University of Washington, Bothell
September 10, 2008
This extraordinarily diverse book is built out of nineteen
very distinct research papers. Cumulatively, the research
provides foundation for a strong appreciation of the varied
cultural contexts that sustain educational enterprises in the
developing world. The majority of chapters are concerned with
Africa, though a limited number address the Caribbean and the
Middle East. The educational subjects are likewise varied.
While most address educational interventions of one sort or
another, a few report on perceptions of students or teachers
towards particular practices. The settings range from
“complementary educational” enterprises to higher
education. Together the studies elevate our understanding of
post-colonial educational initiatives, though it is unlikely that
many readers will, or need to, read the volume from cover to
cover.
The individual chapters are generally well written and make
substantive contributions. The methodologies are well documented,
though they are equally as broad as the geographic settings are
wide. While perhaps methodologically not as strong as others,
the opening set of chapters do the most to set the context of
post-colonial education through portraits of participants in the
school systems and particular school reforms. It is in these
chapters that one encounters crisp narratives documenting the
lives and realities faced by lower income African students and
community members that reveal the importance education has to
them. These chapters also discuss the importance of local
community participation in educational endeavors as a way to
ensure the appropriateness of educational interventions and also
vehicles that empowerment of participants in ways that lay the
foundations for civil society.
An interesting tension exists between papers that use the
voice of denizens versus those of administrators, technicians and
experts. For example, in their study of one
“effective” South African school, Pashiardis and
Heysteck conclude that much of the school’s progress relied
upon its leadership. The principle, though consultative,
nonetheless relied heavily upon prescribed material and strict
discipline. This piece echoes findings of others that seem to
call for interventions involving best practice, which unless
carefully structured to involve participation challenge the idea
of local participation. To be sure, in most instances
today’s understanding of educational improvement is not the
same as it was twenty or thirty years ago. There is far greater
sensitivity to context and louder calls for the promotion of
active learning and involvement.
Abd-El-Khalik, for instance discusses an extensive teacher
education project in Nigeria. The program was intended to
improve the classroom environment and increase active
participation, and to do so in a way that sustained female
independence. While largely successful, the author notes that
Islamic area teachers seemed not to incorporate the guidance as
fully as teachers in non-Islamic settings. Gender issues are
highlighted in several pieces and bespeak a new consensus that
development must support changes in the situation of women, and
that these changes begin with their education.
Still, the tension between expert interventions and local
involvement persists even when these interventions are intended
to produce community participation and empowerment. David S
McCurry, who describes his own involvement in African projects as
a materials expert, deals with the subject headlong. His
critically self-reflective piece suggests how the international
aid community has begun to recognize that the sustainability of
change depends upon building indigenous leadership. Yet, even in
this piece, critical as it is of western attempts to impose
solutions, the hegemony of a new research discourse painfully at
odds with the local environment is demonstrated.
In this, as in other chapters, we are treated to elaborate
methodological discussions. In some cases these methodologies
might be as simply labeled transcribed conversations. Instead
the unintended result is that readers are treated to
demonstrations how education establishes its own language, one
that serves at least as much to exclude as it does to empower.
This reviewer was left with a disconcerting feeling that Western
research methods are awkwardly imposed upon African educational
strategies. It is not that there is anything inappropriate in
the research methods, but rather that they seem so estranged from
their context.
Perhaps no where is this better illustrated than in Mwarumba
Mwavita’s, Research and Practice in Education,
Reflection and Hope to Voiceless Constituents in the Kenyan
Educational System. Opining that Kenyan education is not
sufficiently driven by research findings. Mwarumba deploys
activity theory to examine how pedagagical decisions made,
“Activities, “ Mwaavita explains, “are not
isolated units but nodes in crossing hierarchies, and networks
that are influenced by other activities.” Ultimately,
Mwarumba, is concerned by what he sees as a non-reflective
attitude on the part of teachers which leads to acceptance of
external authority, and asks instead, How can research provide
voice to the voiceless.” Perhaps activity theory will
prove essential in this enterprise, but at first blush it appears
to create larger chasms that the voiceless must cross in first
mastering the foreign language of theory and
research.
Language and research are explicit themes in several of other
chapters. For example there is an interesting comparison of
mathematics among Israeli students of Ethiopian and former Soviet
Union extraction. The seeming universality of the language of
mathematics is explored, particularly when it has to be mediated
first in written or spoken languages, and then in languages other
than those of ones birth. Levin and Shohamey point out that
linguistic challenges appear to have different effects upon the
two groups of students they studied. Former Ethiopian students
had greater difficulty on mathematical test even when they have
had years of involvement with the language of instruction. Thus,
in quite distinct contexts, the authors reaffirm that language
and culture can exclude students from the benefits their
involvement in educational enterprises is presumed to yield. The
findings here tend to emphasize the discussions in other chapters
that discuss the challenges faced by African students where the
language of instruction is frequently not that of their tribal
communities. In fact progression up the educational ladder in
instead often requires that students adapt to new languages.
It is impossible to address all of the intriguing pieces in
this volume. However, it should be clear that there is plenty of
grist to be milled, and, while the individual pieces may seem
discordant, many linkages among them are there for the taking.
While one may at first be put off by the slim connections between
the three geographic areas—even the expected connection
between the Middle East and Africa via Islam turns out to be less
than expected because two of the four middle eastern studies take
place in Israel, and only one is set firmly in the Muslim
world—there is a greater sense in which the diversity of
these pieces do illuminate the importance of context. This is
found in their both similarities and dissimilarities among each
other and with respect to developing nations. Ultimately, this
volume will make a fine edition to institutional and personal
libraries intent on building awareness of education in
post-colonial settings.
Dan Jacoby
Professsor, Policy Studies and Interdisciplinary Arts and
Sciences
University of Washington, Bothell
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