Category Archives: About K-12 International Education News

With both the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), much of the focus for improving education has been on enrolling children in and supporting their completion of primary school. The organization Results for Development reminds that “Despite having made impressive gains in primary and secondary school enrollment over the last few decades, countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have struggled to ensure that all children complete secondary school.” This week, we highlight a study from Results for Development, authored by Results for Development’s Kimberly Josephson, Robert Francis, and Shubha Jayaram. The study “explores lessons on reducing secondary school dropouts from Mexico and Chile and provides recommendations on how decision-makers in the region can counter this challenge.” Robert Francies, also from Results for Development, provides a concise summary of the study. We highlight a few additional sections from the report below.

On the Mexican School System:
Mexico has a near universal transition rate from primary to lower secondary school, and nearly 90 percent of students complete a lower secondary education.2,3 High dropout rates in upper secondary school pose the most significant bottleneck to completing compulsory education in Mexico: 15 percent of young people drop out every year at this level with young men more likely to dropout than young women (17 percent versus 14 percent, respectively) (INEE, 2017). Over the last decade, several reforms have attempted to strengthen the compulsory education cycle, which includes upper secondary school since 2012, and culminated with the recent introduction of a new education model Nuevo Modelo Educativo [New Education Model] in 2017 that aims to disrupt outdated pedagogical practices and make education content more engaging and relevant.

Lessons from Mexico:
Schools inconsistently implemented both initiatives, selecting certain activities and tools as they deem appropriate. This inconsistency could be due in part to overburdened school staff, inherent variation between school systems and limited coordination at the national level. Both Construye T and Yo No Abandono started as large-scale initiatives. Neither program conducted rigorous pilots to test implementation and effectiveness of program activities, which has complicated their ability to scale up effectively.

On the Chilean School System:
Chile has shown remarkable progress in improving access and completion rates at the secondary education level for all students. Between 1990 and 2013, the proportion of youths between the ages of 20 and 24 who completed secondary school increased from 54 to 85 percent (JUNAEB, 2015). Importantly, the lowest-income groups experienced the greatest gains in enrollment over this period; however, economically and socially vulnerable youth still experience much higher rates of school repetition and early exit. The Chilean government has thus executed policies and programs to expand resources to the most vulnerable schools and students. For example, equity-oriented initiatives provide a high amount of funding to schools based on the enrollment of vulnerable students. Similar to Mexico, female students in Chile are more likely to complete secondary education than males (88 versus 82 percent, respectively) (CEN, 2014; JUNAEB, 2014)

Lessons from Chile:
In Chile’s current education governance structure where municipalities operate schools with significant autonomy from the national government, the “outsider” status of Aquí Presente’s psychosocial professionals sparked initial distrust among teachers and staff.8 Eventually, however, this external perspective allowed them to cause disruptive change and gave them more latitude to speak and act freely than other school actors. The effectiveness of Aquí Presente was also seen as attributable to the full-time nature of these professionals, whose sole task was to reduce dropout and improve school conditions. With the 2017 transition of Aquí Presente to ABE, it remains to be seen whether municipalities and schools will use existing resources to hire similarly dedicated staff.

Recommendations:
The recommendations that emerge from the study’s analysis can be placed into five categories. These are areas that warrant particular attention and should be carefully considered during the design and implementation of a strategy or program that seeks to directly or indirectly influence dropout:

→ Quality of learning environments

→ Inclusive and participatory approaches

→ Data and targeting

→ Coordination

→ Investment in school capacity

For related work, IEN has produced posts on Education reform in Mexico and new programs from the CONAFE.

This past June, IEN posted a timeline of the Trump administration’s war on immigrant families and children. This past week, those attacks continued in Trump’s violent rhetoric about a migrant caravan traveling toward the U.S. border. In this post, Managing Editor Jordan Corson, follows up by providing an overview of how immigration and migrant caravan intersects with education issues and sharing some educational resources for educators.

In recent days Trump has tried to use the latest migrant caravan as an opportunity to energize his base of supporters before the mid-term elections. Despite Trump’s focus on the most recent caravan of roughly 6,000 immigrants from Central America, Voices of San Diego’s “Everything you need to know about the migrant caravan, and those that came before” details, caravans are nothing new. The caravans are not simply a product of conditions within home countries but are “often a manifestation of a profoundly unequal and exploitative relationship between countries from which people emigrate and countries of destination,” as this Business Insider article elaborates.  The latest caravan along with others have been supported by Pueblo sin Fronteras (people without borders), an organization dedicated to “reaching out to the most vulnerable immigrants in the United States and to migrants and refugees on the move.” In doing so, they “accompany migrants and refugees in their journey of hope, and together demand our human rights.” An NBC story on the organization provides further details.

Education and the Caravan

There are about 2300 children traveling in the latest caravan. These conditions leading children and families to travel to the U.S. certainly includes schooling and the opportunity to study and attend school in the U.S. The education system in Honduras is underfunded and, as another outlet puts it “People are unable to access education, health care and employment, and violence is ubiquitous. In an interview with France 24, a “migrant, who gave his name as Jaled, said they were marching ‘because there is no work in Honduras, no education, nothing good. The cost of life increases every weekend.’”

Schools in Honduras, the country of origin for many in the latest caravan, face many struggles, including safety concerns and persistently unequal conditions. At the same time, many in Honduras continue to work to improve the country’s education system. Global Partnership highlights changes and plans to improve the education system. A Relief Web piece describes teachers, with the support of the UNHCR, working together to improve the system at a more local level.

Yet, children in this caravan face increasing risks, with recent reports of a child being abducted. Last Friday, Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto announced a new program You Are Home (Estas en tu casa), which offers children a place in Mexican schools. Yet, many in the caravan, however, have decided to continue traveling toward the U.S.

Although many adults and children should be eligible to apply for asylum and its accompanying protections, there is considerable speculation and much uncertainty about what will happen when the caravan reaches the U.S. border. In addition, although children in the caravan enter the U.S. are, at least legally speaking, guaranteed equal access to schools, City Lab reports on the educational crisis that many face once they arrive. Within this uncertainty, it is still clear that those in the caravan are travelling in search of opportunities, including the possibility of a different educational path.

