT, this does not imply that it should be ignored. Abstractions, such as globalization or the knowledge economy can become a relevant mediator when they are used to justify action. In that case when certain concepts mobilize action—for example, when they are used to support a given education policy—they become an actor that is part of an assemblage. If “the global” can become an abstract concept that does not help much in describing empirical realities, the same can be said of local interactions. The solution for ANT is not in choosing one pole or the other, nor in finding a compromise between global and local, structure and agency, or macro and micro. For ANT the way forward is to keep the social domain completely flat. in such a flattened topography, if any action has to be transported from one site to the next, you now need a conduit and a vehicle . . . The full cost of any connection is now fully payable. If a site wants to influence another site, it has to levy the means. The tyranny of distance has been underlined again. Actors have become accountable. —Latour, 2005, p. 174 emphasis in original. In ANT, space is not construed as a series of concentric circles in which the global is the larger site containing the regional, in which the national is embedded and the local is the final station. The metaphor is not the Russian dolls, but “Flatland.”1 There are no a 1 Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is a novel written by Edwin A. Abbott, and published in England in 1884. The story describes a two-dimensional universe occupied by geometrical figures. A quote from the book describing this universe can help to understand why it can be used as a metaphor of a world without a priori scales that are above or below. “I CALL our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space. Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows— only hard and with luminous edges—and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen.” Retrieved from www.amazon.com/Flatland-Romance-Dimensions-Thrift-Editions/dp/048627263X
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priori hierarchies or above and below. It is not up to the researcher to predefine that the global influence (e.g., PISA) is bigger than the local. It is the actors that define it. PISA might be a global overreaching force in a way, but for a teacher, a school, or a policymaker it could be smaller than the influence of the local church or the values of the community. The “size” of the actors should not be assumed; it is part of the uncertainty that should be kept open and has to be reassembled by following the ties between actors. Thus, the notion of “scale” is problematized by ANT, since it can become another way of artificially jumping into abstract constructs. Is an education policy “macro”? Yes, since it has been produced by actors within the state. But that policy is also the result of influences of global actors, of regional organizations, and of local pressure groups. It is also “micro” when the policy is enacted by a teacher in a classroom. “Scale is the actor’s own achievement” (Latour, 2005, p. 185). What the policy is doing is connecting sites. It is a mediator. There is no place that is non-local. If action is distributed and dislocated, if the local scene is overflowed with distant elements, it means that it is connected with other actors in other places, not that it moves from a place to no place (Latour, 2005, p. 179). When “global forces,” “globalization,” or “neoliberalism” are used to explain action, ANT wonders: Through which conduits? Which texts? Which technologies? How much money? Which people interacted? Which theories were used? The mechanisms, actors, and mediators have to be reassembled to understand the specific conduits through which alleged “global” forces produce effects. The World Bank, UNESCO, and Pearson are not abstract entities. They are real world institutions that operate in places through socio-material networks. Thus, the spatial metaphor of ANT is a star-shaped actornetwork of juxtaposed localities. Just like the global has no concrete existence until its specific conduits are revealed, the local also needs to be problematized. “How is the local itself being generated? . . . the local has to be re-dispatched and redistributed” (Latour, 2005, p. 192 emphasis in original). Again, it is the connections between sites that must be made visible. These connections, as we mentioned, are made of heterogeneous entities that transport power, allowing action to be carried out at a distance. Even it what seems to be the most local of interactions, there are multiple actors from diverse places and times acting. For example, the architect that designed a school a long time ago and in a distant place, through their design and its materialization is having an influence on the interactions that produce teaching and learning. Of course, that the material dimension of the classroom does not determine how the teacher teaches, but that does not mean that it does nothing. The design of the school and its materiality connect the architect’s studio which is distant in space and time with the local site. Latour (2005) refers to these entities that operate as conduits of action connecting distant sites “articulators or localizers” (p. 194 emphasis in original). In redistributing the local, certain principles have to be considered. First, no interaction is purely local. The elements that are acting come from many different places. Second, no interaction is synchronic. The entities that act connect different times and have different paces (e.g., the “old” blackboard and the “new” digital technology). Third, interaction is not synoptic. Not all participants are simultaneously visible. Some actors will come to the front at certain times, and later recede when they become dormant. Fourth, interaction is not homogeneous, since the relays through which action is carried have different material forms. Fifth, not all actors that participate in action exert the same amount of pressure. Thus, interaction is not isobaric. In this way, by focusing on the circulation of power in a flattened space, one of the main benefits of ANT is that it makes visible certain entities that might not be evidently
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present if the empirical site is charted through other perspectives. This makes ANT especially relevant for comparative education to open its empirical gaze in times when much of the circulation of power through educational settings does not necessarily flow through the formal mechanisms of state bureaucracies. As has been widely explored, private for profit corporation, philanthropic organizations, consultants, and many other hybrid organizations are increasingly influencing education policies and practices (Ball, 2009; 2012). If Ball is right in suggesting that in times in which new actors participate in educational governance through policy networks we have to pay special attention to technologies and money as conduits of power (Avelar, 2015), then ANT could be a very useful methodological approach to make visible and reassemble the mechanisms through which these actors generate effects.
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION In this section, we offer a review of the use of ANT in educational studies. In no way do we intend to cover all of the texts and authors that have used ANT to study educational phenomena. We will start by commenting on some works that we have found useful and relevant, considering texts that could be helpful as a way of accessing the use of ANT in education. As in a good ANT study, it is then up to the reader to follow the ties between authors and texts that constitute a small, but fast-growing network of scholars interested in the use of the sensibilities of ANT to understand educational phenomena. After the conclusion, in the form of a Mini Case Study, we will then examine the use of ANT specifically in the field of comparative education, by reviewing in more detail the recent work of Piattoeva (2015; 2018) and Gorur (2011a; 2011b; 2016; 2017) that have used ANT to analyze the global governance of education and, more specifically, the (net)work of PISA. The use of ANT in educational research is quite recent. Other than a few early adopters, such as Nespor (1994), the book Actor-Network Theory in Education by Fenwick and Edwards (2010) was seminal in establishing ANT in educational research (Gorur et al., 2019), and it is still a key introductory text on ANT in education. Since then, other authors have written about ANT and the possibilities it opens for educational research (Decuypere, 2019; Fenwick and Landri, 2012; Gorur, 2015; Gorur et al., 2019), and a flurry of empirical studies have been published. Following their introductory book, Fenwick and Edwards (2012) edited a collection of ANT studies in education, Fenwick and Landri (2012) co-edited a special issue in Pedagogy, Culture and Society, and recently Gorur et al. (2019) organized another special issue on Science and Technology Studies (STS)2 and Research in education in Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. At the risk of oversimplifying the ANT literature in education, we suggest that there are three broad themes in ANT in educational research: the materiality of education; processes of teaching, learning, and knowing; and educational policies and reform. Of course, these are not clear-cut divisions since many studies would consider materiality, policies, and teaching and learning practices, at the same time, even when the focus is on one of these themes.
2 STS includes Actor-Network Theory and other similar approaches. For a brief history and conceptualization, see Gorur et al. (2019).
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Given ANT’s emphasis on the work that non-human entities do in assembling the social, it is not surprising that the material dimension of education is one of the main themes in ANT studies in education. For example, Nespor (2011) has used ANT to study what he calls device-mediated educational change by analyzing a computer-mediated interactive video module in a university course, and an assistive communicative device that completely changed the way in which the cognitive abilities of an early childhood student were perceived by teachers and other adults. Similarly, Waltz (2006) makes a plea for educational studies to consider “things” as relevant actors. Textbooks, for example, are usually construed as mere tools for teaching and learning or tools to transmit certain political views or for profit-making. However, Waltz (2006) argues that when textbooks are seen as artifacts that have agency and are key mediators in the assemblages that produce effects in educational settings, a whole new set of ontological possibilities open up: “Depending on the situation, i.e., the other actors with whom they stand in relation, textbooks may become not only tutors and study-buddies, but also co-conspirators, lawenforcement officers, administrators, racists, quality-control agents, seducers, and investment advisors” (p. 57). She also argues that playground geography and equipment in schools contribute to the shaping of gender identities of students. But the physical environment and the artifacts do not act alone. They must be considered alongside humans and conceptions of gender, among other entities, to have a more complex (and precise) view of how humans and non-humans contribute to the shaping of differentiated gender roles. Making a similar argument, McGregor (2004) has demonstrated how different objects in a school science lab contribute to shape teaching practices, while Fenwick (1998) has found that keys to rooms are a source of power in the everyday life of teachers in a public school. Thus, the materiality of education has been one of the main themes studied with the use of ANT—which transforms the notion of materiality into socio-materiality by inviting the material to be part of the social. And there is still a huge potential of empty space to conquer in terms of using ANT to better understand the socio-material construction of educational settings comparatively. One type of effects that socio-material assemblages generate in education are teaching, learning, and knowing. These effects have been the focus of another set of empirical studies using ANT’s sensibilities. The work of Mulcahy (2011; 2012; 2016; 2019) on learning and pedagogic practice is particularly relevant as example of how ANT can contribute to the visualization of learning as a distributed effect that extends beyond the mind and the body of the learner. She questions the idea of the autonomous knowing subject that is at the heart of constructivism. Instead, she proposes a relational notion in which learning is a co-construction between bodies, spaces, and objects (Mulcahy, 2019). Combining ANT with Deleuzian philosophy, she understands agency as “the capacity of entities, both human and nonhuman, to affect others and to be affected by them” (Mulcahy, 2019, p. 69). In one of her latest studies, she followed students that visited museums, recording in different ways (mainly through different uses of video cameras) students’ embodied engagements in order to understand their affective practices of learning. She concludes that “relational bodily affect allows for affirming ‘intricacies between the cognitive and affective elements’ of knowing and learning,” and consequently, “learning to affect and be affected by human and non-human others becomes essential to a subject’s becoming and, at the same time, her being in the world” (Mulcahy, 2019, p. 104). The shifts proposed by Mulcahy (2019) in how to construe learning, overcoming individualized notions, is not only a purely theoretical claim; it is also strongly political.
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Once learning is seen as a distributed socio-material network effect that has cognitive and affective elements, new possibilities for pedagogic practices arise. Among other effects, thinking of pedagogy as an assemblage involves defining teaching and learning as a collective responsibility, and multiplies the vantage points that provide opportunities to intervene (Mulcahy, 2012). Finally, education policies have also been analyzed through ANT. For example, in the book edited by Fenwick and Edwards (2012), six chapters refer to education policy, reform, change, standards, or mechanisms of governance, such as PISA. In another text, Gorur (2011b) describes her own journey when trying to explore the relations between PISA and education policies in Australia. Available theoretical approaches that explained and ordered processes of education policymaking contrasted with her empirical findings, which rather reflected “policy doing” as a messy, incomplete, unstable, and contradictory process that was overflowed by many entities acting upon it. Approaching policy as an assemblage became an “appropriate conceptual resource especially when ‘national’ and ‘transnational’ inter-relations and co-productions are to be explored” (Gorur, 2011b, p. 619). In our own work on Conectar Igualdad (CI)—a 1:1 technology project that distributed 5 million computers to secondary school students and teachers in Argentina— ANT contributed to escape binaries, such as global-local, macro-micro, public-private, etc. (Beech and Artopoulos, 2015). Interpreting CI as a proposed change in the assemblages that produce teaching and learning in Argentine classrooms helped us to visualize the ties and conduits that constructed CI as a policy network composed of heterogeneous actors, and the policy itself as an unstable ever-changing entity that has very different meanings in different places at the same time. For example, a small and apparently localized event, such as classes systematically starting 10 to 20 minutes late, when analyzed through the lens of ANT sensibilities, became a multifaceted, multi-layered incident generated through a network of actors that are global, national, provincial, local, and others that are not easily classifiable in that logic. Argentine secondary school classrooms were overflowed by a socio-material assemblage constituted by students, teachers, students’ computers, schools, classrooms, software, batteries, chargers, electrical plugs, replacement computers, connectivity, the internet, digital files, digital videos, digital learning environments, school servers, access points, internal networks, teacher education strategies, Intel, a Chinese software company, other software companies, companies who sell the computers, the Argentine national state, and provincial and municipal states. In different ways, these heterogeneous actors contribute to the definition of what it means to teach and study in an Argentine secondary school as they come together in an assemblage. Thus, the notion of policy as assemblage is a very potent analytical tool to analyze education policy as complex effects that are generated through the interaction of very different human and non-human elements localized in many different places. In the next section, we will explore in more detail how ANT can contribute to grasp global policy networks, global governance, and, in particular, the work of PISA.
CONCLUSIONS In this chapter, we have explained and illustrated the main features of ANT, we discussed how it has been used in educational studies, and the potential that ANT sensibilities have for comparative education. However, in no way are we trying to promote ANT as a colonizing theory/methodology. On the contrary, we acknowledge that ANT is not a useful approach to researching any theme or topic in education. It is not a kind of grand
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social theory that can be “applied” as a framework to explain the social. Instead, we contend that ANT can be very productive because it provides a different perspective to study innovation and change in education, materiality and power relations, processes of teaching, learning, and knowing, and forms of network governance escaping longstanding dualisms. As ANT extends its influence in the fertile soil of educational studies, we should avoid falling into the mistake of using ANT as a grand theory that can explain the world. Using ANT as a kind of theoretical template that can be used to tell similar stories about different sites, simply showing that agency in education is distributed through networks of humans and non-humans, would not only be repetitive and irrelevant, it would also betray the most profound of ANT’s claims (Decuypere, 2019). On the contrary, one of the biggest advantages of ANT as an approach is its flexibility and how it has been used in many ways to study very different settings. Hopefully, as the use of ANT extends in comparative education, we can creatively think of new productive ways to use it, not only to better understand educational processes, but also to imagine better futures for education, and different ways of intervening to create those futures.
FURTHER READING 1. Gorur, R., Hamilton, M., Lundahl, C., and Sjödin, E. S. (2019). Politics by other means? STS and research in education. Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education, 40(1), 1–15. 2. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor–network theory. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 3. Latour, B. (1993). We have never been modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 4. Law, J. (1992). Notes on the theory of the actor-network: Ordering, strategy, and heterogeneity. Systems Practice, 5(4), 379–393. 5. Fenwick, T., and Edwards, R. (2010). Actor-network theory in education. London, UK: Routledge.
MINI CASE STUDY Given the potential that ANT sensibilities have to understand the ways in which power is displaced and different entities come together to form networks that act, it is surprising that it has very recently and quite timidly been used in the field of comparative education. In this section we will use the work of Piattoeva (2015; 2018) that has used ANT to analyze the global governance of education, and research by Gorur (2011a; 2011b; 2016; 2017) on PISA, to present an example of how ANT sensibilities can be used in CIE. Piattoeva (2018) aims to understand how the networks of global governance hold together, how they mobilize allies, expand, and spread particular policy messages, producing influence. Using the Russian Education Aid for Development (READ) as a case study, she follows “metrics” and shows how numerical assessments circulate and help to assemble extended and dense networks that influence educational systems across big distances. She argues that numerical assessments are not only the effect of global governance schemes, that they are a fundamental mediator holding these assemblages together. Her work contributes to highlight the advantages of including non-human elements in the analysis of networked governance, since “social and discursive ties” are not enough to hold these networks together.
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In a complementary study, Piattoeva (2015), combines Foucauldian notions of power with ANT’s concept of translation to study the power of international organizations as a relational effect. By looking at an OECD country report on Russia, she illustrates the limitations of the idea of power as a fixed resource held by an individual or organizational actor, and of the notion of power as diffused by an autonomous entity that provides the initial impetus for action. Instead, she shows that international organizations need to enroll other actors in their network in order to produce power effects. Through a process of translation, the OECD influences the will of others (in this case the Russian government) to pursue its goals and enhance its power. The OECD presents itself as a “politically disinterested, pragmatic manager” that has access to the most efficient means to improve Russian education. “In this manner, the OECD translates the ‘problem’ of ‘Russian education in transition’ from a contentious political and even ideological issue to an apolitical managerial matter that requires efficient administrative tools rather than a broad political discussion” (Piattoeva, 2015, p. 78). Piattoeva (2015) argues that by promoting the idea that the future of Russian education depends on the alliance with the OECD, it also exposes how its own power and its existence depend on its networks of allies. Thus, seeing global governance as a series of assemblages of heterogeneous elements contributes to demystify the idea of “the global” as an abstract all-encompassing entity that is out there, out of control. On the contrary, this perspective exposes the instability and fragility of these networks that require permanent hard work to assemble more and more actors and allies to generate bigger and stronger networks. The work of Gorur (2011a) on PISA extends and develops these arguments. She takes PISA as a matter of concern by looking inside the “PISA laboratory” to understand how it is that PISA has become such an authoritative actor in the governance of education. She analyzes how the PISA facts are produced through processes of classification, sampling, the use of mathematical models, and the use of socio-material devices to order and preserve data. Gorur (2011a) shows that PISA is not a singular entity. It is a statistically sophisticated entity, a pedagogic innovation, a standard, a policy imperative, etc. The point is not only that PISA is seen differently from different standpoints, but rather that “PISA is ontologically variable and multiple” (Gorur, 2011a, p. 78). She concludes that if PISA can speak with authority about education in so many places it is because it has “mapped the world, ordered knowledge and disciplined actors into taking up their assigned positions at regular intervals” (Gorur, 2011a, p. 90). But PISA is not an individualized monolithic device. It is a network of heterogeneous elements in which nonhuman entities pay fundamental roles: “frameworks acted as gatekeepers. Mathematical models pronounced judgements . . . booklets represented student knowledge” (Gorur, 2011a, p. 90). Gorur (2017) also argues that seeing large-scale international assessments (ILSAs) as socio-technical assemblages could contribute to more productive critiques of this phenomena. She holds that some groups see ILSAs as technical projects, while others see them as socially constructed devices that are used to impose power. She contends that if ILSAs are understood as socio-technical objects that are both real and constructed, much more productive critiques of ILSAs and its effects could be reached. She argues that “knowledge (science—and in this case statistics) is both socially constructed and constitutive of the social life it constructs” (Gorur, 2017, p. 348). Thus, PISA is in a way the result of a performative culture that desperately seeks standards, measurements, and numbers to order and rank the world; but it is also performative, in the sense that it contributes to construct and reinforce such a world view as it enrolls allies such as
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educational administrators, researchers, and many others that start to “see like PISA” (Gorur, 2016). These examples show the potential that ANT has for the study of governance mechanisms in comparative education, moving away from the global–local and macro– micro binaries. It provides useful analytical sensibilities to trace the conduits through which power and knowledge circulate in education, opening the black box of the “globalization of education” to understand who are the actors that participate in these networks and what are the means they use to produce influence and educational change by connecting sites.
