FreshEd

Today Susan Robertson and Mario Novelli join me to review the year. And what a year it’s been! Covid-19 has upended the world. But how has it upended research on education and globalization? Has it changed how we think about and teach comparative and international education? Susan Robertson is a professor of education in the Faculty of Education at the university of Cambridge. Mario Novelli is Professor in the Political Economy of Education at the University of Sussex. They are co-editors of the journal Globalisation, Societies, and Education. https://freshedpodcast.com/2020inreview/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com

What’s the relationship between school dropout, child marriage, and early pregnancy? Do girls drop out of school because of early marriage or pregnancy? Or is it the reverse? My guest today is Erin Murphy-Graham who has researched these questions extensively in Honduras. She focuses on the agency of girls in their adolescence and the disconnect between schooling and their futures. Erin Murphy-Graham is an Associate Adjunct Professor at the Graduate School of Education, UC Berkeley. She’s recently published with Alison Cohen and Diana Pacheco-Montoya a new article in the Comparative Education Review entitled: School dropout, child marriage and early pregnancy among adolescent girls in rural Honduras. freshedpodcast.com/Murphy-Graham/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com

Today I wax philosophically with Dennis Shirley about his new co-edited special issue of the ECNU Review of Education entitled Beyond well-being: Educating for Wholeness and Purpose. In our conversation we discuss the future of education and the dialectic between well-being and learning. Dennis Shirley is Duganne Faculty Fellow and Professor of Education at the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College. He’s co-editor with Stanton Wortham, and Deoksoon Kim of the latest issue of the ECNU Review of Education. freshedpodcast.com/shirley/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com

Today I talk with Kang Zhao about how Chinese policy has interpreted and implemented notions of competency-based education, which has been advanced in global organizations such as the OECD. Kang sees core competencies as limiting and calls for an education beyond competencies. Kang Zhao is an associate professor in the College of Education at Zhejiang University. He’s latest article published in the ECNU Review of Education is entitled Education for Wholeness, but beyond competences: Challenges to key-competences-based education in China. freshedpodcast.com/zhao/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com

My guest today is Steve Klees, professor of international education policy and a distinguished scholar teacher at the University of Maryland. Steve has a new book entitled The Conscience of a Progressive, which draws on his 45 years of work around the world as an economist and international educator. In the book he compares conservative, liberal, and progressive views on a wide range of social issues. Steve’s critique goes to the heart of neoliberal capitalism, pushing us to confront the intersectional challenges of gender, class, race, ethnicity, LGBTQ rights, and disability. freshedpodcast.com/steveklees-2/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com

How can we think of indigenous knowledge systems as a paradigm for research methodology? With me are Elizabeth Sumida Huaman and Nathan Martin to discuss their new co-edited volume entitled Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Research Methodologies: Local Solutions and Global Opportunities. Navigating the interplay of multiple knowledges and research paradigms can be extremely beneficial. Elizabeth Sumida Huaman is an associate professor of comparative and international development Education in the college of Education and Human development at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Nathan D. Martin is an Associate Professor of Justice and Social Inquiry in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. freshedpodcast.com/sumida-huaman-martin/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com

Today we take stock of public education in the United States after the 2020 election. With me are Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire. You may know Jack and Jennifer from their education podcast called Have You Heard, which you should definitely check out. They’ve also recently co-written the book "A Wolf at the schoolhouse door: The dismantling of public education and the future of school," which traces the war on public education in America. They argue that we should be watching the changes at the state level after the recent election. Jack Schneider is an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell and Jennifer Berkshire is a freelance journalist. They co-host the podcast Have you Heard. freshedpodcast.com/Schneider-Berkshire/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com

Today we look at some of the colonial legacies in discourses around girls’ education. With me are Chris Kirchgasler and Karishma Desai. They’ve recently published an article entitled, “’Girl’ in Crisis: Colonial Residues of Domesticity in Transnational School Reforms,” which was published in the Comparative Education Review. Chris Kirchgasler is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Karishma Desai is an assistant Professor at Rutgers Graduate School of Education. https://freshedpodcast.com/kirchgasler-desai/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com

Pro-democracy protests erupted in Thailand in February 2020. Students were in the vanguard. Such protests are extremely dangerous in Thailand. With me to talk about the protests is Kanokrat Lertchoosakul, an assistant professor at the Faculty of political science at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. She has followed student activist movements for many years and has interviewed hundreds of student protesters. She specializes in student movements, left-wing activism and democratization in Thailand. www.freshedpodcast.com/lertchoosakul -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com

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 effect, we only talk about what we can actually measure on the test, missing so many other subjects and areas that are also important to education. And the third issue she finds is that we now talk about an impersonal “Student” as represented by PISA. The many reports put out by the OECD talk about so-called “students”, but they are always abstracted and without color or context. Who is this so-called PISA “student” and why do states compare their young citizens to her? Radhika Gorur is an Associate Professor at Deakin University, Australia, and a Director of the Laboratory for International Assessment Studies. She will speak at the inaugural CIES Symposium this November. The article discussed in this podcast can be found in the European Educational Research Journal. https://freshedpodcast.com/radhikagorur/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com