Explain three ways you can critically analyze sources to determine if they are scholarly.

Prepare: Prior to beginning work on this discussion forum, review the Narrowing a Topic and Developing a Research Question (Links to an external site.) web page and Integrating Research (Links to an external site.) tutorial. These resources will help you in developing a topic.

It is also recommended that you review these tutorials from the Ashford University Library:

  • Database Search Tips (Links to an external site.)
  • Evaluating Sources (Links to an external site.)

You may also want to review the Sample Final Paper GEN499Preview the document, so that you can start preparing your rough draft that is due in Week 4.

Reflect: When considering a research topic, consider an interesting topic that is worth further research. For instance, having a strong opinion on a specific topic may deter you from thinking more critically, and therefore the research might end up being one-sided. It is a good idea to pick a topic in which you can provide a good argument for both sides of the societal issue.

Write: For this discussion, address the following prompts:

  • Identify a global societal issue from the following list that you would consider researching further for your Week 5 Final Paper:
    • Climate change
    • Pollution
    • Religious conflict and violence
    • Rise of artificial intelligence
    • Lack of education
    • Unemployment and lack of economic opportunity
    • Government accountability and corruption
    • Food and water security
    • International drug trafficking
    • Poverty and income inequality
  • Describe effective methods you used in identifying and narrowing down to just one of the topics to further research for your Final Paper.
  • Explain three ways you can critically analyze sources to determine if they are scholarly.
  • Summarize information from at least two scholarly journal articles from the Ashford University Library that will support your claims for your chosen topic.
  • Explain why scholarly sources should be used to support your writing on the selected topic.
  • Download and attach a PDF copy of one of the peer-reviewed scholarly articles that you found from the Ashford University Library to your answer using the “Attach” function located below your response.

Your initial post should be at least 250 words in length, which should include a thorough response to each prompt. You are required to provide in-text citations of applicable required reading materials and/or any other outside sources you use to support your claims. Provide full reference entries of all sources cited at the end of your response. Please use correct APA format when writing in-text citations (see In-Text Citation Helper (Links to an external site.)) and references (see Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.)).

Required Resources

Articles

Arditi, B. (2004). From globalism to globalization: The politics of resistance 1. New Political Science26(1), 5-22. doi:10.1080/0739314042000185102

  • The full-text version of this article is available through the EBSCOhost database in the Ashford University Library. This article discusses the differences between globalization and globalism. Globalism is seen as imposing a new order of things across the globe and is feared by elements within Western societies. Those actors seek a resistance of “radical and viral direction action” (abstract) against what they see as a threat to their way of life. This article will assist you with your APA “Find the Errors” Task assignment this week.

Austin, M. W. (2011, April 13). The value of general education (Links to an external site.) [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ethics-everyone/201104/the-value-general-education

  • In this article, the author gives some reasons that support the importance of general education courses. The reasons for general education courses include helping a student become a better citizen, increasing critical thinking skills, and providing you with a broad and deep education. This blog post will assist you with your Post Your Introduction/General Education Outcomes discussion this week.
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Dowd, M. (n.d.). What is the purpose of taking general classes for a college degree? (Links to an external site.) Retrieved from http://education.seattlepi.com/purpose-taking-general-classes-college-degree-1876.html

  • In this article, the author explains the importance of breadth of learning. General education courses encompass several areas of study (social sciences, math, science, humanities, and nature), which will help prepare you to think more analytically, consider many views on a topic, and value cultural differences when they begin their advanced study courses. This article will assist you with your Post Your Introduction/General Education Outcomes discussion this week.
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Papastephanou, M. (2005). Globalisation, globalism and cosmopolitanism as an educational ideal. Educational Philosophy and Theory37(4), 533-551. doi:10.1111/j.1469-5812.2005.00139.x

  • The full-text version of this article is available through the EBSCOhost database in the Ashford University Library. Globalisation discussed as “a complex relation to its discourse.” In the Abstract, Papastephanous writes, “failure to grasp distinctions between globalisation and globalism leads to naïve and ethnocentric glorifications of the potentialities of globalization…. The antagonistic impulses cultivated by globalization and globalist discourse are singled out and targeted…. The final suggestion of the article concerns the vision of a more cosmopolitically sensitive education.” This article will assist you with your APA “Find the Errors” Task assignment this week.

Reysen, S., & Katzarska-Miller, I. (2013). A model of global citizenship: Antecedents and outcomesPreview the documentInternational Journal of Psychology48(5), 858-870. doi:10.1080/00207594.2012.701749

  • The full-text version of this article can be accessed through the EBSCOhost database in the Ashford University Library. This article provides information concerning the idea of the global citizen. The authors explain the outcomes of identifying with a superordinate identity (global citizen) from two different studies. The relationship between global awareness and social values was evaluated. This article will allow the reader to assess their level of global citizenship and how it can impact their own identity and psychological well-being. This article will assist you with your APA “Find the Errors” Task assignment this week.

