Reflection on Novelli and Cardozo

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An extended discussion on the interaction of conflict and education and the contribution of education to causes of conflict.  A useful discussion of 3 theories of the causes of conflict in the developing world – clash of civilizations (Huntingdon), structural inequalities and insecurity (Duffield) and rational choice/greed based motivations (Collier). Examples of education contributing to or causing violence as well as suffering from it Differentiation between an internal ‘education politics’ agenda and a more external ‘politics of education’ point of view.

Useful but very theoretical and contextual in the broadest sense.

Reflection on Stromquist

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This is a better argued paper than some, connecting literacy education for women with their aspirations and actions to achieve a more equal and effective part in society.  The inadequacy of literacy education for its own sake and the need to embed literacy education in a form of political project or other form of practical relevance is argued from a number of viewpoints.

The language is reasonably dispassionate hence provides a more objective source of reference material than some of the more stridently feminist treatise.

Reflections on Subrahmanian

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This paper is a gender equality review loosely disguised as a development paper.  Most of what is said applies equally to the developed as the less developed world – which is accepted via examples from France and UK.

Most of the issues identified are societal in nature, rather than a choice to limit female opportunity.  There is a strong theme of positive discrimination – men are encouraged to make efforts to equalise the unequal burden of reproductive activities.  No mention here of unequal burden on men in matters requiring physical strength.

A useful comment at the end on ‘blokish’ stereotypes and their tendency to cause boys to underperform.

Useful categorisation and defiinitions  of gender parity, gender equality and gender equity but a bit too dogma ridden to seem very useful in making practical progress.

Reflection on Bonal

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Bonal is a more recent and more practical paper than those previous in Case File 2.  He sets out to challenge the assumption that education will combat poverty by demonstrating the limitations of poor people in acquiring ‘useful’ education – of a level and quality sufficient to give them earning power above poverty levels.

The elasticity of required level and quality – rising as the average level rises – is shown as a major hindrance.  It also shows the way the already powerful sustain their power by changing the rules to maintain their advantage – a way to sustain the poverty trap despite increasing education.  Factors other than education – political social and economic – also need to be in place to achieve social mobility.

Targeting strategies generally had only a local and temporary effect.

The overall conclusion is that policies have been simplistic, non-interactive and therefore ineffective.  The concept of educability sounds horribly eugenic but realistically ‘places the emphasis on ‘precisely those factors associated with poverty that prevent the poor from taking advantage of educational opportunities.’

Quite a useful paper in understanding why policy has failed though not coming up with much in terms of alternative strategy approaches.

Reflections on Castells and Kellner

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Both these paper are dated – Castells  from 1999, Kellner from 2002.  They both take a broad philosophical sweep over the changing world as a result of IT and network technologies.

Castells focuses on networks – power being in the network, isolation if out of the network.  He identifies the opportunity for slower adopters to leapfrog the early stages and go straight to fully networked access. He identifies the transformation of relationship between capital and labour when labour is remote and invisible in an information society.  He identifies cost lowering as the thin end of the wedge for poorer countries in a globalised world.    However, he lapses into idealism “The  disassociation between economic growth  and social development in the  information age is not only morally wrong, but also impossible to sustain.”  “It will take a dramatic investment in overhauling  the  educational system everywhere, through co-operation between national and local  governments, international institutions and lending agencies, international and  local business, and families.”  I wonder if he really expected that to happen?

Kellner is even more idealistic.  He focuses on the need to gain new literacies rather than on the acquisition of IT and networks.  However his conclusions are simplstic and impractical.  ” The disconnect and divides can be overcome, however, by more actively and collaboratively bringing students into interactive classrooms or learning situations in which they are able to transmit their skills and knowledges to fellow students and teachers alike.”  ” In much of the world, the struggle for daily existence is paramount and meeting unmet human and social needs is a high priority. Yet everywhere education can provide the competencies and skills to improve one’s life, to create a better society, and a more civilized and developed world.”  “The time is ripe to take up the challenge and to move to reconstruct education and society so that groups and individuals excluded from the benefits of the economy, culture, and society  may  more  fully  participate  and  receive  opportunities  not  possible  in  earlier  social constellations “.  Again one wonder if he is really serious regarding this as a possibility>

Both papers are comprehensive and analytically sound.  However their conclusions either reflect the misplaced optimism of the dawn of networked society or are just academically tidy ways to end their papers!

Reflection on Leach

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I enjoyed Leach and found the evidence of value-added from ICT in rural education convincing in subjective terms.  However, the paper raises many issues and resolves few.