REFERENCES Avelar, M. (2015). Interview with Stephen J. Ball: Analyzing his contribution to education policy research. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24(24), 1–17. Ball, S. (2009). Privatizing education, privatizing education policy, privatising educational research: Network governance and the “competition” state. Journal of Education Policy, 24(1), 83–99. Ball, S. (2012). Global Education Inc. New policy networks and the neoliberal imaginary. London, UK : Routledge. Ball, S., and Junemann, C. (2012). Networks, new governance and education. Chicago, IL : The Policy Press. Beck, U. (2006). Cosmopolitan vision. Cambridge, UK : Polity Press. Beck, U. (2011). Cosmopolitan sociology: Outline of a paradigm shift. In M. Rovisco and M. Nowicka (Eds.), The Ashgate research companion to cosmopolitanism. London, UK : Routledge. Beech, J., and Larsen, M. (2014). Replacing old spatial empires of the mind: Rethinking space and place through network spatiality. European Education, 46(1), 75–94. Beech, J., and Artopoulos, A. (2015). Interpreting the circulation of educational discourse across space: Searching for new vocabularies. Globalisation, Societies and Education. Callon, M. (1986a). The sociology of an actor-network: The case of the electric vehicle. In M. Callon, J. Law, and A. Rip (Eds.), Mapping the dynamics of science and technology (pp. 19– 34). Basingstoke, UK : Macmillan. Callon, M. (1986b). Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and fishmen of St. Brieux Bay. In J. Law (Ed.), Power, action and belief: A new sociology of knowledge (pp. 196–233). London, UK : Routledge and Kegan Paul. Castells, M. (2000). The rise of the network society (2nd edition). Oxford, UK : Blackwell. Dale, R., and Robertson, S. (2009). Beyond methodological “isms” in Comparative Education in an era of globalization. In R. Cowen and A. M. Kazamias (Eds.), International handbook of Comparative Education (pp. 1113–1127). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Decuypere, M. (2019). STS in/as education: Where do we stand and what is there (still) to gain? Some outlines for a future research agenda. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 40(1), 136–145. Fenwick, T. (1998). Managing space, energy, and self: Beyond classroom management with junior high school teachers. Teachers and Teacher Education, an International Journal of Research and Studies, 14(6), 619–631. Fenwick, T., and Edwards, R. (2010). Actor-network theory in education. London, UK: Routledge. Fenwick, T., and Edwards, R. (Eds.). (2012). Researching education through actor-network theory. Malden, MA : Wiley-Blackwell.
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Fenwick, T., and Landri, P. (2012). Materialities, textures and pedagogies: Socio-material assemblages in education. Pedagogy Culture and Society, 20(1), 1–7. Gorur, R. (2011a). ANT on the PISA trail: Following the statistical pursuit of certainty. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43(s1), 76–93. Gorur, R. (2011b). Policy as assemblage. European Educational Research Journal, 10(4), 611–622. Gorur, R. (2015). Situated, relational and practice-oriented. The actor-network theory approach. In K. N. Gulson, M. Clarke, and E. Bendix Petersen (Eds.), Education policy and contemporary theory: Implications for research. London, UK : Routledge. Gorur, R. (2016). Seeing like PISA: A cautionary tale about the performativity of international assessments. European Educational Research Journal, 15(5), 598–616. Gorur, R. (2017). Towards productive critique of large-scale comparisons in education. Critical Studies in Education, 58(3), 341–355. Gorur, R., Hamilton, M., Lundahl, C., and Sjödin, E. S. (2019). Politics by other means? STS and research in education. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 40(1), 1–15. Granovetter, M. (1985). Economic action and social structure: The problem of embededness. AJS , 91(3), 481–510. Larsen, M., and Beech, J. (2014). Spatial theorizing in Comparative and International Education research. Comparative Education Review, 58(2), 191–214. Latour, B. (1993). We have never been modern. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (1996). On actor-network theory. A few clarifications plus more than a few complications. Soziale Welt, 47, 369–381. Latour, B. (2004). Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical Inquiry, 30(2), 225–248. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor–network theory. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Latour, B. (2011). Networks, societies, spheres: Reflections of an actor-network theorist. International Journal of Communication, 5, 796–810. Latour, B., and Woolgar, S. (1979). Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press. Law, J. (1992). Notes on the theory of the actor-network: Ordering, strategy, and heterogeneity. Systems Practice, 5(4), 379–393. McGregor, J. (2004). Spatiality and the place of the material in schools. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 12(3), 347–372. Mulcahy, D. (2011). Reconsidering teacher professional learning: A practice-based, sociomaterial approach. Paper presented at the AARE Annual Conference 2011, Hobart. Mulcahy, D. (2012). Affective assemblages: Body matters in the pedagogic practices of contemporary school classrooms. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 20, 9–27. Mulcahy, D. (2016). Policy matters: de/re/territorialising spaces of learning in Victorian government schools. Journal of Education Policy, 31(1), 81–97. Mulcahy, D. (2019). Pedagogic affect and its politics: learning to affect and be affected in education. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 40(1), 93–108. Nespor, J. (1994). Knowledge in motion: Space, time, and signs in educational process. Mahwah, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum. Nespor, J. (2011). Devices and educational change. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43(1), 15–37. Piattoeva, N. (2015). Power as translation in the global governance of education. In M. Lawn and R. Normand (Eds.), Shaping of European education: Interdisciplinary approaches (pp. 66–79). London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge.
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Piattoeva, N. (2018). How can transnational connection hold? An actor-network theory inspired approach to the materiality of transnational education governance. In A. Wilkins and O. Olmedo (Eds.), Education governance and social theory. interdisciplinary approaches to research. London, UK : Bloomsbury. Pinheiro, C. A. R. (2011). Social network analysis in telecommunications. Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley and Sons. Roldán, V. E., and Schupp, T. (2005). Bridges over the Atlantic: A network analysis of the introduction of the monitorial system of education in early-independent Spanish America. Comparativ Leipziger Beiträge zur Universalgeschichte und vergleichenden Gesellschaftsforschung, 15, 58–93. Skrbis, Z., and Woodward, I. (2013). Cosmopolitanism: Uses of the idea. London, UK : Sage. Tarc, P. (2012). The uses of globalization in the (shifting) landscape of educational studies. Canadian Journal of Education, 35(3), 4–29. Waltz, S. B. (2006). Nonhumans unbound: Actor-network theory and the reconsideration of “things” in educational foundations. Educational Foundations, 20(3–4), 51–68. Wimmer, A., and Glick Schiller, N. (2002). Methodological nationalism and beyond: Nation state formation, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs, 2(3), 301–334.
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Social Network Theory and Analysis in Comparative and International Education Connecting the Dots for Better Understanding of Education OREN PIZMONY-LEVY
INTRODUCTION The scholarship in the field of comparative and international education (CIE) is vast and diverse. The field brings together researchers and practitioners, multiple academic disciplines, and theoretical approaches (e.g., anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology), and different ways of knowing (i.e., research methodologies and epistemologies). Further approaches exist where some CIE scholars have regional expertise while others topical interests. On the surface, CIE might look chaotic and disjointed. However, is there a method to our madness? One way to answer this question is to describe common and least common themes by surveying scholars about their scholarly interests. This approach, however, overlooks the complexity of and connectivity between scholarly interests. Social network analysis (SNA), which focuses on the relationships between entities, offers a better aerial view of the CIE field. To illustrate the power of SNA to better understand our field, Pizmony-Levy (2016) described the social structure of CIE (Figure 26.1). The study used administrative data from the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) on membership in Special Interest Groups (SIGs). SIGs are proxy for intellectual community with a certain scholarly interest or focus. SIGs (represented in squares) are connected to the extent they have members in common. The thickness of the line reflects the strength of the link between SIGs; the size of each square reflects the connectivity between the SIG to other groups. Thematic SIGs are marked in grey, and regional SIGs are marked in black. Overall, the network is coherent, with many connections between SIGs. About 16 percent of all the possible connections are present. Note that only one SIG is disconnected from other groups (top left corner). On average, every SIG is connected to just over three other groups. The core of the network, where SIGs are more central and highly connected, includes nine groups; the periphery of the network, where SIGs are located in the outer part of the network and sparsely connected, includes 16 groups. The core of the network 447
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Globalization and Education South Asia Higher Education Cultural Contexts of Education and Human Potential Africa Education for Sustainable Development Teacher Education and the Teaching Profession Middle East Citizenship and Democratic Education Large Scale Cross National Studies Language Issues Eurasia
LAM ICT GLI TCE EAS IKA IED RLE PED GME ECD IHE
Latin America ICT for Development Global Literacy Teaching Comparative Education East Asia Indigenous Knowledge and the Academy Inclusive Education Religion and Education Peace Education Global Mathematics Education Early Childhood Development Contemplative Inquiry and Holistic Education
FIGURE 26.1: Social network of special interest groups in the Comparative and International Education Society. Source: Adapted from O. Pizmony-Levy, The social organization of CIES special interest groups. In E.H. Epstein (Ed.), Crafting a Global Field: Six Decades of the Comparative and International Education Society (New York, NY: Springer, 2016).
includes mostly thematic SIGs, with the Africa SIG being the exception. As evident in Figure 26.1, three SIGs have many more connections to other groups: Globalization and Education (GLE), Teacher Education and Teaching Profession (TEP), and Higher Education (HED). This pattern might reflect the centrality of these issues in the CIE field. Furthermore, regional SIGs are more likely to be connected to thematic SIGs than to regional SIGs. That is because scholars are often interested in one geographic region. These and other insights are not possible without the application of SNA. In this chapter, I will examine SNA and its application to scholarship in the field of CIE. I will begin with a basic overview of this theoretical and methodological approach, and will present related concepts. Following the overview, I will provide a review of the CIE literature that has used SNA. I will also point to opportunities for growth in the application of this approach. Next, I will provide further readings for those who are interested in the theory and methodology. I will conclude this chapter with a case study in order to demonstrate the application of SNA in a research study.
OVERVIEW SNA is a broad research paradigm that includes theory, substance, and methodology. While there is no unified social network theory, we can point to several theoretical perspectives, such as social capital (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988; Lin, 1999) and
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social support (Perry and Pescosolido, 2015; Thoits, 2011; Wellman and Gulia, 2018). SNA scholars analyze a variety of substantive phenomena, such as job seeking and employment (Granovetter, 1977), spread of smoking behavior and obesity (Christakis and Fowler, 2007; Christakis and Fowler, 2008), and adolescent romantic and sexual networks (Bearman, et. al., 2004). In addition, SNA includes a rich collection of methodologies and procedures for analyzing such data, such as mapping (see Figure 26.1) and sophisticated multivariate models to assess selection processes and network influence. The origin of modern SNA is in sociology and anthropology. Classical social theorists have engaged with concepts and ideas related to social networks. Both Max Weber (1864–1920) and Georg Simmel (1858–1918) used metaphors—such as tightly “knit” social “fabric”—to describe social structures and their important properties. However, the first true formulation of SNA is associated with the work of social psychologist Jacob Moreno (1889–1974) in the 1930s. Moreno (1934), who called the new field sociometry, sought to better understand how people’s subjective feelings about one another create social structures. In an early study, Moreno and Jennings (1938) discovered that the location of girls in a social network determined whether and when they run away from school. This work laid the foundation for the study of “group dynamics” in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. At the same time, British sociologists and anthropologists also began to examine social networks. The first researcher to use the term social network in a scientific context was John A. Barnes (1918–2010), who studied the social relations among people living in a Norwegian Island Parish. Scott (1988) argues that an increase in scholarly interest in the mathematics of network analysis was a key catalyst in the expansion of SNA in the 1960s and 1970s. This work focused on applying graph theory (the study of mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects) to network analysis. By the 1980s, SNA had become an institutionalized field, with a professional organization (International Network for Social Network Analysis [INSNA]), an annual conference (Sunbelt), specialized software packages (e.g., UCINET and Pajek), and dedicated academic journal (Social Networks). For a more detailed review of the origins and development of SNA, see Scott (1988). Within the tradition of SNA, a network consists of “a finite set or sets of actors and the relation or relations defined on them” (Wasserman and Faust, 1994, p. 20). In other words, a network is a set of socially relevant nodes that are possibly connected by one or more relations (Marin and Wellman, 2011). Note that a network includes some actors that are connected and other actors that might be disconcerted or isolated from each other. These two fundamental components—actors and relationships—are common in most network definitions. Actors (or nodes) are discrete individuals or groups. Examples of actors are students in a classroom, schools within an educational system, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in a given field, articles/documents in a given domain, or nation-states in the world system. Most social network studies focus on collections of actors that are all of the same type (e.g., teachers in a school). However, some studies include actors from different sets (e.g., teachers and professional development events). The former is often called one-mode network, whereas the latter is often called two-mode network. Actors have attributes—or characteristics—that describe and distinguish them. For example, students could be described by their sex/gender, age, grade, and socio-economic background; schools could be described by their location (rural/urban), selectivity, and extent of important resources.
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Relationships (or edges) are the ties that connect actors. The defining feature of a relationship is that it establishes a linkage between two actors. Relationships among actors can be of different kinds, and each type facilitates a corresponding network. Borgatti and Ofem (2010) offer a useful typology of relations studied in SNA that divides relations into five types (Table 26.1) (1) similarities include spatial and temporal proximities, comembership in groups or events, and sharing an attribute, (2) social relations are ties, such as kinship and friendship, (3) mental relations are perceptions of and attitudes toward others, (4) interactions are discrete events that can be tallied over a period of time, and (5) flows are things that are transmitted through interactions between actors. Borgatti, et. al. (2018) note that when actors are collectivities, such as schools and organizations, there are two different kinds of ties possible. First, there are ties between schools as single entities (e.g., alliance or exchange). Second, there are ties between the individual members of the organizations. For example, if teachers from two different schools are friends or have attended same event, they may well share information about their respected schools. In SNA, there are three levels of analysis: the dyad, the node, and the network (Borgatti et al., 2018). At the dyad level of analysis, we examine relationships between two actors/ nodes and ask research questions such as “Do pairs of students who participate in the same school clubs tend to become similar with respect to social attitudes?” At the node level of analysis, we ask questions such as “Are teachers who are more central in their schools’ friendship network less likely to leave for another school?” At the group or network level of analysis, we ask questions such as “Do well connected school systems tend to diffuse educational innovations faster?” These three levels of analysis can be applied to different types of actors—individuals and groups—and to different types of relationships. SNA is not only a sophisticated methodology; it is also a way of thinking about social systems. The key premise of SNA is that relationships between actors determine in part what happens to a group of actors as a whole. Furthermore, SNA posits that an actor’s position in a given network shapes the opportunities and the constraints that the actor will encounter. This perspective is very different from traditional social science that focuses on the characteristics of actors as predictors of different outcomes. In traditional
TABLE 26.1: Typology of relationships studied in SNA Type
Sub-type
Examples
Similarities
Location Membership Attribute
Social relations
Kinship Other role
Mental relations
Affective Cognitive
Same spatial and temporal space Same clubs/organizations; same events Same sex/gender; same race/ethnicity; same attitude Parent of; sibling of Friend of; supervisor of; student of; collaborator; competitor Likes; dislikes; hates Knows, knows about, sees as happy Talked to; advised; sought advice from; helped; harmed; Information; beliefs; money; materials/goods
Interactions Flows
Source: Adapted from S. P. Borgatti and B. Ofem, Social network theory and analysis. In A.J. Daly (Ed.), Social network theory and educational change (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2010).
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social science, we might explain differences in the performance of individuals or groups by certain qualities or characteristics. In contrast, SNA takes into account the web of relationships in which individuals or groups are embedded. That is, SNA is more attuned to the actor’s environment. Although the term “network” is included in both SNA and Actor-Network Theory (ANT) (see Chapter 25), these approaches are discernable. ANT was developed as part of Science and Technology Studies (STS), which focus the lens of social scientific investigation on the production of scientific facts and technological artefacts (Latour, 2005; 2011). SNA and ANT come from different philosophical backgrounds and take different epistemological and ontological perspectives to the study of networks. In ANT, for example, scholars emphasize the notion that all actors are also networks, and vice versa. In SNA, however, scholars view networks as consisting of actors and the relationship between them. Additionally, there are differences in the meaning of the term “relationship.” In ANT, the term is more loosely used to indicate that two entities mutually affect each other, whilst SNA uses a more concrete definition (as discussed above). Furthermore, in ANT the main focus is not on which actors are related to each other, or how many connections are present, but on how actors form and shape each other.
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION This section offers a review of the CIE scholarship that engages SNA. It also outlines several directions for future research. As shown in Figure 26.2, the cumulative number of CIE publications with “social networks” as a key concept has been growing in the past decade. However, the number of publications produced every year is still limited (40 publications per year). A more careful reading of these publications suggests that many authors engage social networks as a concept, but not many authors apply SNA to its full potential. Indeed, in 2017 the editorial team of Comparative Education Review (CER), the flagship journal of CIES, identified SNA as one of the methodological developments that are rarely used in submissions to the journal. While the number of social science publications with “social networks” focus accelerated in the 1980s (Knoke and Yang, 2008), the CIE field did not embrace this research paradigm until more recently. One area where scholars have frequently engaged SNA is the study of international student mobility (Barnett et al., 2016; Macrander, 2017; Shields, 2013). The international flow of post-secondary students has become an important research topic due to the sheer number of students pursuing higher education abroad and the implication of this trend to educational systems worldwide. A recent OECD report suggest that more than 4.1 million tertiary-level students were enrolled outside their country of citizenship in 2010. Most often, scholars draw on administrate data collected by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the OECD. The data includes information on the number of students traveling from each country and their county destination. While the datasets were not produced for the purpose of SNA, they include information on actors/nodes (i.e., countries) and relationships/edges (i.e., counts of incoming international students by country of origin). This kind of data structure facilitates the application of SNA. To exemplify this application of SNA, I focus on a recent study by Shields (2013) titled Globalization and international student mobility: A network analysis. Shields (2013) uses SNA to examine whether and how international student flows have changed over a 10year time period (1999–2008). Using visualization and different statistical measures
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500 450
Cumulave number of publicaons
400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 "social networks"
"social network analysis"
FIGURE 26.2: Growth of “social networks” in Peer-Reviewed Comparative and International Education Publications. Source: Education Resources Information Center (ERIC).
of centrality, he demonstrates how the network of international student mobility “has become concentrated in a smaller number of links between countries, rather than spreading into a more diffuse, even distribution” (p. 620). Furthermore, Shields (2013) estimates models to test several broad theoretical perspectives about globalization that could account or explain variation in international student flow. Using multivariate analysis, he convincingly demonstrates that international student flow patterns are correlated with co-membership in similar international governmental organizations, as predicted by world culture theory. In other words, this study shows international student mobility is more of a result of cultural associational processes than a result of increasing competition between countries or hegemonic/power dynamics. Similarly to research on international student mobility, scholars have used SNA to explore international aid to education (Menashy and Shields, 2017; Shields and Menashy, 2019). Following the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, development agencies have championed partnership as a leading principle. This approach was further solidified through the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by the United Nations. Indeed, Sustainability Development Goal 17 “seeks to strengthen global partnerships to support and achieve the ambitious targets of the 2030 Agenda, bringing together national governments, the international community, civil society, the private sector and other actors” (UN, 2018). The question remains whether this discourse is realized. Using SNA, scholars have addressed this question by looking at the network of bilateral aid to education, where countries are the actors/nodes and counts of donation
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money are the relationships between countries (Shields and Menashy, 2019). In addition, scholars approached the topic by exploring organizational memberships in partnershipbased organizations. Here, organizations are the actors/nodes and they are connected through co-membership in partnership-based organizations (Menashy and Shields, 2017). Scholars interested in the development of policy discourses have also engaged SNA, specifically bibliometric network analysis (Baek et al., 2018; Menashy and Read, 2016; Read, 2017; Verger et al., 2019). Bibliometric analysis is the study of publications, such as journal articles and the citations/references included in them; bibliometric network analysis examines the networks of these publication or literatures (e.g., who publish together, who cites whom, who is co-cited with whom, etc.). In contrast to the case of international student mobility, for bibliometric network analysis scholars need to assemble the information in a data structure that fits SNA. For example, one could create a dataset in which documents are the actors/nodes and the citation/co-citation links these documents have with other documents are the relationships/edges. Another possible approach is to create a dataset in which authors are the actors/nodes and their affiliations with other authors (shared training institution, shared disciplinary background, etc.) are the relationships/edges. To exemplify this application of SNA, I briefly describe two studies. In Knowledge counts: Influential actors in the education for all global monitoring report knowledge network, Robyn Read (2019) uses bibliometric methods to examine the knowledge network underpinning the Education for All initiative. Read (2019) argues that knowledge production has become a common strategy for development agencies. Therefore, it is important to examine the evidence that inform influential documents, such as the Education for All Global Monitoring Reports (EFA GMR). To do so, Read (2019) extracted the references listed in 12 EFA GMR reports, published between 2002 and 2015 (a total of 8,271 references). Using SNA to explore and visualize patterns, she demonstrates how influential international documents draw on a small number of authors and publishers that are frequently cited. Furthermore, she shows how scholarship from the global north dominates and influences the EFA GMR reports. In Policy learning in Norwegian school reform: a social network analysis of the 2020 incremental reform, Baek and his associates (2018) apply text-based social network analysis to examine how policymakers and policy experts in Norway made use of evidence to justify and explain an educational reform. Similarly to Read (2017), the research team identified 14 policy documents (white and green papers) and extracted their references (a total of 3,348 references). They found little overlap between the policy documents; that is, documents cited different sources. Using SNA to visualize patterns, the research team identified five texts that were influential as they connected or bridged different reform topics (e.g., curriculum and quality assurance). In a forthcoming book, Karseth et al., extend this line of work to all Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden). Using comparable research design, the larger study will shed light on how social contexts shape the assemblage of policy knowledge and the position of different authors in the network underpinning that knowledge. The opportunity to use SNA in the field of CIE is not limited to the three domains described above. Indeed, the value of SNA is only limited by scholars’ imagination and creative use of data. Joshi (2018), for example, uses SNA to identify high quality schools in Kathmandu and Chitwan, Nepal. She draws on data from a survey of school principals in which respondents were asked to nominate up to three other schools they view as the “best” schools in their region. Looking carefully on patterns between dyads (reciprocity) and triads (transitivity), Joshi (2018) concludes that principals have a shared understanding
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of what constitutes a good school. Pizmony-Levy and Brezicha (2018) propose applying SNA to data collected through the International Civic and Citizenship Study (ICCS) to examine the social structure of Grade 8 classrooms in 24 countries. Specifically, they use survey questions on participation in school clubs (e.g., sports and arts) to construct class-based networks in which students are connected to the extent they co-attend similar school clubs. In sum, the field of CIE is ripe for engaging SNA because of the shared interest in globalization—broadly defined as movement of people and ideas from one location to another. Also, SNA is a useful stating point to address “methodological nationalism” and the narrow focus on nation-states. Furthermore, because scholars of CIE are concerned with the role of social contexts (macro, meso, micro), there is a great potential to make meaningful contributions to the literature by analyzing social networks at different levels and exploring how contexts shape networks and interactions.