Additional resources that may be useful for classrooms

https://blog.education.nationalgeographic.org/2018/05/02/five-myths-about-the-migrant-caravan/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/what-we-know-about-the-latest-migrant-caravan-traveling-through-mexico

In this post, the editors of the new volume Flip the System UK, JL Dutaut and Lucy Rycroft-Smith, offer an introduction to the main ideas of their work. The book focuses on major issues confronting teachers today and what can be done, through teacher agency, to address these issues. This post is part of the Leading Futures series. Previous Leading Futures posts include a series on Future Directions of Educational Change and Alternative Perspectives on Education Reform.

JL Dutaut and Lucy Rycroft-Smith

Let’s begin with this simple premise: Imagine that your country does not have an education system. As a reformer or as an educational thinker, where do you go from there? What is your priority? How have you determined this priority? The premise is provocative. It invites you to start from scratch, to imagine anew.  Adding in a Rawlsian veil of ignorance might further deepen the thought experiment to include concepts of equity. There should be schools, clearly, but what type of system would support high quality learning and teaching? How should you judge system performance? What agency would teachers have to instigate change and innovation? Your thinking quickly leads you to think of an educational future that is not incumbered by accountability, standardisation and privatisation.

In this thought experiment, you have allowed us to turn you into a politician. You have exercised a whole raft of decision making. In the effort of imagining a new education system, you have considered the consequences you seek, while discounting the strategies unlikely to achieve them. Did you give any thought to the agency of parents, students, employers and communities in your new education system? When the system comes before the people it is designed to serve, democracy has already been de-prioritised.

Who are we then, you might ask, to be publishing a book on system change? And where do we get the audacity to call for the UK’s education system to be flipped?

By ‘flipped’, we mean an ostensibly simple premise:

“Replacing top-down accountability with bottom-up support for teachers.” (Evers and Kneyber, 2016, p. 5)

As teachers in England, we have both suffered the iniquities of being at the sharp end of accountability and decision making in our education system. We found ourselves, and each other, at a dark time in our teaching careers – subjected to the full weight of accountability measures and the dulling grind of questionable professional development. In an effort to find a path back to the realities of the classroom, we met the editors of a book called Flip the System: Changing Education from the Ground Up. This book changed our lives.

Fast forward two years, and we have published our own edition: Flip the System UK: A Teachers’ Manifesto, a book that has added to a global movement and has begun to shift the ground under the feet of policy makers both in the Netherlands and internationally. We are proud to be part of a growing chorus of teachers calling for the re-professionalisation of their work – and to have written a call to collective action for the UK context.

Flipping professional expectations

Flip the System UK: A Teachers’ Manifesto contains 37 chapters by over 40 teachers, headteachers, educational thinkers, researchers and policy makers – and it could have been many more, such was the interest in participating. The book brings people together who often disagree and finds a common cause among them.

“So I started researchED as a conference-based project to bring educators, academics, researchers, policy-makers and everyone else in the eco-system together: to present the best of what they knew, to challenge, discuss and learn.” (Bennett, T. in Rycroft-Smith and Dutaut, 2018, p.7)

“researchED, the brainchild of Sam Freedman (then advisor to Education Secretary, Michael Gove) and doctor/journalist Ben Goldacre (then advisor to the government on research in education) was handed to a high-profile teacher to give it credibility, yet in my opinion its purpose serves the government’s agenda very well.” (Kidd, D. in Rycroft-Smith and Dutaut, 2018, p.65)

Despite disagreement on motives and the very purpose of education, Bennett’s and Kidd’s views on teacher professionalisation offer complementary prisms through which to identify problems and potential solutions. For Kidd, politicians get in the way. For Bennett, they can’t help. Both agree that professionalisation is not only desireable but necessary, and offer unique insights into what it entails.

Not only does flipping the system transcend ideological divides, it also transcends the boundaries of the devolved governments. To a greater or lesser extent, the policy-as-imposition paradigm is the status quo across the UK. In England, it is arguably more advanced but it is unquestionably the case that that professionalism in education has been downgraded and devalued across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland too. The impact on teacher wellbeing, retention and recruitment is evident.

“Today’s report found more teachers are now leaving before retirement than five years ago, and schools are finding it difficult to fill posts with the quality of teachers they need.” (NAO, 2018)

“A growing teacher recruitment crisis is looming unless greater support for teachers is forthcoming, the President of NASUWT Scotland warned.” (NASUWT, 2016)

“Welsh Government figures showed the target for trainee teacher intake in secondary schools and for PGCEs had both been missed in 2015-16. Owen Hathway, Wales policy officer for the NUT, said the pressures and stresses of the job were putting people off entering the profession. […] The Welsh Government said it would be looking into the “downwards trend”..” (Betteley, 2017)

“Speaking ahead of this morning’s conference, Ms McGinley said: “Schools are like pressure cookers about to boil over. Teachers are becoming more and more bogged down and are disappearing under a tsunami of initiatives – target setting, monitoring and evaluating.” (Rutherford, A., 2018)

Whether the cause of this is simply well-intentioned yet fundamentally misguided policy making – or a deliberate and sustained attack on public education from vested interests in the shape of what Pasi Sahlberg calls the Global Education Reform Movement, is irrelevant as far as Flip the System UK is concerned. In their original book, Jelmer Evers and René Kneyber make a strong case that the GERM is a destructive factor, but we feel no need to revisit old ground. Our book is resolutely about finding solutions and arguing for collective professional agency.

This is remarkably simple. It stems from taking the word – professionalism – and defining it, re-appropriating it with and for teachers. Indeed, we might say that we have flipped the very idea of professional expectations, no longer to be expectations of us, but our own expectations as professionals. All we ask is the wherewithal to meet them. The effect can be transformative It leads inexorably to reprioritising the agentic and collective nature of practice.

