Education And Equityinternational Perspectives On Theory And Policy

Research on higher education has yielded many insights that have improved our theoretical and practical understanding but there are still many themes that continue to appear on research agendas, provoking renewed focus on these complex questions and problems. Researching Higher Education explores these issues, examining topics such as equity in access and participation, the relationship between higher education and society, how and what students learn and the professional development of academics. In this volume, contributors from Europe, Australia, Africa and the US critically address ongoing issues with a set of key questions to guide their analysis: What do we know? What are the missing links and gaps in past research? What are the implications for further research? Key themes include: The nature of higher education Higher education and society Staff and students in higher education Teaching and learning Curriculum and assessment Critical, engaging and international in scope, Researching Higher Education will be a valuable guide for academics, researchers, postgraduate students and policy makers in the higher education community.

This book makes a compelling case for better international equity indicators in education. A conceptual framework for a system of comparable indicators is proposed and a spectrum of findings and perspectives presented. Topics include: the sociology of equality and equity in education; the application of theories of justice to educational equity, the trade-off between effectiveness and equity, heterogeneous versus homogeneous classrooms, and the influence of parental education.

This edited volume explores questions about ‘what works’, how, for whom, when, and why in education, and considers how and to what extent such knowledge can be understood and extended across countries and different educational systems. The book starts by presenting an overview of the history of educational effectiveness research and offers examples of current theories of educational effectiveness. Next, it provides exemplars of effectiveness studies that report on educational systems, policies, and practices from across six continents. These studies vary in their research methods and outcomes, illustrating a field of research that is conscious of its origins, its agenda, and its ambition to understand and improve the functioning of schools, networks, and education systems around the world. The book brings these threads together within the final chapter and uses them to signpost directions for future research. 'International Perspectives in Educational Effectiveness Research is an excellent and timely addition to the educational effectiveness literature. It offers a rigorous and insightful range of international perspectives that will be of interest to researchers, policy makers and students of the field.' - Professor Christopher Chapman, University of Glasgow, UK & President-Elect of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement 'This important new volume brings up to date the contributions of educational effectiveness research to the development of policy and practice in the field over the last 50 years. Drawing together the ideas of many of the major researchers in the field, it provides a comprehensive analysis of these earlier contributions, leading to critical commentaries that point to areas for future attention. The editors make use of expertise from a range of disciplines to strengthen the themes that are addressed. Most importantly, the book emphasises the need to pay greater attention to the challenge of equity - arguably the most significant challenge facing education systems internationally. In this respect, a particular strength of the book is the accounts provided from many different parts of the world. These underline the importance of context, a factor often previously overlooked in this field of research. Given all of this, I have no doubt that International Perspectives in Educational Effectiveness Research will become a major source for practitioners, policy-makers and researchers.' - Professor Mel Ainscow, Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Manchester & Professor of Education, University of Glasgow, UK

This volume provides educators with a global understanding of the challenges associated with the growing diversity of student identities in higher education, and it provides evidence-based strategies for addressing the challenges associated with implementing equity and inclusion at different higher education institutions around the world.

This book offers educators new understandings of 21st century diversity emerging from contemporary national events within the U.S., global movements, and changes in the world political order that have long-lasting impact on local education and call for rethinking traditional generalizations and empirical prescriptions for inclusivity in teaching and learning. The book expands the literature on teacher preparation and intercultural education by providing the educational community with critical perspectives, theoretical approaches, and research methodologies for educational inquiry responsive to diversity. Driven by changes in classroom diversity this book offers educators, researchers and policy makers a language for articulating complex differences in educational reform, policy and practice.

All children and youth deserve the opportunity to improve their life chances by acquiring the knowledge and skills that will help them thrive in the future. As the world lags far behind the Millennium Development and Education for All goals, swift, targeted, and effective action is needed to improve both access and quality in education.

Critical Perspectives on Education Policy and Schools, Families, and Communities offers scholars, students, and practitioners important new knowledge about how current policies impact families, schools, and community partnerships. The book’s authors share a critical orientation towards policy and policy research and invite readers to think differently about what policy is, who policymakers are, and what policy can achieve. Their chapters discuss findings from research grounded in diverse theories, including institutional ethnography, critical disability theory, and critical race theory. The authors encourage scholars of family, school, and community partnerships to ask who benefits from policies (and who loses) and how proposed reforms maintain or disrupt existing relations of power. The chapters present original research on a broad range of policies at the local, state/provincial, and national levels in Canada and the USA. Some authors look closely at the enactment of specific district policies, including a school district’s language translation policy and a policy to create local advisory bodies as part of decentralization efforts. Other chapters reveal the often unacknowledged yet necessary work parents do to meet their children’s needs and enable schools to operate. A few chapters focus on challenges and paradoxes of including families and community members in policymaking processes, including a case where parents demonstrated a preference for a policy that research demonstrates can be detrimental to their children’s future education opportunities. Another set of chapters emphasizes the centrality of policy texts and how language influences the educational experiences and engagement of students and their families. Each chapter concludes with a discussion of implications of the research for educators, families, and other community partners.

International Advances in Education: Global Initiatives for Equity and Social Justice is an international research monograph series of scholarly works that primarily focus on empowering students (children, adolescents, and young adults) from diverse current circumstances and historic beliefs and traditions to become non-exploited/non-exploitive contributing members of the 21st century. The series draws on the research and innovative practices of investigators, academics, and community organizers around the globe that have contributed to the evidence base for developing sound educational policies, practices, and programs that optimize all students' potential. Each volume includes multidisciplinary theory, research, and practices that provide an enriched understanding of the drivers of human potential via education to assist others in exploring, adapting, and replicating innovative strategies that enable ALL students to realize their full potential. Chapters in this volume are drawn from a wide range of countries including: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Finland, Georgia, Haiti, India, Italy, Kyrgyzstan, Portugal, Slovenia, Tanzania, Ukraine, and The United States all addressing issues of educational inequity, economic constraint, class bias and the links between education, poverty and social status. The individual chapters provide examples of theory, research, and practice that collectively present a lively, informative, cross-perspective, international conversation highlighting the significant gross economic and social injustices that abound in a wide variety of educational contexts around the world while spotlighting important, inspirational, and innovative remedies. Taken together, the chapters advance our understanding of best practices in the education of economically disadvantaged and socially marginalized populations while collectively rejecting institutional policies and traditional practices that reinforce the roots of economic and social discrimination. Chapter authors, utilize a range of methodologies including empirical research, historical reviews, case studies and personal reflections to demonstrate that poverty and class status are sociopolitical conditions, rather than individual identities. In addition, that education is an absolute human right and a powerful mechanism to promote individual, national, and international upward social and economic mobility, national stability and citizen wellbeing.

Inequality is a marked and persistent feature of education systems, both in the developed and the developing worlds. Major gaps in opportunity and in outcomes have become more critical than in the past, thanks to the knowledge economy and globalization. The pursuit of equity as a goal of public policy is examined in this book through a series of national case-studies. The book covers many different global contexts from the wealthiest to some of the poorest nations on earth. It therefore offers a broad range of different theoretical and methodological approaches, and brings together extensive international experience in equity policy.