Freshed

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 major in engineering, will I earn a higher income than if I majored in English? The answer to these question is usually assumed to be a resounding “yes.” Doing better on examinations or studying subjects that are perceived to be more valuable will result in higher wages at the individual level and higher GDP at the national level. Such a belief shapes educational policies and influences educational decision making by families. It has even resulted in a global private tutoring industry that prepares students for tests in hopes of getting ahead. But what if this assumption isn’t true? What if the relationship betwe

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. In education, this balancing act manifests in the government’s three aims: credentials, control, and creativity. The education system is based on credentials awarded through examinations, a colonial hangover, and teaches students control and order as part of the state’s centralization efforts; yet, somehow, the system promotes creativity so students can pursue a learner-centered education tailored to their own needs, preparing them for the 21st century labor market of precarious work. My guest today, Catherine Honeyman, has a new book that explores Rwanda’s opportunities, challenges, and paradoxes in post-conflict

What are Americans’ views of higher education? The common story is that people see higher education as an investment in the future of an individual. More education from the best university will result in high salaries in the future. In this story, the public doesn’t appear. It’s all about the private good of higher education. But what if this story is wrong? Or at least biased by the very questions being asked? Instead of asking if higher education is an investment in one’s future job prospects, what if we asked about higher education’s public value? Well, my guests today did just that. Noah Drezner and Oren Pizmony-Levy, together with Aaron Pallas, conducted a nationally representative survey in America on views of higher education. Their findings tell a new and powerful story. Noah Drezner is an Associate Professor of Higher Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, where Oren Pizmony-Levy is an Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Education. www.freshedpodcast.com/Drezner-Pi

Competition within and across universities is so common that it may not seem like a big deal. Professors compete for tenure. Students compete to get into a best universities. And universities compete for rankings. But what where does this competition come from and what effects is it having on higher education systems? My guest today is Rajani Naidoo, professor in higher education management at the University of Bath. In 2016, she edited a special issue of the British journal of the sociology of education looking at what she calls the competition fetish in higher education. The special issue brings together articles that show the varieties of competition and the various ways actors channel, reproduce, internalize and secure competition logics. Some of the articles address the consequences of competition. http://www.freshedpodcast.com/rajaninaidoo/

Today we remember the late Geoff Whitty by replaying his 2017 interview. Last year Geoff and his colleague, John Furlong, co-edited a volume entitled Knowledge and the Study of Education: an international exploration. The volume explores these questions: How is education studied around the world? Are there different knowledge traditions to the study of education? Have there been changes over time? And what has been the impact of globalization? John Furlong is Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Oxford and Geoff Whitty had an illustrious career in education, associated with the Institute of Education for 50 years. http://www.freshedpodcast.com/johnfurlong-geoffwhitty/

Today’s topic is space in educational research. My guest is Marianne Larsen, an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario. Dr. Larsen’s recent research focuses on the overall processes and effects of the internationalization of higher education. She has been researching how internationalization policies are taken up ‘on-the-ground’, as well as the role of higher education leaders in advancing internationalization agendas. Her most recent book, Internationalizing Higher Education: An Analysis through Spatial, Mobility and Network Theories, builds upon her work to advance the use of new spatial and mobilities theories in comparative education research. I spoke with Dr. Larsen in 2016 about how she and her colleague Jason Beech theorize the concept of educational space not as an object of study but as a set of relations between individuals and groups. http://www.freshedpodcast.com/marianne-larsen/

The FreshEd team is going on summer holidays. We’ll be back in a few weeks with new episodes. In the meantime, we’ll air some old episodes for you to enjoy. Today, Keita Takayama provides a critical reading of the so-called “PISA debate.” This debate started in May 2014 when a group of scholars published an open letter in the Guardian newspaper to Andreas Schleicher, the head of OECD’s education and skills division, criticizing PISA. Two subsequent response letters were published in the Wall Street Journal responding to the open letter and critiquing PISA in ways left out of the original letter. Keita Takayama, a professor at the University of New England in Australia, takes us through the arguments in these various letters. By looking at who wrote the letters, Prof. Takayama scratches the surface of the arguments to locate hidden agendas. In the end, he sees the so-called “PISA debate” as provincial. www.freshedpodcast.com/keitatakayama