“An understanding of the nature of collaboration, joint exploration and learning also requires a reformulation of the nature of schools as learning organisations that are democratic, fluid and transformative.” (Gibbs, S. in Rycroft-Smith and Dutaut, 2018, p.133)

Indeed, in taking ownership of our professionalism, it becomes evident that ideas previously vociferously contested can be easily re-framed as complementary. There is room for pluralism in our vision. More than that, the very vociferousness with which they have been argued is revealed as a direct consequence of the disempowerment felt by educational professionals with respect to their professional identity. Disconnected from any effective exercise of power (in our classrooms, our schools or our national policy), teachers compensate by attempting to exercise power over what they can. Pedagogy comes to replace curriculum in educational thinking and ‘what works’ methodology usurps questions of purpose and ethics as passionate teachers take to social media to exercise some sense control over their very identities; such is the lack of agency in UK education.

Of course, methodology matters as much as purpose. Pedagogy matters as much as curriculum. But until we attend to agency in all the ways set out in our manifesto, teaching is doomed to continue to suffer the pendulum swings of political whim.

Five facets of professional agency

In collating the contributions to Flip the System UK, it became evident that there were five distinct facets of agency pertaining to education (pertaining perhaps to all public sector professions). Three, it seemed to us, defined that professionalism while a further two developed the context within which it can take root and flourish.

Defining professionalism

It is our conclusion that professionalism in education stems from:

• cognitive agency – teachers as consumers and producers of professional knowledge;

“Greater research engagement has the potential to lead to a more responsive form of accountability, whereby practitioners continually analyse and modify their own professional processes. Doing so requires teachers to have control over what they do in the classroom, and so the movement towards teacher research engagement has an intrinsic link to teacher agency.” (Firth, J. in Rycroft-Smith and Dutaut, 2018, p.22)

• collective agency – networks of teachers as self-sufficient developers and deliverers of accountability;

“Those of us who continue to regard teaching as a profession and ourselves as embodying professionalism in our classrooms and staffrooms already have a strong sense of internal accountability. Effective leadership, teaching and learning take place when that internal accountability is harnessed and celebrated.” (Clarke, Z. in Rycorft-Smith and Dutaut, 2018, p.40)

• ethical agency – teachers and networks of teachers as democratic, purposeful and community-oriented policy makers.

“Democracy involves shared decion making and building a joint vision through direct, deliberative and representative processes. […] Scholarship provides a means by which – practically and through drawing on evidence and theory – professional communities can menaningfully co-construct a vision. Activism involves building networks and communicating more widely the needs of the profession and the nature of education. Solidarity requires us to imagine our disparate sufferings as a common obstacle to overcome. Ultimately, to flip the system we need to construct our actions with respect to all four” (Watson, S. in Rycroft-Smith and Dutaut, 2018, p.74)

Empowering professionalism

To create the conditions for this radical re-professionalisation of teaching, the social context must be one that fosters:

• political agency – the power of each professional to exercise their voice meaningfully (that is, with impact), to enrich accountability as a two-way flow.

“If more of the readily available expertise in the system was re-admitted into the tiny bubble from which current policy emerges, then ministers might begin to realise that [the education system is not broken and is not in need of urgent substantial change]. A period of ‘benign neglect’ would almost certainly be of greater value to schools, teachers and children than the culturally disconnected, ideologically faith-based hyper-activism we have suffered for the last twenty years.” (Critchley, J. in Rycroft-Smith and Dutaut, 2018, p.184)

• global agency – the power to compare and contextualise policy and practice from teacher to teacher, classroom to classroom, school to school, locally, nationally and internationally, to enrich decision-making at all levels.

“To everyone serious about education as an evidence-based profession for the maximum benefit of all: Reach out and take part! Participate in the live, ongoing multitude of voices – sharing, informing, communicating, collaborating. Do it with an open mind and you will not only get help when you ask for it, but also learn to be a better judge of what you encounter and make better decisions.” (Hjelm, S. in Rycroft-Smith and Dutaut, p.249)

The manifesto advocated by the writers in this book explores professional agency in the UK context, and in a global sense. Contributions from Sweden, the Netherlands, Australia and even a refugee camp in Northern France show powerfully the similarity of the challenges we teachers face, and the importance of subverting hierarchies to solve them.

They are complemented by a host of examples of grassroots collaborations that do just that, often despite the systems within which they operate. Teacher agency must be global, and we must connect across national and international boundaries to ensure we don’t keep repeating the same mistakes in different time zones.

Evolution, not revolution

Flipping the system means evolving and expanding our conception of educational professionalism, and it requires everyone to play their part if we are to avoid going around in circles.

So, let us end with this premise: Imagine that your country does not have an education system. As a reformer or as an educational thinker, where do you go from there? What is your priority? If you’d like to work with us on some solutions, Flip the System UK: A Teachers’ Manifesto is out and you can contact us at http://www.flipthesystem.uk.

Let’s keep the conversation going!

Betteley, c. (2017), available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-40300850

Evers, J and Kneyber, R. (2016), Flip the System: Changing Education from the Ground Up. Abingdon: Routledge.

NASUWT (2016), available at http://edgazette.co.uk/latest-news/unions/nasuwt/nasuwt-scotland-annual-conference-2016/

NAO (2018), available at https://www.nao.org.uk/press-release/retaining-and-developing-the-teaching-workforce/

Rutherford, A. (2018) available at https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/teachers-workloads-turning-northern-ireland-schools-into-pressure-cookers-claims-union-36856539.html

Rycroft-Smith, L. and Dutaut, JL (2018), Flip the System UK: A Teachers’ Manifesto. Abingdon: Routledge.

Dr. Elaine Simmt is a professor in the Department of Secondary Education at the University of Alberta. Her scholarship is in mathematics education. She began her career as a secondary school teacher of mathematics and physical sciences. She completed doctoral studies in mathematics education under the supervision of Dr. Tom
Kieren. Dr. Simmt also serves as Associate Dean and the Co-Director of the Centre for Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education. Dr. Simmt’s research is focused in mathematics education. In particular, she explores teaching and learning as understood through the frames of enactivism and complexity thinking with colleagues Brent Davis, Lynn McGarvey, Jo Towers, Lyndon Martin, Jerome Proulx, Jennifer Thom, Joyce Mgombelo and Florence Glanfield. A second and complementary area of study is centred in teacher education, specifically mathematics-for-teaching. In her most recent work, Dr. Simmt has been involved in international projects in Tanzania and Oman where she and colleagues are working to build capacity for mathematics teaching and learning. Dr. Elaine Simmt can be reached at: esimmt@ualberta.ca

In this interview, part of the Lead the Change Series of the American Educational Research Association Educational Change Special Interest Group, Dr. Simmt talks about her work with mathematics teaching and learning as well as complexity theory. As Simmt puts it:

I explore mathematics teaching and learning in “classroom” contexts. That is, contexts that are complex by even everyday definitions of complexity. While working with data from a 7th grade mathematics class that I had taught, Brent Davis, Dennis Sumara, and I
had been co-teaching courses in cognition and curriculum, and doing in-service work with K-12 teachers. The synergy from these activities resulted in us specifically focusing on learning systems in complexity terms. Particularly we were interested in the emergence of “the class” as a collective learning system (Davis & Simmt, 2003; Davis & Simmt, 2006; Davis, Simmt, Sumara, 2006). This work continues today among a group of colleagues (McGarvey et al., 2018).

