The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) higher education system has undergone radical change since the perestroika period—the Gorbachev period (1985–1991). Perestroika means restructuring in Russian. In this period, the institutional context of higher education was fundamentally transformed by the major upheavals of the political and socioeconomic institutions of the USSR. The changes in the USSR higher education had a major impact on the higher education of Kazakhstan—a former Republic of the USSR. Thus, to understand the changes in higher education in Kazakhstan, it is important to locate them in the stages of the collapse of the USSR. It could be argued that the “institutional dis/continuities” theory would allow a careful examination of the educational changes in the postsocialist context. The “institutional dis/continuities” of the perestroika period draw on path-dependency and critical juncture concepts within historical institutionalism theory. Perestroika period can be seen as a critical juncture in the historical development of higher education. Also, the policy choices which were made during the perestroika period could establish further path-dependencies in policy-making.
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Institutional Dis/Continuities in Higher Education Changes During the Soviet and Post-Soviet Periods in Kazakhstan
Gulzhan Azimbayeva
Article
Religious and Cultural Diversity in Spanish Education
Sergio Andrés Cabello and Joaquín Giró Miranda
Treatment of cultural and religious diversity is one of the most important debates in education, especially in societies in the first decades of the 21st century, in which globalization processes have led to increased migration. Different models exist for addressing religious and cultural diversity in compulsory education, linked to the different ways of approaching the integration of immigrant groups. The treatment of diversity, equality, and respect for fundamental rights are the axes on which most of these proposals revolve, which in the case of the religious issue acquire specific dimensions by generating a wider debate. In the Spanish case, the treatment of cultural diversity and, fundamentally, religious diversity is situated both within the framework of general conceptions and with particular elements.
The contemporary scenario of how the Spanish educational system addresses cultural and religious diversity is determined from the particular features of Spanish education and the immigration “boom” in Spain in much of the first decade of the 21st century. The evolution of legislation on diversity, the fact that education is a subject for ideological debate, and the need to face the challenge of a new social structure because of immigration, together with the importance of the Catholic Church in Spain, determine to a large extent the way this country has addressed religious diversity. The treatment of religious and cultural diversity continues to generate an important discussion in Spain, based on different theories about the topic.
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International Cooperation for Education in Developing Countries
James H. Williams
This article looks broadly at the intersection of education, development, and international cooperation. It discusses trends in international cooperation in education for developing countries as well as ongoing challenges. Education has expanded rapidly throughout the world. Even so, the industrialized nations are decades if not generations ahead of parts of the developing world in terms of enrollment and learning attainment. For reasons of equity and economic development alone, it is imperative that all efforts be put to the task of achieving universal school enrollment and learning. To achieve such a goal in the context of what some researchers have termed a 100-year gap requires efforts on the part of national governments and international cooperation on the part of all nations of the world. International cooperation in education includes: (1) the institutions and architecture of international organizations; (2) development assistance, which is closely related; and (3) international agreements to promote education and other development goals. In a broad sense, these initiatives can be seen as moving toward increasingly cooperative relationships between wealthier nations and developing countries. International institutions involved in education include various agencies of the United Nations (UNESCO, UNICEF, ILO, UNHCR) as well as multilateral development banks (the World Bank, IMF, IDA, etc.); regional development banks (Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, etc.); and bilateral development agencies. Development assistance is provided in the form of technical and financial assistance to national governments by bilateral development agencies, the multilateral development agencies, UN agencies, as well as an increasing number of non-governmental agencies (NGOs). The UN Declaration on Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child are foundational documents laying out the rights of all children to education and the obligation of governments to ensure children have access to quality education. Several global initiatives have led the way toward increasing educational participation in developing countries, including Education for All, the Millennium Development Goals, the UN Global Education First Initiative, and the Sustainable Development Goals. The article concludes with a listing of trends in educational development.