CONCLUSIONS In this chapter, I reviewed the premise and basic concepts of SNA. The field of CIE is ripe for engaging SNA because of the shared interest in globalization—broadly defined as movement of people and ideas from one location to another. Also, SNA is a useful starting point to address “methodological nationalism” and the narrow focus on nation-states. Furthermore, because scholars of CIE are concerned with the role of social contexts (macro, meso, micro), there is a great potential to make meaningful contributions to the literature by analyzing social networks at different levels and exploring how contexts shape networks and interactions.
FURTHER READING 1. Wasserman, S., and Faust, K. (1994). SNA: Methods and applications (Vol. 8). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 2. Knoke, D., and Yang, S. (2008). SNA . Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. 3. Kadushin, C. (2012). Understanding social networks: Theories, concepts, and findings. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. 4. Daly, A. J. (Ed.). (2010). Social network theory and educational change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. 5. Menashy, F., and Verger, A. (Eds.). (2019). Special section on: Network analysis, education policy, and international development. International Journal of Educational Development, 64(1–2), 58–105. 6. Dershem, L., Dagargulia, T., Saganelidze, L., and Roels, S. (2011). NGO network analysis handbook: How to measure and map linkages between NGOs. Save the children. Tbilisi, Georgia. Retrieved from www.betterevaluation.org/en/resources/guide/ngo_network_ analysis
MINI CASE STUDY (WITH ERIKA KESSLER) Every few years, international organizations conduct and publish results from international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) of student achievement. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), for example, coordinates and administrates
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the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) every three years to 15-yearold students. In an effort to inform educational stakeholders—the general public and policy makers—about the status of their education system, the OECD has disseminated PISA results through well-coordinated press releases. Indeed, shortly after the release of a new PISA report, the news media begins with frenzied attention. For some time, newspapers worldwide carry articles highlighting the standings of nations in international ranking, and commenting on the implications of these results. Following the immense expansion of ILSAs, CIE scholars have begun to explore public discourse about these assessments (for a review, see Pizmony-Levy, 2018). Early on, Steiner-Khamsi (2003) identified three common responses to ILSAs results: scandalization, glorification, and indifference. More recently, Waldow et al., (2014) analyzed how local contexts—in Australia, Germany, and South Korea—shape policy references to foreign countries. In this case study, we present preliminary findings from an ongoing research project in which we seek to map patterns of external policy referencing among a larger and more diverse sample of countries. Using SNA, we uncover system-wide dynamics and patterns that are otherwise hidden. For the purpose of this study, the actors/nodes are countries that participated in PISA 2012 and the edges/links between them reflect whether countries made a reference to each other. To construct the social network for this project, we assembled an original dataset of 236 news articles and opinion pieces published between December 2 and 10 2013, in 105 newspapers in 20 education systems (Pizmony-Levy and Torney-Purta, 2018). More than half of these education systems (13 out of 20) are OECD members; the rest are OECD partners. We trained and supervised 22 research assistants participating in a graduate-level seminar dedicated to the social analysis of ILSAs. They received a detailed protocol to identify at least ten news articles published in at least two newspapers, and a standardized codebook to analyze the ways in which newspapers report on PISA. One of the questions in the codebook asked whether the news article referred to results of other countries or economies. When relevant, research assistants provided the names of entities mentioned/referenced in the news story. For example, in an editorial titled “Are America’s students falling behind the world?” (Los Angeles Times, December 9, 2013) the authors made a reference to four countries: “in the Asian countries that took the top spots— including Singapore, South Korea and areas of China—families spend heavily on private tutoring [. . .] Finland, for instance, has historically been successful on the PISA tests [. . .].” (para. 5). We used Microsoft Excel for data entry and cleaning; we used UCINET/ NetDraw for data analysis and visualization. The raw dataset is a two-mode matrix, with news stories in the rows and countries or economies that participated in PISA 2012 in the columns (236 rows × 65 columns). Cells are equal to 1 when a news story mentions a given country; otherwise cells are equal to 0. For the purpose of this analysis, we transformed the dataset in two steps. In the first step, we aggregated the results by country (22 rows × 65 countries); at this stage the cells are equal to 1 if at least one new story mentions a given country. We then symmetrize the dataset to have the same number of rows and columns (65 rows × 65 columns). Figure 26.3 presents the graphical map for the external policy reference network in PISA 2012 public discourse. The map comprised of countries (represented in squares) and ties (represented in lines) between countries that referenced each other. The direction of the arrow in the end of the line indicates the direction of the relation (source>reference). Countries in our media sample are marked in black, whereas other countries marked in grey. The size of each node/country reflects the number of countries that referenced that country.
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FIGURE 26.3: Social network of education systems based on media reference in news stories about OECD PISA 2012 results. Source: O. Pizmony-Levy for this book
The “Asian Tiger” countries and economies—Shanghai, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, and Macao—are at the center of the network. Many countries in our media sample referenced these education systems, possibly because their students preform very well on PISA. Indeed, we find that countries that rank at the top of PISA 2012 (mathematics) are more likely than other countries to be referenced. Three other countries are referenced frequently: Finland, Canada, and Poland. We speculate that Finland is referenced frequently because of its top performance on previous cycles of PISA. Both Canada and Poland have demonstrated significant improvement and therefore might be role models for other countries. Figure 26.3 sheds lights on additional dynamics. For example, the external policy reference network is not reciprocal. Australia, Spain, and the United Kingdom reference many other countries, but not many other countries reference them. Furthermore, we find evidence for regionalism where countries tend to reference other countries in their geographic region. This is evident in the case of Uruguay. Finally, we find that countries are more likely to reference countries that are at least similar along geographical location or OECD membership. OECD members have a 25 percent higher likelihood of referencing other OECD member countries when compared to non-member countries in the network. What is next? Now that we mapped the patterns of external policy referencing, we can proceed in two different directions. One approach is to analyze whether the structure of the network is associated with other types of relationships between countries (e.g., post-colonial ties, imports/exports relationship, membership in similar international organizations, etc.). Another approach is to explore the implications of this network for policy and practice. That is, to look carefully on whether the network is a good predictor of reform movements and policy adoption.
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REFERENCES Baek, C., Hörmann, B., Karseth, B., Pizmony-Levy, O., Sivesind, K., and Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2018). Policy learning in Norwegian school reform: a social network analysis of the 2020 incremental reform. Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 4(1), 24–37. Barnes, J. A. (1954). Class and committees in a Norwegian island parish. Human relations, 7(1), 39–58. Barnett, G. A., Lee, M., Jiang, K., and Park, H. W. (2016). The flow of international students from a macro perspective: A network analysis. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 46(4), 533–559. Bearman, P. S., Moody, J., and Stovel, K. (2004). Chains of affection: The structure of adolescent romantic and sexual networks. American Journal of Sociology, 110(1), 44–91. Borgatti, S. P., and Ofem, B. (2010). Social network theory and analysis. In A. J. Daly (Ed.), Social network theory and educational change (pp. 17–29). Cambridge, MA : Harvard Education Press. Borgatti, S. P., Everett, M. G., and Johnson, J. C. (2018). Analyzing social networks. Sage Publications. Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Christakis, N. A., and Fowler, J. H. (2007). The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years. New England journal of medicine, 357(4), 370–379. Christakis, N. A., and Fowler, J. H. (2008). The collective dynamics of smoking in a large social network. New England Journal of Medicine, 358(21), 2249–2258. Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94, S95–S120. Granovetter, M. S. (1977). The strength of weak ties. In Social networks (pp. 347–367). Cambridge, MA : Academic Press. Joshi, P. (2018). Identifying and investigating the “best” schools: A network-based analysis. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 48(1), 110–127. Karseth, B., Sivesind, K., and Steiner-Khamsi, G. (forthcoming). The use of evidence and expertise in nordic education policy: A network analysis. Knoke, D., and Yang, S. (2008). SNA . Newbury Park, CA : Sage Publications. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network theory. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Latour, B. (2011). Network theory networks, societies, spheres: Reflections of an actornetwork theorist. International Journal of Communication, 5, 15. Lin, N. (1999). Social networks and status attainment. Annual Review of Sociology, 25(1), 467–487. Macrander, A. (2017). Fractal inequality: A social network analysis of global and regional international student mobility. Research in Comparative and International Education, 12(2), 243–268. Marin, A., and Wellman, B. (2011). Social network analysis: An introduction. The SAGE Handbook of Social Network Analysis, 11. Menashy, F., and Read, R. (2016). Knowledge banking in global education policy: A bibliometric analysis of World Bank publications on public-private partnerships. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24, 95. Menashy, F., and Shields, R. (2017). Unequal partners? Networks, centrality, and aid to international education. Comparative Education, 53(4), 495–517.
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Moreno, J. L. (1934). Who shall survive?: Foundations of sociometry, group psychotherapy, and sociodrama. New York, NY: Beacon House. Moreno, J. L., and Jennings, H. H. (1938). Statistics of social configurations. Sociometry, 342–374. Perry, B. L., and Pescosolido, B. A. (2015). Social network activation: The role of health discussion partners in recovery from mental illness. Social Science & Medicine, 125, 116–128. Pizmony-Levy, O. (2016). The social organization of CIES special interest groups. In E.H. Epstein (Ed.), Crafting a global field: Six decades of the Comparative and International Education Society (pp. 168–178). New York, NY: Springer. Pizmony-Levy, O., and Brezicha, K. (2018). Social network analysis using CIVED/ICCS data: Proof of concept and research agenda. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES). Atlanta, Georgia. Pizmony-Levy, O. (2018). Compare globally, interpret locally: International assessments and news media in Israel. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 16(5), 577–595. Pizmony-Levy, O., and Torney-Purta, J. (2018). How journalists and researchers communicate results of international large-scale assessments. CADMO—Italian Journal of Experimental Pedagogy, 16(1), 51–65. Read, R. (2017). Knowledge counts: Influential actors in the education for all global monitoring report knowledge network. International Journal of Educational Development. Scott, J. (1988). Social network analysis. Sociology, 22(1), 109–127. Shields, R. (2013). Globalization and international student mobility: A network analysis. Comparative Education Review, 57(4), 609–636. Shields, R., and Menashy, F. (2019). The network of bilateral aid to education 2005–2015. International Journal of Educational Development, 64, 74–80. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2003). The politics of league tables. JSSE-Journal of Social Science Education. Thoits, P.A. (2011). Mechanisms linking social ties and support to physical and mental health. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 52(2), 145–161. United Nations (2018). Sustainable development goals knowledge platform. Retrieved from https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/index.php?page=view&type=20000&nr=4163&me nu=2993 Baek, C., Hörmann, B., Karseth, B., Pizmony-Levy, O., Sivesind, K., and Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2018). Policy learning in Norwegian school reform: A social network analysis of the 2020 incremental reform. Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 4(1), 24–37. Verger, A., Fontdevila, C., Rogan, R., and Gurney, T. (2019). Manufacturing an illusory consensus? A bibliometric analysis of the international debate on education privatisation. International Journal of Educational Development, 64, 81–95. Waldow, F., Takayama, K., and Sung, Y.K. (2014). Rethinking the pattern of external policy referencing: Media discourses over the ‘Asian Tigers” PISA success in Australia, Germany and South Korea. Comparative Education, 50(3), 302–321. Wasserman, S., and Faust, K. (1994). SNA: Methods and applications (Vol. 8). Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press. Wellman, B., and Gulia, M. (2018). The network basis of social support: A network is more than the sum of its ties. In B. Wellman (Ed.), Networks in the global village: Life in contemporary communities (pp. 83–118). Routledge.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Capabilities Approach in Comparative and International Education A Justice-Enhancing Framework JOAN DEJAEGHERE AND MELANIE WALKER
INTRODUCTION In this chapter, we outline core features of the capability approach (CA), indicate its relevance for education, and then summarize how it has been applied in comparative and international education (CIE) research and policy across various sectors from early childhood to higher education. The key point that Sen (2009) advances in his capability approach is an opportunity-based notion of freedoms to make choices about being educated, and the choices enabled through our education. The greater our opportunities, the more freedom we have; the narrower our opportunities, the less freedom we have to choose a life of value for ourselves. The approach is attractive to educational researchers concerned with transformative change for persons and societies. Unlike post-structural theory (see Chapter 7), which has been popular in education work, the CA offers a normative approach; that is, it assumes that the pursuit and operationalization of equality is a good thing. Importantly for education, the CA goes beyond post-structural (and post-colonial) critiques of social structures to ask what social justice would look like and how we might work towards securing capabilities in order to operationalize more justice in and through education. The CA thus provides tools and frameworks within which education might be conceptualized and evaluated with regard to justice. As a meta-theoretical, normative approach, the CA prompts several different questions that researchers and practitioners concerned with inequalities in education might ask, including: What constitutes an educational practice and experience that fosters wellbeing and justice? How do individuals (and groups) use education to choose wellbeing—a life they have reason to value? How do educational practices, pedagogies and policies transform inequalities in society? How do practices in education also work to reproduce inequalities? In what follows, we provide an overview of the CA and its application to CIE.
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OVERVIEW Originating in welfare economics and developed by economist Sen (1999; 2009), the CA is underpinned by a commitment to the advancement of equality and justice among persons and societies. The main theoretical ideas in the CA include (1) the concepts of capabilities and functionings (wellbeing), which is core to any capabilitarian theory (Robeyns, 2017), (2) agency freedoms and achievements, which point to processes of capability expansion and which education generally seeks to expand, and (3) comparative assessments of “real world” justice. The core idea in Sen’s (2009) approach is that we put human capabilities in the space of our evaluations of justice so that we look at what people are actually able to choose to be and to do in their lives, in an informed and reasoned way. Unlike a unidimensional measure of human well-being based on income and wealth, the approach sees well-being as multi-dimensional, with many dimensions which individuals value. Capabilities are the freedoms each person has to realize opportunities toward a combination of valued ways of beings and doings (i.e., their functionings). In short, scholars using the CA ask not only about resources or a person’s satisfaction but about what they can actually do, and their opportunities to function in a fully human way. The approach has been taken up in many different fields, including education. An example for education illustrates this key idea of having the freedom to choose a life of value. In a patriarchal community, parents may not see the point in sending girls to school or university. Even if the formal opportunity to be educated is in place (there is an available school) and higher education is formally open to all who qualify, girls would need to resist gendered social norms (and bear the costs of this resistance) before they could effectively access this formal opportunity. In some cases, girls may come to believe or accept that school is not for them. The CA, thus, shifts the focus from commodities and resources (the school, the parent’s income, and so on) to the capabilities that diverse people (girls and others) have (Unterhalter, 2005; 2007). As a matter of justice, it asks if people have the same opportunities to be the kind of person they want to be and to do what they want, with capabilities as the informational basis for interpersonal and comparative evaluations. Comparative, rather than ideal justice, means that in education we do not look to develop perfect policy or pedagogy but rather focus on approaches which are in practice more rather than less just. It is also important to note that the CA understands each and every person to be of moral worth; capabilities are individually realized. While the CA has been critiqued for being individualistic, grounded in liberal philosophy, this focus on the individual is ethical rather than methodological (Robeyns, 2017), meaning that questions of justice need to ask how individuals are affected, and not only societal outcomes. A person is always understood as a social being, shaped by, and involved in relationships in her society; our agency is qualified by the social, political, and economic opportunities that are available to us. For Sen (2009), there is a complementarity between individual agency and social arrangements, or the force of social influences on the extent and reach of individual freedoms. Nussbaum (2006) also situates the CA as relational and social (see more on this below). Education capabilities, such as those identified by Nussbaum (2006), are formed in and through our relationships (teachers, parents, peers, others), even though the capabilities are individually formed. In short, the CA is fundamentally social in its approach, while maintaining a concern for each person’s opportunities and outcomes (Deneulin, 2014). This is important for education, given that learning is always a deeply social process.
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The individual–social nexus: conversion factors The CA locates persons in society using the concept of conversion factors, which shape a capability opportunity set (See Figure 27.1 for an illustration of how the individual is situated within society and shaped by conversion factors). Basically, we need to know about the circumstances in which each person is living in order to evaluate how or if the conditions for capability formation and the exercise of agency to achieve functioning are enabling or constraining and for whom. Conversion factors refer to how each person is able to convert her bundle of goods (resources, public policy and so on) into capabilities. Conversion (of these goods) encompasses intersecting personal, social, environmental, relational, and family distribution factors (although the latter two could be subsumed into the social). Students, for example, could differ (1) along a personal axis (e.g., gender, age, class, family structure, etc.), (2) along an external environmental axis (climate, geography, prevalence of diseases in the region etc.), and, (3) along an inter-individual or social axis. Furthermore, conversion factors connect individual lives to social and policy arrangements and the historical and geographical context that shapes their everyday lives and the capacity to take advantage of opportunities. “General” conversion factors shape the capability set of each person and form her preferences (Robeyns, 2017). For example, there may be general conversion factors of race, gender, and social class, but these will intersect and work out differently in each person’s life. A girl who is black and poor, for instance, will have different opportunities from a girl who is black but middle class, even though both will have their opportunities shaped by gender. A considerable number of empirical studies focus on these conversion factors (Calitz, 2018b; DeJaeghere and Lee, 2011; Walker and McLean, 2013). Another way of thinking about the nexus of the person and conversion factors is Nussbaum’s (2011) notion of “combined capabilities,” that is “internal capabilities” (such as being able to think critically, the knowledge we have), together with the external and social conditions that effectively enable or constrain a person to exercise the capability. A student may have the internal capacity to think critically but lacks the social conditions of an enabling pedagogy, which fosters dialogue for all students and not just the most confident. The strength of the CA is that it combines both (internal) capabilities as in one’s skills, attitudes, knowledge, and information with the options one has to act on them within one’s social context and its constraints (what Gasper and Van Staveren, 2003, call “S and O capabilities”)—both aspects need to be the focus of our attention in education. When using a CA to understand one’s capabilities for wellbeing through education, we aim to identify three aspects (1) each person’s bundle of resources and commodities (means), (2) the conversion factors, which shape their expansion (or not) of opportunities (freedoms), and (3) their agency to act to convert their capabilities into actual achievements. The possession of a certain amount of resources acts as the means, but cannot guarantee real possibilities to choose because of the intervention of conversion factors. Again, Figure 27.1 below illustrates a framework used in empirical studies to understand capability formation, conversion factors, and ultimate functionings or wellbeing (different scholars have used a variation of this diagram).