Seraphin, C. (n.d.). General education requirements: What’s the point? (Links to an external site.) Retrieved from http://www.collegexpress.com/articles-and-advice/majors-and-academics/articles/college-academics/general-education-requirements-whats-point/

  • In this article, the author explains what general education requirements are and some of the reasons why colleges include them in degree requirements. The author suggests that one of the biggest problems with general education courses is the fact that students do not think they are important. The author then supports the fact that general education courses increase a student’s critical thinking skills, communication skills, and problem-solving skills before they start taking more advanced courses in their field of study. This article will assist you with your Post Your Introduction/General Education Outcomes discussion this week.
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Voelz, J. (2017). Transnationalism and anti-globalism. College Literature, 44(4), 521-526. doi:10.1353/lit.2017.0032

  • The full-text version of this article is available through the Project Muse database in the Ashford University Library. Discusses the differences between globalization as an economic trend and globalism, where globalism is seen as a cultural phenomenon feared as a prioritization of racial and cultural otherness. As a cultural tool, globalism is seen as a threat to Western values, with anti-globalism occurs in the setting of extreme nationalist tendencies. This article will assist you with your Importance of Becoming a Global Citizen assignment this week.

Wehlburg, C. M. (2010). Integrated general education: A brief look back. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2010(121), 3-11. doi:10.1002/tl.383

  • The full-text version of this article can be accessed through the EBSCOhost database in the Ashford University Library. This article addresses the assessment practices that take place in order to measure the course learning outcomes in higher education programs. Assessing general education has been a difficult task compared to assessing different majors based on content and skills. The goals of critical thinking, problem solving, and communication may be more difficult to measure. Assessment procedures tend to be more qualitative when it comes to general education curriculum. This article will allow the reader to fully understand the assessment procedures that have been able to measure their core general education requirements. This article will assist you with your Post Your Introduction/General Education Outcomes discussion this week.

Multimedia

Ashford University Library. (2017, November). What is CRAAP? (Links to an external site.) [PDF file]. Retrieved from https://content.bridgepointeducation.com/curriculum/file/f8a1ef48-2a27-4450-b3d0-242d91015f8d/1/CRAAP%20accessible.pdf

  • This infographic covers several elements of determining when a web resource is credible. CRAAP is an acronym for currency, relevancy, authority, accuracy, and purpose. The infographic provides questions to ask oneself when looking at resources to use as credible support for their research paper. This infographic will assist you in addressing prompts in the Post Your Introduction/General Education Outcomes discussion this week.

Ashford University Writing Center. (2018). Integrating research (Links to an external site.) [Tutorial file]. Retrieved from https://content.bridgepointeducation.com/curriculum/file/5408ee9b-e793-44d5-8a4d-e54bc6e72f74/1/Integrating%20Research.zip/story_html5.html (Links to an external site.)

  • This tutorial from the Ashford University Writing Center introduces the appropriate ways to integrate research when writing a college essay or formal assignment. It goes over examples of the ICE method when it comes to paragraph development and supporting the information found from an outside source. This tutorial will assist you in addressing the prompts in the Final Paper Topic discussion forum this week.

North Carolina State University, Libraries. (2013, August). Picking your topic is research! (Links to an external site.) [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/tutorials/picking_topic/

  • This video tutorial illustrates the importance of picking a topic that can be easily tested through finding and reading sources on that topic. The point made is that the topic is not written in stone unless the topic is specifically assigned by the instructor. The research that is found can guide how the topic can be revised, such as make it more specific if the topic is too broad. This video will assist you in completing the Post Your Introduction/General Education Outcomes discussion forum this week.
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Romin, J., Arnstad, H., Lennartsson, J., & Lilja, V. (Directors & Producers). (2009). What is globalization? (Links to an external site.) [Video segment]. In J. Romin (Executive Producer), Open borders: Globalization-a real-world view. Retrieved from https://fod.infobase.com/OnDemandEmbed.aspx?token=47499&wID=100753&loid=144239&plt=FOD&w=640&h=360&fWidth=660&fHeight=410

  • The full version of this video is available through the Films on Demand database in the Ashford University Library. This first video segment discusses the meaning behind globalization and the encouragement of openness to diversity and other cultures. A few knowledgeable speakers provide suggestions on how people can become more confident in their ability to deal with emotions and thoughts that are tied to the pressures of becoming a global citizen. This video will assist you with your Importance of Becoming a Global Citizen assignment this week.
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Stucke, K. (Writer). (2009). Globalization at a crossroads (Links to an external site.). [Series episode]. In M. Stucke & Claudin, C. (Executive Producers), Global issues. Retrieved from https://fod.infobase.com/OnDemandEmbed.aspx?token=39350&wID=100753&plt=FOD&loid=0&w=640&h=480&fWidth=660&fHeight=530

  • The full version of this video is available through the Films On Demand database in the Ashford University Library. To some, the term “globalization” means ruthless exploitation by corporations; to others, it means bringing economic development to all the peoples of the world. This program explains key principles at the core of global economics and takes a historical look at their effects, focusing on market liberalization and the failed “East Asian miracle;” privatization of basic resources in Bolivia and the severe backlash against it; Russia’s rapid transition to capitalism and the oligarchism and kleptocracy that came to characterize it; and China’s incremental implementation of capitalism under communism. The video also takes stock of the seismic shift in the U.S. economy and its probable effect on the rest of the world. This video will assist you with your Importance of Becoming a Global Citizen assignment this week.
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Stucke, M. (Executive Producer), Purdue, K. (Writer). (2001). What is globalization? (Links to an external site.) [Video segment]. In The global trade debate[Streaming video]. Retrieved from Films On Demand database.