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International Policies on Inclusion
Bronagh Byrne
The education of children and young people with disabilities and the appropriate form this should take is an issue with which countries across the world are grappling. This challenge has not been assisted by the diverse interpretations of “inclusion” within and between States. The international community, in the form of the United Nations (UN), its associated treaty bodies, and its related agencies have taken on an increasingly critical role in working with countries to develop some kind of global consensus on how inclusion should be defined, its core features, and what it should look like in practice. The conclusions of discussions on these issues have emerged in the form of declarations, treaties, general comments, and guidelines, which countries across the world are expected to adhere to, to varying extents. Together, these constitute a set of international policies and benchmarks on inclusion in an educational context, informing and shaping contemporary national policy and practice. At its core is the underlying principle that children and young people with disabilities have a fundamental right to education without discrimination. Examination of international discourse on inclusion indicates that its meaning, form, and content has become more refined, with increasing emphasis being placed on the quality of inclusive practice as opposed to merely questioning its merits.
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Land Education
Austin R. Cruz
Land education from an Indigenous perspective can be understood as the learning of deep social, political, ethical, and spiritual relationships on and with land. By extension, the approach of land-as-pedagogy applies the understanding that the primary and ultimate teacher is the very land itself. Land education offers scholars and students a nuanced, culturally responsive, and responsible critique of the notion of place and field of place-based education, particularly with regard to historically minoritized students and communities such as Indigenous peoples throughout the world. Building from Indigenous scholarship and drawing connections between global examples of Indigenous relationships to land, the educational implications of land education and land-as-pedagogy compel everyone involved in enacting curricula and pedagogy to center such ideas into all learning irrespective of academic “subject” or discipline. By acknowledging where events, relationships, experiences, and understanding happen, communities and learners are afforded the opportunity to reassess and reaffirm the ontological and epistemological basis that all knowledge is contextualized and that contextualization starts with/in land. Examples of the positive educational outcomes of such curricular, pedagogical, administrative, and educational policy change around land include the affirmation and strengthening of Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty, self-determination, and self-education, as well as the larger enculturation of non-Indigenous learners to more applied, reflexive, and explicit alliances and interdependencies with land and other communities. Repositioning land education and land-as-pedagogy from a marginal to central place within formal and informal education initiates the logical consequence and responsibility of such pedagogy: the complex, ethical, and historically informed process of Indigenous land repatriation.
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Language Rights, Racisms, and Language Education Policy in Angola
Nicolau Manuel
The issue of language is a fundamental factor for redressing social inequalities in education. Language is also central to policy measures and management reflections, on political events and social processes that are often not factored in education policy discussions in Angola. Critical stance affords a growing acceptance of teaching and learning as a complex situated social practice. Critical multiculturalism insights and perspectives on language rights enable theproblematization of the media of instruction policies and how existing education policies downplay the question of inequalities to access quality education based on social class and race in Angolan education. Language education policies in Angola represent colonial legacy. Lusotropicalism ideologies are often used to reinforce colonial social and cultural imaginaries that result in disenfranchised indigenous communities. Thus, in the context of globalization, in which immigration imposes rapid changes in the sociolinguistic landscape of the country, initiatives aiming to promote the use of African languages in education (acquisition planning) might provide an opportunity for people who viscerally suffer from the marginalization of these languages. However, the opportunity to carve out a space for candid debate on the issues of language, social class, and education are fraught with tensions due to the fact that the issue of language, education, and race remains a taboo that has not deserved any systematic attention on the part of the government and educationists in particular. Therefore, complementarity between literacy teaching in African languages and Portuguese might project African languages into the linguistic market, provide privileged planning opportunities, and develop an educational system toward bilingual and multilingual literacy. In the heyday of postnational ideologies, language diversity is an asset that needs to be harnessed through critical engagement and critical multicultural education, while recognizing the role that language plays in enabling and disabling both majority and minority groups to access social, cultural, and economic resources that are necessary for surviving in the increasingly commodified and globalized world.