Humans have been the center of Western philosophy and science for centuries, at least since the European enlightenment. With the rise of artificial intelligence, climate change and challenges to the very idea of subjectivity, are we moving into an era that is perhaps better labeled post-human? But what would posthumanism mean for education? My guest today is Stefan Herbrechter. A research fellow at Coventry University and a Privatdozent at Heidelberg University, Stefan has a new book chapter entitled “Posthumanist Education?” published in the International Handbook of Philosophy of Education. Full transcript available at http://www.freshedpodcast.com/stefanherbrechter/

Does social science as it is commonly understood and practiced work in post-socialist settings? That may sound like an absurd question, even a bit crude. My guests today, Alla Korzh and Noah Sobe, see limits to the very social imaginaries underpinning social science. They argue that the diversity of post-socialist transformations challenges the existing paradigms and frameworks of theory and method used in much social science today. Together with Iveta Silova and Serhiy Kovalchuk, Alla and Noah co-edited a 17-chapter volume entitled “Reimagining Utopias: Theory and method for education research in post-socialist context.” The book explores from many perspectives the shifting social imaginaries of post-socialist transformations to understand what happens when the new and old utopias of post-socialism confront the new and old utopias of social science.  Alla Korzh is an assistant professor of international education at the School for International Training Graduate Institute, World Learning. Noah Sobe is a

The images and stories of migrant families being separated by the United States government set off a global conversation about immigration, borders, and justice. If the political philosophy of liberalism is based on liberty and equality, then the events of the past few months have challenged the very core of liberal democratic states. My guest today is Bruce Collet. He researches migration and public schooling, with a special interest in migration, religion, and schooling in democratic states. He’s thinking through what we might call liberal multiculturalism as well as issues around security. Bruce Collet is an Associate Professor in Educational Foundations and Inquiry at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He is the author of Migration, Religion, and Schooling within Liberal Democratic States (Routledge, 2018), and Editor of the journal Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education. Full transcript available at: http://www.freshedpodcast.com/brucecollet/ ‎

Today we take a critical look at human rights. My guest is Radha D’Souza. Radha has a new book entitled: What’s wrong with rights? Social movements, Law, and Liberal Imaginations. In our conversation we discuss why there has been a proliferation of human rights since the end of World War II and how these rights have actually furthered the interests of the transnational capitalist class. Radha also discusses education as a human right and the challenge it has for social movements and unions such as education international. Radha D’Souza teaches law at the University of Westminster, London. Full transcript available at: http://www.freshedpodcast.com/radhadsouza/

Today we look at conditional cash transfers as a global phenomenon of educational development. My guest is Michelle Morais de Sa e Silva. Michelle has written a new book called Poverty Reduction, Education, and the Global Diffusion of Conditional Cash Transfers, which was published by Palgrave Macmillan. She finds that different political ideologies have been used to justify conditional cash transfers, helping them spread worldwide. Michelle Morais de Sa e Silva is a Lecturer in International and Area Studies in the Department of International and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma. www.freshedpodcast.com/silva

On June 30th, Sweden will officially cancel its agreement with Elsevier, one of the largest academic publishers in the world. No longer will new journal articles or books published by Elsevier be available in any Swedish university or library. Why is this happening? What’s behind the disagreement between Elsevier and Sweden?   Today Wilhelm Widmark, the Library Director at Stockholm University, joins me to talk about the state of academic publishing. Widmark serves as the Vice-Chair of the Swedish Bibsam Consortium steering committee, the group that negotiates agreements with publishers on behalf of universities and libraries across the country. Although he criticizes Elsevier for charging excessively high prices on academic publications, he places most of the blame on the academic system of meritocracy that is based on academic publications.

