Community Participation with Schools in Developing Countries


Book Description

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (2016-2030) set by the United Nations in 2015 restated the importance of universal primary education for all, and specifically discuss quality, equity, and inclusion in basic education. To achieve this, the role of community has been emphasized and participation has become a "buzzword" in international development over the past several decades. Despite the growing attention to community participation in school management, previous literature has shown mixed results in terms of its actual practice and its impacts on quality, equity, and inclusion in education. This book deepens the contextual understanding of community in developing countries and its involvement in schools in general, and its impact on quality, equity, and inclusion of school education in particular. By presenting various case studies in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and a post-conflict state in Europe, the book analyses commonalities and differences in the ways communities are involved and cast their impacts and challenges. The book contributes knowledge on the ways in which community involvement could work in developing countries, the detailed processes and factors that make community participation work in different dimensions, and remaining challenges that scholars and practitioners still need to be concerned and mindful in the field. This book will appeal to both researchers and practitioners who are concerned about the community participation approach for the SDGs.




Community Participation in School Management


Book Description

Nobody denies that trust in schools is key to success in generating any educational outcomes. However, trust is often eroded, resulting in conflicts, alienation, and differentiation among school-level stakeholders. This book analyses school-based management (SBM) of education through the lens of relational trust in the context of Ghana, revealing how community participation in school management leads to educational outcomes. Conducting quantitative analysis of headteacher questionnaires from public basic schools and qualitative analysis of case study schools in the Akatsi South District of Ghana, Shibuya offers critical insights into building sustainable relationships between individual households and geographical/school communities. He argues it is critical to highlight relational trust as an analytical tool to examine relationships between actors and factors in school management. The research finds that trust in schools is a two-way mechanism, and the mutuality of expectations and obligations among stakeholders is essential if children’s learning outcomes are to improve. With its mixed-methods approach, this book will be a valuable resource for scholars in comparative education, those in educational development, and those interested in African contexts.




School, Family, and Community Partnerships


Book Description

Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.




Reforming Education in Developing Countries


Book Description

Underpinned in the stream of thought named ‘communitarianism’, Reforming Education in Developing Countries argues that developing countries need educational reforms that are tightly entwined into their cultural, social, and organizational contexts. It questions the applicability of neoliberal reforms in developing societies, through an analysis of the main elements of neoliberalism in education. It highlights the critical role of the community and suggests new and alternative lines of thought for the practice of reform initiation and implementation in developing countries. The book criticizes major neoliberal ideas in education, illuminates the distinctions between current neoliberal reforms and the characteristics of traditional societies, analyzes major educational ideologies in the developed world, and emphasizes the key role of local communities in this world. It proposes a dynamic model of reforming education in these countries that includes three major phases and integrates both modern and traditional (indigenous) educational purposes and values. Evocative ponderings are outlined throughout the book to promote critical thinking and reframing of educators' views towards educational reform and change. This book will be of great interest to researchers and students in the fields of educational leadership, educational policy, educational change, comparative education, political science, and sociology. It will also appeal to educators, supervisors, and policymakers.




Pitfalls of Participatory Programs


Book Description

Participation of beneficiaries in the monitoring of public services is increasingly seen as a key to improving their efficiency. In India, the current government flagship program on universal primary education organizes both locally elected leaders and parents of children enrolled in public schools into committees and gives these groups powers over resource allocation, and monitoring and management of school performance. However, in a baseline survey we found that people were not aware of the existence of these committees and their potential for improving education. This paper evaluates three different interventions to encourage beneficiaries' participation through these committees: providing information, training community members in a new testing tool, and training and organizing volunteers to hold remedial reading camps for illiterate children. We find that these interventions had no impact on community involvement in public schools, and no impact on teacher effort or learning outcomes in those schools. However, we do find that the intervention that trained volunteers to teach children to read had a large impact on activity outside public schools -- local youths volunteered to be trained to teach, and children who attended these camps substantially improved their reading skills. These results suggest that citizens face substantial constraints in participating to improve the public education system, even when they care about education and are willing to do something to improve it.