This Lead the Change interview appears as part of a series that features experts from around the globe, highlights promising research and practice, and offers expert insight on small- and large-scale educational change. Recently Lead the Change has also interviewed Kristin Kew and Kirsi Pyhältö.

This week, IEN shares a conversation with Dr. Shenila Khoja-Moolji, Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women Studies at Bowdoin College. We discussed her latest book, Forging the Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia (University of California Press, 2018). The book is available for free download here.

Photo credit:  Dennis Griggs/Tannery Hill Studios

IEN: What was the impetus for the book?

Shenila: I had been researching and writing about the convergence on the figure of the girl in international development policy and practice for some time. I noticed that many development campaigns portrayed girls in the global South as not only threatened by poverty, disease, and terrorism, but also as holding the potential to resolve these problems. Education was often presented as that ‘silver bullet’ that would help girls overcome any issue they faced. I explored if girls really were the key to societal progress, and contemplated on the kind of girlhood that was portrayed as being desirable. Crucially, I wrote about how the burden of development and ending poverty was being shifted to black and brown girls, without any due consideration to how poverty is political and an effect of historical relations of power.

As I did this work, I was reminded of how this girl resembles her predecessor, the “Moslem woman” or “Musalman woman” who, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in colonial India, emerged as a figure to be saved from backward cultural practices of purdah, seclusion, early marriage, and religious superstitions. We find writings where colonial administrators, Christian missionaries, as well as Muslim social reformers—for different reasons—claimed that education would save/civilize/reform native women.

So, in the book, I decided to track these multiple articulations of the figure of the ‘educated girl’ in the context of Muslim South Asia during the last 100 years or so. In a way, I wanted to discover her allure and promise.

IEN: Can you offer an overview of the book?

The book is a genealogy of the figure of the educated girl and it is situated in the context of colonial India and postcolonial Pakistan. I have organized the book into three time-periods—the turn of the twentieth century, the early decades after the political establishment of Pakistan, so the 1950s and 1960s, and the turn of the twenty-first century. I explore a broad range of texts: novels, political speeches, government documents, periodicals, advertisements, television shows, and first-person narratives, with an eye to examining how the figure of the ‘educated girl’ is being conjured: What are rationales given for women’s and girls’ education? What is the ideal curriculum for girls? What are imagined as the most suitable spaces for girls’ education?

I found that calls for girls’ education are often entangled with other societal goals. During the turn of the twentieth century, for instance, women were to be educated so that they could signal a respectable status for their families; after the establishment of Pakistan, women and girls were to be educated in order to become ‘scientifically-inclined mothers’ or ‘daughter-workers’ and by doing so contribute to the development of the state and family; and since the turn of the century, girls are called on to educate themselves and become flexible workers for the neoliberal economy.

Of course, there is a lot more going on in the book. For instance, I discuss how it is crucial to pay attention to social class; that there are different expectations for girls from different economic backgrounds. I also trace the rise of mass schooling as a central institution for disseminating knowledge and how this shift has elevated particular forms of knowledges over others. Finally, there is also a discussion of how over the course of the century different kinds of dispositions and practices of women have come to signify respectability, and how they are linked with advancing the welfare of the patriarchal state and family.

IEN: Can you say more about the expansion of mass schooling?

Well, the book traces how the institution of the modern school, with its systems of learning, bureaucratic administration, and examinations, gradually becomes the hegemonic institution for educating young people. The modern school has displaced the multiple community-centered and home-based educative spaces that were prevalent in colonial India. In doing so, it disturbed some of the ways in which the elite reproduced their privilege through education but replaced it with new hierarchies. For instance, it was “English schooling” that conferred upward mobility through access to the British administrative apparatus and exposure to Victorian norms.

Schooling in contemporary Pakistan, like elsewhere, is viewed as a pathway to obtaining jobs. For low-middle-class girls – who were the subject of my study, as you know in chapter four – schooling, unfortunately, did not really deliver on its promises. This group of girls desired more vocational education, which has been excised from formal schools. So the book also traces the promises and failings of mass schooling for girls of a particular socio-economic class.

IEN: With whom is the book talking?

The book is primarily aimed at an academic audience in the fields of gender studies, South Asian studies, and international education. However, I also think that it would be a useful read for development policymakers and practitioners to situate the current enticement of the figure of the girl.

IEN: What does it/can it say to policymakers / how might it be of use to policymakers? What possibilities are offered for policymakers and the like?

The purpose of a genealogy is to de-stabilize taken-for-granted categories and truths. So my hope would be that the book compels policymakers and practitioners, particularly those in the field of girls’ education, to interrogate some of the assumptions around girlhood and education. In particular, it calls on them to pay attention to the range of meanings that are often subsumed in calls for girls’ education. These meanings are frequently linked to reproducing particular privileges; in the book for instance, I focus on the reproduction of social class and masculine privilege. So I would hope that the book serves as a case study so policymakers and practitioners can engage in similar analyses in relation to other contexts.

Last week in New York City, the UN held the 73^rd session of the General Assembly. Though many headlines focused on stories like diplomats laughing at Donald Trump’s claims, education featured prominently in many sessions. “Education really came of age at this year’s UNGA,” Joseph Nhan-O’Reilly,  Save the Children ’s head of education policy and advocacy was quoted as saying in Devex ’s review of education stories. That review described a series of announcements of new investments as well as a high level meeting on refugee education. Among education issues, a renewed focus on girls education emerged as the most prominent theme.