  • The full version of this video is available through the Films On Demand database in the Ashford University Library. To some, the term “globalization” means ruthless exploitation by corporations; to others, it means bringing economic development to all the peoples of the world. This program explains key principles at the core of global economics and takes a historical look at their effects, focusing on market liberalization and the failed “East Asian miracle;” privatization of basic resources in Bolivia and the severe backlash against it; Russia’s rapid transition to capitalism and the oligarchism and kleptocracy that came to characterize it; and China’s incremental implementation of capitalism under communism. The video also takes stock of the seismic shift in the U.S. economy and its probable effect on the rest of the world. This video will assist you with your Importance of Becoming a Global Citizen assignment this week.
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Web Page

Ashford University. (n.d.). Narrowing a topic and developing a research question (Links to an external site.). Retrieved from https://writingcenter.ashford.edu/narrowing-topic-and-developing-research-question

  • This web page provides information about how to narrow down a research topic as well as developing a focus for your final essay. It will assist you in your Final Paper Topic discussion forum this week.
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Annotated Bibliograpy

Annotated Bibliography: Instructions

Specific Guidelines

Gutek, G. L. (2011). Historical and philosophical foundations of education: A biographical introduction (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Your articles will be collected in two sets of three each. The first set of three articlesyou will select articles related to an educational thinker from the Gutek textbook that aligns closely with your personal beliefs about education. To clarify, all three articles in this first set should be on the topic of the same educational thinker.

The second set of three articles, you will select articles related to an educational thinker from the Gutek textbook that represents ideas to which you are opposed. This educational thinker should be in a different philosophical camp than the first one you selected for your first set of articles. All three articles in the second set will be on the topic of this same second educational thinker. (See the chart at the bottom of these directions for guidance if you are confused by this.)

Though you may agree with and support some of the ideas or actions of this second educational thinker, there is a key element that you reject—something that is antithetical to your own core values or philosophy of education.

LENGTH: The total assignment is to be at least 2,000 words in length. This does not count the title page or the references themselves. Each of the six annotations is to be at least 300 words in length, and the final synthesis is to be at least 200 words.

STRUCTURE: Download the attached Annotated Bibliography Assignment template; you may enter your information into the template. The format requires the components listed below:

· Title Page

· Annotated Bibliography: six articles listed in APA reference format; each article, a paragraph of at least 300 words will be inserted for the annotation.

· Synthesis: paragraph of at least 200 words.

· Preliminary Thesis Statement: one or two sentences proposing a thesis for the upcoming Philosophical Model Analysis assignment.

· References: a page listing sources other than the articles themselves, which are already listed in APA reference format in the annotated bibliography section above. This reference list will include Gutek (2011) and any other sources you choose to include in your annotations.

PRELIMINARY THESIS STATEMENT: At the bottom of the assignment, under the synthesis statement, enter the heading “Preliminary Thesis Statement.” Write one or two sentences that you anticipate may serve as the thesis statement to your upcoming Philosophical Model Analysis assignment.

Focus on philosophy and not educational practice. Do not address specific instructional practice or the learning environment in this thesis statement. Here are some suggestions for your preliminary thesis statement:

· Address the purpose and outcome of education rather than its process or practice.

· Consider the long-range impact education should make on individuals and on society.

· What knowledge is most worth learning and why?

· What values are most worth teaching and why?

· Based on observations of society , what outcome should education have on society?

The above suggestions are not offered as a formula for you to follow. Most importantly they are presented to help you avoid the most common error in the upcoming Philosophical Model Analysis, which is to focus on instructional practice rather than on philosophical ideas. Because instructional practice should flow out of philosophical beliefs, you are to start with a preliminary thesis statement that addresses philosophy. Avoid first-person pronouns as much as possible. To do this, think in terms of ought and should and write in third-person plural as much as possible.

Examples of Philosophic Categories

It is often difficult to apply philosophical labels to individuals. Labels, however, assist in understanding, comparing, and analyzing the ideas people hold. Keep in mind that the labels below are only approximations to assist in understanding which educational thinkers may be similar and which ones may hold opposing philosophical positions. The list below is only a partial list of thinkers addressed in this course. These examples were selected because of the relative ease in applying a label.

Educational Thinkers Philosophical Label

Some of these are approximations.

Addams, Jane Progressivism
Aquinas Scholasticism; Realism
Aristotle Realism
Bagley, William Chandler Essentialism; Traditionalism
Comenius, Johann Amos Pansophism; Realism
Dewey, John Pragmatism; Progressivism
Du Bois, W.E.B. Social Reconstructionism
Erasmus, Desiderius Idealism; Humanism
Freire, Paulo Critical Pedagogy; Liberation Education
Gandhi, Mohandas Social Reconstructionism; Critical Pedagogy; Liberation Education
Mill, John Stuart Utilitarianism
Owen, Robert Utopianism; Socialism
Plato Idealism
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Naturalism; Romanticism
Spencer, Herbert Social Darwinism

PE445 Outdoor Space : Response Should Be At Least 200 Words

Describe the guidelines for school facility outdoor space versus the size of the schools in your neighborhood. What can be done to rectify the situation if there is a large discrepancy?  Identify four major points that must be established to determine if a teacher is negligent.  Also, discuss the importance of foreseeability. Make sure to have a reference at the end of your post.

How do international EFA targets and indicators constrain or enable global, national and local level action towards the achievement of quality education for all?