Selecting a capability set Some scholars focus on operationalizing the approach in education by identifying a capability set as a guide both to evaluating whether people have the capabilities to lead good lives and to making changes to policy or practice. It is misleading to locate this drafting of
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FIGURE 27.1: General diagram of the CA. Source: adapted from J. DeJaeghere and A. Baxter, Entrepreneurship education for youth in sub-Saharan Africa: A capabilities approach as an alternative framework to neoliberalism’s individualizing risks (Progress in Development Studies, 14(1), 61–76, 2014).
education-specific capabilities in the disagreement between Sen (2009) and Nussbaum (2006) about a list of capabilities. This debate rather turns not on having lists but on Sen’s (2009) rejection of Nussbaum’s (2006) fixed and universal list. In contrast, selecting education capabilities is contextually informed, provisional not fixed, includes some form of wider input, and contributes to capabilitarian theory. For example, Wilson-Strydom (2015) proposes an access capability set for South African higher education, based on theorizing and empirical research. Such an education capability set could comprise a standard of evaluation against which alternatives can be judged as better or worse for persons in comparison with each other, and also helps orient policy toward what it needs to do to help foster these capabilities and the conditions for their conversion to wellbeing. Policymakers might even agree on a small number of key general capability dimensions for implementation and evaluation, including decisions about the trade-off that might be necessary in putting some capabilities aside. Identifying a capability set for policy purposes at the global, national, and/or local level can help to counter inequalities that different people face in accessing and using their education for a good life, such as patriarchal norms discussed earlier.
Public reasoning In Sen’s (2009) approach, public debate, and reasoning—our agency freedoms—play a crucial role in selecting the capabilities that are valuable for a context because people cherish agency and reasoned choice. Having the freedoms to decide—in an informed way—what to value and how to pursue it matters in choosing capabilities, rather than having someone else decide. Scholarship by Unterhalter (2007) on an interactive approach toward achieving gender equality, DeJaeghere’s (2012) work on gender inequality and deliberation, and Tikly and Barrett’s (2011) argument for democratic participation as critical for socially just education are all examples of engaging with the ideas of public debate to draft valued capabilities sets and functionings (or for identifying inequalities).
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Still, commitments to public reasoning may present a dilemma for education, not so much as to whether children or parents or teachers should decide on matters that affect them, although this has been discussed in some literature (see early childhood education below). Rather, the challenge of inequality structures, such as gender or race is how they may compromise good decisions about capabilities. For example, Unterhalter (2003) has written about how schools can be unsafe places for girls, and in a deeply gendered society it may be difficult to make an argument for gender equality absent social and education policy insisting on education and safety as valuable capabilities. But having laws and policies does not preclude public debate at different levels of why gender equality matters for a better society, and how then best to realize it (see Unterhalter, 2009 for a discussion on achieving equity from the top, bottom, and middle for examples of this).
Role of education Education as conceptualized in the CA has the potential to do three things. Education can serve (1) as an intrinsic good to foster individual well-being through the formation of many aspects to their life quality, (2) as an instrumental development of skills and knowledge (human capital) for economic development, and (3) as a social-democratic good in influencing social change by encouraging participation and critical agency (Dreze and Sen, 2002). Overall, from a CA perspective, education creates both market (instrumental) and non-market (intrinsic) outcomes and both need to be captured for a full account (Robeyns, 2006). In addition, education is understood by Sen (2009) as a capability multiplier, with a critical role in fostering other capability sets (health, gender equality, and so on). The confidence, knowledge and navigational skills that can be acquired through education enable participation in work, family life, and community domains. People flourish when they are genuinely free to act toward and achieve what they value in all these areas of life. The CA is also uniquely positioned in relation to the multi-dimensional UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in which quality education is both a goal or end in itself, and a key means to realizing other goals. The CA is different from human capital and goes beyond a human rights approach to education (Robeyns, 2006; Tikly and Barrett, 2011; Unterhalter, 2009a). With regard to human capital, which argues for the role of education first and foremost for its contribution to economic growth and productive skilled workers, the CA accepts the human capital function (skills and knowledge) of education but subsumes it in a more expansive set of wellbeing outcomes. The CA rather understands education as having intersecting intrinsic, instrumental, and socialdemocratic functions, as noted above. “Skills” especially have emerged as important in public policy agendas—often in the mistaken belief that skills development and education will somehow solve defective labor markets. So-called non-cognitive skills (for example, team work) are increasingly presented as enabling success and employment (see DeJaeghere et al., 2016, for a CA critique of these skills). The education literature, drawing on the capability approach, instead pays close attention to personal and social factors in the dynamics of skills and knowledge formation through teaching and learning processes and is critical of the narrow cognitive outcomes measures, which feature prominently in international education testing. Learning and education outcomes need not be reduced to what can be measured in numbers as human capital does; rather in the capability approach they can be thought of in a rich way, situated in social relations and supported by (but not divorced from) the kinds of skills policy makers seem to want (see Robeyns, 2006; Walker, 2012). With regard to human
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rights, scholars using the CA support human rights but also argue that capabilities go beyond formal legal rights to consider whether these rights are actually secured to a person (Robeyns, 2006; see McCowan, 2011, for a discussion of this in education). For example, a country may have gender equality in its Constitution (such as India and South Africa), yet this may be weakly realized in equal education for girls and women. While the CA has been used in ways that have been critiqued for aligning with neoliberal orientations to human capital more than a social justice orientation (Charusheela, 2008), and for not engaging with issues of power (Hill, 2003), its use in education has been informed by critical theory (Unterhalter, 2009b; Walker and Unterhalter, 2007), and by feminist and post-colonial perspectives (see, Calitz, 2018b; DeJaeghere, 2019; 2020; Fricker, 2015; Walker, 2019; Wilson Strydom and Walker, 2015). This work gives attention to issues of power and privilege that reproduce inequalities through the educational, labor, and legal structures in society. It also calls for greater attention to relational capabilities of recognition and affiliation, which include a critical sense of belonging and inclusion in and through education, and to epistemic justice that gives attention to those who have been silenced or not acknowledged in contributing to shared knowledge and understanding of our societies.
APPLICATION IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION The CA, whether drawing on Sen’s (2009) or Nussbaum’s (2006; 2011) articulations, tends to be used in educational research, policy, and practice in two broad ways. First, it is used to discern which capability sets are critical for being an educated person—a person who has expanded their practical reason to be able to choose what they value for a good life. As Robeyn (2006) puts it, “it is important to ask which are the most important capability inputs, and how we can change them” (p. 5). Otto and Ziegler suggest that asking this question in the field of education is critical as it allows us to evaluate what is necessary for “an autonomy fulfilling education” (Brighouse, 2000, p. 54) to expand one’s capability sets. Some of this work has been theoretical, while others have empirically used the CA to identify lists of capabilities in and through education (also see above). As discussed above, this use of the CA is particularly beneficial for informing and evaluating policy and educational practices (i.e., pedagogy). At the policy level, certain core capabilities can be articulated as what Nussbaum (2006; 2011) refers to as a “threshold level”—a minimum level for human dignity. Second, scholars have applied the CA to understand and evaluate how capabilities fostered through education—or the expansion of one’s ability to choose options that one values—can redress inequalities or foster justice and wellbeing. The second use of the CA tends to be used with empirical studies to understand conversion factors or constraints related to personal, social, and institutional conditions that influence choosing either what one has reason to value or in converting one’s capabilities into wellbeing. There is a growing body of literature in the past decade since Unterhalter (2009) argued that much of the work on the CA in education was mostly aspirational and not yet put into practice. The CA is utilized in empirical studies and in policy analysis at all levels and forms of education: early childhood; inclusive; non-formal and vocational; basic and secondary; post-secondary/higher; and teacher professional development. Empirical studies have been undertaken across a broad set of countries—in Europe, Southern and Eastern Africa, East Asia, South Asia, and North and South America—to examine
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“educational capabilities” (Walker, 2016a) and the transformation of capabilities from education into justice and wellbeing. In this section, we will highlight a selection of these studies to illustrate the breadth and depth of its uses across levels and forms of education. This review of educational studies is necessarily incomplete, but it demonstrates how the CA can be used. These recent studies show how the CA has expanded theoretically and empirically, but we also identify gaps and shortcomings in its use.
Early childhood education The capability approach, with its focus on the intrinsic role of education for achieving wellbeing, is particularly relevant for scholars of early childhood education (ECD). ECD scholars draw on the CA to incorporate relational and creative pedagogies, including spaces to play, to develop relationships, to act creatively, and to foster agentic and ethical human beings in early childhood education (Bessant, 2014). This approach is aligned with many of the capabilities that Nussbaum (2006) also advocates. Another use of the CA in ECD is to bring children’s voices and aspirations into their learning, and in doing so, educators recognize that learning will look and be different for different individuals. These scholars argue for recognizing and fostering children’s agency in their learning, including articulating their emerging values, developing aspirations, and fostering moral capacities (Bessant, 2014; Biggeri, 2007; Biggeri et al., 2006; Buzzelli, 2015). These scholars challenge the assumption that children may not have much agency by stating that the role of education in young people’s lives is precisely to help them develop this sense of what they value, both through fostering their expressions and voice, and through acquiring greater informational resources by which to understand and make these decisions. As Walker (2014) has argued, developing practical reasoning toward one’s valued future is an educational capability, and many scholars would suggest this starts when children are young (Biggeri et al., 2006).
Basic and secondary education Much of the literature applying the CA in basic and secondary education starts from the premise that education plays a critical role in redressing inequities. The international agenda of Education for All served as a catalyst for scholars to use the CA as a way to both inform policy to achieve this agenda, and to identify factors that inhibit the possibilities for equity in and through education (Unterhalter, 2009; DeJaeghere, 2017). In the capability approach, inequities are considered in how they are manifested in individuals’ lives, and how social, structural, or institutional factors constrain or support a student’s ability to choose and achieve valued wellbeing. Therefore, this scholarship has particularly focused on inequities related to gender, race, and class, and broadly, inclusive education. Many scholars using the CA take a critical stance to recognize when and how education can be damaging to one’s wellbeing (Unterhalter and Walker, 2007), and they seek to identify for whom and how education is facilitative of expanding capabilities sets (Tikly, 2015). The use of the CA to identify and redress inequities in and through education has focused most on identifying diverse social and institutional factors that perpetuate or transform inequities, and much of this scholarship relates to gender inequities (DeJaeghere and Lee, 2011; Dutt, 2010; Murphy-Graham, 2008; Okkolin, 2017; Seeberg, 2014). Another body of literature calls for different goals and measures of inequity beyond the minimal notions of parity of participation and outcomes (Manion and Menashy, 2013; Thomas and Rugambwa, 2011; Unterhalter, 2017; Unterhalter and Walker, 2007; Walker,
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2016a). More recently, empirical research using the CA in basic education examines both pedagogies for fostering democratic and inclusive citizenship (Peppin Vaughan, 2016) and students’ aspirations toward achieving wellbeing. Scholars, particularly framing their work in inclusive education, have used the CA to provide for alternative frameworks for pedagogy and assessment, noting the important role of socio-emotional needs for all students and fostering capabilities to flourish in addition to defined skills and knowledge (Broderick, 2018; Terzi, 2014). Other research highlights how care, affiliation and imagination can expand aspirations and agency to achieve one’s valued being and doings (DeJaeghere et al., 2016; DeJaeghere, 2017; Hart, 2016; Tzenis, 2018). Finally, the CA has been used as an alternative framework for defining and measuring quality of education in policy and practice (Tikly and Barrett, 2011). Tikly and Barrett (2011) suggest three dimensions as necessary for ensuring a quality education (1) inclusion so that all learners can develop their capabilities, (2) relevance of educational learning and outcomes for learners valued wellbeing, and (3) democratic participation in debates about educational governance at all levels, and not only the global level. Others have used these dimensions for assessing the quality of education by evaluating the extent to which it is inclusive, relevant, or democratic (Jerrard, 2016).
Non-formal and vocational education Different from the studies in ECD and basic education that emphasize the intrinsic value of education, and capabilities formed in and through education, studies using the CA in nonformal and vocational education settings bring together the instrumental value of education for livelihoods with the intrinsic value of education for justice. For example, McGrath (2012) suggests that the CA can broaden the conceptualization and practices of vocational education and training (VET) to include other valued notions of education and work. VET, McGrath (2012) argues, has been long circumscribed by its economic rationales instead of valuing vocational and technical expertise as important for the creation of a broader public good and for human development. The capability approach re-centers the dignity of work, meaning work that is decent, solidary, and that supports virtues, such as self-mastery, and sustainability (McGrath and Powell, 2016). Powell (2012) has also applied the CA empirically to understand what young people in South Africa value in and from their vocational education, and importantly she notes that they value it for its aspiration-enhancing possibilities beyond the learning of skills. She argues that for youth who live in conditions of poverty, both the ability to aspire—to imagine alternatives—and to work to earn money are critical for overcoming inter-generational poverty. Empirical studies of non-formal livelihood programs have focused on how they foster earning and wellbeing for out-ofschool youth by generating aspirations, imagining alternative futures, and creating social relations that support youth’s inclusion in society (DeJaeghere and Baxter, 2014; DeJaeghere, 2017; DeJaeghere et al., 2016). These uses of the CA to examine non-formal and vocational training programs offer insight into different pedagogical practices necessary for addressing inequities that youth face who cannot continue in formal education.
Higher education Studies in higher education (HE) have burgeoned since Walker’s (2006) study of pedagogies to generate a capabilities list; space allows for mention of only some of the numerous studies now available. Research focuses on pathways of access (Wang, 2011; Wilson-Strydom, 2015), participation (Calitz, 2018a) or graduate outcomes (Walker and
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Fongwa, 2017); or a thematic focus including: aspirations (Hart, 2016; Mkwananzi and Wilson-Strydom, 2018), citizenship (Walker and Loots, 2016), and quality (Mukwambo, 2017); or a focus on specific structures, such as gender (Cin, 2017; Okkolin, 2017; Walker, 2016a), race (Walker, 2016b), and disability (Mutanga and Walker, 2015). Across all research areas, the concern is the role higher education plays in advancing a combination of inclusive economic development, social mobility and the public good, and at university level, how HE can have equity or inequality effects and whether or how HE can address these through policy changes, institutional cultures, and teaching and learning practices. Some studies also identify empirically and conceptually generated capability dimensions (Calitz, 2018a; Wilson-Strydom, 2015; Mutanga and Walker, 2015), while others leave the process up to public debate. The pathways to higher education literature is more developed (see McLean, 2018, for an excellent overview) than the thematic (except around aspirations) or structures literature (aside from gender), and much of the work deals with sub-Saharan Africa, especially South Africa. Boni and Walker (2016) work across all three areas and further locate HE within global human development debates.
Professional capabilities and teachers Finally, the CA has been used to theoretically frame and empirically examine the types of capabilities that should be or are fostered in professional education—professionals serving society and who are at the forefront of producing greater equality and justice in society. Walker and McLean (2013) utilize the CA to identify a capability list for various professions (social work, law, theology, public health). A key difference in this use of the CA from that at other educational levels is that it focuses on the professional’s ability to expand capabilities of others, rather than on using capabilities to achieve their own wellbeing (Buckler, 2016; Tao, 2016; Walker and McLean, 2013). Both Walker and McLean (2013) and Buckler’s (2016) study identify a list of valued capabilities from various stakeholders. Buckler’s (2015; 2016) work applies the CA to teachers’ capabilities specifically and she does so by comparing policymakers’ ideas and expectations of teachers’ capabilities with teachers’ own generated capability list. In comparing these different lists, she asks the question: Are teachers able to achieve these expected capabilities, and if they achieve them, do they act on their valued capabilities—or those valued by authorities? This research is a valuable addition to the body of literature because it identifies key gaps that have important policy and practice implications for improving teachers’ practices. In summary, across these different levels and areas of educational practice, the CA is used to support claims for the intrinsic right to an education and to redress inequalities. Considerable advances have been made in applying the CA to education by identifying valued capabilities, constraints to capability conversion, and implications of these for policy and educational pedagogy and practice. The CA has called for shifting the emphasis in education toward the value it has to achieve social justice in societies and to foster greater wellbeing (Walker, 2012), and it can provide a framework for working toward great inclusion in, democratic debate and deliberation of, and relevancy of the education system and policies (Glassman, 2011; Tikly and Barrett, 2011).
CONCLUSIONS The use of the CA in CIE is particularly relevant because the field is concerned with how education systems, practices and experiences are realized within specific contexts
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(Bartlett and Vavrus, 2017), and with how education works for whom and in which contexts (Tikly, 2015). The CA puts particular emphasis on individual differences within social and institutional contexts, and it can be helpful to evaluate policies and practices for their justice-enhancing possibilities. The CA’s contribution to international agendas and debates about education is that it addresses shortcomings of other frameworks and tools that focus on resources (educational inputs) and outcomes as measures of educational equity. It calls for reframing equality at the heart of our education and development agendas, and it does so by focusing not on inputs, resources, or outcomes, but on the capabilities—or expanded options by which one has reason to choose one’s valued wellbeing. The CA has a long history of influencing larger international debates and measures related to development, and in a more limited way, goals and targets related to education. It requires a shift in the goals associated with education—away from parity of participation, and also the targets and measures of them, as Unterhalter (2017) and others have long argued. Some of these shifts are now present in the Sustainable Development Goals, but a capability approach that frames measures of these goals as well as educational policy and practices to achieve them are yet to be seen. While the last decade has produced much scholarship on the CA and its uses in the many different levels and forms of education, there is still considerable work to be done. There are at least five areas for further research in the field of CIE. First, research is needed that applies the CA to the evaluation of educational policies and whether and how they address inequalities. Like some recent work in the human capital approach, this requires taking a longitudinal design to understanding how education—and different policies and components of the system—have, or not, fostered improved wellbeing and redressed inequalities. There is little CA research that uses longitudinal data to understand if and how inequalities are addressed by educational policies, programs, or specific practices. Second, more work is needed on debating and developing measures related to educational capabilities and valued functionings (see Unterhalter, 2017, and the special issue in comparative education). There is a need to expand the way the international community, and particularly international organizations, such as the OECD, UNESCO, and the World Bank, measure educational goals and targets. As Sen’s (2009) early work on the CA reminds us, we need to ask the questions: Equality of what? And for whom? International organizations have emphasized gathering more disaggregated data by gender, social class/income groups, and geographic areas, to understand inequalities as they affect diverse groups. But there is still a debate, and an empirical challenge, about how to measure the expanded capabilities, or options to choose, that can redress historical and social inequalities. Third, more application of the CA to educational practices—curriculum and pedagogies—that expand capability sets is needed. The literature on good teaching practices assumes that social-constructivist pedagogies are necessary for fostering expanded capabilities, but given the global contentions related to “learner-centered pedagogies” and how they fit with other culturally informed notions of learning (Vavrus, 2009; Schweisfurth, 2011), more in-depth research is needed to show how a combination of pedagogies are used not only to expand capability sets through fostering positive learning environments, but to transform inequalities. A newly emerging area of research on pedagogies of care, emotion, trust, and ethics—and how these foster an expansion of capabilities and redress inequalities—is an area for further exploration (Bessant, 2014; DeJaeghere, 2018; Murphy-Graham and Lample, 2014; Walker, 2010).
