FreshEd

Today we talk about a television show that was hugely popular in Latin America called El Chavo del Ocho. The show crossed boarders across Latin America, taking on a multiplicity of meaning. My guests today, Daniel Friedrich and Erica Colmenares, have a new edited collection that explores how the show worked and produced particular visions of Latin American childhood, schooling, and societies. They also contend that their approach to studying El Chavo del Ocho is a new direction in comparative education research. Daniel Friedrich is an Associate Professor of Curriculum at Teachers College, Columbia University where Erica Colmenares is a doctoral candidate in the Curriculum and Teaching department. Their new edited collection is entitled Resonances of El Chavo del Ocho in Latin American Childhood, schooling and societies. It is the first book in the new Bloomsbury series “New Directions in Comparative and International Education.”

Finland is known to have an excellent education system. Its high scores on the Programme for International Student Assessment have convinced people around the world that Finland is a country worth copying. In 2011, Pasi Sahlberg detailed Finland’s educational reforms that helped achieve these world-class results in his book Finnish Lessons. As Pasi traveled the world talking about his award-winning book to academics, policy makers, and educators, he was always asked if it is a good idea to copy the Finnish education system. Today, Pasi Sahlberg – a regular on FreshEd -- sits down with me to talk about his latest book, FinnishEd Leadership: Four Big, inexpensive ideas to transform education. FinnishEd Leadership is, in some sense, a sequel to his earlier book, Finnish Lessons. FinnishEd Leadership offers ideas to make a difference in other schools inspired by Finnish practice. In other words, he provides an answer to those people asking if their country should copy Finland’s education system.

Ever since the 1983 Nation at Risk report, America has seemingly gone through one educational reform after another. Have these reforms worked? My guest today, Paul Reville, thinks the reforms have correctly focused on the goals of excellence and equity but have not addressed the systemic problems impacting schools. Paul Reville is the founding director of the Education Redesign Lab at the Harvard. Prior to his time at Harvard, he was the Education Secretary for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. As Governor Patrick’s top education adviser, Paul brings valuable insights to his work of the real-life political challenges that sometimes slow educational change. Paul is the Francis Keppel Professor of Practice of Educational Policy and Administration at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

When I was in school, I did anything – and everything! – to get out of a test. Seriously. Ask my parents, who I drove nuts. I often refused to go to school on test days or simply pretended I was sick to get out of class just as the exam was being handed out. Tests made me nervous and I hated the idea that one number could forever define my intelligence. Today, more and more students are refusing to take standardized tests across the USA. Unlike my own mini-protest, however, students who refuse to take tests are part of the Opt-Out movement. This movement is found in many states in America and units people from across the political divide. With me to talk about this growing movement is Oren-Pizmony-Levy, an Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He has been researching the opt-out movement, situating it within the global context. What motivates people to join the movement? What results have been produced? In my conversation with Oren today, we discuss his and Nancy Green Saraisky's report entitled “who opts-out and why?" Who Opts Out and Why? Results from a national survey on opting out of standardized tests https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:201689 How Americans View the Opt Out Movement https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:xd2547d7zx

Across the globe, millions of people have been displaced from their homes. How does the international community respond to this humanitarian crisis? What is the role of education? My guest today is Sarah Dryden-Peterson. She leads a research program that focuses on the connections between education and community development, specifically the role that education plays in building peaceful and participatory societies, particularly in conflict and post-conflict settings. She is concerned with the interplay between local experiences of children, families, and teachers and the development and implementation of national and international policy. Sarah has recently written an article entitled “Refugee education: Education for an unknowable future” in a special issue of the journal Curriculum Inquiry that rethinks refugee education Sarah Dryden-Peterson is an Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She taught middle school in Boston, founded non-profits in South Africa and Uganda, and has two school-aged children.

Today we look at the history and tensions of international education. My guest is Paul Tarc, an Associate professor at Western University. Paul sees certain tensions as inherent in the very idea of international education. As universities around the world embrace internationalism in an era of limited state funding, some wonder whether those idealists intentions have been clouded by hopes of increased revenue generation.

This is the last episode in our four-part series leading up to the CIES 2017 Symposium. In the past three episodes, we have talked about decolonizing knowledge and innovating comparative and international education primarily from within the USA. But what does decolonization look like in other countries? Today we focus on Pakistan. My guest is Shenila Khoja-Moolji. She researches and writes about the interplay of gender, race, religion, and power in transnational contexts. In the May 2017 supplement of the Comparative Education Review, she wrote an article on teacher professional development in Pakistan. Shenila has also learned to navigate the difficult and at times imperial terrain of international education development. Shenila Khoja-Moolji is currently a visiting scholar at the Alice Paul Center for Research on Gender, Sexuality and Women at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Forging the Ideal Educated Girl, which will be published by the University of California Press in June 2018.

The CIES 2017 Symposium aims to explore new frontiers in Comparative Education. Today, I speak with Peter Demerath about some of the exciting work being done in ethnographic research. We discuss many ideas from indigenous knowledge to grounded grit. Peter even talks about the challenges researching the same community for over two decades, as well as the value such studies can have. Peter Demerath is an Associate Professor in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development, and an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. A former middle school social studies teacher, Peter has conducted ethnographic research on schooling, student identity, and academic engagement in Papua New Guinea and in the suburban and urban United States. He is currently President-elect of the American Anthropological Association’s Council on Anthropology and Education. www.freshedpodcast.com/2017symposium

Today we look inside an example of destabilizing knowledge hierarchies inside an American university. With me is Patricia Parker. Patricia helped set up the Graduate Certificate in Participatory Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The graduate certificate reveals the paradoxes of challenging dominant forms of knowledge inside one of the very sites, the university, responsible for reproducing colonial knowledge structures. Patrcia Parker is chair of the Department of Communication at the University of North Carolina where she is also an associate professor of critical organizational communication studies and director of the Graduate Certificate in Participatory Research. She will speak at the CIES 2017 Symposium later this month. www.freshedpodcast.com/2017symposium

Today we kick off a four-part series called FreshEd x Symposium. During the lead-up to the 2017 Symposium, four speakers will join FreshEd to whet your appetite for the conversations and debate that will take place in Washington DC. This year’s symposium asks us to consider about how comparative and international education phenomena are studied and wade through the possibility that our field has colonial legacies and tendencies. To kick things off, Leigh Patel joins me to discuss the ways in which settler colonialism structures American society, including the academy. Leigh Patel is an interdisciplinary researcher, educator, and writer. She is a Professor at the University of California, Riverside, and is working on her next book, “To study is to struggle: Higher education and settler colonialism." www.freshedpodcast.com/2017symposium