FreshEd

Today we continue our look at global education policy. Last week, I spoke with Andy Green about social cohesion, one of the two main pillars found in most, if not all, of education policies worldwide. The second pillar, as Professor Green pointed out, is education for economic development. This global policy of education has recently manifested, in many countries, through various practices and processes of educational privatization. With me today is Toni Verger to talk about the global diffusion of education privatization not as a global education policy per se but as a set of processes through which private actors participate more actively in a range of education activities that have traditionally been the responsibilities of the state. In this sense, privatization directly impacts education policy. Not only is Toni a co-editor of the Handbook of Global Education Policy but he is also a co-author of a new book entitled The Privatization of Education: A political economy of global education reform. In our talk today, Toni discusses his book on education privatization, outlining the factors driving its spread globally. Toni Verger is researcher in the Department of Sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He will join Andy Green, Bob Lingard, and Karen Mundy on December 12 for a public webinar focused on global education policy. You can visit FreshEdpodcast.com for more details.

The globalization and education special interest group of the comparative and international education society will be hosting a public webinar on December 12 entitled “Puncturing the Paradigm: Education Policy in a New Global Era.” The webinar will bring together the four co-editors of the newly published Handbook of Global Education Policy, Karen Mundy, Andy Green, Bob Lingard, and Toni Verger. During the lead up to that event, FreshEd will interview the co-editors to set the stage for the webinar. Today I speak with Professor Andy Green about the global education policy of social cohesion. Although we often think of education policy as primarily concerned with economic development, it also has been historically connected to the idea of creating a cohesive group of people who share certain norms and customs. Benedict Anderson called this “imagined communities.” Andy Green has looked at the effect from education on social cohesion across the globe. Andy Green is Professor of Comparative Social Science and Director of the Center on Learning and Life Chances at the Institute of Education, University College London. He will participate in the webinar on global education policy on December 12. Check out Freshedpodcast.com/webinar for more details about the event.

For the past 7 weeks, FreshEd has focused on global learning metrics. Although there is much more to say on that subject, I think it’s time to look at something completely different. This week Sachi Edwards joins me to talk about interfaith dialogue initiatives in US higher education. The ideas of religious identity, religious oppression and religious privilege are often overlooked when we think about social justice. Sachi wants to change that. Sachi Edwards is an Adjunct Professor in Higher Education, Student Affairs, and International Education, at the College of Education, University of Maryland. She’s recently published her first book entitled Critical Conversations about Religion: Promises and pitfalls of a social justice approach to interfaith dialogue (Information Age Publishing, 2016).

This is the final show in the global learning metrics mini-series. The two day inaugural CIES symposium has concluded. As a wrap up, I’m going to play my brief conversation with Pasi Sahlberg, a professor at the University of Helsinki, about some of his reactions to the symposium. He tweets at @pasi_sahlberg. I hope you’ve enjoyed this mini-series!

Day one of the CIES symposium just ended. Before we start day two, I thought it important to revisit a remark Tom Popkewitz made on this podcast a few months ago. Tom argued that educational metrics, and the comparison that comes with them, have always been about inscribing in children a certain moral order. I’ve been surprised that this type of thinking has been relatively absent in the conversations today. What will tomorrow bring? Stay tuned!

This is the last installment of the FreshEd mini-series on global learning metrics. On Thursday, the CIES Symposium kicks off in Scottsdale, Arizona. For this last show, I’ve invited Karen Mundy to talk about the Global Partnership for Education. Karen offers interesting insight into learning metrics because she is both an academic and a development practitioner. Karen Mundy is the Chief Technical Officer at the Global Partnership for Education. She came to the Global Partnership for Education in 2014 from the University of Toronto where she was Professor and Associate Dean of Research, International and Innovation. She will present some of the ideas discussed in this podcast at the CIES Symposium in Scottsdale Arizona, which starts on Thursday. Now it’s time for me to catch my flight! See you in Scottsdale!