CONCEPTS OF EDUCATION


Book Description




Knowledge, Education and Social Structure in Africa


Book Description

In searching for the potential that lies in African societies, the chapters of this volume consider relationships between knowledge, education and social structure from multiple angles, from a macro-continental scale to national education systems, schools and local communities. The themes that cut across the chapters include education as a mode of transmitting values, the contrasting effects of school credentials and knowledge for use, politics and interactions among people surrounding a school and knowledge acquisition as a subjective process. The rich empirical analyses suggest that the subjective commitment of, and mutuality among, people will make the acquired knowledge a powerful 'tool for conviviality' to realize a stable life, even given the turmoil created by rapid institutional and environmental changes that confront African societies.




School Management and Effectiveness in Developing Countries


Book Description

This book is quite different from existing 'Western' books on school effectiveness. It describes and analyses the way in which schools operate in developing countries and also tries to explain why they are as they are. Examining them at three levels - the macro, the meso and the micro - the authors use a theoretical framework that they have termed 'post-bureaucracy.' The book has four interlinked sections. First the authors examine the existing economic and theoretical contexts around school effectiveness, including an analysis of the causes of economic crisis and its impact on school management. In the second section the analysis of schools as bureaucratic facades is proposed. The reality of school life, from which any theory of school effectiveness must derive, is illustrated by an ethnographic account of the job of the headteacher in developing countries. The third section explores different ways to understand this reality, operating on three levels: global relationships, national and community cultures, and individual agency. In the final section Haber and Davies draw these levels and realities together. They argue for the democratization of schools as the only way forward for effective education fordevelopment.




Education Sector Plans and their Implementation in Developing Countries


Book Description

This book examines the factors affecting the successful implementation of Education Sector Plans in developing countries. It provides a detailed comparison that draws on data from 27 countries to offer careful research conclusions and policy recommendations. Offering a detailed comparison of the schooling situation (e.g. availability of potable water and toilets, provision for the disabled) as well as educational outcomes (both test scores and percentages out-of-school) from the 27 countries using empirical evidence, the book examines the resources that have been invested in different education sectors, investigating the development and success of each plan. The volume uses correlation analysis to compare factors including the availability of government funding, national characteristics, ministerial decisions, influences of country and donor stakeholders, as well as district- and school-level issues. Thorough comparative analysis of the data is then demonstrated, with two measures of achievements to identify which factors can be considered as the most important in order to reach realistic policy and research conclusions. Timely and engaging, this book will be of great interest to researchers, scholars, and postgraduate students in the field of education and international development, comparative education, and international education more broadly.




Community Engagement in Higher Education


Book Description

There seems to be renewed interest in having universities and other higher education institutions engage with their communities at the local, national, and international levels. But what is community engagement? Even if this interest is genuine and widespread, there are many different concepts of community service, outreach, and engagement. The wide range of activity encompassed by community engagement suggests that a precise definition of the “community mission” is difficult and organizing and coordinating such activities is a complex task. This edited volume includes 18 chapters that explore conceptual understandings of community engagement and higher education reforms and initiatives intended to foster it. Contributors provide empirical research findings, including several case study examples that respond to the following higher educaiton community engagement issues. What is “the community” and what does it need and expect from higher education institutions? Is community engagement a mission of all types of higher education institutions or should it be the mission of specific institutions such as regional or metropolitan universities, technical universities, community colleges, or indigenous institutions while other institutions such as major research universities should concentrate on national and global research agendas and on educating internationally-competent researchers and professionals? How can a university be global and at the same time locally relevant? Is it, or should it be, left to the institutions to determine the scope and mode of their community engagement, or is a state mandate preferable and feasible? If community engagement or “community service” are mandatory, what are the consequences of not complying with the mandate? How effective are policy mandates and university engagement for regional and local economic development? What are the principal features and relationships of regionally-engaged universities? Is community engagement to be left to faculty members and students who are particularly socially engaged and locally embedded or is it, or should it be, made mandatory for both faculty and students? How can community engagement be (better) integrated with the (other) two traditional missions of the university—research and teaching? Cover image: The Towering Four-fold Mission of Higher Education, by Natalie Jacob