Answer the following questions in essay form.  Essay must be 1 page and have at least three paragraphs.  Use MLA format.

1.  How do international EFA targets and indicators constrain or enable global, national and local level action towards the achievement of quality education for all?

2.  Do you think current EFA goals and strategies sufficiently support broader global goals of poverty reduction and equity? Why or why not?

3.  What challenges and opportunities for EFA might emerge from new donors to education (e.g. China, Brazil, India, Turkey, South Korea, Russia)?

4.  How has the engagement of a growing number of non-state actors in EFA, including local, national and transnational civil societies, the private sector and philanthropic organizations, influenced EFA goals, strategies and outcomes?

5.  In your view, what are the chances of success for recent international efforts to achieve EFA?

Chapter 3 The Education for All Initiative History and Prospects Post-2015.html

Introduction

For more than half a century, international actors and national governments have focused their efforts on the achievement of ‘education for all’ (EFA) using the frames of national development, poverty reduction and human rights to raise education to the status of a key global development priority. This chapter traces the development of international EFA efforts in the period after the Second World War.

When speaking of ‘EFA’, we refer both to

a)  the set of concrete education goals, targets and indicators contained in formal EFA policy documents and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and

b)  the network of state and non-state actors operating at multiple scales (i.e. local, national, regional, global) actively promoting basic education of good quality for all.

In what follows, we begin by describing the origins of the EFA movement in the period after the Second World War, reviewing the changing roles played by bilateral donors, UN agencies and non-state actors and highlighting how these roles have been shaped by changes in the global geopolitical order. We assess the period after 2000, when the EFA movement gained increased momentum and new proponents. We conclude with a discussion of current efforts to place education at the centre of a new global development agenda for the period after the 2015 target date for the achievement of the UN MDGs.

The origins and evolution of ‘Education for All’

After the Second World War, newly established international organizations and agreements helped to define a set of universal norms about educational rights and educational development. Brought together under the umbrella of the UN, the international community promised to uphold a universal right to education, first through the creation of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1946, whose charter commits it to the achievement of ‘full and equal opportunities for education for all’ (UNESCO 1946) and secondly through Article 26 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states:

Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. (General Assembly of the United Nations 1948)

Geopolitical and interstate relationships shaped this new, universal commitment to education. Formal schooling was among the most significant of the cultural exports of colonial powers during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, leading to the widespread institutionalization of educational systems as part of the common apparatus of emerging nation states (Anderson 1991). When formal colonial rule ended (in most countries after the middle of the twentieth century), education remained deeply implicated in the neocolonial relationships between Western countries and postcolonial societies – educational cooperation was one way to enhance geopolitical and economic ties. Education was also increasingly viewed, within the Western world and in newly independent colonies, as a significant contributor to economic development and growth. Many newly independent countries committed to improving access to education for their citizens, and demanded support from the industrialized world to this end. Thus a wide network of actors and activities focused on education for development emerged after the Second World War, shaped both by demands from newly independent governments and by the geopolitical interests and normative approaches of the predominantly Western hegemons of the world system (Mundy 2006, 2010).

Initially, UNESCO took the lead in international efforts to spur forward ‘education for all’, sponsoring ambitious regional conferences where regional and national targets for educational development were set in the late 1960s and 1970s (Chabbott 2003). Despite initial hopes however, Western governments failed to fund UNESCO at levels sufficient to allow it to play a major role in the implementation of educational programming within low income countries – its funding never rising above that of a medium-sized university. UNESCO’s General Assembly became increasingly embroiled in Cold War politics, and its perceived politicization caused the organization to gradually lose the confidence of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) governments in the 1970s and 1980s (Jones 1988, Mundy 1998, 1999).

By far the largest source of international financing and initiatives to emerge out of the post-war commitment to ‘education for all’ came from the newly formed bilateral aid programmes in the wealthy states of the Western world (e.g. United States Agency for International Development, Canadian International Development Agency, etc.). Historically, more than three-fourths of all flows of foreign assistance to education have gone through bilateral channels (Mundy 2010). By the mid-1970s, virtually every industrialized country (including Japan and the Soviet Union) supported educational development through a bilateral foreign aid programme, though at varying levels of between 3 and 30 per cent of their total official aid. Yet, in contrast to the initial UN commitment to universal access to basic education, most bilateral aid for education in the period from 1960 to the mid 1990s focused predominantly on programmes of post-primary training, foreign scholarships and tertiary level institution-building and was heavily tied to technical assistance from the donor countries (King 1991, Mundy 2006).

The ‘education for development’ regime that emerged was dominated by many small to medium sized, short term, bilateral transactions, often working at cross-purposes. Bilateral efforts tended to have a geographical focus on former colonies or regions of geopolitical significance for the donor nation. For four decades (1960s through the 1990s) attempts at global level coordination of bilateral education for development activities failed, and usually failed quite quickly. Examples of failure include: UNESCO regional conferences of the 1960s; OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) efforts to coordinate education sector activities among OECD members in the 1970s; the World Bank’s initiative in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s; and the Jomtien World Conference on Education for All (1990). In each case, international targets were set but not met. More importantly, the donor community failed to provide resources promised to meet these targets.

