Jason Beech

The Theme of Educational Transfer in Comparative Education: A View over Time

This article analyses notions of ‘transfer’ in the literature of comparative education, searching for continuities and discontinuities in the way that the process of educational transfer has been construed. The analysis shows that the theme of transfer has been fundamental in comparative education from the early nineteenth century until the present day. Although some of the questions addressed in the field since its origins are still crucial today, it is suggested in the final part of the study that these problems should now be addressed in a world in which educational space has become more complex, as supra-national and sub-national actors become increasingly important in the production and reproduction of specialised knowledge about education.

Spatial Theorizing in Comparative and International Education Research

The authors argue for a critical spatial perspective in comparative and international education. We briefly summarize how time and space have been conceptualized within our field. We then review mainstream social science literature that reflects a metanarrative, which we critique for contributing to false dichotomies between space and place and oversimplified views of the relationship between the global and the local. We present some of the key ideas associated with the “spatial turn,” including a relational understanding and productive capacity of space. In the final part of this article, we analyze the significance of new spatial theorizing for comparative and international education by reviewing examples of both comparative and educational researchers who are engaging with critical spatial theorizing. We argue that a possible way to confront binary thinking about space and place is by shifting attention to the relational conceptions of space, through analyses of networks, connections, and flows.

Who is Strolling Through the Global Garden? International Agencies and Educational Transfer

In 1900 Sadler warned against the transfer of educational policies or practices from one context to another by noting that ‘We cannot wander at pleasure among the educational systems of the world, like a child strolling through a garden and pick a off a fl ower from one bush and some leaves from another, and then expect that if we stick what we have gathered into the soil at home, we shall have a living plant’ (Sadler, 1979: 49). At those times, the ‘children strolling through gardens’ were mostly men (sic) who were appointed by their governments to develop their own systems of education. These travellers and reformers believed that by studying other educational systems, such as Prussia and France (two of the most popular gardens of the nineteenth century) they could avoid some of the ‘mistakes’ made by other countries in their linear progress towards an ideal educational system, and, of course, they could fi nd some aspects of these systems that could be adopted at home. Even though Sadler’s lecture has been given much attention, and the above is probably one of the most quoted sentences in the literature (in the English language) on comparative education, his advice was not always followed. Educational transfer has been the raison d’etre of what has been called ‘applied comparative education’ (Cowen, 2006). Since the times of Jullien, Victor Cousin, Horace Mann, Tolstoy and Sarmiento, practitioners of comparative education have given policy-oriented advice about which educational ideas, practices or institutions overseas could be transferred as the solution to pressing internal problems. So, for example, when the Japanese were faced with the ‘Black Ship’, which revealed their technological underdevelopment, they saw education as one of the ‘secret keys’ of the power of the West (Passin, 1965). If Japan wanted to compete with the West it had to borrow Western education. European educators were hired to run institutions in Japan, and Japanese leaders and intellectuals were sent to Europe and North America to observe educational practices (Tanaka, 2005). The administrative model was taken from France. Co-educational common schools as the basic unit of the school system, normal schools and vocational (particularly agricultural) education were transferred from the USA (Passin, 1965); and German Universities were taken as a model for creating the Imperial University (Tanaka, 2005). Similarly, in the late 1950s, when the USSR launched the fi rst artifi cial satellite, after the failure of two US attempts, there was a great shock in the USA. The Sputnik

Policy spaces, mobile discourses, and the definition of educated identities

The aim of this article is to analyse the circulation of discourse in the global educational field and its relation to local‐specific education policies and practices. The first section examines the logic of networks and relates it to the specificities of the networks of interaction that, it is argued, constitute ‘global policy spaces’ in education. It is then suggested that the structural attributes and politics of ‘global policy spaces’ influence the type of discourses produced in this space. The second and third sections will analyse how the mobile discourses that are produced and reproduced in these networks are transformed as they move into the space of places (the state and institutions that are attached to a territory). The main argument is that as discourses that define an educated identity for the information age move from global space to the state and to practice‐based institutions these discourses change their meaning and their practical effects.

Interpreting the circulation of educational discourse across space: searching for new vocabularies

This article argues that certain established vocabularies that are used to interpret the circulation of educational discourse and its transformation in different settings have significant limitations to capture the complexity inherent to new geographies of power/knowledge in education and that, consequently, we need to develop new concepts to analyse the movement of educational discourses across space. After a critique of concepts such as ‘transfer’ and ‘policy borrowing’, we offer an alternative kind of approach by using Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to briefly analyse Conectar Igualdad, a program in Argentina that distributes one computer per student in secondary schools. It will be shown how the use ANT can make certain connections visible that would not be so noticeable using the established vocabularies discussed above.

Global mobilities and the possibilities of a cosmopolitan curriculum

ABSTRACT This paper is aimed at exploring the possibilities that the notion of everyday cosmopolitanism can open up for pedagogic practices and, at the same time, the opportunities that pedagogy can provide for the construction of a cosmopolitan global ethics. Our argument is that students (and teachers) are involved in everyday experiences of cosmopolitan encounters and that these can and should be used as a starting point for the development of a cosmopolitan curriculum aimed at steering the cosmopolitan outlook of students towards morally open but productive directions.

Migration, Educational Policies, and Practices: Constructing Difference in Buenos Aires and in Madrid

The aim of this chapter is to analyze the formal education of Latin American immigrants in the cities of Buenos Aires and Madrid. The comparison between the two cities is aimed at examining the ways in which differences in historical migration trajectories, legislation, educational policies, and broader social contexts have affected paths through education for immigrant students. Madrid and Buenos Aires have experienced substantial changes in the profile of their populations recently; the growth and visibility of ethnic plurality in two cities that saw themselves as having certain ethnic homogeneity has altered imagined homogenized identities and have placed political and educational systems under tremendous strain. New political, economic, educational and social tensions between groups often build upon previous socio-cultural constructions and historical relations of power between these groups. Thus, Spains colonial past and the image of Argentina as a European enclave in South America have a significant influence in the ways in which Latin American immigrants are othered. In both cities the overall approach is based on the notion of assimilation to an imagined mainstream culture. Within this general approach, misrecognition of the specific needs of immigrant students takes place in schools in both cities, although in very different forms. In the case of Madrid, differences are emphasized through compensatory programs in education. In Buenos Aires differences are obscured and, to a certain extent, ignored. Nevertheless, both educational systems need to re-think the way in which they deal with constructing difference and with injustices rooted in political inequality, economic disadvantage and socio-cultural patterns of representation of specific groups.

Space, knowledge and education policy

Taylor and Francis Ltd EDP_A_196832.sgm 10.1080/02680930600969308 Journal of Education Policy 0268-0939 (pri t)/146 -5106 (online) Review Essay 2 06 & Fr n is 1 6 000December 2006 aso Beech jb ech@ud s .edu.ar National differences, global similarities: world culture and the future of schooling David P. Baker and Gerald K. LeTendre, 2005 Stanford, Stanford University Press

Revisiting Jullien in an era of globalisation

20.95, 194 pp. ISBN 0-8047-5021-1

Negotiating Identities in School Settings

Abstract In this paper, we discuss some of the ways in which forces of globalisation have transformed the spaces in which educational policies are now developed and practices now enacted. We will consider further the widely held claim that the emergence of these transnational spaces requires new ways of thinking about comparative education. We will examine this claim, referring in particular to the questions proposed by Jullien almost two centuries ago. Taking these questions as a starting point, we will reflect on their usefulness in understanding contemporary developments in education and discuss what kind of theoretical and methodological approaches are needed to address these questions in an era of globalisation.