The Strong State and Curriculum Reform PDF Download

Author: Leonel Lim
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317579232
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
As Asian education systems increasingly take on a stronger presence on the global educational landscape, of special interest is an understanding of the ways in which many of these states direct their schools towards higher achievement. What is missing, however, are accounts that take seriously the particular construction of the strong, developmental state witnessed across many Asian societies, and that seek to understand the politics and possibilities of curriculum change vis a vis precisely the dominance of such a state. By engaging in analyses based on some of the best current social and cultural theories, and by illuminating the interactions among various state and non-state pedagogic agents, the chapters in this volume account for the complex post-colonial, historical and cultural consciousnesses that many Asian states and societies experience. At a time when much of the educational politics in Asia remains in a state of transition and as many of these states seek out through the curriculum new forms of social control and novel bases of political legitimacy, such a volume offers enduring insights into the real if not also always relative autonomy that schools and communities maintain in countering the hegemonic presence of strong states.

Author: Leonel Lim
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317579224
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
As Asian education systems increasingly take on a stronger presence on the global educational landscape, of special interest is an understanding of the ways in which many of these states direct their schools towards higher achievement. What is missing, however, are accounts that take seriously the particular construction of the strong, developmental state witnessed across many Asian societies, and that seek to understand the politics and possibilities of curriculum change vis a vis precisely the dominance of such a state. By engaging in analyses based on some of the best current social and cultural theories, and by illuminating the interactions among various state and non-state pedagogic agents, the chapters in this volume account for the complex post-colonial, historical and cultural consciousnesses that many Asian states and societies experience. At a time when much of the educational politics in Asia remains in a state of transition and as many of these states seek out through the curriculum new forms of social control and novel bases of political legitimacy, such a volume offers enduring insights into the real if not also always relative autonomy that schools and communities maintain in countering the hegemonic presence of strong states.

Author: Charleen Chiong
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000457117
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
Focusing on Singapore’s education system from an equity perspective, Chiong’s book describes the often unheard perspectives of socio-economically disadvantaged families in Singapore. The performance of Singaporean students on international education benchmarking tests has been widely recognised. Relatively less known is how socio-economically disadvantaged families negotiate Singapore’s highly competitive, stratifying and meritocratic system. Yet, families’ perspectives can provide crucial insight in understanding how policy is ‘lived’ and experienced, and its effects on people’s lives. Drawing on 72 interviews with 12 families, this book traces the development of surprisingly close, collaborative relations between the state, schools and families on Singapore’s socio-economic margins. It demonstrates that in the 'strong' state of Singapore, families’ dependency on schools and the state facilitates the internalisation of individual and familial responsibility for future success. However, these very processes can injure, and perpetuate inequality. The analysis presented in this book has relevance in other contexts, in times where advanced capitalist states face growing inequalities and challenging relationships between institutional authority and the wider populace. As socio-economic and educational inequalities widen, this book asks timely questions and provides recommendations on what a more equitable state-citizen compact might look like. The book will appeal to researchers and students who are interested in the fields of the sociology and politics of education, social policy, and Asian culture and society.

Author: Morgan Polikoff
Publisher: Harvard Education Press
ISBN: 9781682536124
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Beyond Standards highlights the structural conditions that have undermined the success of the standards movement and challenges us to confront them. The book offers an impassioned argument about the ways that our decentralized educational systems undermine the pursuit of educational equity and excellence. Morgan Polikoff applies a wide array of quantitative and qualitative data to provide a pointed critique of the US educational system. He addresses why standards have failed, whether standards-based reform can be salvaged, and what we can do to improve teaching and learning at scale across America's 13,000 school districts. Polikoff argues that no amount of tinkering can fix standards. Rather, we need to tackle the big, structural issues, such as decentralization. The author identifies curriculum reform as a high-leverage strategy for making meaningful progress at scale and emphasizes that states need to play a greater role in evaluating and recommending high-quality curriculum materials. Beyond Standards proposes a new, progressive vision that emphasizes the central role of states in challenging the antiquated, segregating structures that have thwarted educational improvement.

Author: Ronald W. Evans
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230119107
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
Two persistent dilemmas haunt school reform: curriculum politics and classroom constancy. Both undermined the 1960s' new social studies, a dynamic reform movement centered on inquiry, issues, and social activism. Dramatic academic freedom controversies ended reform and led to a conservative restoration. On one side were teachers and curriculum developers; on the other, conservative activists determined to undo the revolutions of the 1960s. The episode brought a return to traditional history, a turn away from questioning, and the re-imposition of authority. Engagingly written and thoroughly researched, The Tragedy of American School Reform offers a provocative perspective on current trends.

Author: Helen Proctor
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100380232X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
This book maps globally shifting relations between families, schools and the state across a range of nations (Australia, Germany, India, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA) in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Featuring contributions from leading international experts, the book’s eight chapters reflect upon the apparently vital responsibility of parents for choosing the rights sort of educational pathways for their children, offering comparative insights into several different kinds of state, with different contexts for the practices of ‘educational’ parenting. The contributors consider the proposition that a significant focus of the material, emotional and occupational investment of contemporary parents is the formal education of their children, re-shaping not only the relationship between parents and schools but also the nature of parenthood itself. Parents are analysed both as local actors in schools and as subjects of national and international policy regimes, particularly recent and contemporary imperatives of marketisation.. With a focus on social change, the chapters examine the operation of global educational programmes and ideas in national and local settings. The collected national and local studies attend to different confluences of local, regional and transnational, considering a variety of social and cultural patterns as well as national and local educational structures and policy regimes. Parents, Schools and The State: Global Perspectives will be a useful resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of comparative education, educational policy and leadership, educational research, history of education, sociology, research methods and politics. This book was originally published as a special issue of Comparative Education.