We often think of international assessments as being synonymous with PISA, the OECD international assessment that has been the focus of many shows in FreshEd’s mini-series on global learning metrics. But international assessments have a history far beyond PISA. In fact, it was the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, known as the IEA, that first introduced large-scale comparative studies of educational systems in the late 1950s. This history is important to consider when thinking about global learning metrics today. My guest today is Dirk Hastedt, Executive Director of the IEA. He’s spent many years working with the IEA, seeing the development of assessments in new subjects, such as citizenship and computer literacies, and the emergence of league tables, which rank education systems and have become popular today. Drik offers valuable insight for any discussion on the feasibility or desirability of global learning metrics. Check out www.FreshEdpodcast.com for more details.

Next week the CIES Symposium will take place where scholars and practitioners from around the world will come together to discuss and debate the desirability and feasibility of global learning metrics. I’ve had the honor of interviewing many of the speakers who will attend the symposium. And one things that has struck me during my conversations about global learning metrics is that often a universal meaning of education is assumed by the tests and those who use it. For instance, a 2013 OECD report that used PISA data was entitled “What makes Schools Successful?” Implied in the very title of that report is an assumption that there is a universal definition of success, as if all schools around the world agreed on what it means to be successful. Moreover, the report implies that it is PISA data itself that can reveal the answer. Perhaps more clearly, a 2013 report by the Learning Metrics Task Force, which is a multi-stakeholder collaboration organized by UNESCO Institute of Statistics and the Center for Universal Education at Brookings, was entitled Toward Universal Learning. The very goal of the task force seems to be reaching universal learning. But can there actually be one definition of learning and success? Is it possible, in other words, to have a universal notion of “good” education? This question has bugged me for some time, so I’ve invited Supriya Baily back to the show to discuss this idea of a “good” education in relation to global learning metrics. She points out how tests such as PISA are often culturally unresponsive and do not enable teachers to thrive. Although Supriya is hopeful that Global learning metrics can be meaningful with some revision, she cautions against universalizing concepts of learning or success. Supriya Baily is an Associate Professor at George Mason University and the Associate Director for the Center for International Education. She will present some of the ideas discussed today at the CIES Symposium next week. Check out www.freshedpodcast.com for more details.

Today we continue our focus on global learning metrics during the lead up to the inaugural CIES symposium, which will take place in Scottsdale, AZ from November 10-11. The past shows in this mini-series have focused broadly on global learning metrics: We’ve looked at the history and value of learning metrics for the perspective of national governments; we’ve examined the power of tests like PISA; and we’ve heard critiques of policy borrowing and outcome-based approaches to education that rely on learning metrics and their subsequent rankings. But we haven’t yet looked at some of the questions on the tests that form the proxies for global learning metrics. My guest today is Dr. Inés Dussel, Researcher and Professor at the Department of Educational Research, Center for Advanced Studies and Research (DIE-CINVESTAV) in Mexico. She argues that global learning metrics are not culturally sensitive and uses examples from her work on digital literacy to show why. Inés critiques PISA for taking a narrow focus of learning as only related to cognitive skills — the ability for students to read or write or problem solve. By contrast, she takes a broad view of learning, which encompasses not only cognitive skills but also a collection of interpersonal and social skills. Of course, these latter skill sets are nearly impossible to measure in one school let alone worldwide using universal metrics. And this is the crux of the issue: how can global learning metrics measure any skill set across so many different contexts and cultures worldwide? Photo credit: La Nación

Today we explore some of the problems with global learning metrics from the perspective of teacher unions. In particular, we look at outcomes-based approaches to international education development. Such an approach uses global learning metrics to quantify supposed outcomes of education. But as a result, education is reduced and simplified. My guest today is David Edwards, Deputy General Secretary of Education International in Brussels. Education International is the global federation of teacher unions. He will present some of the ideas discussed today at the CIES Symposium in November. Check out FreshEdpodcast.com for more details about the event.