UNESCO’s weakness created space for other, more entrepreneurial UN organizations to become active in educational development after the 1970s. The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, had developed its own distinctive approach to educational development during the 1960s, targeting marginalized children. In the 1980s, it emerged as a significant player in debates about the appropriate roles and responsibilities of governments in the development of programmes targeting the basic needs of poor and vulnerable populations. In the 1990s, UNICEF embraced a new focus on children’s rights, spurred forward by a growing advocacy movement among international non-governmental organizations. It in turn developed innovative programmes in the areas of girls’ education and basic education (as, for instance, in its ‘child friendly schools’ programme), playing a major role in establishing the principle that schools are protective institutions for children if adequately resourced and appropriately oriented to protecting children’s basic rights (Phillips 1987, Jolly 1991, Black 1996, Fuchs 2007).

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the World Bank emerged as an important international player in the education for development regime, becoming the largest source of multilateral finance for education. The Bank also became an increasingly influential thought leader, responsible for maintaining a strong focus on the link between educational development and economic growth, through its research on investments in human capital. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Bank was influential in designing a reform agenda for countries facing debt crises due to the loss of cheap international credit and in this context promoted the use of market-like mechanisms to ensure educational efficiency. The Bank emerged at the ‘center of a neo-classical resurgence’ in development economics; more responsible than perhaps any other organization for elaborating what has come to be called the ‘Washington Consensus’ agenda for low and middle income countries (Miller-Adams, 1999). Around the world, governments were advised to restructure their education sectors by lowering subsidies to tertiary level education and introducing user fees at this level and by encouraging efficiency-driven reforms at primary and secondary levels through the use of contract teachers, lowering of repetition rates and parental ‘participation’ in school costs often through the imposition of user fees (Hinchcliffe 1993, World Bank 1995, 1986, 1988, Alexander 2001, IEG 2011). Paradoxically, the era of structural adjustment contributed to substantial increases in Bank lending activity in education, especially for primary schooling (Jones 1992, Mundy 2002, Jones and Coleman 2005, Resnik 2006, Klees et al. 2012).

In summary, it is worth highlighting some of the major features of the regime of actors and activities that emerged around the universal commitment to education for all in the period between 1945 and the late 1980s. As noted above, this regime was constructed primarily around bilateral flows of aid, with international organizations emerging as policy entrepreneurs. Dominated by ‘official actors’ – a handful of multi-lateral organizations (UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank) and bilateral aid organizations – Southern governments were the targets (or recipients) of the regime but often not active shapers of it (Samoff 1999, 2001). Furthermore, few non-governmental actors were involved or recognized within the official regime. They remained outside its conferences and conventions, despite the existence of international teachers unions and international humanitarian and religious organizations with an interest in education that predated official educational aid activities (Mundy and Murphy 2001). Despite various calls for global action, activities were primarily organized around bilateral intergovernmental relationships, with both the geographic focus of aid and the levels at which aid was targeted shaped by the geopolitical interests of the donor governments.

The diffuse nature of the educational-aid regime also played out in its growth as an epistemic and professional community (Chabbott 2003). From high-level man-power planning to vocational education, non-formal education, adult literacy, higher education and back again, a vague and expansive menu of what was ‘needed’ was reported or endorsed in a succession of international conferences and publications. A growing professional expert community on educational development, largely housed within international organizations and research institutions, could do little to harness donors behind a common agenda because their own assessment of priorities changed so rapidly or diverged quite widely (Chabbott 2003). A fractious epistemic community allowed for a very loose coupling between rhetorical commitments and practical activities – creating in effect a smorgasbord of priorities and approaches from which donor countries might choose according to their own geopolitical and economic interests.

Most importantly, although the notion of a universal right to education figured strongly in the international discourse, EFA was not what was supported by major flows of foreign funding or technical expertise. In the period between 1960 and the late 1990s, most aid flows to education were focused at levels beyond primary schooling. Aid rarely supported the core costs borne by governments trying to expand access to their educational systems.

These features of international aid for education persisted into the 1990s, despite the new and ambitious framework that emerged from the World Conference on Education for All, a conference organized by the World Bank, UNICEF, UNESCO and the UNDP and hosted in Jomtien, Thailand. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, and the fiscal difficulties faced by Western states as they adjusted to greater international economic integration over the next decade, led to a precipitous decline in overall flows of aid, and an even steeper decline in aid for education, as illustrated in Table 3.1.

Table 3.1 Trends in ODA to education and basic education sub-sector (1989–1999)

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Source: OECD-DAC (2013)

Tensions between the market-led liberalization programmes advocated by the Bank and the ‘human development’ models promoted by the UN led to heated debate rather than concerted action (Jolly 1991, Therien and Lloyd 2000, 2002). Instead of the ‘peace dividend’ (expected by many at the end of the Cold War), issues of global poverty and inequality were sidelined. The gap between rhetoric and reality in the implementation of EFA became particularly acute in the 1990s.

2000–2010: A new ‘Education for All’ consensus

While it is important not to overstate the case, the education for development regime experienced significant changes in the decade after 2000. These changes are particularly dramatic when placed alongside what has been widely assessed as the failure of the international community to achieve the goals established for education in the 1990s, at the World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien, Thailand (Torres 2000, Chabbott 2003).

Three significant changes in the education for all movement during the first decade after 2000 are explored below:

a)  embedding education in a new consensus on global development and the construction of clear global educational targets and monitoring efforts;

b)  new forms of donor coordination and rising levels of aid for basic education; and

c)  the emergence of new actors and partnerships within the international education for development regime.