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Fourth, and related to all of the above, is the need to develop methodologies that are consistent with the CA and the values of empowerment and participation and an inclusive approach to knowledge making. A promising body of literature is emerging that uses participatory approaches. For example, Boni and Walker (2016) propose a participatory action research cube to guide actions, while Walker (2017) recounts a participatory gender equity project, which included taking photographs, drafting policy, and organizing a cultural event. Other examples include participatory research and young black women in South African higher education (Calitz, 2018b) and a participatory photovoice project to identify local and indigenous meanings of education and development in Ecuador (Fricas, 2018). More work could be done on participatory approaches and more generally, on aligning methodological approaches with CA philosophy. Finally, there are gaps in the thematic foci in education and the theories used with the CA to examine educational inequalities. Race and sexuality are undeveloped thematic areas across all levels of education, while decoloniality and non-Western philosophies still need to be brought into robust conversation with the CA (see Martinez, 2019, for promising emerging work in this area).
FURTHER READING 1. Boni A., and Walker, M. (2016). Universities, development and social change: Theoretical and empirical insights. London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge 2. Nussbaum, M. (2011). Creating capabilities. The human development approach. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press. 3. Robeyns, I. (2017). Wellbeing, freedom and social justice: The capability approach reexamined. UK: Open Book Publishers. 4. Sen, A. (2009). The idea of justice. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. 5. Walker, M., and Unterhalter, E. (Eds.) (2007). Sen’s capability approach and social justice in education. New York, NY: Palgrave.
MINI CASE STUDY This case study focuses on the work of Calitz (2018a) undertaken for a doctoral thesis. We have selected this from among many possibilities because the work is by a global South researcher; it demonstrates rigorous investigation of conversion factors; it focuses on pedagogy and hence has wide relevance beyond higher education; and it is grounded in an in-depth, participatory, and dialogical process over two years with a group of Black students in South Africa to generate rich and compelling accounts of student voices. Using the CA, Calitz (2018a) explores student experiences of pedagogy, power, and well-being at a South African university arising from her concern with persistent educational, economic, and social inequalities that perpetuate patterns of unequal access and participation particularly for many first-generation, working-class, and Black students who have fewer opportunities to convert academic resources into successful outcomes. Calitz (2018a) investigated how pedagogical and institutional arrangements could enable these students to convert available resources into capability praxis for equal participation, given the material and structural conditions in schools and at the university. She makes the argument that unequal participation is a remediable injustice that can be partially addressed by creating enabling pedagogical arrangements for capability development.
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Qualitative methods were used to track the experiences of eight undergraduate university students over two years, including in-depth interviews, focus groups and digital narratives produced by the students themselves. This latter process involved students as co-researchers. The analysis of data produced a capability-informed praxis, in which six capabilities were proposed and defended as a pedagogical response to inequalities identified in the student data. These capabilities are (1) Practical reason, (2) Critical literacies, (3) Student research, (4) Deliberative participation (5) Critical affiliation (including to university student support services and extra-curricular opportunities), and, (6) Values for the public good. This capability-informed pedagogical praxis conceptualized equal participation on a spectrum where on the one end, equality is defined as access to the resources and opportunities needed to achieve valued outcomes aligned with student capabilities, agency, and aspirations. On the other end of the spectrum, unequal participation refers to students who are vulnerable to drop out, face resource scarcity, and do not have sustained access to pedagogical or institutional arrangements that enable them to convert available resources into equal participation. Calitz (2018a) found that some remedial interventions, which these students had to undertake, reproduced a deficit approach to students, illustrating the earlier point about how young people adapt what they as see as possible for themselves. The consequence of a marginal status projected onto students by such courses, while no doubt well-intentioned, had a negative effect on some students’ ability to develop confident learning dispositions, to seek and expect challenge, to form a concept of themselves as valued members of the institution, or to give the individual the legitimacy to claim fair opportunities. Based on this research, Calitz (2018a) proposes that institutional structures and pedagogical arrangements should be transformed in consultation with students who are disengaged and excluded. Such a use of the CA in empirical work on inequalities in and through education allow us to identify both the constraints or factors that inhibit capability development, and conversion factors, in this case pedagogical and policy, that can transform such inequalities.
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Buckler, A. (2016). Teachers’ professional capabilities and the pursuit of quality in sub-Saharan African education systems: Demonstrating and debating a method of capability selection and analysis. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 17(2), 161–177. Buzzelli, C. A. (2015). The capabilities approach: Rethinking agency, freedom, and capital in early education. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 16(3), 203–213. Calitz, T. (2018a). Enhancing the freedom to flourish in higher education: Participation, equality and capabilities. Abingdon, UK : Routledge. Calitz, C. (2018b). A capability approach to participatory research platforms for young black women in South African higher education. In A. Fogues and M. Cin (Eds.), Youth, gender and the capabilities approach to development. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Cin, M. (2017). Gender justice, education and equality: creating capabilities for girls’ and womens’ development. London, UK : Palgrave Macmillan. Charusheela, S. (2008). Social analysis and the capabilities approach: A limit to Martha Nussbaum’s universalist ethics. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 33(6), 1135–1152. DeJaeghere, J., and Lee, S.K. (2011). What matters for marginalized girls and boys in Bangladesh: A capabilities approach for understanding educational well-being and empowerment. Research in Comparative and International Education, 6(1), 27–42. DeJaeghere, J. (2012) Public debate and dialogue from a capabilities approach: Can it foster gender justice in education? Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 13(3), 353–371 DeJaeghere, J., and Baxter, A. (2014). Entrepreneurship education for youth in sub-Saharan Africa: A capabilities approach as an alternative framework to neoliberalism’s individualizing risks. Progress in Development Studies, 14(1), 61–76. DeJaeghere, J., Wiger, N. P., and Willemsen, L. W. (2016). Broadening educational outcomes: Social relations, skills development, and employability for youth. Comparative Education Review, 60(3), 457–479. DeJaeghere, J. (2017). Educating entrepreneurial citizens: Neoliberalism and youth livelihoods in Tanzania. Routledge. DeJaeghere, J. (2018). Girls’ educational aspirations and agency: Imagining alternative futures through schooling in a low-resourced Tanzanian community. Critical Studies in Education, 59(2), 237–255. DeJaeghere, J. (2020). Reconceptualizing educational capabilities: A relational capability theory for redressing inequalities. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 21(1), 17–35. DeJaeghere, J. (2019, online). A capability pedagogy for excluded youth: Fostering recognition and imagining alternative futures. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice. Deneulin, S. (2014). Wellbeing, justice and development ethics. Abingdon, UK : Routledge Dreze, J., and Sen, A. (2002). India: Development and participation. 2nd editioin. Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press Dutt, S. (2010). Girls’ education as freedom? Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 17(1), 25–48. Fricas, J. (2018). Honoring indigenous knowledges in community development: Participatory research with photovoice in indigenous and mestizo communities in Andean Ecuador. Paper presented at the Comparative and International Development Education Conference, March, 2018. Mexico City. Fricker, M. (2015). Epistemic contribution as a central human capability. In G. Hull (Ed.), The equal society (pp. 73–90). Lexington Books. Gasper, D., and Van Staveren, I. (2003). Development as freedom – and as what else. Feminist Economics, 9(203), 137–161
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Glassman, M. (2011). Is education ripe for a paradigm shift? The case for the capability approach. Education as Change, 15(1), 161–174. Hart, C. S. (2016). How do aspirations matter? Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 17(3), 324–341. Hart, C. S. (2012). The capability approach and education. Cambridge Journal of Education, 42(3), 275–282. Hill, M. (2003). Development as empowerment. Feminist Economics, 9(2–3), 117–135. Jerrard, J. (2016). What does “quality” look like for post-2015 education provision in lowincome countries? An exploration of stakeholders’ perspectives of school benefits in village LEAP schools, rural Sindh, Pakistan. International Journal of Educational Development, 46, 82–93. Loots, S., and Walker, M. (2015). Shaping a gender equality policy in higher education: Which human capabilities matter? Gender and Education, 27(4), 361–375. Manion, C., and Menashy, F. (2013). The prospects and challenges of reforming the World Bank’s approach to gender and education: Exploring the value of the capability policy model in The Gambia. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 14(2), 214–240. McCowan, T. (2011). Human rights, capabilities and the normative basis of “Education for All.” Theory and Research in Education, 9(3), 283–298. McGrath, S. (2012). Vocational education and training for development: A policy in need of a theory? International Journal of Educational Development, 32(5), 623–631. McGrath, S., and Powell, L. (2016). Skills for sustainable development: Transforming vocational education and training beyond 2015. International Journal of Educational Development, 50, 12–19. McLean, M. (2018). How higher education research using the capability approach illuminates possibilities for the transformation of individuals and society in South Africa. In P. Ashwin and J. Case (Eds.), Pathways to the public good: Access, experiences and outcomes of South African undergraduate education. Stellenboch: Africanminds. Martinez, C. (2019). Democratic capabilities research: An undergraduate experience to advance socially just higher education in South Africa. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of the Free State. Mkwananzi, F., and Wilson-Strydom, M. (2018). Multidimensional disadvantages and educational aspirations of marginalised migrant youth: Insights from the global south. Journal of Global Ethics. Mukwambo, P. (2017). Quality as human development: A case study of teaching and learning in Zimbabwean universities. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of the Free State. Murphy-Graham, E. (2008). Opening the black box: Women’s empowerment and innovative secondary education in Honduras. Gender and Education, 20(1), 31–50. Murphy-Graham, E., and Lample, J. (2014). Learning to trust: Examining the connections between trust and capabilities friendly pedagogy through case studies from Honduras and Uganda. International Journal of Educational Development, 36, 51–62. Mutanga, O. and Walker, M. (2015). Towards a disability-inclusive higher education policy through the capabilities approach. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities. Nussbaum, M.C. (2006). Education and democratic citizenship: Capabilities and quality education. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 7(3), 385–395. Nussbaum, M. (2011). Creating capabilities. The human development approach. Cambridge, MA : The Belknap Press. Okkolin, M-A. (2017). Education, gender and development, a capabilities perspective. Abingdon, UK : Routledge
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Otto, H.U., and Ziegler, H. (2006). Capabilities and education. Social Work, 4(2), 20. Peppin Vaughan, R. (2016). Education, social justice and school diversity: Insights from the capability approach. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 17(2), 206–224. Powell, L. (2012). Reimagining the purpose of VET—expanding the capability to aspire in South African further education and training students. International Journal of Educational Development, 32(5), 643–653. Robeyns, I. (2006). Three models of education: Human capital, rights and capabilities. Theory and Research in Education, 4(1), 69–84 Robeyns, I. (2017). Wellbeing, freedom and social justice: The capability approach re-examined. UK : Open Book Publishers. Schweisfurth, M. (2011). Learner-centred education in developing country contexts: From solution to problem? International Journal of Educational Development, 31(5), 425–432. Seeberg, V. (2014). Girls’ schooling empowerment in rural China: Identifying capabilities and social change in the village. Comparative Education Review, 58(4), 678–707. Sen, A. (2009). The idea of justice. Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press. Sen, A. (1999). Development as freedom. Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press. Tao, S. (2016). Transforming teacher quality in the global south: Using capabilities and causality to re-examine teacher performance. Springer. Terzi, L. (2014). Reframing inclusive education: Educational equality as capability equality. Cambridge Journal of Education, 44(4), 479–493. Thomas, M. A., and Rugambwa, A. (2011). Equity, power, and capabilities: Constructions of gender in a Tanzanian secondary school. Feminist Formations, 153–175. Tikly, L., and Barrett, A. M. (2011). Social justice, capabilities and the quality of education in low income countries. International Journal of Educational Development, 31(1), 3–14. Tikly, L. (2015). What works, for whom, and in what circumstances? Towards a critical realist understanding of learning in International and Comparative Education. International Journal of Educational Development, 40, 237–249. Tzenis, J. (2018). Contradictions in belonging: Educational aspirations and agency of youth in the Somali diaspora. Doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota. Unterhalter, E. (2003). The capabilities approach and gendered education: An examination of South African complexities. The School Field, 1(1), 7–22 Unterhalter, E. (2005). Global inequality, capabilities, social justice: The millennium development goal for gender equality in education. International Journal of Educational Development, 25(2), 111–122. Unterhalter, E. (2007). Gender, schooling and global social justice. Oxon, UK : Routledge Unterhalter, E., and Walker, M. (2007). Conclusion: Capabilities, social justice, and education. In Amartya Sen’s capability approach and social justice in education (pp. 239–253). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Unterhalter, E. (2009a). Social justice, development theory and the question of education. In R. Cowan and A. M. Kazamias (Eds.), International handbook of comparative education (pp. 781–800). New York, NY: Springer. Unterhalter, E. (2009b). What is equity in education? Reflections from the capability approach. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 28(5), 415–424. Unterhalter, E. (2017). Negative capability? Measuring the unmeasurable in education. Comparative Education, 53(1), 1–16. Vavrus, F. (2009). The cultural politics of constructivist pedagogies: Teacher education reform in the United Republic of Tanzania. International Journal of Educational Development, 29(3), 303–311.
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INDEX
The letter t following an entry indicates a page that includes a table. abstract liberalism 393 academia 4, 8 academic journal articles 134t–7, 191 achievement tests 76, 206–7, 242, 244–5 see also assessment methods and education measurement Accumulation of Capital, The (Luxemburg, Rosa) 56 accumulation strategies 256, 258 action 430, 432 actors (ANT) 432, 451 actors (SNA) 449, 451 Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) 429–41, 451 agency 432–4 application 438–41 case study 441–3 global and local 435–8 symmetry 430–2, 434–5 Actor-Network-Theory in Education (Fenwick, T./Edwards, R,) 438 adaptation 71 adaptive colonial education 44, 45–6, 49 ADB (Asian Development Bank) 160 Afghanistan 206 Africa colonialism 43–4 human rights education 370 learner-centered pedagogy (LCP) 305 LGBTI rights 410–11 migration 81 pan-Africanism 391 Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU) 270 Southern African Development Community (SADC) 271 After Hegemony (Keohane, R. O.) 271 Aga Khan Foundation 155 Agenda for Sustainable Development 452 AGIL scheme 26 AIDS crisis 401–2 Al-Daraweesh, F./Snauwaert, D. T. 366 Al-Saji, A. 386
Alexander, Jeffrey 29 Algeria colonialism 46–8 Altbach, P. G. 49 Aman, R. 119 ambivalence 39, 111 America. See United States Amin, S. 44–5 Amnesty International 364 Human Rights Friendly Schools (HRFS) framework 363, 371 analysis of exogeny 12 anarchy 234, 237, 238, 243, 244 Anderson, C. Arnold 31–2 Anderson, L.F. 10 Anderson, L.F. and Becker, J.M. 8 Andreopoulos, G. J./Claude, R. P. Human Rights Education for the TwentyFirst Century 369 Andreotti, V. 117, 118 ANT (Actor-Network-Theory). See ActorNetwork-Theory anthropology 25–6 anti-racist policies 331–2 apriori principles 319 Arab Awakening 417 Argentina 440 Armenia 154 Arnove, R. F. 97, 283 articulators (ANT) 437 Ashley, R. K. 239 Asia colonialism 43 influence 155 assemblages 430–1, 432 assessment methods 76, 206–7, 242, 244–5 see also education measurement and Programme for International Student Assessment achievement tests 76, 206–7, 242, 244–5 International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs) 244, 333, 442, 454–6f 475
476
Knowledge Assessment Methodology (KAM) 256 assimilative colonial education 44, 46–8, 49 austerity 203 Australia 205, 207–8, 210–11 Australia Education Act 207 authoritarianism 417, 425 autopoiesis 315, 329 autopoietic operative closure 315 Avengers (comic book characters) 193 Aztec Empire 37 Baber, Z. 387 Racism Without Races 386 Baby PISA 333 Baek, C. et al. Policy learning in Norwegian school reform: a social network analysis of the 2020 incremental reform 453 Baily, S. 175 Bajaj, M. 365, 370 Bajaj, M./Hantzopoulos, M. 354 balance-of-power theory 239, 245 Ball, S. 11, 205, 433 banking education 60 Barker, M. 385 Barnes, John A. 449 Bartlett, L. 61 Bartlett, L./Vavrus, F. 303–4 basic education 465–6 Basset, Cesar August 5–6 Beck, U. 435 Becker, Gary S. 31, 61, 71 Becoming Modern (Inkeles, Alex/Smith, David Horton) 31 Ben Ali, Zine El Abidine 425 Bentham, Jeremy 76 Bereday, G. Z. F. 32 Bernstien, Basil 130 Beyond Internationalization and Isomorphism – The Construction of a Global Higher Education Regimen (Zapp, M./Ramirez, F. O.) 276–7 Bhabha, Homi 39, 111–12 Location of Culture, The 111 Bhattacharyya, G. Rethinking Racial Capitalism: Questions of Reproduction and Survival 389–90 bi-polar system of International Relations 237 bibliometric network analysis 452 Bickmore, K. 353 Bieler, A./Morton, A. 252, 253
