Session 2

Discourses of Educational Development

Dave Bainton

Educational timelines….

Actors?

Priorities

Power

Social impact

Discourses (of educational quality)

What are the shifting discourses of educational quality in your chosen context?

What influences these changing discourses?

(Post)colonialism.. Cycles of response

Narratives of power and response. We cannot but reference the past….

Resistance/development/overcoming the situation that is pre-given.

• Neo-colonialism• Living history• Ghosts• Legacies• Hegemony

Narratives

Write a short narrative of the legacies that are alive in your chosen educational context…and how they connect with something that happens now..

Placing ourselves in this narratives

Matjinge Secondary school, Zim, 1991-94

VSO - Colonialism

Nation – building and school expansion

Agriculture, Building subjects

SAPs – maternal mortality doubling

Philosophically.. We both live out these dominant narratives ( and in doingso, recreate them

Narratives 2

Write a short narrative that places your own experiences in context of a dominant discourse – as teacher, as student, your own, your grandmothers….

International agendas

Three key texts…

• Jomtien (1990) World Declaration on Education For All - Meeting Basic Learning Needs (and framework for Action)

• Dakar framework for Action (2000)

• MDGs

International Policy

1. World Declaration on Education for All–Quality as meeting basic learning needs;–Enhanced environment for learning

(nutrition, health care, and general physical and emotional support).

Discourse Analysis of the text

Key phrases

Is this universal?

Critique…

International Policy

2. Dakar Framework for Action– Says a lot about quality.– Quality at heart of education. Quality

education satisfies basic learning needs, enriches lives.

– Students, teachers, learning methods, learning facilities, curriculum, language of instruction, environment (safe, gender-sensitive), assessment of learning outcomes, management, relationship with community & cultures.

Dakar (2000) EFA Goals• (i) expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and

education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children; • (ii) ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult

circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality;

• (iii) ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programmes;

• (iv) achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults;

• (v) eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls' full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality;

• (vi) improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills.

International Policy

3. MDGs• Say very little about quality

• All children should complete full cycle of primary education.

• Gender parity.

EFA and Quality?

Quality vs. Quantity issue (quality discourse is response to EFA discourse)

Is it feasible to implement quality improvements alongside expansion?

1. Gains in quantity come at cost to quality2.Targets for expansion are unachievable. 3. Is international emphasis on quality being

implemented at country level?

Zones of Exclusion (Lewin 2007)

Lewin (2007) Compare 37(5)

Access-Quality relationship• the majority not enrolled have attended &

dropped out;

• many more enrolled but not attending regularly;

• amongst those enrolled & attending many learning little – ‘silently excluded’;

• Primary enrolment ratios relate to secondary enrolment ratios through teacher supply & impact of transition rates.

GMR 2009 Overcoming Inequality: Why Governance matters

No coincidence that GMR focuses on inequality

Quality/inequality/access/expansion and differential access…

Schooling and social cohesion? Social rupture?

There has been remarkable progress towards someof the EFA goals since the international communitymade its commitments in Dakar in 2000. Some of theworld’s poorest countries have demonstrated thatpolitical leadership and practical policies make adifference. However, business as usual will leavethe world short of the Dakar goals. Far more has tobe done to get children into school, through primaryeducation and beyond. And more attention hasto be paid to the quality of education and learningachievement.

Progress towards the EFA goals is being underminedby a failure of governments to tackle persistentinequalities based on income, gender, location,ethnicity, language, disability and other markersfor disadvantage. Unless governments act to reducedisparities through effective policy reforms, the EFApromise will be broken.

Good governance could help to strengthenaccountability, enhance participation and breakdown inequalities in education. However, currentapproaches to governance reform are failingto attach sufficient weight to equity.

Discussion

Do you agree with the GMR?

What role governance?

Are national governments to blame for not taking inequality seriously enough?

For next time…Quality frameworks

a) Send me your personal piece if not done so already

b) Read,

Barrett,A., Chawla-Duggan, R., Lowe, J., Nikel,J., Ukpo, E. (2006), Review of the ‘international’ literature on the concept of quality in education, Edqual. Available to download at:

http://www.edqual.org/edqual/publications/intlitreview.pdf

c) Either…

write up and send me the narrative that you wrote today (

ORfind one other article that you enjoy on the topic of frameworks for education quality. Write a short review of this article. Send me the reference for the article ( or the article itself) and your review piece.