FreshEd

Today we continue our mini-series on global learning metrics during the lead up to the inaugural CIES Symposium, which will take place in Scottsdale, AZ this November. So far in this mini-series, we’ve heard why international assessments can be valuable for national governments and how many governments have begun to see like PISA. Today, we jump into a case study of the way in which countries learn from one another based on international assessments. My guest, Professor Bob Adamson, takes us through the case of how England learned from Hong Kong. He unpacks the selective learning of English policymakers on their visits to Hong Kong. He see this as akin to a pantomime. The larger implication of the rise of superficial policy referencing among countries is the challenge it brings to comparative education. Bob Adamson is Chair Professor of Curriculum Reform and Director of the Centre for Lifelong Learning Research and Development at the Education University of Hong Kong. In December 2015, Bob was named UNESCO Chair holder in Technical and Vocational Education and Lifelong Learning.

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 a Senior Lecturer 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. For more information, check out www.freshedpodcast.com

Today marks the first installment of a seven-part miniseries on Global Learning Metrics. In effort to promote the inaugural Symposium of the Comparative and International Education Society, FreshEd will air interviews with some of the invited speakers. To kick things off in this episode, I speak with renowned educational economist Eric A. Hanushek about global learning metrics and his use of cross national educational data to understand what is possible in education systems around the globe. He has authored or edited twenty-three books along with over 200 articles. Dr. Hanushek is perhaps most famous for introducing the idea of measuring teacher quality through the growth in student achievement, which forms the basis for value-added measures for teachers and schools. More recently, his work has focused on the quality of education and its connection to national economic growth. Eric A. Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University and will speak at the CIES Symposium this November. I hope these shows will spark your interest in joining the Symposium. It starts November 10 in Scottsdale, Arizona. You find more details at FreshEdPodcast.com.

I’m going to generalize here. I bet for many listeners schooling is understood as an institution that instills in children a type of practical knowledge that hopefully makes them future productive citizens. Education through schooling is the answer to many social problems. It’s very purpose is to improve society. But where did these ideas come from? Why do many people think schooling is to improve society? What knowledge and systems of reason govern this type of thinking about education? My guest today, Professor Tom Popkewitz, dives deep into these questions. Tom joined me to talk about some of his newest thinking, which he is currently writing up as a book tentatively entitled, The Impracticality of Practical Research: A History of Present Educational Sciences and the Limits of its System of Reason. Get ready: My conversation with Tom covers a lot of ground: touching on the notion of cosmopolitanism, connecting the Enlightenments in the 18th and 19th centuries to the 20th century progressive education era in America, and finally to contemporary teacher education and the rise of PISA. He challenges us to think about what it means to compare in educational sciences today. Where did such comparative thinking come from and how does it primarily work? Tom Popkewitz is a professor in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Full link: www.freshedpodcast.com/tompopkewitz

How can we think about inequality and education? My guest today, Mario Novelli, dives into the subject by looking at the role of schools in the production of inequality. Since 2010, Mario has researched issues related to the role of education in peace building processes, working with UNICEF on a series of projects. In our conversation, Mario not only details how modernity, capitalism, and colonialism combine to create systems of inequality inside school systems but also publicly struggles with his role in the production of inequality through his work in international educational development. Mario Novelli is Professor of the Political Economy of Education and Director of the Centre for International Education (CIE) at the University of Sussex. His latest article discussed in this podcast can be found in the most recent issue of the British Journal of the Sociology of Education.

Did you know that today there are more forcibly displaced people than at any time since World War II? The total number comes out to roughly 65 million, including internally displaced peoples, asylum seekers, and refugees. That’s roughly 1 out of every 113 people on Earth. Today I speak with three professors from Teachers College, Columbia University about their research project on refugees, which is being funded by the United States Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. At Teachers College, Mary Mendenhall is an Assistant Professor of Practice in International and Comparative Education; Garnett Russell is an Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Education; and Elizabeth Buckner is a Visiting Assistant Professor in International Comparative Education. If you’d like to see some of their research photos showing urban refugee education, please check out FreshEdpodcast.com

It’s been over two months since the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Right after it happened, I invited Prof. Susan Robertson on FreshEd to talk about the possible consequences the Brexit vote would have on education. During that conversation, I asked if this vote would open the possibility for a new left to emerge within the British Labour Party. Well, how have things turned out? To update the situation in the United Kingdom, I recently spoke with Mario Novelli. Mario Novelli is Professor of the Political Economy of Education and Director of the Centre for International Education (CIE) at the University of Sussex. For years, Mario has followed the solidarity work of Jeremy Corbyn, who is now Leader of the labour party and currently in a leadership battle with Owen Smith. This short episode of FreshEd has been taken from a longer conversation I had with Mario about his research on inequality and education, which will air on September 12.

You’ve probably heard about the elaborate Olympic handover from Rio to Tokyo that included a video animation of Super Mario walking through Shibuya, jumping through a green tube, and then appearing at the closing ceremony in Rio. The super Mario custom dropped to the floor and there was, lo and behold, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, standing in a red hat holding a red ball, ready to take the helm of the Tokyo Olympics, which will take place in 2020. It was an unusual moment, to say the least, for the Japanese leader, who is typically reserved and anything but showy. But the scene perfectly captured the contemporary push by the Abe administration to internationalize Japan. There he was in front of a global audience, showing off Japan’s athletes and pop-culture icons. Abe has been on a march to change Japan: he’s trying to alter the constitution to allow Japan to send military forces abroad, something that has not been done since World War II. And his administration started something called super-global universities, which aim to allow graduates to “walk into positions of global leadership.” Reforms to Japanese education are not knew and we can learn a lot by looking at previous experiences. My guest today, Peter Cave, has a new book that explores changes in Japanese junior high schools in the 1990s and in the early 2000s. Dr. Peter Cave is a Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies at the University of Manchester. Through an ethnography of two schools over 11 years, he was able to detail how, if at all, educational reforms translated into educational practice. And these insights can help us understand the reforms being proposed today by the Abe administration. Peter Cave’s new book is “Schooling Selves: Autonomy, Interdependence, and Reform in Japanese Junior High Education”, which was published this year by the University of Chicago Press.

Today we look at developmental leadership in the Philippines. My guest is Professor Michele Schweisfurth. In a recent report for the Developmental Leadership Program, with support from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Michele and a team explored the ways in which higher education has supported the emergence of developmental leaders and the formation of networks among leaders in the Philippines. Michele Schweisfurth is Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Glasgow, where she is also co-Director of the Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change. Her latest co-written report on developmental leadership in the Philippines can be found on FreshEd’s website: FreshEdpodcast.com. Check it out today.

Today: Case Studies. My guests, Fran Vavrus and Lesley Bartlett. They have a new co-written book entitled Rethinking Case Study Research: A Comparative Approach, which will be published by Routledge later this year. Fran and Lesley contend that the recent conceptual shifts in the social sciences, some of which have been discussed by previous guests on this show, demand that case studies re-configure their approach towards culture, context, space, place, and comparison. Fran Vavrus is a professor in the college of education and human development at the University of Minnesota. Lesley Bartlett is a professor in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. I spoke with Fran and Lesley in Mid-July. They have written an exclusive summary of their forthcoming book, Rethinking Case Study Research: A Comparative Approach, for FreshEd listeners, which is only available on FreshEdpodcast.com Check it out today.