INDEX
Biko, Steve 392 I Write What I Like 392 Black Lives Matter movement 395 Black Marxism (Robinson, C.) 389 Black Skins White Masks (Fanon Frantz) 391–2 Blau, P. M./Duncan, O. D. 78–9 Blaug, M. 79 Block, F. 79 Blumer, Herbert 28–9 Bockman, J. 158 body, the 193 materiality of 147–8 Boli, J. 241 Bologna Process 261–2, 321 Bonilla-Silva, E. 393–4 Borgatti, S.P./Ofem, B. 450t Boserup, Ester Women’s Role in Economic Development 169 Botswana 96 boundaries 105 bounded rationality 219 Bourdieu, Pierre 59, 130 Bourdieu, Pierre/Passeron, Jean-Claude 59 Bourguiba, Habib Ben Ali 425 Bourn, D. 292 Bowles, S./Gintis, H. 79 Schooling in Capitalist America 58–9 Brain Drain 80–1 Brantmeier, E. 354 Bray and Thomas analytical cube 10 Brazil 421–2 Bringing Human Rights to U.S. Classrooms (Katz, S./Spero, A. M.) 370 Brinkman, S. 304 Brock-Utne, B. 348–9 Brown, P./Lauder, H./Ashton, D. Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs, and Incomes, The 61–2 Buckler, A. 467 Bullivant, B. M. 60 Burnett, G. 190 Butler, J. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity 400 Buzan, B. 237 CA (capability approach). See capability approach Calitz, T. 469–70 Can the Subaltern Speak? (Spivak, Gayatri) 111
INDEX
capability approach (CA) 459–69 application 464–7 basic education 465–6 capability sets 461–2 case study 469–70 combined capabilities 461, 462f conversion factors 461, 462f early childhood education (ECD) 465 education 463–4 future research 468–9 inequities 465 non-formal and vocational education 466 participatory approaches 469 professionals 467 public reasoning 462–3 secondary education 465–6 teachers 467 wellbeing 466 capability sets 461–2 Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (Marx, Karl) 54 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty, T.) 53 capitalism 40, 41, 284 see also Human Capital Theory dependency theory 88–91, 95–101 expansion 56–7 Luxemburg, Rosa 56 Marx, Karl 53, 54, 55–9 problems 94–5, 99 racial capitalism 389–91 schooling for 58–9 world-systems analysis (WSA) 88, 91–101 Caribbean, the 43, 50 Caribbean Community (CARICOM) 273–4 CARICOM (Caribbean Community) 273–4 Carnoy, M. 40, 78, 95, 98 Carnoy, M./Levin, H. M. 80 Carr, E. H. 235–6 casteism 387 causality 285 CCPE (critical cultural political economy of education) 256 Center for Peace Education, Columbia University 350, 351–2 centrist liberalism 93 CES (Comparative Education Society) 7–8, 405 Chakrabarty, D. 112 chalk and talk method 301, 304 change 219
477
Chankseliani, M. 116 Child-Friendly Schools framework 305 childhood 302 Chile 205 Chilisa, B. 118 China 303, 404 Chisholm, L./Leyendecker, R. 305 choice 202, 205 Choo, H.Y./Ferree, M.M 388–9 Chubbuck, S.M./Zembylas, M. 353 CI (Conectar Igualdad) 440 CIES (Comparative and International Education Society). See Comparative and International Education Society CIES conferences 191 Cislaghi, B. 370 citizenship 223 civil society 254 class. See social class Cohen, C.J. 409 Colclough, C./Rose, P./Tembon, M. 81 Cold War, the 348 Coleman, James S. 31 Collins, R. 73–4, 79 colonialism 37–40, 49, 384 see also postcolonialism ambivalence 39, 111 Asia 43 Burnett, G. 190 capitalist expansion 56, 57 Caribbean, the 43 case study 50–1 conscientização (conscientization) 61 definitions 40–1, 109 dependency theory 89–91, 95–100 education 44–8, 49–51 exploitation colonies 42 historical analysis of 112 history of 42–4 independence 50–1 literature 38–9 maritime enclaves 42 metropolis-satellite relationship 90–1, 92 mimicry 111–12 peace theory 347 racial domination 390 Rostow, Walt Whitman 89 settlement colonies 42 South America 42–3 United Nations 89 world-systems analysis (WSA) 88, 91–100 coloniality 41, 154, 187
478
colonization 40–1 epistemic 41, 50 colony 41 color-blind racism 393–4 Columbia University peace education program 350, 351–2 Combahee River Collective, The 170 combined capabilities 461, 462f Comenius, John 6 comics 193–4 commodification 55, 62, 202, 257 common good theories 80 common sense 255 communication 316, 328, 329 communication theory 315–16 Communist Manifesto (Marx, Karl) 54, 58 Comparative and International Education: Issues for Teachers (Bickmore, K./ Hayhoe, R./Manion, C./Mundy, K./ Read, R.) 346 Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) 8, 352, 405 Bibliography 407–8 Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression special interest group (SOGIE SIG) 399 Special Interest Groups (SIGs) 399, 447–8f Comparative Education journal 113, 134, 136 Comparative Education Review journal 7–8, 113, 134–6, 175, 407 Social Network Analysis (SNA) 451 Comparative Education Society (CES) 7–8, 405 Comparative Education Society of Hong Kong 113 comparative regionalism 271 comparative social sciences 318 comparativists 4 comparisons 2, 224–5 competition 56–7, 202 higher education 62–4 labor market 61 positional 61 competition state 202–3 comprehensive peace 346, 348 Comte, Auguste 24, 72 Conectar Igualdad (CI) 440 Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance 387 conflict 224, 237 see also war human rights education 370–1
INDEX
conflict resolution 350 conflict theory 28, 29 Connell, R. W. 286 conscientização (conscientization) 60, 61, 303, 349, 365 consensus theory 28 Constructions of Internationality in Education (Schriewer, J./Martinez, C.) 322–3 constructivism 302–3, 307–8 Convention on the Rights of the Child 362, 368 convergence theory human rights education 366, 367t conversion factors 461, 462f core economies 43 core-semiperiphery-periphery zones 92, 96, 99, 221 Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic 13–14 corporatization 257 cosmopolitanism 365, 435 counter-hegemonic movements 259 counterculture 59 coupling 223–4 see also loose coupling Cousin, Victor Rapport sur l’etat de l’instruction publique de l’Allemagne (Report on the State of Public Education in Some Parts of Germany) 6 Cowen, R. 9, 98–9, 190, 418–20, 421–2, 424 Cox, C. 292 Cox, Robert W. 250, 251, 252–6, 257 Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations: An Essay in Method 252 Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory 252 Coysh, J. Power and Discourse in Human Rights Education 367 CPE (Cultural Political Economy). See Cultural Political Economy credentialism 73–4, 79 Crenshaw, K. 388 Critical Concepts in Queer Studies in Education (Rodriguez, N.M. et al.) 404 critical cultural political economy of education (CCPE) 256 critical peace education 350, 354 critical pedagogy 60–1, 96 critical race theory (CRT) 393–5 critical realism 286 critical social theory 12 critical theory 12, 221, 252
INDEX
Cox, Robert W. 253 human rights education 366, 367t cross-boundary factors 225 Crossley, M./Tikly, L. 115 CRT (critical race theory) 393–5 Cuba 98, 101, 204, 416 culture 25 n. 1, 284–5, 385 Cultural Political Economy (CPE) 284–5 neo-institutional theory 224 neo-realism 238–9 cultural hegemony 251 Cultural Political Economy (CPE) 282–3, 290 application 288–90 approaches to globalization and education 283–4 case study 291–3 culture 284–5 economy, the 284 education 285 elements of 284–5 globalization, problematizing 283 methodology 286 of/for education 286–7 philosophical pre-suppositions of 285–6 politics 284 understanding 284–4 cultural racism 394 cultural studies 284 cultural violence 348 curricula 303–4 decolonizing 392 extremism 353 cybernetic thinking 315 cyborgs 193–4 Dagara people 119 Dakar Framework for Action 9, 304 Dale, R. 99 Dale, R./Robertson, S.L. 274 Damro, C./Friedman, Y. 321–2 data 10, 11, 13 digitization 257 Davies, S./Guppy, N. 240 Davis, K. 388 DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era) 170–1 de-coupling. See loose coupling de Freitas, Elizabeth 193–4 de-ideologization 149–50 de Lauretis, Teresa 400 debt reduction 203 Decade for Human Rights Education 362
479
Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training (UNDHRET) 363 decolonization 391–3 Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (Smith, L. T.) 118 deconstructionism 132–3, 135, 136, 137 definitions 8 Dei, G. 392 Delgado, R./Stefancic, J. 384 democratization 416–18, 422, 425–6 Denniss, R. 207–8 dependency theory 88–91, 95–100 case study 100–1 developed countries 72 see also first world countries developing countries 73, 87–8 see also third world countries dependency theory 88–91, 95–100 Escobar, A 89 gender 170–4 Global South 170, 176, 347 mass education 217–18 neoliberalism 204–6 structural adjustment reform 204–5 world-systems analysis (WSA) 88, 91–100 development 88–9, 185, 191–2, 217 see also international development Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) 170–1 development planning 77, 79 gender 168–74 development studies 78 post-foundational theories 185–8 developmentalism ideology 88 developmentalist paradigm 73 Dewey, John 302, 349 Experience and Education 302 dictatorships 417, 423, 425 difference 215 differentiation 314–15 Differentiation Theory 313–17, 322 case study 322–3 différrance 132 diffusion theory 329–30f, 332 direct violence 348 discourse 367 discursive dimension of the global higher education regime 277 discursive violence 352–3 “Discussing Comics and Notions of the Human” webinar 193–4 diversity 138
480
Division of Labor in Society, The (Durkheim, Émile) 25 Doan, P.L./Higgins, H. 403 donor organizations 155–6, 160–1, 242–3 Dos Santos, T. 89, 90 dualistic education systems 50–1 Duckworth, C. 353 Durkheim, Émile 25 Division of Labor in Society, The 25 Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, The 25 dyad level of analysis (SNA) 450 early childhood education (ECD) 465 early regionalism 270 earnings 71, 74, 76–7, 80 capitalism 94 Tanzania 69–70, 83 East India Company 43, 45 ECD (early childhood education) 465 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (Marx, Karl) 54 economic globalization 240 economics 38, 73–5 see also capitalism and Human Capital Theory accumulation strategies 256, 258 austerity 203 Block, F. 79 capital flows of finance 203 centrist liberalism 93 core-semiperiphery-periphery economic zones 92, 96, 99 Cultural Political Economy (CPE) 284 debt reduction 203 dependency theory 88–91, 95–100 development model 89 economic efficiency 80 gender 169 gift economy 284 globalization 240 growth 57, 78, 203 hegemony 256–7 institutional 74 Keynes, John Maynard 73, 77, 202 n. 2 laissez faire free markets 76 Marx’s political economy theory 53, 54–8 Money-Commodity-Money (MCM) cycle 55 neoliberalism 201–3, 204 Nixon shock event 252 plantation economy 43 rate of return 134
INDEX
regional currency crisis 204 Smith, Adam 71, 76 structural change 252 transitologies 416 unequal exchange 92–3 world-systems analysis (WSA) 88, 91–100 education 186, 217 Dewey, John 302 ensemble 286–9, 290 function of 26, 28 innovation measurement case study 33–4 latent function of 28 manifest function of 28 materiality of 438–9 quality 330, 466 queering 404–5 reform. See reform research 134–7 role in society 23 Education and Emergencies and Post-Crisis Transition (EEPCT) programme 355–6 Education, Economy and Society (Halsey, H. A./Floud, J./Anderson, C. A.) 32 education ensemble 286–9, 290 Education For All (EFA) initiative 9, 170, 190, 227, 368 capability approach (CA) 465 learner-centered pedagogy (LCP) 304 Social Network Analysis (SNA) 453 Tikly, L. 273 education market 202, 205 education measurement 32, 76, 78, 206–7, 223, 257 see also assessment methods and ranking achievement tests 76, 206–7, 242, 244–5 capability approach (CA) 468 International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs) 244, 333, 442, 454–6f local context 340 education policies 440 educational codings 419–20 Educational Import: Local Encounters with Global Forces in Mongolia (SteinerKhamsi, G./Stolpe, I.) 160 educational patterns 419–20f, 421–2, 424 educational servitization 257 EEPCT (Education and Emergencies and Post-Crisis Transition) programme 355–6 EFA (Education For All) initiative. See Education For All (EFA) initiative efficiency drives 63
INDEX
EHEA (European Higher Education Area) 260–2, 321 Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, The Durkheim, Émile 25 emergent heterogeneity 5, 29 emerging approaches 379 EMI (English as a Medium of Instruction) 288 employment 74–5, 76–7 see also labor market growth 79–80 empowerment 172–3 Engels, Friedrich 53, 57, 58 English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) 288 Enlightenment, the 185–7 liberalism 57 temporality 285 environment, the 94, 350 environments (differentiation theory) 314–17, 331 epistemic colonization 41 epistemicide 188, 392 Epistemology of the Closet (Sedgwick, E.K.) 401 Epstein, E. H. 29 equality 460, 462, 468 see also inequalities Erziehungssystem der Gesellschaft, Das (Society’s System of Education) (Luhmann, N.) 328 Escobar, A. 89 Esping-Anderson, G. 267 Esquisse et vues Préliminaires d’un Ouvrage sur l’Éducation Comparée (Plan for a Work on Comparative Education) (Jullien de Paris, Marc-Antoine) 5, 29 ethics 434–5 ethnic studies programs 138 EU (European Union) 260–2, 321 Eurocentrism 39, 89, 138, 175 see also colonialism and Western dominance/ influence European capitalism 40 European Coal and Steel Community 271 European colonialism 37–8, 42–9 European Commission 289 European Higher Education Area (EHEA) 260–2, 321 European League of Nations 270 European Social Model 261 European Union (EU) 260–2, 321 evidenced-based governance 335 evolution 25 n. 1 examinations colonialism 49
481
Experience and Education (Dewey, John) 302 expert commissions 334–8 exploitation colonies 42 externalization 313–14, 317–22, 329 application 320–2 case study 322–3 global education policies 331–3 International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs) 333 Norway 337 reception/translation 331, 332, 333–9 extremism 353 facts 189 Fagotto, M. 99 false consciousness 59 family, function of 26 Fanon Frantz 41, 391–2 Black Skins White Masks 391–2 Fast Track Initiative (FTI) 155 fees 204, 205, 206, 210–11 female empowerment 172–3 feminism 167, 170, 191–2 see also gender intersectionality 388–9 peace research 348–9 race 388–9 solidarity perspective 389 Fenwick, T./Edwards, R. 434, 440 Actor-Network-Theory in Education 438 Ferguson, R.A. 403 feudalism 55, 57 Fiji 60 Finland 340 first world countries 30 see also developed countries First World War 48 Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Abbott, Edwin A.) 436 n. 1 Flowers, N. 372 foreign assistance 185 see also international development foreign cultures 8 Forging the Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia (Khoja-Mooli, Shenila) 177–8 Foster, Philip 31, 77 Foster-Carter, A. 88 Foucault, M. 187 History of Sexuality 401 foundational theories 19–21, 183 Fourth Industrial Revolution 13
482
France 24 colonialism 46–8 Francis, D. 174 Frank, A. G. 90 freedom 459, 462 see also capability approach (CA) Freire, Paulo 60–1, 303, 349, 365 Freirean critical consciousness 367t–8 French Revolution 24 Friedrich, Daniel 188, 193 FTI (Fast Track Initiative) 155 function systems 329 functional analysis 29–30 Merton’s postulates 27 functional differentiation 315–16, 328–9 Functional Regions 269 n. 2 functional requisites 71 functionalism 9, 10, 72, 221 see also structural-functionalism functions latent 27, 28 manifest 27–8 Merton’s five forms of 27 funding 204, 205, 206, 210–11 externalization 321 GAD (Gender and Development) 168, 171–4 Galtung, J. 348 GATS (General Agreement in Trade on Services) 62 GCE (global citizenship education) 117–18 GCED (Global Citizenship Education) 292–3 gender 81, 167, 206 case study 177–8 Eurocentrism 175 female empowerment 172–3 Gender and Development (GAD) 168, 171–4 Girls in Development (GID) 176 human rights education 370 intersectionality 174 local prioritization 173 post-colonialism 174, 175–6 post-structuralism 174–6 as process of becoming 168 Saudi Arabia 226–7 schooling 173 as social construct 171–2, 400 Women and Development (WAD) 168, 170–1 Women in Development (WID) 167, 168–71 Gender and Development (GAD) 168, 171–4
INDEX
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Butler, J.) 400 General Agreement in Trade on Services (GATS) 62 general systems theory 314 geographical levels 10 Georgia 156 German Ideology, The (Marx, Karl) 54 Ghana 118, 204 Gibson-Graham 404 GID (Girls in Development) 176 gift economy 284 Gillborn, D. 394 Gilpin, R. 238–9 Ginsburg, M. B./Arias-Godínez, B. Girls in Development (GID) 176 Giroux, H. 60 global 283, 435–7 Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs, and Incomes, The (Brown, P./Lauder, H./Ashton, D.) 61–2 global citizenship 120–2, 281–2 global citizenship education (GCE) 117–18 Global Citizenship Education (GCED) 292–3 Global Citizenship Framework 281, 282, 291, 292–3 global competencies 281–2, 291–3 global convergence 150, 154 global divergence 154 global governance 441, 442 global peripheries 43 see also coresemiperiphery-periphery economic zones global queering 403–4, 410 global rationalization 240 Global South 170, 176, 347 see also developing countries and Third World countries global trends 97 global university rankings (GUR) 119 see also ranking globalization 13, 97–8, 197, 283, 317, 318 see also regimes and regionalism Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) 436 approaches to education 283–4 economic 240 non-state actors 243 problematizing 283 transitologies 420 Globalization and international student mobility (Shields, R.) 451–2 globalization theory 221
INDEX
globalizers 155 globalizing 283 goal attainment 72 Goldberg, D.T. 393 Gordon, S. 50 Gorur, R. 440, 442 governance by numbers 335 governance models 415 Grace, A.P./Benson, F.J. 407 Grace, A.P./Hill, R.J. 404 Gramsci, Antonio 251, 253, 254, 259 Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations: An Essay in Method (Cox, Robert W.) 252 Greece 96 Grek, S. 242 Gross, A. 404 group dynamics 449 Gueye, A. 81 Gülen Islamist Movement 155 GUR (global university rankings) 119 see also ranking Guterres, António 87 Habermas, Jürgen 129 Hall, S. 385 Halsey, H. A./Floud, J./Anderson, C. A. Education, Economy and Society 32 Hans, Nicolas 30 Hantzopoulos, M. 353–4, 370 Harber, C./Davies, L. 301–2 HCT (Human Capital Theory). See Human Capital Theory HE (higher education). See higher education health 14, 83 hegemonic order 254 hegemonic structures 254 hegemony 250, 251–2, 253–60 case study 260–2 common sense 255 economic 256–7 European Union (EU) 261 international 255 national 255 stable 255–6 Heggoy, A. A. 48 HEIs (higher education institutions) 206 Herz, B. K./Sperling, G. B. 169 heterodoxy 5, 29 heterogeneity 5, 9 heteronormativity 400–1, 404 heteroprofessionalism 404
483
heterosexuality 401 Hickling-Hudson, A./Ahlquist, R. 119 Higgins, S./Novelli, M. 289 higher education (HE) 62–4 capability approach (CA) 466–7 externalization 321 quality assurance (QA) 330, 466 regimes 276–7 regionalism 274–5 higher education institutions (HEIs) 206 Hill Collins, P. 387, 389 historic bloc 254 historical functionalism 30 historical functionalist stage 29 historical institutionalism 332–3 historical materialism 54–5 historical perspective 30 historicism 251, 252 history, teaching 353 History of Secondary (Kandel, Issac) 30 History of Sexuality (Foucault, M.) 401 history of the field 4–10 History of the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides) 235 History told by Lenin statues (Millei, Zsuzsa) 148 Hobbes, Thomas 235 homosexuality 187, 401, 410–11 Hooks, B. 60–1 Hopgood, S. 371 How far can we learn anything of practical value from the study of foreign systems of education? (Sadler, Michael) 6 Howard, A. 117 HRE (human rights education). See human rights education HRFS (Human Rights Friendly Schools) framework 363, 371 human body 23 human capital capability approach (CA) 463 Cuba 101 racial capitalism 390 Human Capital Project 33 Human Capital Theory (HCT) 19, 31, 61, 70, 81–2, 96 alternatives to 74–5 application 75–81 case study 82–3 contributions of 76–8 current debates and critiques 32, 76–7, 78–81