  • The primary problem is the eternal question ‘what is education’.  Leach’s research is mainly qualitative and while value is described in subjective terms, there is little objective evidence (except anecdotal reports of better exam marks).  The evidence seems to reinforce other studies which show that online learning provides more engagement and deeper understanding but little better performance in summative assessment (particularly of the ‘fill in the answer’ type typical in Africa).  Many would argue that this deeper understanding reflects improved pedagogy but it doesn’t pay the bills or convince politicians the way exam results do.
  • Some of the answers seem oblique to the challenge.  The challenge that food and penicillin were more important than ICT was answered by evidence that reading and writing were improved.  Well not for the kids who had starved to death or died of infection first!
  • The cost benefit challenge is similarly answered illogically.  Value was described as the production of posters and notices which could just as easily have been written by hand.  The use of the printer as a photocopier does not provide much evidence of the power of ICT in education!

There was however, a lot of good information.  Certainly the evidence that people, however unsophisticated, could use and get value from technology was useful to rout the Luddite arguments.  The evidence that goods would be protected from theft and damage if they were sufficiently valued was also interesting.

The most convincing argument seemed to be the last – that technology was shrinking the world, so making these remote people less remote and enabling them to access education otherwise unavailable to them.

Overall, the paper is convincing that ICT in education, if done well – with the right equipment, the right content, the right pedagogy and some access to support – can produce improved educational results.  However, with all those qualifications I am not sure the arguments would convince the doubters.  There is so much alternative evidence of technology-led initiatives which have failed to have much impact that these beacons of isolated good practice may be seen as only that, not evidence of general opportunity.

Reflections on Smith 2005

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A clear paper, albeit unreasonably strewn with acronyms, regarding the problems of where aid money is best directed.  Reports the trend away from Technical Assistance (TA) and direct project support – seen as too directive.  Sector Wide Approaches (SWA) and Direct Budget Support (DBS) are now favoured, allowing recipient governments to direct the funds and make their own capacity building decisions, so reflecting increased ownership of programmes.

Smith concludes however that recipient governments aren’t too good at these high level processes and that little of this high level spending  actually results in building local capacity, which is the only place it is really effective.

Concern that achievement of Millennium Development Goals (MDG) may actually be hindered by the redirection of aid money to high level.  Do we want better education by colonial methods or worse education by delegating spending to recipient government control?

Reflections on Wise

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Wise talks about the imposition of legislation on schools.  He features two problems:

  • The tendency of (western) schools to chase targets to the exclusion of other objectives of education – the teach to test or teach to OfSTED syndrome
  • The problem of disconnection of means and ends where means are specified without process to achieve the desired ends or ends are specified without obvious means to achieve them.  He calls this hyperrationalisation

The first is in a way the opposite of the problem addressed by Jansen – who complained that host governments do not chase targets.  The second is more in line with Government Aid reality – that ends are specified for which the means or process do not exist.

Reflections on Barrett and Jansen – studying theory or practice?

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The papers by Barrett and Jansen came from different directions with a huge gulf in their sense of pragmatism.

Barrett is research for its own sake.  Introspective, indulgent, semantic – indeed anything but practical.  When one eventually gleans some meaning out of the flowery language, there is some sense in the analysis of personality type among teachers and how it governs their teaching behaviour – but it doesn’t take us anywhere.  There is a broad conclusion that, for progress to be likely, it has to build on teachers’ experience and their sense of their role but I think we might have guessed that!

Jansen by comparison is ruthlessly practical.  He demolishes the development education target setting process from conceptual, methodological and organisational points of view and concludes that the process is more to do with meeting the political needs of donor and donee than any expectation of targets being met.  The only disappointment is that he does not offer advice on a better path, only concludes that target setting does drive some beneficial action.

My own preference would be to talk about reference data rather than targets and about “straw-men”* rather than firm propositions.  Individual situations can then be mapped against the reference and a framework for action devised that can replace all or part of the straw-man.  That would achieve the same progress in a more meaningful process with more likelihood of local buy-in.

* A “straw-man” proposal is US parlance for a model proposal that is intentionally simplistic and designed to be changed and improved but triggers focused discussion more effectively than a blank sheet of paper.

Commentary on Bartlett

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Lesley Bartlett (2007) The comparative ethnography of educational projects: youth and adult literacy programmes in Brazil, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 37:2, 151-166, DOI: 10.1080/03057920601165421

Having lived and worked in Brazil this article interested me in how closely the findings mapped onto my own experience.  I had previously learned languages at school over long periods using traditional “autonomous” methods.  I started learning Portuguese in this way but rapidly found that I could not understand or communicate with only this base.  To enable communication in the real world required idioms and conversational speech in relevant contexts.  I realised I had to make an initial choice – to be accurate or to be fluent. Because I had little requirement for formal written output, I (implicitly) chose fluency, to be able to be understood and to influence people.

This created interesting reactions.  My well educated staff would frequently correct my grammar. After I had talked to staff as a group people would confide “we knew what you meant”! However, people in the local community could understand me reasonably well and taught me lots of idioms which certainly would not reach the textbooks!  This highlights the significant contrast between language as a badge of education and status and language as a means to communicate – very much Bartlett’s point.

Interestingly however, the traditional method is the one which has persisted better.  I still remember more French vocabulary and grammar than I do Portuguese – which may say more about the structured way in which my particular brain works than anything to do with the better way to teach and learn language.