Rosen examines the local meanings of "choice" in a very different setting, a city in the United States. Oddly enough, the progressive movement of the 1910s and 1920s in the United States included a similar tension between a movement toward democratic.
MINISTRIES AND SCHOOLS TRANSFORM
THAI WISDOM” AND GLOCALIZATION
Two years after the economic crash and the adoption of the new constitution, the National Education Act of 1999 was passed. I argue that appealing to Thai wisdom and local wisdom is a strategic process in building the 'cosmopolitan'.
TRANSFORMATIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA
Various training and support programs comprise the various main components of the national reforms and provincial mandates. These examples are a small sample of the totality of experiences found at the sub-provincial level in South Africa. Public recognition of the value of education could well provide continued support for the reforms.
Paper presented at the 45th Annual Meeting of the Comparative and International Education Association, Washington D.C., March. Paper presented at the 45th Annual Meeting of the Comparative and International Education Association, Washington, D.C., March. Between school policy and practice: Comparison of the Potgietersrus and Vryburg crises in the light of the South African Schools Act 1996.
Untitled paper presented at the 45th Annual Meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society, Washington D.C., March. 2001. Untitled paper presented at the 45th Annual Meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society, Washington DC, March.
TEACHING BY THE BOOK IN GUINEA
Fewer scholars have studied teacher autonomy in the Global South, and reports are contradictory. Meanwhile, in the United States, the influential reports of the Carnegie Task Force (1986) and the Holmes Group (1986) advocated greater teacher autonomy in the context of longer professional training. We see the teaching control debate as transnational rather than 'global' in the sense of 'universal'.
One of us (Diallo) collected questionnaires from 100 educators (a 91 percent response rate) at a regional training seminar on the use of the new textbook and at schools visited in the region in October 1998. The official curriculum provided for one lesson per week in first grade and two lessons per week in second grade. In 1998, in schools that adopted the new textbook, teachers had to choose between the official order of sounds and the order presented in the new text.
In the US and UK, the pendulum swings between competing models and competing camps of educators. Globalization as seen from the periphery: The dynamics of teacher identity in the Republic of Benin.
TEACHERS, STUDENTS, AND PARENTS RESPOND
GETTING BEYOND THE
ONE BEST SYSTEM”?
The school's average test scores are consistently among the highest not only in the district, but also in the nation. Similarly, the school has not developed explicit ways for new professors to learn about the school's approach. However, there have been occasions when the school's approach appears to be in direct conflict with district policy.
That will bring down the quality of the school.'” Lucy Simmons, a parent who had children during Fredericksen's tenure, welcomes the changes. Similarly, the adoption of the project-based approach at Emerson during the school's re-examination inspired the development of a variety of organizational structures and practices. They also invited the superintendent and board members to visit the school and talk to the teachers "anytime".
At Emerson, that culture helps to support the school's approach and empower newcomers to implement it. If policies and expectations in the district are inconsistent with those of the school, school staff must be able to get out there and change them.
RESISTANCE TO THE
COMMUNICATIVE METHOD OF LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION
WITHIN A PROGRESSIVE CHINESE UNIVERSITY
Despite the fact that many foreign professionals have very successful experience working in China, it is an undeniable fact that many do not. Interpretations or explanations of student criticism supported by insider knowledge are also rare (but see Dzau 1990a; Cortazzi and Jin 1996a, 1996b). The purpose of this study is not, nor is it possible, to measure the strengths of foreign professionals with their weaknesses in Chinese students.
Rather, one of the purposes of the chapter is to point out that often the same students who praised the foreign experts make complaints about them. The voices of both the Chinese students and teachers and the foreign teachers will be presented as verbatim as possible, however limited or even possibly “biased” the perspectives of the informants may be. I also consulted two Guangwai Foreign Ministry officials responsible for the evaluation, who had a lot of routine contact with the foreign experts.