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Leadership and Teacher Education in Oman
Sulaiman M. Al-Balushi, Mahmoud M. Emam, and Khalaf M. Al'Abri
Leadership is conceptualized in various ways. In general, however, leadership is defined as a transaction between leaders and followers. In 2016, the College of Education at Sultan Qaboos University successfully obtained the international accreditation by the U.S. National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, which is now known as the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation. Such achievement was recognized nationally by policymakers and was commended internationally by expert educators. In fact, the journey toward international accreditation was so challenging that without the contribution of sustained leadership it could not have been completed. The college leadership contributed considerably and played an inspirational role to achieve that goal. In the early stages of the process, the college leadership conducted a thorough needs assessment in which opportunities, assets, and risks were identified before a decision regarding seeking international accreditation was made. When national accreditation was first established in Oman, the college leaders focused on communicating the vision and mission clearly to the college faculty and administrative staff as well as students. This was followed by leading change within the institution through a careful inspection of the resources that could be deployed and the incentives that could successfully promote the new accreditation culture and build positive attitudes. Through forming teams of leaders within the institution as part of the distributed leadership, the college was able to set up an action plan in which various gaps could be covered. The college leadership adopted different approaches to lead the college, its faculty, staff, and students toward the attainment of international accreditation. A combination of distributed, transactional, and transformational leadership approaches was used by the college leadership in order pursue and accomplish accreditation. The college relied on the AASC as a form of distributed leadership. The AASC included faculty members with experience in academic accreditation and assessment and represented focal points for other faculty members. The college leadership restructured the roles and responsibilities of the Heads of Departments as a form transactional leadership to embed accreditation work within the normal flow of operations. The college provided constant feedback on performance, adhered to equity and equality principles, considered personal differences among staff and students, and responded to their diverse needs. As a form of transformational leadership, the college worked on creating the culture for accreditation, stimulating innovation and creativity, encouraging scholarship and research activities, and sharing potential risks. The college sought to build a community of practice by creating a positive collegial atmosphere for teamwork and capacity building. The adoption of a combination of successful leadership styles helped the college to overcome the potential ambiguity and conflict between academic duties of faculty and the demanding tasks of accreditation. Additionally, it helped faculty members, staff, and students to change from being passive observers to positive players. In short, the achievement of international accreditation, though a tough journey, was possible only because the college leaders thought it could come true and worked for it.
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Learning in History
Liliana Maggioni and Emily Fox
At first glance, learning in history might be characterized as committing to memory sanctioned stories about the past. Yet a deeper consideration of this process opens up several questions about the specific features that make the generation of shared knowledge about the past possible and meaningful. Some of these questions regard the very object of such learning: What makes specific aspects of the past historically significant? What relations among people, events, and phenomena are especially salient in fostering understanding of the past? Another set of questions regards the affective and cognitive traits and abilities that characterize a successful learner in history. Researchers from different countries have worked at the intersection between history, history education, and educational psychology, and have investigated how experts and novices address historical questions on the basis of sources provided to them, identifying certain differences in their strategy use, their ability to contextualize information gleaned from the sources, their use of prior knowledge, and their ideas about the nature of historical knowledge and historical evidence. Researchers have also studied the influence that learners’ epistemic beliefs, school curricula, pedagogical practices, testing, and classroom discourse may have on student learning in history. By their variety, these studies have illustrated the complex nature of learning in history and evidenced several tensions among educational goals and between these goals and educational practices in the 21st century.
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Least Restrictive Environment and Students With Disabilities in the United States
Mark C. Weber
This article considers placement in the least restrictive environment (LRE) for students with disabilities in the United States, discussing the LRE concept as it has developed in other contexts and its application to special education. The article describes the legislation that embeds the LRE principle in the delivery of special education services and details its origin, then covers developments in the courts both before and after the legislation was enacted. Finally, the article takes up ongoing controversies over LRE, including whether the principle has been taken too far, problems with implementation, and how the LRE principle relates to issues regarding racial segregation in the schools.