Embedding concrete education goals in a new consensus on global development

In the period after 1995, some of the most dramatic shifts in the education for development regime came on the heels of renewed efforts to build international consensus about how to deal with global inequality and poverty. The Millennium Development Summit and Millennium Development Declaration (2000) aligned the UN (and its agencies), the Bretton Woods institutions and OECD governments behind a unifying substantive framework for global development efforts (United Nations General Assembly 2000, OECD/DAC 1996). The Declaration sets out eight Millennium Development Goals (MDG) with time-bound, measurable targets. The MDGs include halving world poverty by 2015, reducing infant mortality by two thirds, halving the spread of HIV/AIDS, combating malaria, halving the number of people without safe drinking water, promoting gender equity and environmental sustainability. The achievement of universal primary education and gender equity in education are goals numbers 2 and 3 in the MDGs (see table below). For education, a second set of more expansive ‘Education for All’ targets emerged in parallel to the MDGs, coming out of the UNESCO sponsored World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000. The widely endorsed Dakar framework established a more expansive set of six global education goals (only two of which overlap with the MDGs) (see Unterhalter 2013 for a history of recent education goal and targets).

Several authors characterize this new ‘consensus’ on development as part of a broader rapprochement between the neo-liberal and pro-economic approaches to globalization and development endorsed by the IMF and the World Bank in the 1980s-1990s, and the more equity and globalization-skeptic approaches adopted by the UN and some OECD governments (Therien 2002, 2005, Ruggie 2003). They locate the origins of this rapprochement in the need to respond to rising international protests against globalization and the aftermath of the East Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s (Stiglitz 2003). The rising importance of the European Union, with its more expansive approach to welfare state capitalism, also played an important part (Noel 2005). Education, which straddles both equity and productivity conceptualizations of development, has arguably benefited from this consensus. As Simon Maxwell summarizes, the post 2000 consensus on development ‘encourage[d] internal and external trade liberalization, and simultaneously invest[ment] in health, education and good governance, so that people are able to take advantage of new economic opportunities’ (Maxwell 2005, p. 3).

Anchored by explicit goals and targets, the new global consensus on international development was also backed up in new ways by efforts to hold governments to account to their development commitments. The Millennium Development Goals (including the two goals for education) are monitored formally by the UNDP (see for example UNDP 2013, 2012) and the World Bank (World Bank and International Monetary Fund 2013) as well as by many civil society organizations operating at the international and national level (i.e. Dyer and Choksi 2004, Global Campaign for Education 2004).

Among the monitoring and accountability tools developed by the global community to track the achievement of global education commitments over the last decade, the annual UNESCO Education for All Global Monitoring Report1(established in 2002) monitors EFA progress, focusing on the six EFA goals endorsed by the 164 countries attending the 2000 Dakar World Education Forum with assistance from the UNESCO Institute of Statistics. The GMR also tracks foreign aid to education and the share of domestic spending allocated to different levels of education, and it annually reports on the global financing gap (currently estimated at $26 billion) that needs to be filled to achieve all six of the EFA goals (UNESCO/GMR 2013, p. 1). There have also been efforts to establish and track a common framework for the implementation of the education MDGs, described by Gene Sperling as an essential part of the new ‘global compact’ for education (see for example Millennium Development Project 2005a, b, Sperling and Balu 2005).

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New forms of donor coordination and rising levels of aid for basic education

One measure of the consensus on education during the decade after 2000 is the rise of overall aid for education and in particular for basic education, as can be seen in the figure below. Although these substantial gains in international financing did not come close to filling the financing gap estimated for achieving the MDGs and the EFA goals, they do reflect a significant change in overall behaviour among donor governments and multilateral organizations.

Additionally, significant changes in the way in which aid to education is delivered occurred after 2000. The 2004 Rome Declaration on Aid Harmonization and the establishment and endorsement by UN agencies and OECD governments of the Aid Effectiveness Principles (Paris and Accra), formalized a significant (if uneven) shift in donor behaviour towards pooling of aid, provision of direct budget support (where aid is channelled directly into a government’s budget), and sector-wide funding (where aid is given to support a sector budget). In education this has meant more coherent system focused aid programmes that for the first time address the largest barriers to expanding access, including such recurrent costs as teachers’ salaries and teaching materials. What is sometimes not recognized is how frequently education has emerged as the key sector in which donors experiment with these historically novel efforts at donor coordination and pooling of resources (see Riddell 2000, Samoff 2001, 2004).

A further impetus to donor coordination in the education sector has been the emergence of the Education For All Fast Track Initiative (renamed the Global Partnership for Education in 2011), whose goal it is to ensure that no developing countries with clear plans for achieving universal primary education UPE would fail to make progress due to lack of resources (Unterhalter 2013). It acts by providing pooled funding, supporting coherent sector plans, and assisting in the development of local coordination committees (‘local education groups’) comprised of donor agencies, Ministries of Education and civil society representatives (Global Campaign for Education and Oxfam International 2012, Global Partnership for Education 2012a, Global Partnership for Education 2012b).

Experimentation with pooled funding, direct budgetary support, the funding of recurrent costs of primary level education and the creation of a new multilateral institution each suggest that EFA received significant recognition from the international community as a global public good in need of collective rather than unilateral action in the decade after 2000 (Figure 3.1).

