FreshEd

We’ve talked a lot about PISA on this show. Today we take a fresh look at the test, digging into the specifics about how the test is created and what the results can tell policy makers and teachers. My guest today is Sam Sellar, a reader in Education Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University and a Director of the Laboratory of International Assessment Studies. He has recently co-written with G...

A group of Yale graduate students are protesting their labor conditions as teachers. They are demanding the administration recognize them as a union and negotiate their contract as full employees of the university. After all, graduate students teach many undergraduate classes. But the administration is stalling, waiting for Donald Trump to appoint an anti-union National Labor Relations Board that,...

Today we look at the globalization of curriculum markets with Professor Catherine Doherty. Catherine uses the example of the International Baccalaureate Diploma in Australia to think about the movement of global curriculum inside local markets. Why do schools choose to include global curricula like the IB? And what impact do these new curricular offerings have on educational choice both locally an...

Today we discuss human rights education with Monisha Bajaj. Monisha, has recently edited a book entitled Human Rights Education: Theory, Research Praxis, which was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. In our conversation, we discuss the origins of human rights education, its diverse range of practices, and the ways it has changed overtime. We also discuss the challenges to Human Righ...

What’s the relationship between test scores and gross domestic product? Do higher test scores lead to higher GDP? This question may seem a bit strange because most people think about the value of education on a much smaller, less abstract scale, usually in terms of “my children” or “my education.” Will my children earn a higher wage in the future if they do well on school examinations today? If I...

I hated tests growing up. They made me feel physically ill. But we aren’t going to look at the types of tests I disliked so much, those given by a teacher to her or his students. We aren’t even going to look at standardized tests administered across one country. Instead, today’s show focuses on tests that are administered around the world. We call these types of tests international large-scale ass...

Have you ever visited schools like Eton College in the United Kingdom, St. Albans in the United States, or Geelong Grammar School in Australia? Maybe you were among the lucky few to have attended one. These schools are primarily reserved for children from the most privileged families, members of the 1 percent, as we would say today. The schools are steeped in tradition, covered in oak and ivy, and...

Can education be used to create peace? Can it help mend long standing issues in conflict afflicted regions? These questions don’t have easy answers, but we’ll jump into the debates surrounding them feet first. My guests today, Mieke Lopes Cardozo and Ritesh Shah, have been studying education, social transformations, and peacebuilding for the past decade and have worked and written together since 2...

One of the primary goals of education is to prepare youth for the labor market. This task is infinitely difficult because economies are constantly changing. What will the global labor market look like in 30 years and how will it impact specific countries? It’s impossible to know for sure, which therefore makes deciding which skills to teach inside national school systems difficult to pinpoint. It’...

For the past few years, the Globalization and Education Special Interest Group of the Comparative and International Education Society has hosted an annual keynote address focused on cutting edge issues in the study of globalization and education. In early March at the CIES conference held in Atlanta, Fazal Rizvi gave the annual address. Fazal Rizvi is a well-known and prolific scholar on issues re...

The field of Global Studies has a similar historical trajectory as the field of comparative education. Both fields in the American context were formalized in the 1950s during the Cold War and expanded in the 1980s when scholars “began to take note of the rapidly increasing transnational flows of people, ideas, and products, and the social, political, economic, and cultural consequences of these tr...

Rwanda is perhaps most well-known for the genocide it experienced in the 1990s. In its post-conflict development, the country has had to balance colonial legacies, state centralizing tendencies, and the zeitgeist of neoliberalism. This has made for a careful balancing — one that has left the government regulating the society and economy while simultaneously reducing its responsibility to citizens....

The Globalization and Education Special Interest Group holds an annual book award to honor an outstanding book that addresses issues related to globalization and education. The 2016 award will be presented on March 8 to Toni Verger, Clara Fontdevila, and Adrian Zancajo for their book The privatization of education: A political economy of global education reform, which was published by Teacher Coll...

A few of you have reached out to me, recommending that I ask guests about their biographies. For young scholars, it is valuable to learn from scholars with lots of experience about how they navigated the field of comparative and international education. This year FreshEd will broadcast short supplementary shows with some guests about their backgrounds and tips for young scholars. For our first ins...

Since the death of Chairman Mao in 1976, China has experienced a “Reform and Opening” period. In education, this has meant a change from an egalitarian to an elite system. Examinations emerged has the primary way of sorting students. Those who did well on various examinations rose to the next level, working their way up to higher education. This system, combining credentialism, competition, and Co...

Rui da Silva joins me today to talk about his PhD research on Portuguese Aid to Guinea-Bissau. Rui is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Education, University of Minho. He is also a board member of the Centre of African Studies of the Oporto University. Guinea Bissau is a small state in West Africa that was formally colonized by Portugal. Since independence in the 1970s, the country has experienc...

Each year, the Comparative and International Education Society holds elections for the position of vice-president. The way the society is organized means that this person will automatically become president after serving one year as vice president. Every vice president, in other words, steps up to hold the presidency. So, vice presidential elections are a big deal. This year, two outstanding candi...

Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on international aid each year. Most aid providers undergo periodic evaluations to assess their support. Have their policies worked? What priorities have guided aid? And what practices have been effective? With such large sums of money circulating in the evaluation process, an aid evaluation industry has emerged. Formal evaluations are undertaken by “exper...

Today I speak with Arathi Sriprakash, a lecturer in the sociology of education at the University of Cambridge. Arathi co-edited with Keita Takayama and Raewyn Connel a special issue of Comparative Education Review on post-colonialism in the field of comparative and international education. The special issue shows that the field of comparative and international education continues to have many colo...

As we near the end of 2016, I want to take stock of the field of globalization and education. What were the big ideas this year? And where are we going in 2017? For the final show of the year, I’ve invited Susan Robertson and Roger Dale, co-editors of the journal Globalisation, Societies, and Education, to reflect on the year in research and point to future directions. In our conversation, we disc...

Earlier this week, the globalization and education special interest group hosted a public webinar entitled “Puncturing the Paradigm: Education Policy in a New ‘Global’ Era.” The webinar brought together Professor’s Toni Verger and Andy Green to discuss their new co-edited Handbook on Global Education Policy. D. Brent Edwards Jr moderated the event. I’m going to play the webinar’s audio here but en...

Today we explore youth violence in Trinidad with my guest Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams. Hakim situates his study of Trinidad within the country’s colonial past. He is also actively creating a new paradigm to address youth violence that blends a systems approach with restorative justice practices. Hakim Williams is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Education at Gettysburg College. Ear...

What is the connection between education and the economy? For many neoclassical economists, the connection is found in Human Capital theory. My guest today, Professor Steve Klees, thinks human capital theory and rates of return analyses are very problematic. In our conversation today, Steve talks about his new article, “Human Capital and Rates of Return: Brilliant Ideas or ideological dead ends?”,...

Today we continue our look at global education policy. Last week, I spoke with Andy Green about social cohesion, one of the two main pillars found in most, if not all, of education policies worldwide. The second pillar, as Professor Green pointed out, is education for economic development. This global policy of education has recently manifested, in many countries, through various practices and pro...

The globalization and education special interest group of the comparative and international education society will be hosting a public webinar on December 12 entitled “Puncturing the Paradigm: Education Policy in a New Global Era.” The webinar will bring together the four co-editors of the newly published Handbook of Global Education Policy, Karen Mundy, Andy Green, Bob Lingard, and Toni Verger. D...