484
education development institutions 73–4 gender 169 history 71–3 measurability 32 neoliberalism 202 human experience 193–4 human nature 236, 238 human rights 121, 208, 463–4 Human Rights and Education (Tarrow, Norma) 368 human rights education (HRE) 350, 361–73 application 368–72 case study 373–4 critiques 371–2 definitions 363, 364 models 364–6 theory 366–8 trends 370 Human Rights Education for the Twenty-First Century (Andreopoulos, G. J./Claude, R. P.) 369 Human Rights Education: Theory, Research, Praxis (Bajaj, M.) 369 Human Rights Friendly Schools (HRFS) framework 363, 371 humanity 121–2, 194 hierarchies of 44, 194, 384–5 humans (ANC) 434–5 Huntington, Samuel P. 31, 416–17 Husén, T. 6 hybridity 3, 111–12 hyper self-reflexivity 111, 113, 120 IR (International Relations). See International Relations I Write What I Like (Biko, Steve) 392 ideal-types transitologies 418, 420f, 421, 422–3 ideas 254 identity 261, 400–1, 402 ideological apparatuses 59–60, 186 ideology 57–60, 96 IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) 10, 32 IEA (International Project for the Evaluation of Education Achievement) 5, 29 IELS (International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study) 242, 333 IFC (International Finance Corporation) 257 IIPE (International Institute on Peace Education) 352
INDEX
ILSAs (International Large-Scale Assessments) 244, 333, 442, 454–6f IMF (International Monetary Fund. See International Monetary Fund imperialism 40 In the First Row (Norwegian Green Paper) 335–7 Incan Empire 37 income 71 see also earnings India 111, 304 colonialism 43, 45–6 gender 173 human rights education 370 indigenous research and epistemologies 118–19 individual level analysis 236, 237 individuals 460 Indonesia 112 industry 38 inequalities 54–5, 59–60, 463, 465 see also race/racism between countries 87, 89–90 Calitz, T. 469–70 Malaysia 46, 121–2 measuring 78 neoliberalism 203, 205–6 role of the state 80 Saudi Arabia 226–7 sex 81, 206 see also gender Ingrey, J. C. 408 Inkeles, Alex 72, 74 Making Men Modern 72 Inkeles, Alex/Smith, David Horton Becoming Modern 31 innovation 431 innovation measurement case study 33–4 institutional apparatuses 186 institutional economics 74 institutional infrastructure externalization 321 institutional theory 220 institutionalization 220, 257–8 see also regimes and regionalism institutions 25–6, 254, 255–6, 267 n. 1 integration 72 intellectuals 251 Intelligent Nationalism in the Curriculum (Kandel, Issac) 6 interculturalidad 119 interdisciplinary approaches 379 interest-based theories of regime 269t intermediaries (ANT) 433–4
INDEX
international aid 452–3 International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) 10, 32 international branch campuses 63 International Bureau of Education 6 international comparison 327 see also ranking international development 88–9, 96, 152, 153–6, 160–1 rationality 187 International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study (IELS) 242, 333 international education regimes 273 International Education Review 6 International Finance Corporation (IFC) 257 international hegemony 255 international historical block 252 International Institute on Peace Education (IIPE) 352 International Journal of Educational Development 134, 136–7 International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs) 244, 333, 442, 454–6f International Monetary Fund (IMF) 73 neoliberalism 202, 203, 204 international organizations (I.O.s) s 96, 152, 153–6, 203–4, 240, 241–4 see also regionalism and under individual organization names capability approach (CA) 468 characteristics of 267–8 donor organizations 155–6, 160–1, 242–3 hegemony 256–9 patterns of 273 ranking 258 regulations 256 state, the 240, 241–4, 249–50 international politics 238 International Project for the Evaluation of Education Achievement (IEA) 5, 29 International Regime (IR) 267–8 International Relations (IR) 233, 234–7, 241 see also world order Cox, Robert W. 252 regimes 267–8 international schools 6 international student mobility 451–2 international students 63 international trade agreements 257 internationalism 6 internationalization 276–7, 317 Cox, Robert W. 255, 257–8 Schriewer, J. 317, 318
485
Schriewer, J./Martinez, C. 322–3 Stein, S. 175 Interplay of “Posts” in Comparative and International Education, The (Silova, I.) 116 interrelationship networks 318–19, 320 Interrupting the Coloniality of Knowledge Production in Comparative Education: Post-socialist and Post-colonial Dialogues after the Cold War (Soliva, I./Millei, Z./Piattoeva, N.) 116 intersectionality 174, 387–9, 403, 409 intransitive, the 284 IR (International Regime) 267–8 irony 147–8 Islam 47, 155, 386 gender 177–8 isomorphic change 219 isomorphism 218–19, 227, 276–7 Jagose, A. 400, 401, 402, 409 Janashia, S. 156, 330 Japan 320 Jessup, B. 282, 284 Joshi, P. 453–4 Jones, C. 388 journal articles 134t–5t Journal of Peace Education 350 Jules, T. D. 242, 273–4 Jules, T. D./Barton, T. 423, 425 Jullien de Paris, Marc-Antoine 5, 167 Esquisse et vues Préliminaires d’un Ouvrage sur l’Éducation Comparée (Plan for a Work on Comparative Education) 5, 29 justice 460 Kabeer, N. 172–3 KAM (Knowledge Assessment Methodology) 256 Kandel, Issac L. 30, 114 History of Secondary 30 Intelligent Nationalism in the Curriculum 6 Studies in Comparative Education 7 Kant, Immanuel Perpetual Peace 270 Karseth, B. et al. 453 Katz, S./Spero, A. M. Bringing Human Rights to U.S. Classrooms 370 Kazakhstan 155, 156 Kedzierski, M. 288 Kelly, G./Altbach, P. 4–5, 44
486
Keynes, John Maynard 73, 77, 202 n. 2 Keynesian welfare state 202–3 Khachatryan, S. 154 Khoja-Mooli, Shenila 61 Forging the Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia 177–8 King, Rodney 138 Kingdon, J.W. 338 Kiribati 190 Klees, Steven 80, 406 “Reflections on Theory, Method, and Practice in Comparative and International Education” 406–7 Knowandpol (“role of knowledge in the construction and regulation of health and education policy in Europe: convergences and specificities among nations and sectors, the”) project 334 knowledge 286 canon 303, 304 co-construction of 303 local 188 mode 1 research 334, 337 mode 2 research 334, 337 nature of 303–4 post-foundational theories 188–9 production 110–11 Knowledge Assessment Methodology (KAM) 256 knowledge-based theories of regime 269t Knowledge counts: Influential actors in the education for all global monitoring knowledge network (Read, Robyn) 453 knowledge movements 93 Krücken, G./Drori, G. S. 222 labor see also Human Capital Theory alienation from 55–6 competition 61 division of 25 earnings 70, 71, 74 employment 74–5, 76–7 Malaysia 46, 121–2 markets 61–2 Marx, Karl 55–6, 61 mobility 77, 80–1, 83 universities 63–4 labor-power 59, 61 LAFTA (Latin American Free Trade Association) 271 laissez faire free markets 76
INDEX
language 132, 392 Lao, R. 330 large-scale international assessments (ILSAs) 244, 333, 442, 454–6f late-modern educational patterns 419, 420f, 421, 422, 424 latent functions 27, 28 Latin America 204–6, 270, 271, 363 Latin American Free Trade Association (LAFTA) 271 Latour, B. 186, 433–4, 436, 437 Latour, B. Reassembling the Social: An introduction to Actor-Network-Theory 430 Latour, B./Woolgar, S. Life in the Laboratory: The construction of scientific facts 429 Latvia 156 Law, J. 430, 434–5 law of three stages 24 LCP (learner-centered pedagogy). See learner-centered pedagogy learner-centered pedagogy (LCP) 96, 299–308 application 304–6 case study 307–8 theoretical foundations 302–3 theoretical questions 303–4 learning 439–40 Learning for Peace 355–6 Learning to Labor: How working class kids get working class jobs (Willis, P.) 59 Lechner, F.J./Boli, NJ. 222 lecture method 301 Leestma, R. 8 legitimacy-seeking 218, 219 Lenin, Vladimir 147 cult of 150–1 statues of 148–9 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) 401 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) 410–11 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and/or Intersex (LGBTQI) 369, 399 see also queer theory Levi-Strausse, Claude 72 LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) 401 LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex) 410–11 LGBTQI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and/or Intersex) 369, 399 see also queer theory
INDEX
Life in the Laboratory: The construction of scientific facts (Latour, B./Woolgar, S.) 429 linguistic structuralism 132 Lisbon Process 261 Little, A. 95 Liu, P. 404 local 435–7 localizers (ANT) 437 Location of Culture, The (Bhabha, Homi) 111 loose coupling 218, 219, 223–4, 227 Lopes Cardozo, M./Shah, M. 289–90 Luhmann, N. 29, 314, 315, 316, 323, 328, 331 Erziehungssystem der Gesellschaft, Das (Society’s System of Education) 328 Luhmann, N./Schorr, K. E. 319 Lundin, M. 408 Luxemburg, Rosa Accumulation of Capital, The 56 McCombs, B. 301 McGrath, S. 466 Machiavelli, Niccolò de Bernardo dei 235 Macionis, J./Plummer, K. 79 McLaren, P. 60 McLeish, E. 422 McMichael, P. 79 maintenance 72 Making Men Modern (Inkeles, Alex) 72 Makuwira, J./Ninnes, P. 192 Malawi 204 Malaysia colonialism 46, 122–3 Malik, K. 383 Malinowski, Bronislaw 25–6 manifest functions 27–8 Manzon, M. 114 Marchant, O. 184 maritime enclaves 42 market, the 202, 205, 284 laissez faire free markets 76 Marshall Plan 73 Marvel Comics 193–4 Marx, Karl/Marxism 28, 53–4, 105 Capital: A Critique of Political Economy 54 case study 62–4 Communist Manifesto 54, 58 competition and decline of surplus 56–7 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts 54
487
education 58–62 German Ideology, The 54 historical materialism 54–5 human rights education 366, 367t ideology 57–8 mode of production 55, 57 political economy theory 53, 54–8 value and surplus 55–6 mass education 97, 99, 151, 186, 217–18, 219, 241 material capabilities 254 Mbembe, A. 392 Mbulu town 69–70 MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) 9, 87, 88, 227, 388 Mead, George Herbert 29 Mearsheimer, J. J. 238, 242 measurement. See education measurement mechanic solidarity 25 mediators (ANT) 433–4 Mejias, S. Politics, Power and Protest: Rights-Based Education Policy and the Limits of Human Rights Education 371 Melamed, J. 390 memories 157, 353 meritocracy 59 Merton, Robert K. 26–7 Social Theory and Social Structure 27 metanarratives 187 metaphysical stage 24 metatheory 12 Method Wars 8 methodological empiricism 9 methodologism 8–9 metropolis-satellite relationship 90–1, 92 Mexico 60 Meyer, J.W. 222, 283 Meyer, John W./Ramirez, Francisco O. 322–3 microtheory 12 migration 77, 80–1 Tanzania 83 Miles, Jack Black vs. Brown 138 Millei, Zsuzsa 148 n. 1, 157, 158 History told by Lenin statues 148 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 9, 87, 88, 227, 388 Miller, S.J. 405 Mills, C. 394 mimicry 111–12
488
Mincer, Jacob 61, 71 minority groups 138 Mirza, H.S. 388 missionaries 44, 45 Mizzi, R. C. 404 Mkhoyan, A. 155 mode 1 research 334, 337 mode 2 research 334, 337 modelling. See scripting modern, the 131–2 modern educational patterns 419, 420f, 421–2, 424 Modern World-System, The (Wallerstein, Immanuel) 91 modernism 131–2, 133 modernity 131, 185–7 coloniality 187 Latour, B. 186 post-foundational theories 185–8 Wittrock, B. 186 Modernization Theory 30–2, 72, 130 critique 88–9 gender 168–9 transitologies 416 Western bias 77 Mohanty, C. T. 175, 389 Moland, N./Pizmony-Levy, O. 410–11 moment of education politics 287, 291–2 moment of educational practice 287 moment of outcomes 287, 288 moment of the politics of education 287–8 Money-Commodity-Money (MCM) cycle 55–6 Mongol Empire 37 Mongolia 160–1 Montessori, Maria 349 monuments 148–9, 159 Morais da Sa e Silva, M. 330 Moreno, Jacob 449 Moreno, J. L./Jennings, H. H. 449 Morgenthau, H. 235–6 mortality 194 Moutsios, S. 96 Mulcahy, D. 432, 439–40 Müller, H. 267, 268 multicultural education 331, 350 multilateralism 240–1 multipolar system of International Relations 237 multiracial feminism 170
INDEX
Mundy, K. 240, 241 Munro, J. 112 Murphy-Graham, E. 173 Muslim Empire 37–8 myth 150 NAFSA: Association of International Educators 405 Naseem, M. A. 190–1 Naseem, M. A./Arshad-Ayaz, A. 353 nation-states. See states National Defense Education Act (NDEA) 420–1 national development 88–9 national hegemony 255 national identity 57 nationalism 9–10, 13, 347, 435 Soviet Union 151 Native Studies 403 natural selection 24 naturalization 393 NDEA (National Defense Education Act) 420–1 negative peace 345, 348 negritude movement 391 neo-colonialism 112 neo-functionalism 29, 33 neo-Gramscian theory 250–5, 259–60 application 255–9 case study 260–2 neo-institutional theory 217–22 agency/power 225–6 alternative theories 221–2 application 222–5 bounded rationality 219 case study 226–7 comparison 224–5 contemporary debates and critiques 225–6 contribution of 224–5 culture 224 empirical relevance 223 human rights education 366, 367t, 369 legitimacy-seeking 218, 219 loose coupling 218, 219, 223–4, 227 normative isomorphism 219 policy-borrowing 332, 333 relevance of 223–4 scope 224, 225 scripting 218–19
INDEX
neo-realism 11, 233–9, 243–4 application 239–43 case study 244–5 critiques 238–9 neoliberalism 158, 201–9, 226 application 203–8 case study 210–11 paradoxes 207–8 reform 150, 155, 204–5, 207–9, 332 Nepal 99 Nespor, J. 439 network level of analysis (SNA) 450 networks (ANT) 430, 431–4, 451 networks (SNA) 449, 451 new approaches 5 new regionalism 271 Ngan, T. T. T. 239 NGOs (non-government organizations) 155, 222, 363 Nicaragua 206 Ninnes, P./Mehta, S. 190–1 Nixon, Richard 252 Nixon shock event 252 Niyozov, S/Dastambuev, N 155, 156 Noah, H. 9 Noah, H./Eckstein, M. 4, 32 node level of analysis (SNA) 450 non-formal education 466 non-government organizations (NGOs) 155, 222, 363 non-humans (ANC) 434, 439 non-state actors 243–4 Nordtveit, B. Sexual Diversity, Marginalization, and the Comparative Education Review 399 normative dimension of the global higher education regime 277 normative isomorphism 219, 227 normative theory 11 Norway 320, 335–7 nuclear arms race 348 Nussbaum, M. C. 121, 460, 461, 462 OAS (Organization of American States) 270 O’Donnell, Guillermo/Schmitter, Philippe Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions About Uncertain Democracies 416 OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). See Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
489
offensive realism 238 old approaches 5 old regionalism 270–1 Omi, M./Winant, H. 385–6 Open Method of Coordination (OMC) 260–2 operative closure 316, 328–9 organic solidarity 25 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 33–4, 153, 241–2 global competencies 281–2, 291–3 Piattoeva, N. 441–2 PISA Global Competency Framework 291–3 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). See Programme for International Student Assessment Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 288–9 Tröhler, D. 158 Organization of American States (OAS) 270 organizations 319 Orientalism 38–9 Orientalism (Said, Edward) 38–9, 110 orthodoxy 5, 29 othering 186, 190, 386 Pakistan 190 pan-Africanism 391 Pan-American Conferences 270 paradigm 1–2, 3 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness 452 Parreira do Amaral, M. 272, 273 Parsons, Talcott 26–7, 30, 72, 315 pathways 338 Paulston, R. G. 3, 5, 29, 190 peace 238, 270, 303 see also peace education Peace Corps 8 peace education 345–55 application 351–54 case study 355–6 scholarship 352–4 Peace Education Special Interest Group (SIG) 352 peacebuilding 289–90, 355–6 Peacebuilding, Education, and Advocacy (PBEA) in Conflict Affected Contexts Programme 355–6 pedagogies 300, 468 periphery economic zone 99
490
Perpetual Peace (Kant, Immanuel) 270 PfA SIG (Post-foundational Special Interest Group) 191 Philippines 81 Phillips, D. 11 Phillips, D./Ochs, K. 222 Phillips, D./Schweisfurth, M. 11 Phillips, K. D. 60 Piaget, Jean 302 Piattoeva, N. 441–2 Piattoeva, N./Takala, T. 158 Piketty, T. Capital in the Twenty-First Century 53 Pilot Study, The 29 Pires, M./Kassimir, R./Brhane, M. 81 PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) 32 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment). See Programme for International Student Assessment PISA-D (PISA for Development) 333 PISA for Development (PISA-D) 333 PISA for Schools 333 PISA Global Competency Framework 291–3 Pizmony-Levy, O./Brezicha, K. 454 Pizmony-Levy, O/Jensen, M. 369 plantation economy 43 pluriversality 158 policies and practice 295 policy-borrowing 222, 320, 327–33, 339 application 333–9 case study 340 diffusion patterns 332 local context 332 research 335–8 policy-borrowing and lending approaches 320 policy change 338–9 “Policy Knowledge and Lesson Drawing in Nordic School Reform” project 320 Policy learning in Norwegian school reform: a social network analysis of the 2020 incremental reform (Baek, C. et al.) 453 policy making 320, 321 policy windows 338 political economy theory 53, 54–8, 284 policy-borrowing 332 political incorporation 223 political leaders 235 images of 147–9 political structures 237 political translation 333–8 political violence 348
INDEX
politics 234, 235–6 see also transitologies authoritarianism 417, 425 Cultural Political Economy (CPE) 284 democratization 416–18, 422, 425–6 dictatorships 417, 423, 425 international 238 queer theory 401–2 science 334–8 Politics, Power and Protest: Rights-Based Education Policy and the Limits of Human Rights Education (Mejias, S.) 371 population categories 384–5 positional competition 61 positionality 111, 120 positive peace 345, 348 positive philosophy, system of 24 positive stage 24, 29 positivism 188 positivistic study method 24 post, as prefix 109 Post-colonial Directions in Education journal 113 post-colonialism 7, 41, 109–13, 119–20 application 113–19 case studies 120–3 critique 112–13 definitions 109–10 gender 174, 175–6 global citizenship 120–2 global citizenship education (GCE) 117–18 historical analysis of colonialism and neo-colonialism 112 human rights education 366, 367t hybridity 111–12 hyper self-reflexivity 111, 113, 120 as illustration of transformation 422 indigenous research and epistemologies 118–19 learner-centered pedagogy (LCP) 306 peace education 350–1 positionality 111, 120 post-socialism 115–17 power and knowledge production 110–11 problematizing the knowledge base 114–15 racism 386–7 post-development 192 Post-foundational Special Interest Group (PfA SIG) 191, 193
INDEX
post-foundational theories 105–7, 183–5 application 189–92 case study 193–4 knowledge and science 188–9 modernity, development and social progress 185–8 post-modern, the 131 post-modernism 77–8, 129–33, 137 academic journal articles 134t–7 application 134–7 case study 138–9 Paulston, R. G. 190 Rust, Val 189–90 post-race 383, 393, 394 post-socialism 115–17, 149 see also postsocialist transformations post-socialist transformations 147–54, 159 agency 158 application 154–8 Asian influence 155 case study 160–1 childhood 157–8 divergence and difference 154–6 donor organizations 155–6 European practices 156 historical accounts 157–8 memories 157 Mongolia 160–1 monuments 148–9, 159 neoliberalism 158 non-Western influence 155 pluriversality 158 posting socialism 157–8 reclaiming authority as epistemic subjects 158 relationalities between different worlds 158 Russia 155 socialist myths 150–2 socialist symbols, disappearance of 152–4 Soviet practices 156 Western dominance/influence 152, 153, 154–6, 159, 160–1 post-Soviet transition 416, 418, 422 post-structuralism 129–33, 137 academic journal articles 134–7 application 134–7 case study 138–9 gender 174–6 poverty 73, 76, 466 Malaysia 122 Tanzania 81 Powell, L. 466