Today we continue our exploration of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and what it means for education. Last week, we looked at comparative education as a field. Today we look at teachers. What are the prospects and perils of the fourth industrial revolution for teachers? My guest today is Jelmer Evers. Jelmer is a teacher, blogger, writer, and innovator. He teaches history at UniC in the Netherlands and works with Education International, the global federation of teacher unions. He was nominated for the global teacher prize in 2012 and is known for his book called Flip the System. Today Jelmer and I discuss his new co-edited volume Teaching in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Standing at the Precipice, which was published by Routledge earlier this year. http://www.freshedpodcast.com/jelmerevers/

We’ve all heard the terms “Big Data,” Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning. They are supposedly at the heart of a Fourth Industrial Revolution that, because of technology, is altering the way in which we live, work, and relate to one another. But how is this so-called era of datafication transforming what we mean by both “comparative” and “education”? Earlier this month, the Post Foundational Approaches to Comparative and International Education Special Interest Group of the Comparative and International Education Society organized a webinar entitled “The Datafication of Comparative Education.” The webinar brought together NelliPiattoeva, Ezekiel Dixon-Román, and Noah W. Sobe. I moderated the discussion, which focused on how data and algorithms are reshaping ways of thinking, seeing, acting, and feeling in educational research, policy, and practice. In this special addition of FreshEd, I’m going to replay our conversation because I think there is a lot of critical work to be done on cybernetic sy

Private interests are increasingly becoming commonplace inside education. In today’s economic globalization, the attainment of knowledge is seen as the key difference between economies that succeed and economies that stagnate or fail. Perhaps more precisely, it is knowledge that determines if an individual — not a national economy—succeeds or fails. We call this the “knowledge economy” and it is one of the main reason why private interests have entered education systems. Private interests in education range from private schools and private textbook and examination companies to the emerging belief that education is an individual, positional good that can be purchased and to the financialization of education where companies buy and sell student debt. It also includes things such as evidence based policy and information technology Our guest today, Professor Gita Steiner-Khamsi sees herself as a second generation researcher of educational privatization. Whereas the first generation of scholars aimed at describin

Today: Case Studies. My guests, Fran Vavrus and Lesley Bartlett. They have a new co-written book entitled Rethinking Case Study Research: A Comparative Approach, which will be published by Routledge later this year. Fran and Lesley contend that the recent conceptual shifts in the social sciences, some of which have been discussed by previous guests on this show, demand that case studies re-configure their approach towards culture, context, space, place, and comparison. Fran Vavrus is a professor in the college of education and human development at the University of Minnesota. Lesley Bartlett is a professor in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. I spoke with Fran and Lesley in Mid-July. They have written an exclusive summary of their forthcoming book, Rethinking Case Study Research: A Comparative Approach, for FreshEd listeners, which is only available on FreshEdpodcast.com Check it out today.

Today we look at the lessons that can be learned from radical histories. My guests are Aziz Choudry and Salim Vally. They’ve edited a new volume entitled: Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements: History's Schools (Routledge, 2018). They see history as an organizing tool and discuss the ways in which social movements have learned from the past. Aziz Choudry is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Social Movement Learning and Knowledge Production in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University and a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation, University of Johannesburg. Salim Vally is the Director of the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation, an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg, and a Visiting Professor at the Nelson Mandela University. They are both active in various social movements and solidarity organizations around the world.

Today, we do a deep dive into the World Bank’s 2018 World Development Report. With me is David Edwards, the Secretary-General of Education International, a federation of 32 million teachers and other educators affiliated with unions and associations in 173 countries. David takes us through the report’s main points and offers a series of critiques compiled in a new report called “Reality Check.” He also gives us a behind the scene look at global education governance and comments on the teacher strikes happening in many states in America.

Today we continue our conversation with Makoto Itoh. Last week, we discussed educational privatization in Japan. This week, we explore the study of Marxism in Japan and the influence of Kozo Uno. Makoto Itoh teaches at Kokugakuin University and is professor emeritus of the University of Tokyo. His newest book, written in Japanese, is A guide to Capitalist Economy, which was published in February.