Education Professionals and the Construction of Human Rights Education

Transnational Advocacy, Global Civil Society? Emerging Evidence from the Field of Education

L'objectif des auteurs de cet article est double. Il s'agit d'une part de presenter une etude exploratoire sur les tendances actuelles temoignant de l'emergence d'un nouvel activisme non gouvernemental dans le champ de l'education et d'autre part de dresser un cadre analytique afin d'evaluer l'importance de cet activisme, en elaborant des concepts bases sur les recherches ayant porte sur les nouveaux mouvements sociaux et les debats theoriques actuels a propos de la societe civile mondiale.

Dans les parutions recentes de sociologie et d'education, on constate une penurie de travaux d'etudes longitudinales et comparatives sur les changements dans les programmes d'etudes. En particulier, les etudes systemiques sont rares. Cet article vise a combler ce manque puisqu'il produit une etude du programme d'histoire a l'Universite dans plusieurs pays de 1895 a 1994.

With the release of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003 results in late 2004, Finland became the focus of international admiration. Soon after the study’s release, scholars, journalists, and government officials from around the world flocked to the small Nordic nation in search of the “secret” of its educational accomplishment (Asahi News 2002). While Finland enjoyed international acclaim, Japan—the former exemplar of educational excellence—was in the midst of serious soul-searching about its own educational system. The Japanese “academic achievement crisis debate” (gakuryoku teika ronsō) erupted in the late 1990s, generating a national moral panic over declining academic performance (see Takayama 2007). The PISA 2003 results were released at the peak of this controversy, and Japan’s “drop” in ranking in some areas from PISA 2000 to PISA 2003 led many observers to believe that the suspected scholastic crisis had been confirmed (see Takayama 2008c). In the aftermath of the PISA shock, Japanese journalists, scholars, and government officials followed the international trend, traveling to Finland in search of the Finnish secret (Fujita 2005). Meanwhile, various Japanese professional educational associations invited Finnish education scholars and former and incumbent ministers of education to learn from the world’s best education system (Asahi News 2005b; Tanaka 2005b; Kitagawa 2006 In addition, many individuals, organizations, and publishers were quick to capitalize on the “Finnish boom” (Watanabe 2005, 12). Tatsuo Kitagawa, formerly of the Japanese embassy in Helsinki and presently the chairperson of the Finnish Method Promotion Association (Finrando Mesoddo Fukyū Kyōkai) translated a series of literacy textbooks used in Finnish schools, selling more than 100,000 copies (Yomiuri News 2007b). Kitagawa and other experts

L'auteur souhaite faire un bilan des methodes de collectes des donnees en education comparee. Ce bilan permet de repondre a cinq questions : La methodologie de recherche fait-elle partie des discussions dans ce champs de recherche? Quelles sont les strategies de recherche de ceux qui publient actuellement en education comparee? La variete des strategies de recherche est-elle reduite dans ce domaine? Les zones geographiques concernees par les travaux se sont-elles elargies? De la recherche qualitative ou de la recherche quantitative, laquelle tient le plus de place? Les sources de l'auteur pour realiser cette synthese sont essentiellement les periodiques specialises : Comparative education review, Comparative education et International Journal of educational development. L'auteur definit une typologie des recherches et procede a l'analyse de contenu des publications du point de vue des strategies de recherche de 1960 a 1995.

Comparative and International Education: A Bibliography (2008)

Discerning Trends, Contours, and Boundaries in Comparative Education: A Survey of Comparativists and Their Literature

Basee sur une enquete d'envergure mondiale, cette etude delimite les orientations des travaux en education comparee, en tâchant de regrouper les tendances actuelles majeures afin d'isoler des domaines d'application futures de cette discipline.

Education has long been characterized as a central requirement for national economic development and political democratization in the contemporary world. Moreover, international benchmarking has been identified as the “basis for improvement. . . . It is only through such benchmarking that countries can understand relative strengths and weaknesses of their education systems and identify best practices and ways forward” (OECD 2006, 18). Statements such as this example signal an international consensus that has emerged— at least among “developed” countries—about the legitimacy and, even more so, the necessity of international testing and national assessment. As David P. Baker and Gerald K. LeTendre (2005) observe, both international testing and national assessment are linked to efforts to reform educational systems and are often themselves stimuli for further cycles of reform. The results of international testing, they note, will fuel further interest in national assessment. Here we develop an argument about the global forces that have led to the explosive growth of national educational assessment and international testing. In particular, we argue that the international acceptance of testing comes from key ideological forces in the world polity that are associated with the accelerating globalization of national and international cultural, economic, and political structures. As we develop and warrant this argument, we also qualify it by pointing out that national adaptations to this larger world culture may vary depending on the presence and capacities of international organizations and regional associations that act to mediate and adapt these changes to conditions in individual countries. In addition, we consider the effects of subnational movements in introducing pressures for change that may favor more national assessment.

The Politics and Economics of Comparison

the 1950s. In artistic circles, particularly in architecture and literary criticism, the discussion of a shift from aesthetic modernism to postmodernism has been continuous and sustained,' while in the social sciences postmodernism has gone through two phases. The first was rather disparate, and, in fact, various labels were invented to describe it, such as "postindustrialism," the "information society," or the "technetronic society."2 In the 1970s the discussion of postmodernism all but disappeared from social science literature;3 however, in the past decade social scientists again discussed it, and by the mid-1980s postmodernism had left the ghetto of esoteric debates and had entered the mainstream of intellectual and public discourse.4 The term "postmodernism" now refers to a discussion involving not only social scientists but also three other strands of influence more closely connected with artistic modernism.

Globalization and Citizenship Education in Hong Kong and Taiwan

This essay is a call for world-systems analysis of education. Increasingly, the field of comparative education is moving toward more sophisticated examinations of education in relationship to economic, political, and social forces. Studies of the ecology of educational institutions and processes, however, often fail to take into account an international context of transactions. To date, most macro studies of education have taken the nation-state as the basic unit of analysis.' An examination of the international forces impinging upon education systems is no less essential than an examination of the international economic order would be to an

What Does Globalization Mean for Educational Change? A Comparative Approach

CIES Bibliography 2010