Freshed

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 candidates have been nominated, David Post and Aaron Benavot. Today I interview each candidate back-to-back to give CIES members a better understanding of their proposed agendas. Aaron Benavot is Director of the Global Education Monitoring Report published by UNESCO. Later this year he will return to the Department of Educational Policy and Leadership in the School of Education of SUNY-Albany, where he serves as Professor of Global Education Policy. David Post is Professor of education at Pennsylvania State University. You can check out www.FreshEdpodcast.com/vpcandidates for more details. Please remember: Voting

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 “experts” who are hired by companies that bid on evaluation contracts. Sometimes universities themselves bid on the same contracts. And professors navigate the tricky terrain of research-for-hire. Many of FreshEd’s listeners have likely participated in an evaluation of an aid project. I know I have. My guest today, Professor Joel Samoff, thinks it’s time to “re-think evaluations, from conception through method to use.” Joel Samoff is a Consulting Professor in African Studies at the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. He studies and teaches about development and underdevelopment, with a particular i

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 colonial entanglements, which have gone unrecognized in most accounts. Colonial logics underpinned many of the field’s founding figures and contemporary forms of modernization theory continue to be widely assumed today:. Knowledge is produced in the global north, often with data taken from the global south; theory is reserved for northern scholars; and some societies, like CIES in North America, have held more power over smaller societies from Asia and Africa. In most aspects of the field, we continue to see uneven power dynamics of where and how knowledge is produced by whom and with what effect. The special issue

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 discuss a range of issues facing education, including: the limitations of mobility studies, the increase of migration worldwide, the rise of populism and anti-globalization movements, the role of trade deals in education, and the Hayekian world in which we find ourselves where individuals — not societies or governments — are at the center of social imaginaries and how this relates to educational privatization, private debt, and the discourse of choice. Susan Robertson is a Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Cambridge, and Roger Dale, is a Professor of Education in the Centre for Globalisation,

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 encourage you to check out FreshEdpodcast.com where you can find a video of the event. I hope you enjoy the show and I’ll be back next week with our final episode of the year.

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. Early this year, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict and Complexity (AC4) at The Earth Institute, Columbia University. In today’s show, Hakim discusses his article, “A Neocolonial Warp of Outmoded Hierarchies, Curricula and Disciplinary Technologies in Trinidad’s Educational System,” which can be found in the latest issue of Critical Studies of Education.

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?”, which can be found in the latest issue of the Comparative Education Review. He takes us through human capital theory, its internal logical fallacies, and proposes a set of alternatives. Steve Klees is professor of International Education Policy in the College of Education, University of Maryland.

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 processes of educational privatization. With me today is Toni Verger to talk about the global diffusion of education privatization not as a global education policy per se but as a set of processes through which private actors participate more actively in a range of education activities that have traditionally been the responsibilities of the state. In this sense, privatization directly impacts education policy. Not only is Toni a co-editor of the Handbook of Global Education Policy but he is also a co-author of a new book entitled The Privatization of Education: A political economy of global education reform. In

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. During the lead up to that event, FreshEd will interview the co-editors to set the stage for the webinar. Today I speak with Professor Andy Green about the global education policy of social cohesion. Although we often think of education policy as primarily concerned with economic development, it also has been historically connected to the idea of creating a cohesive group of people who share certain norms and customs. Benedict Anderson called this “imagined communities.” Andy Green has looked at the effect from education on social cohesion across the globe. Andy Green is Professor of Comparative Social Science and

For the past 7 weeks, FreshEd has focused on global learning metrics. Although there is much more to say on that subject, I think it’s time to look at something completely different. This week Sachi Edwards joins me to talk about interfaith dialogue initiatives in US higher education. The ideas of religious identity, religious oppression and religious privilege are often overlooked when we think about social justice. Sachi wants to change that. Sachi Edwards is an Adjunct Professor in Higher Education, Student Affairs, and International Education, at the College of Education, University of Maryland. She’s recently published her first book entitled Critical Conversations about Religion: Promises and pitfalls of a social justice approach to interfaith dialogue (Information Age Publishing, 2016).

This is the final show in the global learning metrics mini-series. The two day inaugural CIES symposium has concluded. As a wrap up, I’m going to play my brief conversation with Pasi Sahlberg, a professor at the University of Helsinki, about some of his reactions to the symposium. He tweets at @pasi_sahlberg. I hope you’ve enjoyed this mini-series!

Day one of the CIES symposium just ended. Before we start day two, I thought it important to revisit a remark Tom Popkewitz made on this podcast a few months ago. Tom argued that educational metrics, and the comparison that comes with them, have always been about inscribing in children a certain moral order. I’ve been surprised that this type of thinking has been relatively absent in the conversations today. What will tomorrow bring? Stay tuned!

This is the last installment of the FreshEd mini-series on global learning metrics. On Thursday, the CIES Symposium kicks off in Scottsdale, Arizona. For this last show, I’ve invited Karen Mundy to talk about the Global Partnership for Education. Karen offers interesting insight into learning metrics because she is both an academic and a development practitioner. Karen Mundy is the Chief Technical Officer at the Global Partnership for Education. She came to the Global Partnership for Education in 2014 from the University of Toronto where she was Professor and Associate Dean of Research, International and Innovation. She will present some of the ideas discussed in this podcast at the CIES Symposium in Scottsdale Arizona, which starts on Thursday. Now it’s time for me to catch my flight! See you in Scottsdale!