Canada, Kenya, Niger, Jordan, France, and the UK released a joint statement on ensuring that the world “leave no girl behind”

Coverage focused both on speeches that reinforced the message and the potential impact of new initiatives for girls’ education:

• French President Macron focused part of his speech on girls’ education
• British Prime Minister May spoke at an event for girls’ education
• An article from Kenya about educational equality and conflict
• Another article focusing on the British Foreign Secretary and Kenyan Education Minister co-chairing the platform for girls’ education meeting
• NGOs and other organizations lauded the commitment as a “milestone”

Of course, other headlines remind that nations, multilaterals, and organizations have already taken up many campaigns for girls’ education in recent decades. Furthermore, headlines on girls’ education have not exclusively focused on the commitments coming from UNGA. Just yesterday, for example, it was reported that $600 million of World Bank money intended for girls’ education had not been used.

For more information, we have provided some organizations focused on girls’ education:

A list of organizations working specifically in India

A broader list of organizations around the world

The UN’s girls’ education initiative

The Plan International page for girls’ education, which includes facts and ways to take action

Dr. Kristin Kew serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Management and Development at New Mexico State University. Dr. Kew’s teaching and research interests include educational change, school reform, community organizing, and the principalship. She has taught at all levels of schooling and assisted in the creation and management of educational leadership networks. Dr. Kew was awarded the College of Education Service Award and the Dean’s Teaching Award. She is serving as the Chair of the Educational Change Special Interest Group through the American Educational Research Association. Her new anthology, co-edited with Helen Janc Malone and Santiago Rincon-Gallardo, and published in 2018 by Routledge is titled, The Future Directions of Educational Change: Social Justice, Professional Capital, and Systems Change. Dr. Kew may be reached at kew@nmsu.edu

In this interview, part of the Lead the Change Series of the American Educational Research Association Educational Change Special Interest Group, Dr. Kew talks about her work with the Educational Change SIG and her transnational research on immigration and education. As Kew puts it:

I am doing some transnational research in this area of the NM/Mexico border as many
pK-12 students come across every day for school. Around 850 students make a one-hour
trip across the border, passports in hand. They are U.S. born but their parents are not citizens so they send their children to get a public education in the states. Crossing is a pretty normal phenomenon for those living near the southwest border as families have been visiting one another for generations. As per the census count in 2017, 48% of the
population in New Mexico is Hispanic, 37% White, 11% is Native American, 3% Black or
African-American, and 2% Asian.

Our faculty and graduate students in Educational Leadership and Administration
choose to conduct their research on immigration, transnational students, bilingual
and multilingual education and leadership, culturally relevant pedagogies and identity,
and culturally and linguistically responsive instruction and leadership. New Mexico was the first state in the U.S. to have a bilingual multicultural law (1973). The law was expanded in 2004, making the state an exemplar. There are also a number of indigenous languages spoken in New Mexico and these are also recognized in the bilingual/ multilingual law.

Regarding immigration and educational leadership in this area, schools are a safe
haven for students in New Mexico. School leaders and teachers do not ask or share
documentation information on their students with U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) http://www.aps.edu/about-us/policies-and-procedural-directives/procedural-directives/j.-students/immigrant-students-regardless-of- documented-status.

Deportation is a fear for many and there are thousands of children separated from their families because of raids. Everyone in the community, and country, is affected some way by what is happening on our borders. For more information and updates on the current immigration policy in the U.S, one of our SIG partners, International Ed News, has a wealth of information on their site.

This Lead the Change interview appears as part of a series that features experts from around the globe, highlights promising research and practice, and offers expert insight on small- and large-scale educational change. Recently Lead the Change has also interviewed Kim Fong Poon-McBrayer and Kirsi Pyhältö.

**This week, we are re-blogging the third part of a recent series from Larry Cuban‘s blog on School Reform and Classroom Practice. The first two posts in this series deal with education reformers’ attempts to get rid of the “grammar of schooling” within the U.S. This post pursues a similar theme but with a more international focus.

Take your pick of above quotes (or choose both) and you have the kernel of the story of progressive reformers actively trying to alter traditional teaching and school practices over the past century.

Well, at least part of the story since binary choices, the either/or dichotomy of success or failure omit the creation of hybrids, mixes of progressive and traditional classroom practices that have occurred over the past century in the U.S. and internationally.

Parts 1 and 2 of this series describe many attempts of progressive reformers to get rid of the “grammar of schooling” or reduce its effects on teaching and learning. These efforts, at best, have created hybrids (see here and here) and,at worst, have signally failed (see here and here).

Part 3 looks beyond the U.S. experience to see what has occurred internationally since the ideas of John Dewey and his acolytes about teaching and learning have entered many nations outside of North America.

In Classroom Change in Developing Countries: From Progressive Cage to Formalistic Frame (Springer, 2011), Australian academic and consultant Gerard Guthrie has synthesized many research studies and evaluations on the influence of progressivism in developing nations and largely found few traces of these reforms altering traditional ways of teaching and learning. That is, “formalism” in teaching and learning–Guthrie’s phrase for teacher-centered instruction–remained intact after determined efforts were made in African, Asian, and Oceania nations to introduce progressive education. Guthrie focuses on the risks connected to the error-filled assumption–what he calls the “progressive education fallacy”–that inquiry-based classroom practices are necessary to promote academic learning among non-western school children. He also lays out the strengths of traditional and didactic teaching. He concludes that the primary reason for continuity in traditional ways of teaching and learning in these nations spanning continents is the abiding cultural context of these nations favorable to teacher-centered instruction.

In his study, Guthrie has chapters on the Confucian tradition in education in China and efforts to introduce progressive classroom practices in African nations such as Botswana, South Africa, Namibia,and Tanzania. The bulk of the evidence he provides (research studies and evaluations) to support his case of traditional teacher-centered instruction overcoming top-down mandates to shift classroom practices to student-centered ones is found in Papua New Guinea, where he has had extensive first-hand experience.

One excerpt illustrates Guthrie’s summary of studies on teachers in Papua New Guinea responding to progressive-driven reforms amply funded and mandated by ministry of education officials.