Author: Joel I. Klein
Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations
ISBN: 087609521X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
The United States' failure to educate its students leaves them unprepared to compete and threatens the country's ability to thrive in a global economy and maintain its leadership role. This report notes that while the United States invests more in K-12 public education than many other developed countries, its students are ill prepared to compete with their global peers. According to the results of the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), an international assessment that measures the performance of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics, and science every three years, U.S. students rank fourteenth in reading, twenty-fifth in math, and seventeenth in science compared to students in other industrialized countries. The lack of preparedness poses threats on five national security fronts: economic growth and competitiveness, physical safety, intellectual property, U.S. global awareness, and U.S. unity and cohesion, says the report. Too many young people are not employable in an increasingly high-skilled and global economy, and too many are not qualified to join the military because they are physically unfit, have criminal records, or have an inadequate level of education. The report proposes three overarching policy recommendations: implement educational expectations and assessments in subjects vital to protecting national security; make structural changes to provide students with good choices; and, launch a "national security readiness audit" to hold schools and policymakers accountable for results and to raise public awareness.

Author: Bruce L. Wilson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780807732632
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
In the past decade, states have taken an increasingly active role in designing new policies intended to reform America's high schools. This book offers a systematic, empirical look at the most widely adopted policy reform strategy--mandatory changes in high school graduation requirements. Maryland is used as a case study, exploring five representative high schools and presenting an in-depth discussion of their experiences with mandated reform. The first of eight chapters, Chapter 1, "Introduction," sets the context and the research strategy. Chapter 2, "The Role of the States in the Reform Movement of the 1980s," deals with research on graduation requirements and tracking. Chapter 3, "Where's the Action? Students, Teachers, and the Curriculum," looks at student credits and courses, graduation requirements, and teachers' views on curricular change. Change 4, "Who's Winning? Tracks, Tracking Systems, and Access to Resources," gives the views of teachers and students on tracking. Chapter 5, "Who's Losing? Students and Teachers at Risk," investigates dropouts, students, teachers, and departments at risk. Chapter 6, "Who's in Control? Key Actors and Their Influence on Policy Implementation," gives the perspectives of state staff, district and school administrators, and counselors. Chapter 7, "What's the Bottom Line? Policy Intentions and the Perception of Effects," details policy intentions, and school-level and consumer perceptions of policy effects. Chapter 8, "Educational Reform: Retrospect and Prospect," looks at the first wave of reform, educational reform and challenges in the 1990s, and a framework for reform. Two appendices give the research methods and tables of sample sizes. (Contains 161 references.) (RR)

Author: Leonel Lim
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317499972
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
This book examines how critical thinking is regulated in Singapore through the process of what the influential sociologist of education Basil Bernstein termed "pedagogic recontextualization". The ability of critical thinking to speak to alternative possibilities and individual autonomy as well as its assumptions of a liberal arrangement of society is problematized in Singapore’s socio-political climate. By examining how such curricular discourses are taken up and enacted in the classrooms of two schools that cater to very different groups in society, the book foregrounds the role of traditional high-status knowledge in the elaboration of class formation and develops a critical understanding of post-developmental state initiatives linked to the parable of modernization in Singapore. Knowledge, Control and Critical Thinking in Singapore offers chapters on: • Critical Thinking and the Singapore State: Meritocracy, Illiberalism and Neoliberalism • Sacred Knowledge and Elite Dispositions: Recontextualizing Critical Thinking in an Elite School • Power, Knowledge and Symbolic Control: Official Pedagogic Identities and the Politics of Recontextualization This book will appeal to scholars in comparative education studies, curriculum studies and education reform. It will also interest scholars engaged in Asian studies who are struggling to understand issues of education policy formation and implementation, particularly in the areas of critical thinking and other knowledge skills.

Author: Grant Black
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000802132
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
This book is a case study of policy translation at an elite Japanese university. Through an analysis of the implementation of government-funded reform policies, Black investigates the role of the university in society, the youth-to-work transition, and systems of organisational management operative at the university. Black was present throughout the initial adoption phase of the Super Global project, a policy project implemented at an elite Japanese university, the University of Tsukuba. Aligned with a basic critical realist perspective, the different components of his research are integrated in four levels of analysis: the macro level of policy, the organisation level of the university, the departmental level of the English Section, and the individual level of the student. The analysis and the different sources of data look at internal structures of the organisation and try to understand what the mechanisms of policy translation operative are in the integrated and overlapping complexity of the four levels of analysis. At the core of the research is the objective of understanding why things are as they are. The main theories to emerge from the case study serve to inform the judgements and decisions of practitioners or policy makers in this area. It is a telling case for internationalisation-focused education reform policy in Japan.