The most common complaint, agreed upon by more than 70 percent of the Guangwai students, teachers and leaders, was the lack of systematic organization and linearity in the foreign teachers' classes, resulting in a lack of a sense of achievement for the students. Most of the foreign teachers I interviewed criticized the traditional and still common Chinese practices of teachers correcting mistakes extensively and not allowing peer or self-correction.
WORLD-CULTURAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL
CHOICE PROGRAMMING”
IN TANZANIA
S. MISSIONARIES’ VIEWS OF PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT AND CHOICE IN EDUCATION
The missionaries' introduction of choice programming in Tanzania must be understood within the context of two assumptions that pervade American society: one, the idea that foreign aid, especially in the form of education (and specifically English-language instruction) can alleviate poverty and provide access to world markets; and two, an assumption that parental involvement in choice options in education will lead to expanded post-educational opportunities and changes within the government system. It is perhaps easiest to illustrate a belief in the idea that foreign aid in the form of language education can alleviate poverty by repeating the message expressed in the missionary's comment above about the value of the English-medium language program: that the English language program has. In the United States, such thinking is behind a growing trend toward elective programs in education.
They will not enroll their children in the program when they know their children could benefit from it. Because between the degree to which the missionaries took charge of the project and the context within which the Tanzanian parents interpreted and even rejected the concept of parental involvement in education, the English-language program was hardly a copy of optional programming in the United States. In the final section, I will consider the deeper question of the directionality of institutional forms in education.
Others choose to enroll in the program, but argue that parental involvement in educational programming is not new. Within the limited scope of the English-language program I have described here, the program has all the characteristics that any typical choice program might have in the United States: a stated commitment to parental involvement and institutional flexibility, and an institutional structure that merges private organizations (the mission and its Ministry of Youth Summer Program) with public educational institutions (the Tanzanian system of state primary schools).
THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY AND THE MARKETIZATION
OF U.S. SCHOOLS How Local Meanings
Their concerns were shared by parents and teachers who are not affiliated with either HOLD or Pro-Balance, but are concerned about the implications of the plan -- a market-like transformation of public schools. Contestants in the selection debate also appropriated language and ideas from the long-standing struggle for the status and authority of the teaching profession and the field of education in general. These examples illustrate the contrast between the individualistic discourse of the Parents Committee and the discourse of the Pro-Balance group.
The latter used the idiom of the common good, instantiated through a vocabulary of expert administration. Contrast this with a model that comes from a perspective of parents as "customers" of the district. For example, a letter to the editor of the local newspaper from a teacher's husband argued: “[A]ll this recent school controversy .
In addition, the way local debate suppressed discussion of broader ideological issues may have contributed to the outcome of the dispute. I have already explained why the party identity was attractive to the parent committee members.
OUTSIDE OR BEYOND A GLOBAL CULTURE
WORLD CULTURE OR TRANSNATIONAL PROJECT?
However, I contend that when world culture theorists reduce educational diversity and debate to a single "model" for schooling, they do not adequately address the various interest groups, organizations, philosophies, and pedagogies involved in building and promoting educational projects. . These actors have used it (and continue to use it) to combat the dominant, widespread, economic educational project – precisely the current hegemonic (but not permanent, ubiquitous or omnipotent) world model of mass education described by world culture theorists become Finally, I discuss the historical development of Brazilian literacy projects, using the case to illustrate my appreciation and my critique of world culture theory.
Second, world culture theorists have not paid enough attention to the factors that persuade countries to adopt a dominant model of schooling. World culture theory argues that first Western nation-states and then international organizations and knowledge regimes (such as the educational professions) diffuse the model of schooling from the center to the periphery (Meyer and Ramirez 2000). By studying only formal schooling, the theory of world culture excludes a multitude of informal, non-institutionalized educational endeavors.
I argue that there is rarely a single, coherent educational project, as world culture theory claims. CONCERNING LITERACY PROJECTS IN BRAZIL In the rest of the chapter, I discuss the history of adult literacy programs in Brazil to highlight the benefits of the concept of an educational project and the limitations of world culture theory.