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Experiences of Gender and Sexual Minority Students and Teachers in Catholic Schools
Tonya D. Callaghan and Jamie L. Anderson
Caught between the religious edicts of the Vatican and the secular laws of the state, Catholic schools around the world respond to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) students and teachers in contradictory and inconsistent ways. The oppression of nonheterosexuals in Catholic schools is incongruous in democratic nations such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, which value and protect the individual rights of equality, freedom, and justice. In Canada, Britain, and some Australian states, governments have even offered apologies for historical acts of discrimination against LGBTI people, such as the criminally convicted and those purged from public service and the military for being nonheterosexual. Despite these governmental apologies and other progressive acts of legislation related to student-led gender and sexual orientation alliances and the banning of conversion therapy, Catholic schools still exist in these nations and continue to receive government funding while violating the basic human rights of LGBTI students and staff members. The intolerance toward gender and sexual minority groups could be due to the church’s decree to “love the sinner, hate the sin,” which is untenable for many Catholic students and teachers. As they struggle with how to respond to LGBTI people in their schools, Catholic education leaders tend to abandon the tradition of Catholic teaching involving justice for the weakest and turn instead for guidance to the formidable canonical law on the topic of homosexuality and gender identity. In so doing, they also disregard secular human rights legislation in their jurisdictions. Many people saw great hope in Pope Francis’s welcoming tone toward LGBTI people in 2013, but since then he has made unambiguously anti-LGBTI statements. If this kind of religiously inspired heterosexism in Catholic schools is to be challenged and changed, then it is important to examine how it operates and how widespread it is on a global scale.
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LGBTQ Education Policy
Elizabethe Payne and Melissa Smith
LGBTQ education policy includes federal, state, district, or school policies that specifically name lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer students and families, or those that include gender identity and sexual orientation among enumerated protected categories. Significant areas of LGBTQ education policy include antibullying, antidiscrimination, school discipline, sex education, teacher education, parental notification, gender-aligned facility access, and inclusive curricula. Policies explicitly addressing LGBTQ student experiences are most often written and enacted to address bullying, gender-based targeting, and other safety threats that may lead to school drop-out, self-harm, or other risk outcomes. An ongoing and pressing concern is the dangers and limitations of relying on deficit and risk discourses to create policies that are intended to ease LGBTQ youth paths to educational success.
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LGBTQ+ Students in PK–12 Education
Benjamin A. Lebovitz, Erin K. Gill, Mollie T. McQuillan, and Suzanne E. Eckes
Shifts in the visibility and recognition of LGBTQ+ identity have been accompanied by an evolution in understanding how educational policies, curricula, and environments impact well-being, health, and academic success. Since 2015, landmark decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court recognizing same-sex marriage and expansively defining sex under employment law have been joined by a retrenchment in public opinion as well as federal and state policy. This paradox of both increasing LGBTQ+ visibility and resistance toward LGBTQ+ acceptance has centered LGBTQ+ youth in political debates, with a particular focus on issues related to transgender and nonbinary youth. Historically, the literature on LGBTQ+ students in schools has focused on discrimination and poor social relationships, such as bullying, harassment, and victimization. While situated in a deficit-based framing, students’ reports of negative school environments and their connection to poor academic and health outcomes provide the motivation for policymakers, educators, parents, and other educational stakeholders to invest in structural and social reform efforts. The law has played a prominent role in both the expansion and retrenchment of students’ civil rights in schools, and this has been true for LGBTQ+ students. LGBTQ+ students have experienced many favorable but fluctuating rulings in many courts, so school officials would be wise to keep apprised of the evolving decisions in their jurisdictions.
Educational stakeholders should familiarize themselves with the legal landscape, advocate for inclusive and protective state and local policies, ensure that local district practices protect LGBTQ+ students from discrimination and harassment in schools, leverage LGBTQ+-inclusive community organizations and resources, participate in trainings to improve inclusive school practices, and build LGBTQ+-inclusive facilities, teaching practices, and social supports for youth.