We often think of international assessments as being synonymous with PISA, the OECD international assessment that has been the focus of many shows in FreshEd’s mini-series on global learning metrics. But international assessments have a history far beyond PISA. In fact, it was the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, known as the IEA, that first introduced large-scale comparative studies of educational systems in the late 1950s. This history is important to consider when thinking about global learning metrics today. My guest today is Dirk Hastedt, Executive Director of the IEA. He’s spent many years working with the IEA, seeing the development of assessments in new subjects, such as citizenship and computer literacies, and the emergence of league tables, which rank education systems and have become popular today. Drik offers valuable insight for any discussion on the feasibility or desirability of global learning metrics. Check out www.FreshEdpodcast.com for more deta

Next week the CIES Symposium will take place where scholars and practitioners from around the world will come together to discuss and debate the desirability and feasibility of global learning metrics. I’ve had the honor of interviewing many of the speakers who will attend the symposium. And one things that has struck me during my conversations about global learning metrics is that often a universal meaning of education is assumed by the tests and those who use it. For instance, a 2013 OECD report that used PISA data was entitled “What makes Schools Successful?” Implied in the very title of that report is an assumption that there is a universal definition of success, as if all schools around the world agreed on what it means to be successful. Moreover, the report implies that it is PISA data itself that can reveal the answer. Perhaps more clearly, a 2013 report by the Learning Metrics Task Force, which is a multi-stakeholder collaboration organized by UNESCO Institute of Statistics and the Center for Univ

Today we continue our focus on global learning metrics during the lead up to the inaugural CIES symposium, which will take place in Scottsdale, AZ from November 10-11. The past shows in this mini-series have focused broadly on global learning metrics: We’ve looked at the history and value of learning metrics for the perspective of national governments; we’ve examined the power of tests like PISA; and we’ve heard critiques of policy borrowing and outcome-based approaches to education that rely on learning metrics and their subsequent rankings. But we haven’t yet looked at some of the questions on the tests that form the proxies for global learning metrics. My guest today is Dr. Inés Dussel, Researcher and Professor at the Department of Educational Research, Center for Advanced Studies and Research (DIE-CINVESTAV) in Mexico. She argues that global learning metrics are not culturally sensitive and uses examples from her work on digital literacy to show why. Inés critiques PISA for taking a narrow focus o

Today we explore some of the problems with global learning metrics from the perspective of teacher unions. In particular, we look at outcomes-based approaches to international education development. Such an approach uses global learning metrics to quantify supposed outcomes of education. But as a result, education is reduced and simplified. My guest today is David Edwards, Deputy General Secretary of Education International in Brussels. Education International is the global federation of teacher unions. He will present some of the ideas discussed today at the CIES Symposium in November. Check out FreshEdpodcast.com for more details about the event.

Today we continue our mini-series on global learning metrics during the lead up to the inaugural CIES Symposium, which will take place in Scottsdale, AZ this November. So far in this mini-series, we’ve heard why international assessments can be valuable for national governments and how many governments have begun to see like PISA. Today, we jump into a case study of the way in which countries learn from one another based on international assessments. My guest, Professor Bob Adamson, takes us through the case of how England learned from Hong Kong. He unpacks the selective learning of English policymakers on their visits to Hong Kong. He see this as akin to a pantomime. The larger implication of the rise of superficial policy referencing among countries is the challenge it brings to comparative education. Bob Adamson is Chair Professor of Curriculum Reform and Director of the Centre for Lifelong Learning Research and Development at the Education University of Hong Kong. In December 2015, Bob was named UNE

Today we continue the mini-series on global learning metrics. Last week we heard from Eric Hanushek about the desirability of large scale international assessments such as PISA. He argued that cross-national tests offer ways for countries to see what is possible when it comes to student learning. But what effect are large scale international assessments having on national governments? In my conversation today, I speak with Radhika Gorur about how PISA, and its embedded assumptions about education, are going a global. In our conversation, Radhika unpacks what it means to “see like PISA.” She finds three major ways governments around the world have embraced PISA. First, governments have assumed that the very purpose of education is to increase GDP, which is a cornerstone of PISA and the OECD. But of course education has many more values that are much harder to define. Second governments have narrowed the field of vision of the meaning of education to be in line with what PISA has been able to test. In effe

Today marks the first installment of a seven-part miniseries on Global Learning Metrics. In effort to promote the inaugural Symposium of the Comparative and International Education Society, FreshEd will air interviews with some of the invited speakers. To kick things off in this episode, I speak with renowned educational economist Eric A. Hanushek about global learning metrics and his use of cross national educational data to understand what is possible in education systems around the globe. He has authored or edited twenty-three books along with over 200 articles. Dr. Hanushek is perhaps most famous for introducing the idea of measuring teacher quality through the growth in student achievement, which forms the basis for value-added measures for teachers and schools. More recently, his work has focused on the quality of education and its connection to national economic growth. Eric A. Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University and will speak at the CIE