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Figure 3.1 Aid to education has fallen by over US$1.3 billion since 2010 Total aid to education disbursements, 2002–2012

Source: EFA Global Monitoring Report team analysis based on OECD Creditor Reporting System (2014)

New actors

Another aspect of the new educational multilateralism that is unprecedented is the inclusion of new kinds of actors in both international and national EFA networks. It is not just that new partnerships with civil society and private sector organizations have come to be seen as essential by official political actors on the international stage (Ruggie 2003). There has also been a remarkable growth of effective transnational organizations and networks, representing coalitions of civil society and private sector actors.

As Mundy and Murphy (2001) have shown, in the early 2000s, transnational civil society advocacy networks on such issues as debt relief, ODA reform, children’s rights and globalization increasingly took up the issue of the universal right to education as one part of their broader advocacy efforts. But the period after 2000 also saw the formation of robust transnational advocacy networks dedicated to EFA, such as the Global Campaign for Education,2 the International Network on Education in Emergencies3 and the Consultative Group on Early Childhood Education.4 Many of these networks have significant links to national civil society groups. By linking global advocacy to national accountability, these organizations can play a powerful accountability role vis-à-vis both donors and their home governments (Mundy and Murphy 2001, Mundy 2012, Verger and Novelli 2012). One cited early example, is of the civil society efforts to end primary school user charges in Tanzania. In this case, research on the impact of user fees generated by Tanzanian groups was used by US NGOs to press the US government to halt funding to the World Bank if it imposed any form of user fees as part of its loan conditions. The World Bank subsequently removed this loan condition and the Government of Tanzania declared free primary education. The Tanzania experience in turn stimulated a number of other African governments to remove user fees in education and declare universal free primary education. Here, a new form of global accountability spurred significant advances in the achievement of ‘education for all’ (Alonso i Terme 2002, Sumra 2005, TEN/MET 2006, Mundy et al. 2007).

Several other types of new actors have emerged over the past decade. New foundations – like the Open Society Foundations (Soros) and the Hewlett Foundation (among others), suggest a novel appetite for supporting advocacy and accountability efforts in education as well as a new focus on social innovation. International think-tanks and consulting firms including for example the work of Pearson Foundation5 and McKinsey and Company consulting on education and development are more recent entrants to the EFA field, signalling a new and expanding role for the private sector in the EFA movement (see, for example, recent studies by Blanchard and Moore 2010, Mourshed et al. 2010, Shuler 2010, Ball and Junemann 2012, Mourshed et al. 2013). The rise of new bilateral donors from the BRICs and other emerging market economies will be taken up in the next sections.

The status of EFA in the countdown to 2015

The past fifteen years have seen some important developments in global efforts to improve the access and quality of educational opportunities for all the world’s children. As described above, EFA efforts since 2000 have received increased attention, and EFA has become a focus for new initiatives and new kinds of multi-stakeholder partnerships. Official flows of education aid have grown significantly (up until 2011), and the modalities through which aid is delivered have improved to allow direct funding of the recurrent costs of educational systems. Increases in national spending on education in poor countries, combined with better-targeted flows of aid to education have led to substantial improvements in access to primary education. Gender equity in education has especially benefited: as reported in the UNESCO Global Monitoring Report, the incidence of severe gender disparity (fewer than nine girls for every ten boys in primary schooling) has become very rare (down from thirty-three to seventeen countries since 1999), and secondary level gender disparities are declining in all but a few countries (GMR 2012, p. 106) (Figure 3.2).

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Figure 3.2 Number of out-of-school children by region, 2000–2011

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics database

However, the gaps between EFA aspirations and EFA achievements remain significant. In terms of international financing, the record of the last decade has been disappointing: official aid for basic education stagnated after 2005, while for the first time overall aid for the sector declined by 7 per cent between 2010 and 2011 (UNESCO GMR and UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2013: 7, see also Table above). This is in contrast to the health sector, where global funding rose much more rapidly and continuously during the 2000s, and where much more significant levels of new funding was put in place for global health funds (i.e. GAVI and the Global Fund). Education aid was also poorly targeted to the countries and populations most in need: for example, in 2011, less than $2 billion of the overall $5.8 billion of aid to basic education was allocated to low-income countries. Aid to basic education in Sub-Saharan Africa, where more than half of all out-of-school children reside, has been declining (UNESCO GMR 2013, p. 8).

EFA gains within countries and regions have also been more mixed than global and national statistics on schooling might suggest (Lewin 2009, Lewin 2011). Educational life-chances and the right to education are especially precarious in contexts of conflict or political fragility – yet the world community has failed to introduce reliable and consistent assistance to children in such contexts (United Nations General Assembly 2010, Mundy and Dryden-Peterson 2011, Talbot 2013). Furthermore, and as has long been understood, there are persistent disparities in the educational life chances of children coming from lower income families, those living in rural areas, those having disabilities, and those who come from marginalized communities or ethnicities within countries. The UNESCO EFA World Inequality Database on Education (http://www.education-inequalities.org/) demonstrates how interlocking sets of disadvantage (including income, ethnicity, location and gender) combine to ensure that the poorest children do not enter or persist in school.