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Listening to Students in Schools
Marilene Proença Rebello de Souza and Silvia Helena Vieira Cruz
Access to education has generally been recognized as a human right. There is a consensus among the various sectors of civil society and government regarding the importance of schooling from the earliest years of life. But only recently have the fields of humanities and education begun to consider the importance of children’s perceptions, representations, and meanings attributed to the school and the educational institutions offered to them. Listening to children at school has drawn the attention of researchers when the right to a democratic school has been extended to more children, aiming at assuring them access to the knowledge socially constructed by mankind as well as access to social and cultural activities. Knowing what children think and feel during the process of schooling and in educational practices is today an important aspect of educational research. The qualitative approach has been shown to be fundamental in listening to very young children on various aspects of their school experience, thus promoting the expansion of knowledge about differing school contexts. However, this listening process presents several challenges for research, including the development of strategies that favor a child’s multiple ways of communicating and the search for solutions related to potential ethical issues. Researching children’s perspectives can provide a basic foundation for better pedagogical practices and public policies with regard to children.
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Marginalizing Palestinians in Historic Palestine (Israel) Through Education
Ilham Nasser and Mohammed Abu-Nimer
The article is an analysis of the Palestinian Arab education system, in particular the curriculum, and ways it was dealt with after the Nakba (Catastrophe) and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The relevant Israeli government policies that impacted the Palestinian minority who remained in historic Palestine are introduced. The authors delve into methods in which the Israeli state managed, and is still managing, the education of this national minority within a Zionist ideological framework embedded with Jewish religious and national values and themes. We describe the mechanisms through which Israel maintains a tight grip on the Palestinian minority through a security management apparatus employed in the education system to monitor teachers’ employment and staffing of those who are friendly and submissive to the policies of the government. Evidence for the continuous attempts to erase the Palestinian national and cultural identity through the curriculum, and textbooks is provided in content such as history, civics, and Arabic language. The authors address the initiatives taken by the Palestinian minority allies to react, resist, and organize. These include efforts to claim back the education space, as in the case of parents offering alternative schooling and nongovernmental entities and initiatives with a purpose of moving the community into a Palestinian self-steering education system. Recommendations on steps and initiatives to elevate the educational experiences and academic attainment of the next generations of Palestinian youth are provided, without denying them their right to learn their national and cultural heritage.
Article
Market Economy, Social Change, and Education Inequality in China
Shibao Guo and Yan Guo
China has experienced major shifts from a centrally planned economy to a market economy, from centralization to decentralization, from state ownership to privatization, and from a decisive state to a weakened state. Despite China’s economic miracle, the country also faces unprecedented challenges, including rising social inequality, rural-urban divide, regional disparity, environmental degradation, declining health and education conditions, and polarization between the rich and poor. China’s profound socioeconomic and political transformations have led to significant fundamental changes to education in China, as manifested in its decentralization, marketization, and privatization. One significant paradigm change relates to the devolution of education power and policy from a centralized governance model to local governments. With the privatization and marketization of its education system, China has adopted a market-oriented approach with the orientation, provision, student enrollment, curriculum, and financing of education. There is sufficient evidence to suggest that there has been a withdrawal of the mighty state from its paternalistic role in the provision and subsidy of public education. Unfortunately, the market economy has further increased education inequalities. The maldistribution of resources and education opportunities raises important questions about issues of social justice and equity regarding who gets how much education as the social good.
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Marketization and Educational Institutions
Pedro Nuno Teixeira
The way education is perceived socially and politically has changed significantly over the last half century. The growing pervasiveness of economic analysis in education has contributed significantly, among other societal and political factors, to a reformulation in the way educational organizations are conceived, particularly due to the economic and social effects of their activity. One of the major dimensions of that change has been the strengthening of a discourse that emphasized the advantages of market and competitive forces over public regulation and of privatization and quasi-private rationales over public ones. Despite significant social and political resistances, the education sector has been experiencing a growing influence of market and competitive forces, and this is particularly visible in the higher education sector. Hence, several policy developments have led to the strengthening of market forces and competition in higher education. This encompasses changes in the contextual conditions through which market forces have been strengthened and the subsequent impact of marketization, competition, and privatization policies at the institutional level. However, this faces resistance, not least due to the peculiarities of educational sectors and institutions, that begs reflection about the potential and limitations of approaching education institutions as economic organizations.