491
power 28, 80, 242, 367 Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) 431, 434, 437–8, 442 bourgeoisie 57 distribution 245 International Relations 237 post-colonialism 110 social forces 254 state, the 234–6, 237, 238, 239, 254, 255 United States 241 Power and Discourse in Human Rights Education (Coysh, J.) 367 power-based theories of regime 269t powerful knowledge 304 practice 3 pre-modern educational patterns 419, 420f, 421, 422, 424 Prebisch, Raul 90 Prebisch-Singer hypothesis 90–1 Preparing Teachers for Global Citizenship Education (UNESCO) 292 privatization 201, 205, 206, 208, 210–11 pathways to 338 problem-solving theory 12, 253 production of meaning 328 mode of 55, 57, 59, 61 societal relations 254 production relations 254 productivity 73–5, 78 professional training 154 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 10, 153, 244–5, 282, 291, 333 Gorur, R. 442–3 Human Capital Theory 76 local context 340 national education policy 250 neoliberalism 206–7 PISA for Development (PISA-D) 333 PISA for Schools 333 PISA Global Competency Framework 291–3 PISA-D (PISA for Development) 333 Social Network Analysis (SNA) 454–6f progress 185, 186, 187, 189, 285 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 32 projection 340 Prokou, E. 96 public health 14, 83
492
public reasoning 462–3 punctuated equilibrium 339 QA (quality assurance) policy, global diffusion of 330f, 466 QOC (queer of color analysis) 403, 409 quality assurance (QA) policy, global diffusion of 330f, 466 queer 400, 402, 409 queer literacy framework 405 queer migration 409 queer of color analysis (QOC) 403, 409 queer theory 399–409 academic articles/journals 407–8 activism 401–2 application 405–8 case study 410–11 Comparative Education Review journal 407–8 education 404–5 global queering 403–4, 410 intersectionality 402, 409 origins 401–2 queer of color analysis (QOC) 403, 409 radicalism 409 Queer Theory in Education (Pinar, W.) 404 queer urbanism 405 queering 399, 403, 407 Quijano, A. 41 race/racism 41, 44, 119, 138–9, 383–95 see also colonialism and post-colonialism anti-racist policies 331–2 biological accounts of race 384–5 color-blind racism 393–4 critical race theory (CRT) 393–5 decolonization and racial justice 391–3 feminism 170 intersectionality 387–9 minimization 394 queer of color analysis (QOC) 403, 409 racial capitalism 389–91 racial formations 383, 385–7 racial projects 385–6 racialization 383, 386–7 as social construct 384–5 taxonomies 385 Racism Without Races (Baber, Z.) 386 Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. 25, 26 ranking 13, 206–7, 242, 245, 327 see also education measurement
INDEX
countries 30 global university rankings (GUR) 119 hegemony 258 humanity 44, 194, 385 Knowledge Assessment Methodology (KAM) 256 learner-centered pedagogy (LCP) 307 Rappleye, J. 420, 423 Rapport sur l’etat de l’instruction publique de l’Allemagne (Report on the State of Public Education in Some Parts of Germany) (Cousin, Victor) 6 rate of return (ROR) 71, 76–7, 78, 79–80, 134, 169 rationality 186, 187, 188 Re-Imagining Comparative Education: Postfoundational Ideas and Applications for Critical Times (Ninnes, P/Mehta, S.) 113 READ (Russian Education Aid for Development) Trust Fund 155 Read, Robyn Knowledge counts: Influential actors in the education for all global monitoring knowledge network 453 realism see also neo-realism critical 286 origins of 234–6 world order 348 reality 220 Reardon, B. 348–9, 350, 351 Reassembling the Social: An introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Latour, B.) 430 reception/translation (externalization) 331, 332, 333–9, 340 Reddaway, P./Glinski, D. 416 reference 331 reflection theory 319–20 “Reflections on Theory, Method, and Practice in Comparative and International Education” (Klees, Steven) 406–7 reform 153–6, 160–1, 204–5, 207–9, 241 policy-borrowing 328, 329–32 regime complexes 274 regimen 266 regimes 265–9t, 271–2, 275–6 application 272–5 case study 276–7 regime complexes 274 regional currency crisis 204
INDEX
regionalism 242, 265–6, 269–71, 272, 276 application 273–5 phases 270–1 regions 269, 275 regulation approach 256 regulatory dimension of the global higher education regime 277 relational systems 223–4 relationships (ANT) 450, 451 relationships (SNA) 450t, 451 relativist stage 29 religion see also Islam Durkheim, Émile 25 peace 346 role in society 23, 25 Renn, K.A. 405 Resolution 1710 (XVI) 87 Rethinking Racial Capitalism: Questions of Reproduction and Survival (Bhattacharyya, G.) 389–90 Rhodes Must Fall movement 392, 395 Robertson, S. 261 Robertson, S. L. 274–5 Robertson, S./Dale, R. 253, 256 Robinson, C. Black Marxism 389 Rodriguez, N.M. 400 Trans Generosity 409 “role of knowledge in the construction and regulation of health and education policy in Europe: convergences and specificities among nations and sectors, the” (Knowandpol) project 334 Roman Empire 37 ROR (rate of return) 71, 76–7, 78, 79–80, 134, 169 Rostow, Walt Whitman 31, 72, 89 Stages of Economic Growth: A NonCommunist Manifesto, The 72 Rottman, C. 404 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 302 Rowlands, J. 172 rulers 235 images of 147–9 Russell, S. G./Suárez, D. 366 Russia 155 Russian Education Aid for Development (READ) Trust Fund 155 Rust, Val 189–90 Rustow, Dankwart Transitions to Democracy 416
493
Sachsenmaier, D. 98 SACU (Southern Africa Customs Union) 270 SADC (Southern African Development Community) 271 Sadler, Michael 6–7 How far can we learn anything of practical value from the study of foreign systems of education? 6 Sahlberg, P. 240 Said, Edward Orientalism 38–9, 110 salary. See earnings Saudi Arabia 226–7 Saussure, Ferdinand de 130 Sayer, A. 286 Scale (ANT) 437 schooling 185, 186, 364 Schooling in Capitalist America (Bowles, S./ Gintis, H.) 58–9 schools peace education 353–4 violence 353 Schriewer, J. 317–20 Schriewer, J./Martinez, C. Constructions of Internationality in Education 322–3 Schultz, Theodore 31, 71–2, 74, 76, 77 Schweisfurth, M. 302 Schweisfurth, M./Thomas, M.A.M./Smail, A. 300 science 9,10 politics 334–8 post-foundational theories 188–9 Western 41 Scott, J. 449 screening 74–5 scripting 218–19 SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). See Sustainable Development Goals second world countries 30 secondary education 465–6 security 234–6 crises 239 security dilemma 235, 244 Sedgwick, E.K. Epistemology of the Closet 401 self-referentiality 315–16, 319, 323, 328, 329, 331 Sellar, S./Lingard, B. 245 semi-periphery economic zone 92, 96 Sen, A. 459, 460, 462 Sen, G./Grown, C. 170, 171
494
settlement colonies 42 sex 168 inequalities 81 Sexual Diversity, Marginalization, and the Comparative Education Review (Nordtveit, B.) 399 Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression special interest group (SOGIE SIG) 399 sexuality 187, 401, 410–11 Shah, P. P. 173 Shahjahan, R. A. 119 Shields, R. Globalization and international student mobility 451–2 Shlasko, G.D. 400, 402, 403 Sierra Leone 289 signaling 74–5 SIGs (Special Interest Groups) 399, 447–8f Silova, I. 157–8, 422 Interplay of “Posts” in Comparative and International Education, The 116 Silova, I./Millei, Z./Piattoeva, N. Interrupting the Coloniality of Knowledge Production in Comparative Education: Post-socialist and Post-colonial Dialogues after the Cold War 116 Simmel, Georg 449 Sinic cultures 285 Sirota, S. 369 skills 463 slavery 38, 43, 55, 384 Smelser, Neil J. 31 Smith, A. 403 Smith, Adam 76 Wealth of Nations 71 Smith, J. 94, 99–100 Smith, L. T. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples 118 SNA (Social Network Analysis). See Social Network Analysis Sobol, I 79 social action 26 social cartography 3, 190 social categories 187 social change 431 social class 28, 59–60, 78 Bowles, S./Gintis, H. 79 Carnoy, M./Levin, H. M. 80 Gramscian theory 251
INDEX
Malaysia 122 neoliberalism 205–6 social context 430 social dynamics 24 social forces 254 Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory (Cox, Robert W.) 252 social mobility 78–9 Social Network Analysis (SNA) 433–4, 447–54 actors 449, 451 application 451–4 case study 454–6f networks 449, 451 in publications 451, 452f relationships 450t social orders 430 social progress post-foundational theories 185–8 social reproduction 59, 60 social science phase 8–9 social sciences 10, 19, 93–4, 317, 405–6, 430 see also structural-functionalism Social Network Analysis (SNA) 450–1 social statistics 24 social structure 430 social systems 286, 315–17, 323 Social Theory and Social Structure (Merton, Robert K.) 27 socialism 150–4 historical accounts 157 posting 157 socialist myths 150–2 socialist symbols, disappearance of 152–4 sociological systems theory 314, 315–16, 328, 332–3, 338 sociological theory 11, 314 sociology 26, 158, 220–1, 222 societies 8, society 23 civil 254 Comte, Auguste 24 Durkheim, Émile 25 French 24 Malinowski, Bronislaw 25–6 modernity 186 needs 25–6, 28 Parsons, Talcott 26–7, 30 power 28 Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 25, 26 Spencer, Herbert 24
INDEX
stratified 316 as super-organic body 24 sociometry 449 Söderbaum , F. 270–1 SOGIE SIG (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression special interest group) 399 solidarity 25 solidarity perspective 389 Sorensen, T./Robertson, S. L. 288–9 de Sousa Santos, B. 283, 392 South Africa 392 South America colonialism 42–3 Southeast Asia 206 Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU) 270 Southern African Development Community (SADC) 271 Southern Theory 149 Soviet Union 115–16 see also post-Soviet transition childhood 157–8 cult of Lenin 150–1 education system 150–2, 153 historical accounts 157 political leaders 147–9 see also Marx, Karl space program 150–1, 233 third world influence 152 space 435–7 space race 150–1, 233 Special Interest Groups (SIGs) 399, 447–8f Spence, A. M. 74 Spivak, Gayatri Can the Subaltern Speak? 111 Spreen, C. A. 367–8 stable hegemony 255–6 Stages of Economic Growth: A NonCommunist Manifesto, The (Rostow, Walt Whitman) 72 standardized testing 71, 78, 340 see also EHEA and PISA state, the 92, 186, 435 see also hegemony and regimes agency 237 authoritarianism 417, 425 Carr, E. H. 236 civil society 254 competition state 202–3 decline of 243 democratization 416–18, 422, 425–6 dictatorships 417, 423, 425
495
forms of 254 globalization 240 Hobbes, Thomas 235 international organizations 240, 241–4, 249–50 international politics 238 International Relations 233, 234–7 Keynesian welfare state 202–3 late-modern educational patterns 419 Machiavelli, Niccolò de Bernardo dei 235 Morgenthau, H. 236 multilateralism 240–1 neo-realism 234 neoliberalism 202–3 offensive realism 238 power 234–6, 237, 238, 239, 254, 255 race 385 role of 80, 334–8 security dilemma 235, 244 survival 238 Thucydides 235 transitologies 420–1 Waltz, Kenneth 236–7 war 234–5, 237, 238 state level analysis 236, 237 state of nature 235 statism 243 statues 148–9, 159 Stein, S. 175 Steiner-Khamsi, G./Stolpe, I. 283 Educational Import: Local Encounters with Global Forces in Mongolia 160 Stiglitz, J. 74, Stiglitz, J./Weiss, A. 75 Stockton, Sharon 138 Stromquist, N. P. 172 structural adjustment reform 204–5 structural constraints 239 structural coupling 333–5 structural-functionalism 23–33, 314 application 29–32 characteristics of 24 Comte, Auguste 24, 72 critiques 28, 29–30 Durkheim, Émile 25 law of three stages 24 Malinowski, Bronislaw 25–6 Merton, Robert K. 26–7 Parsons, Talcott 26–7, 30, 72 positivistic study method 24 Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 25, 26 Spencer, Herbert 24
496
structural realism 236–9 structural strain 31 structural violence 348 structuralism 72, 132–3 student exchange 321 student mobility 451–2 student-teacher relationships 349 Studies in Comparative Education (Kandel, Issac) 77 Sub-Saharan Africa 305, 410 Sum, N-L 282, 284 surplus 55–7 survival 238, 242 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 9, 87, 88, 137, 243 capability approach (CA) 468 Global Citizenship Framework 281, 282, 291, 292 partnerships 452 Saudi Arabia 227 Western countries 138 Sustainable Solutions Network 138–9 symbolic interactionism 28–9 system-environment 314–16 systemic level analysis 236 systems 315–17, 319, 323, 328–9, 331 systems theory 29, 313, 314–15, 316, 328 see also Differentiation Theory sociological systems theory 314, 315–16, 328, 332–3, 338 Tabulawa, R. 96 TAFE (technical and further education) 210–11 Tajikistan 155, 156 Takala, T./Piattoeva, N. 153 Takayama, K. 114–15, 320 TALIS (Teaching and Learning International Survey) 288–9 Tamale, S. 174 Tan, C. 303 Tanzania 60, 69–70, 81, 82–3 constructivism 307, 308 examination system 303–4 learner-centered pedagogy (LCP) 307–8 Tarrow, Norma Human Rights and Education 368 Teach for All 188 teacher-centered pedagogy 300, 301 teachers 467 Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 288–9
INDEX
teaching, learning, and knowing 439–40 teaching practices 469 technical and further education (TAFE) 210–11 technology 63, 185, 194 Tesar, M. 157 textbooks 153–4, 434, 439 theological phase 24 theory 1–14, 328, 406–7 adaptation 197–200 analysis of exogeny 12 Ball, S. 11 boundaries 105 comparisons 2–3 critical 12 critical social 12 data 10 datafication 13 factors and forces phase 7 foundational 19–21 functionalism 9, 10 globalization 13 human capital 19 in the field 12–13 metatheory 12 methodological empiricism 9 methodologism 8–9 microtheory 12 nationalism 9–10, 13 nations 9–10 neo-Marxism 9 neo-realism 10 normative 11 policies and practice 295 post-foundational 105–7 problem-solving 12 ranking 13 revision 197–200 Sadler, Michael 6–7 science 9 sociological 11 theory of change 365 Thiong’o, N. 392 third world countries 30, 152 see also developing countries gender 170, 176 Global South 170, 176, 347 THRED (transformative human rights education) 365–6, 367t–8 three worlds ideology 30, 149, 152, 158 Thucydides 234–5 History of the Peloponnesian War 235 Tibbitts, F. 364–5
INDEX
Tikly, L. 273 Tikly, L./Barrett, A.M. 466 time 185–6, 285 TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) 32, 76 Todoro, M. P. 76–7, 79–80, 81 Tomlinson, B. 389 Tongson, K. 403 Tostan 370 Trans Generosity (Rodriguez, N.M.) 409 transfer (transitologies) 418, 422–3 transformation (transitologies) 418, 422–3 transformative human rights education (THRED) 365–6, 367t–8 Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions About Uncertain Democracies (O’Donnell, Guillermo/ Schmitter, Philippe) 416 Transitions to Democracy (Rustow, Dankwart) 416 transitive, the 285 transitologies 415–24 application 420–3 case study 424–6 translation (ANT) 433, 442 translation (transitologies) 418, 422–3 transnationalism 240, 244, 245, 319 Treaty of Rome 271 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 32, 76 Trinidad 50, 51 Tröhler, D. 158 Truman, Harry 185 truths 188, 189 Tuhiwai Smith, Linda 393 Tunisia 423, 424–6 UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) 362 UN (United Nations). See United Nations uncertainty 189 UNDHRET (Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training) 363 undocuqueers 409 unequal exchange 92–3 UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) 7, 227, 240, 241–2 Global Citizenship Education (GCED) 292–3 Global Citizenship Framework 281, 282, 291, 292–3
497
Preparing Teachers for Global Citizenship Education 292 uni-polar system of International Relations 237 UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund). See United Nations Children’s Fund Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). See Soviet Union United Kingdom human rights education 371 United Nations (UN) 87 Agenda for Sustainable Development 452 Children’s Fund (UNICEF) 240, 305, 355–6 colonialism 89 Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance 387 Convention on the Rights of the Child 362, 368 Decade for Human Rights Education 362 Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training (UNDHRET) 363 Development Decades 87–8 Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. See UNESCO Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 362 World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna) 362, 369 World Programme for Human Rights Education 363 United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) 240, 355–6 Child-Friendly Schools framework 305 United state of Europe 270 United States 133 education system 152 ethnic studies programs 138 human rights education 370 National Defense Education Act (NDEA) 420–1 Nixon shock event 252 power 241 Progressive movement 235 space race 152, 233 Sustainable Solutions Network 138–9 third world influence 152 USAID 206 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 362 universal education 58
498
universal truths 188, 189 universal values 57–8 universities 62–4, 392 Unterhalter, E. 167, 388, 463 USAID (United States Agency for International Development) 206 USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). See Soviet Union utility maximization 79 theory of 76 values 319 Verdery, K. 147, 148, 159 Verger, A. 338 VET (vocational education and training) 466 Vienna Declaration 362, 369 Vietnam 204 violence 348, 352–3 Virdee, S. 386–7, 390 Vision (comic book character) 193 “Vision Vol. 1, The” (King, T./Hernandez Walta, G./Walsh, M.) 193–4 “Vision Vol. 2, The” (King, T./Hernandez Walta, G./Walsh, M.) 193–4 vocational education and training (VET) 466 Vygotsky, Lev 302–3 WAD (Women and Development) 168, 170–1 wages. See earnings Wahl, R. 370 Walker, M./McLean, M. 467 Wallerstein, Immanuel 91–3, 100, 221, 283 Modern World-System, The 91 Waltz, Kenneth 233, 236–7, 238 Waltz, S. B. 439 war 234–5, 237, 238 Washington Consensus Model 10, 203, 204 WCT (world culture theory) 97, 114–15, 154, 222, 240 wealth 80 see also earnings Tanzania 82 Wealth of Nations (Smith, Adam) 71 Weber, Max 28, 220–1, 449 Weingart, P./Lentsch, J. 334–5 welfare regime 267 wellbeing 466 West Africa 370 Western dominance/influence 73, 78, 217–18 see also colonialism and postcolonialism anti-colonialism 391
INDEX
Eurocentrism 39, 89, 138, 175 language 392 post-modernism 135, 138 post-socialism 152, 153, 154–6, 159, 160–1 post-structuralism 135, 138 queer theory 403–4 WFEA (World Federation of Education Associations) 6 White ignorance 394–5 Whitehead, C. 45 Whitlock, R. 403 whole-class instruction 301 Why is My Curriculum White movement 392, 395 WID (Women in Development) 167, 168–71 Williams, H. M. A. 50, 51, 352–3 Willis, P. Learning to Labor: How working class kids get working class jobs 59 Wilson-Strydom, M. 462 Wiseman, A.W./Matherly, C. 405, 406 Wittrock, B. 186 women 460, 463 see also feminism and gender race 388–9 Women and Development (WAD) 168, 170–1 Women in Development (WID) 167, 168–71 Women’s Role in Economic Development (Boserup, Ester) 169 World Bank 73–4, 78, 82, 240 development research 133 education reform 153, 203, 204, 205, 241 Fast Track Initiative (FTI) 155 hegemony 256, 257, 258–9 Human Capital Project 33 International Finance Corporation (IFC) 257 Knowledge Assessment Methodology (KAM) 256 learner-centered pedagogy (LCP) 304–5 neoliberalism 203, 204, 205 World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna) 362, 369 world culture theory (WCT) 97, 114–15, 154, 222, 240 World education Forum 9 World Federation of Education Associations (WFEA) 6 world order 250, 253, 254 see also International Relations World Programme for Human Rights Education 363 World Society Theory 222
INDEX
world-systems analysis (WSA) 88, 91–100 case study 100–1 world-systems theory 96–7, 221, 283, 317–18 World Trade Organization General Agreement in Trade on Services (GATS) 62 WSA (world-systems analysis). See worldsystems analysis Wu, Jinting 194
499
Yogyakarta Principles 404 Young, M. 304 Yurchak, A. 157 Zapp, M./Ramirez, F. O. Beyond Internationalization and Isomorphism – The Construction of a Global Higher Education Regimen 276–7 zone of proximal development theory 303
500