One caveat about the evidence Guthrie provides. Classroom studies where researchers observe, interview, and document both stability and change in teaching practices are few and far between. The above excerpt, however, includes such direct classroom research.

Now what does any of this have to do with the “progressive arc’ of reform in U.S. schools that I laid out in Parts 1 and 2?

I see similarities and omissions.

Similarities

First, the pattern that Guthrie found in developing nations of top-down curricular and instructional mandates to shift classroom practice from teacher-centered to student-centered has occurred in the U.S. on at least two occasions. Between the 1920s-1940s, and the 1960s-1970s, determined efforts to introduce new progressive curricula and teaching practices happened across the U.S. in big city, suburban, and rural schools. A few researchers using historical sources such as photos, teacher and student diaries, lesson plans, and journalist descriptions have documented the minimal changes that occurred across classrooms (see here and here).

Second, Guthrie documents the failure of progressive methods to transform  traditional teaching practices and recommends that existing traditional practices be improved rather than dismantled.

Among U.S. reformer ranks this suggestion has been made many times, particularly since the 1960s when nearly 90 percent of all students attended public schools. Divisions do exist among reformers some of whom wish to dump the existing system and erect new ones. Most reformers, however, seek improvements in the present system including building the capacities of teachers and supporting their  professional growth to carry out incremental changes in schools and classrooms.

Omissions

Researcher Guthrie omits other possible explanations for “failure” of “progressive” reforms. His argument is clear: cultural context determines the fate of “progressive” reforms especially for those instructional policies out of sync with historical and cultural setting in which the reforms appear.

The first omission is flawed implementation of these top-down reforms. Researchers have pointed out (see here and here) the complexity of putting policies aimed at classroom instruction into practice. Moreover, that complexity often leads to some policies being inadequately and partially implemented. When that occurs the validity of the innovation or new program can not be assessed as worthwhile or worthless. Yes, in summarizing the studies and evaluations of other researchers, the idea of errors made in implementing the policy is mentioned, but the center of gravity in Guthrie’s argument rests on his claim that failed “progressive” reforms occurred because they were incompatible with the culture of the developing nation.

The second omission is instances of teachers creating mixes of old and new ideas and practices. Hybrids of traditional and “progressive” practices have happened among U.S. teachers over the past century (e.g., spread of small group activities in teacher-centered classrooms). At various places, Guthrie notes such occurrences but largely ignores the common practice of teachers throughout the world maintaining their dominant ways of teaching yet incrementally changing daily practices by incorporating ideas they believe will work with their students.

Guthrie’s study of the “arc of progressivism” and the strong influence of a “grammar of schooling” in developing nations gives the often parochial study of U.S reform-driven policies aimed at classroom practices a global perspective. And for Guthrie’s focus on the importance of context in shaping teachers’ responses to top-down mandates, classroom researchers owe him a thank you.

Schools around the world get started at different times of year (this Wikipedia page offers a calendar with a partial list) but here in New York City students head back to school in September.  Therefore, we did a quick scan to see what’s being written about the start of school in different places.

Around the World

An article describing different back-to-school traditions from around the world (Business Insider)
9 back-to-school traditions from around the world

National Geographic recognized the return to school with a fascinating collage of photos of classrooms from around the world (National Geographic)
These Vintage Pictures Celebrate School Around the World

Another perspective about students going back to school around the world, describing UNICEF’s work to help children go to school in the face of adversity (Independent)
Top of the class: Children go back to school around the world

Similarly, this UNICEF report on conference in the Lake Chad Basin provides a reminder that millions of children around the world remain unable to go to school.
Education at risk for more than 3.5 million school-aged children in the Lake Chad Basin

Canada

Some basic tips on adjusting back to the daily school routine (CBC)
Back to school? Here are some tips to help you and your kids get back to sleeping easy

As they head back to school, families face an increasing burden of paying for everything from school supplies to extra-curricular activities (CBC)
Back-to-school bills and unexpected fees dividing classes, says youth advocate

 An article about how British Columbia is set to start off the new school year facing a teacher shortage (CBC)
B.C. short 250 teachers as new school year begins

Introducing a new sex-ed program in Quebec (CBC)
3 Quebec school boards say they’re ready to teach new sex-ed program

Palestine

Even as they face a funding crisis, half a million children headed back to school in Palestine (Their World)
Day of celebration as Palestinian children go back to school amid funding crisis

France

Some new education reforms as students return to school in France (The New Republic)
The French Plan to Fix Inequality—by Ignoring It

France has banned mobile phones from schools this year (The Strait Times)
Back to school for French kids, without their phones

Greece

Many new teachers to address the teacher shortage (Greek City Times)
Schools in Greece start their first day of the new school year

UK

A poll finds that as students in England head back to school, nearly half fear returning as a result of bullying (Telegraph)
Half of children worried about returning from school holidays because of bullying, poll finds

The BBC offers a short quiz to help parents and students get ready for heading back to school (BBC)
Back to school: How much do you know?

USA

An article from the Brookings Institution about different issues to watch in the new school year (Brookings)
As kids go back to school, these are the education story lines experts are watching 

A back-to-school reminder of persistent school segregation across the country (Hechinger)
Take a closer look at those back-to-school photos: Is something missing?

An article about tech trends for the new school year (Ed Surge)
10 Inspired Tech Trends Every Teacher Should Know About

Students in a number of districts are returning to a new schedule as some schools are set to begin later in the day
Students catch extra winks with later start times for new school year (Burrell school district, Pennsylvania)
Students Head Back To School, Some With New Start Times (CBS, St. Paul, Minnesota)

However, many schools have started earlier in the year, including a few places starting before Labor Day for the first time
Back to school coming earlier for more Michigan students (Michigan)
Elected officials, students, families rings the bell to start off new school year (Philadelphia)

In Tacoma, WA students will not head back to school as teachers strike for better pay (USA Today)
Teachers are striking again; in Tacoma, they’re prepared to picket for weeks
Students in Los Angeles are already back in school, but teachers have authorized a similar strike (LA Times)
L.A. teachers authorize strike as tensions rise

Teachers and other school employees in Chicago face issues with receiving clearances (Chalkbeat)
Chicago schools start Tuesday, but 511 employees don’t have clearance yet

New York and Virginia have added teaching about mental health to their curriculum (Governing)
New School Year, New Mental Health Lessons: 2 States Now Require It

In New York City, the chancellor and mayor opened the year emphasizing equality (Wall Street Journal)
NYC Chancellor, Mayor Greet School Year, Emphasizing Equity

Also in New York City, as teachers head back to school, social media plays an increasingly important role (Chalkbeat)
New York City teachers head #backtoschool, both in real life and on Twitter

Iceland

Some information and statistics about students starting and heading back to school in Iceland (Iceland Monitor)
Back to school today

As students in New York transition back to school from the summer break, IEN founder Thomas Hatch shares a post that explores how Singapore works systematically to connect learning outside of school with learning inside school.

