Despite the Odds: The Contentious Politics of Education Reform

2005 ◽  
Vol 3 (01) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean C. Robinson
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 131-156
Author(s):  
Ömer Turan

Abstract The student movement of ’68 was both a major source of inspiration and subject of research for the social movement scholars. One persistent disagreement about studying ’68 lies between the world-system theory—Wallerstein views the movement as “a single revolution”—and the contentious politics approach—McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly refuse to consider ’68 “one grand movement.” Expanding this theoretical debate, this article overviews Turkey’s ’68 movement and discusses its divergence from the global movement. Wallerstein summarizes “the single revolution” of ’68 with five points: challenging US hegemony, working-class solidarity, demanding education reform, counter-culture, and challenging the old left. This article revisits these points and cross-reads them with insights of the contentious politics approach to evaluate Turkey’s ’68 movement. It then focuses on mobilizing structures, framing processes, and repertoires of contention that have shaped student activism.


This book examines the politics of the learning crisis in the global South, where learning outcomes have stagnated or worsened, despite progress towards Universal Primary Education since the 1990s. Comparative analysis of education reform in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ghana, Rwanda, South Africa, and Uganda highlights systemic failure on the frontline of education service delivery, driven by deeper crises of policymaking and implementation: few governments try to raise educational standards with any conviction, and education bureaucracies are unable to deliver even those learning reforms that get through the policy process. Introductory chapters develop a theoretical framework within which to examine the critical features of the politics of education. Case study chapters demonstrate that political settlements, or the balance of power between contending social groups, shape the extent to which elites commit to adopting and implementing reforms aimed at improving learning outcomes, and the nature this influence takes. Informal politics and power relations can generate incentives that undermine rather than support elite commitment to development, politicizing the provision of education. Tracing reform processes from their policy origins down to the frontline, it seems that successful schools emerged as localized solutions to specific solutions, often against the grain of dysfunctional sectoral arrangements and the national-level political settlement, but with local political backing. The book concludes with discussion of the need for more politically attuned approaches that focus on building coalitions for change and supporting ‘best-fit’ types of problem-solving fixes, rather than calling for systemic change.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003232922110027
Author(s):  
Ben Ross Schneider

Existing research on developing countries emphasizes the decisive power of teacher unions in education politics. Yet that power varies, and a full understanding of the roots of union power and the sources of cross-national variation requires deeper analysis of organizational dynamics within unions. This analysis supports four arguments. First, teachers have a range of advantages in overcoming obstacles to collective action. Second, unions are not all alike; they vary widely, from interest groups (in Chile, Brazil, and Peru) to powerful political machines (in Mexico and Ecuador). Third, the source of this variation lies in factors (e.g., influence over teacher hiring) that shift power within unions from members to leaders in political-machine unions. Fourth, analyzing the dimensions of variation helps explain the different outcomes of recent reforms to teacher careers in Latin America, especially in highlighting the staunch opposition from political-machine unions.


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