Measuring Quality Beyond Test Scores: The Impact of Regional Context on Curriculum Implementation (in Northern Uganda)

Although global initiatives have brought attention to the lack of quality in education systems worldwide; the question remains, how do we implement quality education? Teachers, a vital component of the education process, are not usually included in these global conversations; this results in government initiatives missing key obstacles faced by teachers daily. In this article, we used a rights-based approach to examine the Quality Educators Initiative, specifically its curricular component, as it tries to assist teachers in northern Uganda, an area whose schools and communities are vastly under-resourced and dealing with post-conflict effects. Using a mixed-methods approach, we highlight teachers’ experiences with the National Thematic Curriculum and reveal through our findings that regional contextual factors, and teachers’ voices and changing roles due to these factors, must be taken into consideration when rolling out new education policies

A Truly Transformative HRE: Facing our Current Challenges

In this research project, we examine how human rights education can go be-yond the symbolism and rhetoric of rights and, instead, be understood in a way that critically considers the continued social, economic, and political inequalities that persist. Learning about rights should be informed by the lived experiences of those whose rights have been and continue to be violated. We use five years of research which empirically documents the impact and learning that took place in an interdisciplinary, action-oriented high school class comprised of honors/Advanced Placement (AP), refugee/migrant and special education students. By understanding and investigating identity, belonging, and citizenship through critical historical inquiry, experiential learning in diverse classroom settings, and civic action lessons, human rights education can provide a more complex way of looking at and understanding rights and responsibilities in a global world. The research examines the limitations in teaching human rights through “declarationism” (or merely through presenting texts, facts, and figures); but it also describes the strengths and possibilities for teaching rights through engaged critical praxis which enables learners to explore their rights and injustices through social action projects in their communities. We describe a combined university and high school course “Human Rights Activism and Education” which integrated university students with refugee/migrant and American high school students. Through action research projects that were carried out over a year-long course, students engaged in investigations about the intersections of race, class, and gender with issues of power and status, and considered these in light of their own experiences as well as their potential to impact the following concerns: homelessness, food security, racial discrimination, and immigration

Education, Covid-19 and care : social inequality and social relations of value in the South Africa and the United States

Abstract:Education has not been spared during the Covid-19 pandemic that has exposed deep inequalities across the world along lines of ‘race’, class, gender and geography, as well as the digital divide. However, many of the policy responses and solutions proffered to mitigate the crisis fail to address the generative structures that made public education institutions so vulnerable to shocks in the first place. Using the work of Nancy Fraser and Social Reproduction Theory (Bhattacharya, 2017), we argue that understanding the prevailing capitalist social institutional order, and the relations it generates between spheres of production and spheres of reproduction (including education), is fundamental to theories of change that not only respond to the Covid-19 moment justly, but also avoid reproducing and deepening the conditions that made Covid so cataclysmic to begin with. By analysing the conditions of public education across South Africa and the United States comparatively, a case is built for distinguishing between affirmative responses that leave inequitable structures intact and transformative responses that seek to address the root causes of injustice and violence amplified by the pandemic

Procesos de subjetivación, prácticas y políticas para el poscapitalismo

Este artículo presenta algunos resultados de un estudio de terceros espacios que representan pedagogías contrahegemónicas en las ciudades de Buenos Aires y Nueva York. Elaboramos las características de estos espacios, como se crean y se mantienen, los desafíos que encuentran, como negocian su re-lación con el estado y como prefiguran un mundo poscapitalista.Fil: Anderson, Gary. University of New York; Estados UnidosFil: Desai, Dipti. University of New York; Estados UnidosFil: Heras Monner Sans, Ana Ines. Universidad Nacional de San Martin. Escuela de Humanidades. Laboratorio de Investigacion En Ciencias Humanas. - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas. Oficina de Coordinacion Administrativa Pque. Centenario. Laboratorio de Investigacion En Ciencias Humanas.; ArgentinaFil: Spreen, Carol Anne. University of New York; Estados Unido

The curriculum and citizenship education in the context of inequality: Seeking a praxis of hope

In South Africa, more than most countries, the meaning of citizenship and related rights has faced severe contestation centred on categories such as race, class and nation. Close to two decades after the first democratic elections, notions of citizenship in South Africa represent a complex dynamic involving a combination of one or another of these social constructs, as they relate at different times to changing social, political and economic imperatives. In this article we explain that analyses of citizenship education in South Africa have traversed different phases over the last two decades and discuss some of the research on how ideas and values around citizenship are translated into classroom practice. We then examine notions about citizenship and social justice in the shadow of the xenophobic or Afrophobic attacks of 2008/2009 and in the light of the present rise in racial tensions within and across communities in South Africa. Our conclusion highlights the paradox that, despite the normative framework of the Constitution, policies and the curriculum, structural inequalities in society will continue to thwart attempts at social cohesion

The curriculum and citizenship education in the context of inequality: Seeking a praxis of hope

In South Africa, more than most countries, the meaning of citizenship and related rights has faced severe contestation centred on categories such as race, class and nation. Close to two decades after the first democratic elections, notions of citizenship in South Africa represent a complex dynamic involving a combination of one or another of these social constructs, as they relate at different times to changing social, political and economic imperatives. In this article we explain that analyses of citizenship education in South Africa have traversed different phases over the last two decades and discuss some of the research on how ideas and values around citizenship are translated into classroom practice. We then examine notions about citizenship and social justice in the shadow of the xenophobic or Afrophobic attacks of 2008/2009 and in the light of the present rise in racial tensions within and across communities in South Africa. Our conclusion highlights the paradox that, despite the normative framework of the Constitution, policies and the curriculum, structural inequalities in society will continue to thwart attempts at social cohesion

"Until we get up again to fight": education rights and participation in South Africa

This article reflects on the possibilities for democratic and direct participation that have emerged through socially engaged research on education rights in South Africa. The Education Rights Project is located in a university-based research and advocacy center for education rights and social justice that has been working with township communities to monitor the implementation of right to education legislation. In this article we examine the ways in which rights-based participatory research combined with citizen struggle and community mobilization can contribute to new understandings of rights-based education policy, citizen participation, and democracy