This post initially appeared on thomashatch.org

Workshop spaces at the National Gallery Singapore (Photo Credit: Thomas Hatch)

The constant emphasis on Singapore’s high performance on educational tests masks the extent to which Singapore continues to try to improve the educational system. Since the launch of the “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation” campaign in 1997, Singapore has pursued a series of initiatives to shift the system to provide a more holistic education that supports the development of 21^st Century skills and learning throughout life.  As the Education Minister (for Higher Education and Skills) Ong Ye Kung recently explained “more emphasis should be placed on teaching students critical soft skills — such as building up their resilience to be able to fail and pick themselves up — and also helping students discover what they are passionate about.”

Until my last trip to Singapore, however, I did not understand the extent to which the Singaporean government supports efforts to create new kinds of learning opportunities outside of schools in order to achieve these national education objectives. Although concerns about an overload of afterschool tutoring persist, the Singaporean government actively aligns and connects work in the “outside of school” sector with efforts to expand the focus of learning in schools.

“Co-curriculars” and camps

The Singaporean education system has a well-known academic focus that has spawned fears about the consequences of excessive testing and rote learning. Yet the “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation” effort also supports a series of initiatives designed to create spaces and opportunities for more holistic approaches to students’ development.  In particular, Singapore has developed a set of co-curricular activities at the end of the school day designed to foster the development of a wide range of abilities. While in the US, extra-curricular activities are largely locally determined, the Ministry of Education in Singapore requires every secondary student to participate in at least one of these co-curricular activities, including clubs and societies, physical sports, uniformed groups (such as the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts), and visual and performing arts groups.  To reinforce the importance of these activities, students are assessed on their performance in their co-curricular activities, based on a framework that emphasizes Leadership, Enrichment, Achievement, Participation, Service (LEAPS).  Students can even boost their chances for placement in post-secondary institutions and get “bonus points” for assessments of ‘Excellent’ or ‘Good’ in their co-curriculars.

Reflecting the increasing attention to students’ holistic development, the Ministry of Education in Singapore also recently established a National Outdoor Adventure Education (NOAE) Master Plan. That plan mandates that starting in 2020 all secondary students will participate in a 5-day outdoor adventure camp.  Carried out in a collaboration between the Ministry of Education and Outward Bound Singapore, the program is designed to immerse students in “authentic and often challenging situations, where they need to work in teams and learn to take responsibility for decisions they make.”

S’pore Discovery Center (Photo Credit: Thomas Hatch)

Learning Journeys

On top of the co-curriculars and camps, the Ministry of Education (MOE) also created what they called “Learning Journeys” in 1998. Learning Journeys are “experiential and multi-disciplinary learning trips” that students make to learn about key national institutions and heritage sites. Learning Journeys complement curriculum in subjects like Social Studies, History and Geography, they were conceived specifically to support the goals of National Education and to help students understand and appreciate the role that these institutions and sites play in Singapore’s development.  The National Education initiative first established in 1997 seeks “to develop national cohesion, the instinct for survival and confidence in the future” by helping students develop an “awareness of the facts, circumstances, and opportunities” of Singapore’s history and current realities and to help students “develop a sense of emotional belonging and commitment.”

While schools can create their own Learning Journeys, the Ministry of Education has invited a host of government agencies and other institutions to serve as Learning Journey partners.  For example, the Energy Market Authority (responsible for maintaining Singapore’s energy supply) offers five different Learning Journeys including “Gas It Up” and “Clean and Green.” These Journeys take students behind the scenes to local energy facilities “to bring engineering concepts to life and interest students to seek out a career in the Power sector.”

There are now over 50 Learning Journey partners including the Maritime and Port Authority, the Singapore Stock Exchange, and the Public Utilities Board.  In the process, the government both encourages these organizations to use their resources to support schools and provides schools with the funds they need to pay for these out-of-school experiences.  In addition, every year the Singaporean government deposits about $200 in an Edusave account for each Singaporean child enrolled in schools funded by the Ministry of Education. Those funds can be used for a variety of educational resources and enrichment activities including Learning Journeys and educational trips overseas.

As a result of the government’s investments, a whole group of not-for-profit and for-profit organizations have gotten into the act by offering Learning Journeys and other enrichment activities. For example, the Singapore History Consultants have developed a wide range of Learning Journeys for different age groups that focus on topics like “Our Journey to Nationhood” and “The Dark Years: World War II & Singapore under Japanese Occupation.”  The offerings of the History Consultants are designed both to appeal to students but also to be relatively easy for teachers and schools to implement: while teachers and schools can design their own field trips, they can also purchase packages that include, as the History Consultants put it, “worksheets, air-conditioned transport, and tour facilitators/chaperones.”

The initiatives of organizations like the National Heritage Board (NHB) also illustrate the extent of support for education outside of school in Singapore.  The National Heritage Board is a statutory board established in 1993 as the “custodian of Singapore’s heritage”, which has also taken on responsibilities for the development and maintenance of many of Singapore’s museums and historical sites. (Statutory boards in Singapore are autonomous government agencies often designed to spur economic development in particular sectors).  The National Heritage Board has pursued those goals by using funds allocated by the government as well as funds raised through its own institutions to foster a wide range of educational activities that help to connect work in schools with work in the institutions overseen by the NHB.  For example, the NHB has helped to fund the development of education departments within museums and they have also offered grants and encouragement for smaller galleries and other organizations to create programs for students and the general public that help “tell the Singapore story” and accomplish their mission.