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Masculinities and School Gun Violence in the United States
Samantha Deane
Schools are sites of personal, political, and symbolic violence. In the United States acts of rampage school gun violence, themselves symbolic, are connected to acts of personal violence via the inscription of social gender norms. Carried out by White teenage boys rampage school shootings call us to grapple with the ways in which schools form and discipline gendered subjectivities. Central to the field of masculinity studies is R. W. Connell’s theory of masculinity which draws on a Gramscian theory of hegemony rather than a Foucauldian theory of power. Whereas Gramsci focuses the ways in which power moves down, Foucault studies the impact of small interaction on our subjective sense of self. When addressing the phenomena of rampage school gun violence where White teenage boys target their schools in acts of gendered rage, a Foucauldian theory of power helps us to take seriously the significance of everyday interaction in legitimating gendered ontologies. Jointly Foucault and the contemporary works of Jane Roland Martin, Amy Shuffelton, and Michel Kimmel point towards an avenue that may afford us the opportunity to root out practices and environments wedded to hegemonic masculinity (and thus rampage school gun violence): the everyday celebration of gender-inclusive and egalitarian ways of learning and living.
Article
Meritocracy
Nicholas C. Burbules
Meritocracy is a normative principle directing the distribution of opportunities and benefits based on ability, talent, or effort. It is a central issue in education, which seems centrally concerned with identifying, developing, and rewarding merit. But many have come to doubt the reality of meritocracy, apart from its worth as an ideal; and in a society in which opportunities and benefits (including educational opportunities and benefits) are in fact not distributed based on merit, the belief in meritocracy functions as a kind of legitimating myth. The essay concludes that meritocracy is an ambivalent principle, producing some things that we want and many things that we do not want.
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Mestiza Methodology as a Hybrid Research Design
Amanda Jo Cordova
Chicana feminists such as Maylei Blackwell, Cherrie Moraga, and Anna Nieto-Gómez of the 1960s Chicano Movement called for a gendered critique of racial activism mired in the stultification of Chicana leadership, ultimately galvanizing epistemology and theory grounded in a Chicana way of knowing. In particular, the introduction of a Chicana Feminist Epistemology in the 1990s to the field of education centered the reconciliation and healing of education, knowledge, and knowledge holders dehumanized by the exclusionary logics of colonialism pervasive in educational spaces. Consequently, crafting research methodologies of a Chicana hybrid nature, both locating and healing the fractured embodiment of knowledge educational actors draw upon, is critical to the groundwork of a more socially just educational system. Focused on the hybridity or the duality of knowing and the damage created by the colonial separation of such knowledge from knowledge holders, methodologies must be curated to locate and fuse back together what was torn apart. Mestiza Methodology was developed to locate the liminal space in which Chicanas collectively recount experiences leading to the separation of who they are and what they know in the academic arena as a means to recover, reclaim, and reconcile oneself to the pursuit of an education decolonized.
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Micropolitics in School Leadership
Jane Clark Lindle
The concept of micropolitics in schooling originated in the latter part of the 20th century and contrasted macropolitical analyses of central ministries’ directives, primarily in English-speaking education systems, with more localized forms of governance, as in the United States. Either form of educational governance envelops daily interactions among governmental agencies, school personnel, and stakeholders. As political scientists long have studied macropolitics, sociologists and educationists focused on micropolitics found in schools’ short- and long-term decisions. Typical decisions, which generate micropolitics, include how schools carry on teaching and learning and range from formalized policy implementation to negotiations over scarce resources as big as allocation of teacher–pupil ratios and as momentary and small as distribution of paper and pencils. Given its local focus, scholars of micropolitics assume that the conditions of schooling generate and sustain persistent conflict, and thus they study how such conflict surfaces, who participates, who wins or loses, and what roles school leaders play. Conflicts surround schools’ internal and external communities’ power structures. The power players, groups and individuals, contest the purposes of schooling and work to influence their agenda. These influential moves may reshape macro-policies and directives, making policy implementation a localized project. Internal and external constituencies struggle over resource allocation, frequently under conditions of scarcity, which provides an arena for investigating decision participation. As with studies in macropolitics, the methods vary with the research questions. Because of the high-engagement dynamics in the study of micropolitics in schools, discursive methods that focus on communications, relationships, and media dominate these studies.