It is also important to note that the most widely and consistently endorsed global goals over the past decade are the goals of universal access to primary education and the achievement of gender equity in elementary and secondary education (again measured in relation to access). The wider goals adopted at the World Education Forum (Dakar 2000) and at Jomtien have not received the same level of attention and commitment from heads of states and international organizations – in particular, goals related to early childhood education, youth skills and adult education had unclear targets and have remained neglected. Another neglected area of concern, one that is gaining in international attention, is the importance of ‘learning’ as opposed to ‘schooling’. According to many analyses the race to rapidly expand access to schooling has not led to better learning outcomes, particularly in foundational areas like literacy and numeracy (Hanushek and Woessmann 2007, World Bank 2011, Pritchett 2013).

Whither EFA post-2015?

At the time of writing, much international attention and energy is focused on the construction of a new set of global development goals and targets for the period after 2015, the end date for the Millennium Development Goals adopted in 2000. In 2013, the UN Secretary General indicated his expectation that a single set of goals combining a new set of international development goals and UN generated goals for sustainable development will be adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015 (UN Open Working Group 2013, United Nations 2013a, 2013b).

There is significant debate among the major players in the field of international education about the shape and focus of the next generation of global education goals, with interventions from the largest bilateral aid donors, UNICEF, the World Bank, UNESCO and an increasingly diverse group of non-state actors, most notably from the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution.6 Among these actors, there is heated debate about the inclusion of specific learning targets (viewed by some as narrowing the scope of education); how to include equity targets and measure the gains made among the poorest and most marginalized populations; whether to expand the notion of basic education beyond junior secondary schooling; and ensuring that an expanded set of goals brings more pressure to bear in areas neglected after 2000, like early childhood education and youth skills; and how to create goals that speak not only to poor countries but to the middle and higher income countries where educational disparities and deprivation persist. Much will be written about the complicated processes of positioning and negotiation that will lead to a final set of goals in 2015.7

Beyond the selection of goals, however, is perhaps the more important question of the underlying commitment among governments around the world to increase finance and improve the effectiveness of the international education for all movement, especially for countries and populations that are increasingly marginalized within the world economy. As noted above, financing for EFA has stagnated in recent years, particularly after the financial crisis of 2008 when rich countries of the Western world pulled back from spending on international development. Two areas of considerable interest for those concerned with filling this gap are the potential role which emergent world powers might play in the construction of global collective action on issues such as education and the potential for engaging the private sector in financing education for all (Steer and Wathne 2009).

Since 2000, several of the most powerful emergent economies have established bilateral programmes of foreign aid for education – including among others China, Russia, Brazil, Turkey, India and South Korea as well as some countries in the Middle East. Many of these emergent powers are also longstanding members of the major multilateral organizations engaged in education, where they have been active in calling for governance reforms to reflect the changing balance of power between Western and non-Western nations.

But caution is in order here. Characterized by sharply differing national approaches to economic and social development, these rising powers share a limited appetite for international regimes that constrain national sovereignty (including in such putatively domestic spheres as education). They are instead primarily focused on expanding their spheres of geopolitical influence on a bilateral basis and often use their foreign aid for this purpose, as for example, China’s use of foreign aid to leverage stronger relationships with resource rich African governments (Brautigam 2009). At the same time, the growing voice of emergent economies in global decision-making is illustrated by the development of the Group of 20 (G-20), which has now replaced the G-8 as key global summit on world financial and economic matters. As Kumar explains, emergent economic powers have insisted that the G-20 officially adopt ‘international development’ as a specific area of attention, despite the preference among Western industrialized governments that the G-20 concentrate primarily on global financial and economic governance (Kumar 2010). To date, reference to education in G-20 communiqués relates to education for economic development and skills formation, reflecting a focus on working together to advance science, technology and skills to advance their own economic competitiveness (Gu et al. 2008, Woods 2008, Brautigam 2010, Nordveit 2011, Cammack 2012, Bracht 2013, Rodrik 2013).

Less well known is the development of a significant transnational network promoting public-private partnerships as a solution capable of bridging EFA’s financing and service delivery gaps. Low-fee private schooling is increasingly touted as an alternative to publicly provided education by an assembly of new players, including among others the Pearson corporation (a leading provider of educational services and materials), the Omidyar Foundation, and the private sector arm of the World Bank-the International Finance Corporation (Ball 2009, Nambissan and Ball 2012, Robertson et al. 2012, Verger 2012, Mundy and Menashy 2014). Other networks are more focused on engaging resource extraction and other industries in charitable giving for education.

Further Readings The Education for All Initiative History and Prospects Post-2015.html

Mundy, K. (2008), ‘Education for All,’ Africa, and the sociology of schooling, in K. Mundy, K. Bickmore, R. Hayhoe, M. Madden and K. Madjidi (eds), Comparative and international education: Issues for teachers (pp. 49–76). Toronto & New York: Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc., and Teachers’ College Press.

Verger, A. and Novelli, M. (2012), Campaigning for ‘Education For All’: Histories, Strategies and Outcomes of Transnational Social Movements in Education, Netherlands: Rotterdam.

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Education & International Deve Section 01 Fall 2019 CO – The Education for All Initiative: History and Prospects      Post-20151. Chapter 3: The Education for All Initiative: History and Prospects Post-2015

2. Further Readings: The Education for All Initiative: History and Prospects Post-2015