Carol Anne Spreen

“Until We Get Up Again to Fight”: Education Rights and Participation in South Africa

This article reflects on the possibilities for democratic and direct participation that have emerged through socially engaged research on education rights in South Africa. The Education Rights Project is located in a university-based research and advocacy center for education rights and social justice that has been working with township communities to monitor the implementation of right to education legislation. In this article we examine the ways in which rights-based participatory research combined with citizen struggle and community mobilization can contribute to new understandings of rights-based education policy, citizen participation, and democracy.

On Becoming a Global Citizen

The scope and complexity of global initiatives have dramatically increased at institutions of higher education (Altbach & Knight, 2007). Many colleges and universities conceptualize their programmatic and curricular responses to these calls for internationalization around global citizenship education (Deardorff, 2006; Morais & Ogden, 2011; Musil, 2006; Nussbaum, 2006).

Book ReviewTeaching in the New South Africa at Merrydale High Schoolby Everard Weber. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2006. 231 pp.

“major geomorphic shifts” (Tony Brecher and Paul Trowler [2001], quoted in Bray, Adamson, and Mason, 354) shaping the field of comparative education and our methods of inquiry. Returning to the Bray and Thomas (1995) model, it may be helpful to separate the aspects of education and society on the third face of the cube. The third face could address the education aspects alone, while aspects of society could be depicted on the model as an axis or rods that slice through the cube’s center. This may help capture the notion that comparative analyses should explore the convergence and divergence of values as well as participants’ perceptions of political change, the labor market, and “other aspects” (e.g., continuity, conflict, fluidity, hybridity, and development) that could be labeled on the axis/rod(s). This addition may help to depict more permeable boundaries and provide the opportunity to identify and address temporal dimensions (past, present, and future) all on one cube, thereby eliminating the need for separate cubes to display each temporal dimension.