The NHB has also helped to fund the development of Heritage Trails, which local organizations create to highlight particular aspects of Singaporean history and culture. Among the many trails, a “Spirit of Saving Lives” Trail winds through the grounds of the Singapore General Hospital and introduces visitors to Singapore’s medical history. The Singapore Council of Women’s Organizations also offers a trail dedicated to “Walking in the footsteps of our foremothers” to highlight the contributions of women to the development of Singapore. The National Heritage Board’s efforts also include support for schools to adopt nearby heritage trails, to train their students to serve as trail guides, and to incorporate the trail’s educational opportunities directly into their school curriculum. More recently, the NHB has provided funding for schools to create their own Heritage Trails and Heritage Corners.  In turn, the efforts of the National Heritage Board have helped to encourage other governmental organizations and statutory boards, like the Urban Redevelopment Authority, the National Parks Board, and neighborhood groups to get into the act and develop their own Trails.

Beyond Schools: Museums and Discovery Centers

In addition to the co-curriculars, camps, and Learning Journeys that come directly under the purview of the Ministry of Education, the Singaporean government also fuels the work of a wide range of other public and quasi-public entities that support students’ development and help to integrate educational initiatives across sectors. Government agencies, particularly the Ministry of Community, Culture and Youth (MCCY), and groups like the National Arts Council provide funding for educational activities that serve the objectives of Singapore’s education system. For example, Singapore’s National Gallery also receives funding from the Ministry of Community, Culture and Youth and corporate sponsors to support educational activities including field trips and workshops.  Many of those programs are offered to schools for free, but schools can get grants from the National Arts Council to pay the National Gallery to provide more customized “in-school” programs. In turn, the National Gallery staff develop their programs with an eye to both the national curriculum established by the Ministry of Education and the National Gallery’s own mission, vision, and special exhibitions.

The S’pore Discovery Center (SDC) provides another example of the way that cultural and national institutions support Singapore’s educational goals. Launched initially by the Ministry of Defence as a museum to showcase the history of Singapore Armed Forces, the SDC has now evolved into a multi-faceted “Discovery Center” and “edu-tainment” complex (complete with paintball, a “4D thrill ride”,  “Crisis Simulation theatre,” and a first-run movie theatre) that also plays a key role in supporting Singapore’s goals for National Education.

In addition to infusing National Education topics and goals across the school curriculum, the Ministry of Education has also fostered National Education through active participation and experiential learning in informal settings outside of school.  The S’pore Discovery Centre has been a natural partner in those efforts. With a mission To “Share the Singapore Story and inspire a desire to contribute to Singapore’s future,” the S’pore Discovery Centre offers a series of interactive exhibits that give students opportunities to explore Singapore’s governance and values and current affairs as well as Singapore’s future. Permanent exhibits like Dream Lab gives visitors a chance to learn about Singapore’s future plans while Harmony Circle features a game show with questions about Singaporean culture.  Those exhibitions also include a roster of changing activities linked to four commemorative events held on an annual basis to celebrate key events and values.  These include Total Defence Day, International Friendship Day, Racial Harmony Day, and National Day.  The Discovery Center also develops a variety of “outreach” programs, including travelling exhibitions that schools can choose to bring right into their classrooms as well as partnerships that engage students in becoming guides to the exhibitions.

Coherence and constraints inside and outside schools

Far beyond the kind of “1000 flowers bloom” philosophy often found in the US, what Pak Tee Ng and others have called the Singapore government’s “centralized-decentralization” approach seeds “ground-up” initiatives (what those in the US might call “grass-roots” efforts); but it also creates a context of support and pressure that reinforces alignment with national education and coherence across initiatives. In many cases, government agencies (or quasi-government agencies like Statutory Boards) provide some (but not all) of the funding for these activities, often in the form of seed investments or grants and awards linked to Singapore’s national goals.  As a result, as investors, the government has some influence over the work, but these organizations also have to develop their own sustainable business plans and their own sources of revenue.

The government ministries, statutory boards, and institutions like the National Gallery and the S’pore Discovery Center also have advisory or governing boards with members drawn specifically from different sectors (this is similar to the governance of entities like eduLab in Singapore that I wrote about earlier).  Having board members from different ministries, industries, academia, and other institutions helps support cross-sector communication and information sharing. For example, while the S’pore Discovery Centre operates under the aegis of the Ministry of Defence, it has a board that includes members from other government agencies including NEXUS (the Central National Education Office) and the Ministry of Education as well as from other organizations in the public and private sector.

Pressure and support also comes from Singapore’s embrace of many of the principles of Total Quality Management and performance management, particularly a focus on customer service. That embrace includes the use of a variety of customer surveys by organizations like the Discovery Centre and the National Gallery. At the same time, the Ministries of Education, Defence, and Community, Culture, and Youth, and the National Heritage Board also get feedback on the work of these organizations through nationwide surveys like the National Education Orientation Survey and the Heritage Awareness Index.  As a consequence, the S’pore Discovery Centre and the National Gallery have to figure out how to fulfill their goals in ways that satisfy the government agencies with which they are associated, and they have to respond to the demands of their customers and attract children, schools and families in a competitive marketplace with a wide range of public and private vendors.

Some constraints, however, come along with the close connections between the work inside and outside the education system. In particular, despite the interest in supporting more holistic development, this work outside of school still faces the reality that the most popular programs are usually those most closely tied to the academic topics covered in high-stakes tests.  This is a particular challenge for institutions like the Discovery Centre that focus on National Education, which is not a tested subject.

Nonetheless, the systemic support and pressure in Singapore means that an extensive, well-resourced, and aligned set of educational opportunities outside of schools surrounds an already focused and coherent public education system. Furthermore, that coherence is achieved even though many of those learning opportunities outside of school are not overseen directly by the Ministry of Education.  That coherence and coordination benefits from the mix of government funding and competition for those educational opportunities, the many organizational and personal connections across institutions and sectors, and the focus on customer service and the embrace of feedback throughout.

Singapore Botanic Garden (Photo Credit: Thomas Hatch)

— Thomas Hatch