Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 123-136
Author(s):  
Sarah Kabay
Keyword(s):  
Primary Schools ◽  
Complex Adaptive System ◽  
Positive Association ◽  
Education Quality ◽  
Access To Education ◽  
Global Learning ◽  
Grade Repetition ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
Improve Access

This book uses empirical analysis of grade repetition, private primary schools, and school fees in a single sample of Ugandan primary schools in order to examine the association between access to education and education quality. This concluding chapter reviews the results of this empirical research and advances the conclusion that there does not have to be a trade-off between efforts to improve access to education and efforts to improve education quality: there can be a positive association between the two. This finding can be used to inform how the Global Learning Crisis is defined and addressed. In addition, it can be seen as an example of research on complexity. This chapter emphasizes the importance of viewing primary education as a complex adaptive system, and offers some insights into education systems and complexity.

Access, Quality, and the Global Learning Crisis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Kabay
Keyword(s):  
Primary Education ◽  
Primary Schools ◽  
Basic Education ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Education Quality ◽  
Access To Education ◽  
Global Learning ◽  
The World ◽  
Access And Quality

Around the world, 250 million children cannot read, write, or perform basic mathematics. They represent almost 40 percent of all primary school-aged children. This situation has come to be called the “Global Learning Crisis,” and it is one of the most critical challenges facing the world today. Work to address this situation depends on how it is understood. Typically, the Global Learning Crisis and efforts to improve primary education are defined in relation to two terms: access and quality. This book is focused on the connection between them. In a mixed-methods case study, this book provides detailed, contextualized analysis of Ugandan primary education. As one of the first countries in sub-Saharan Africa to enact dramatic and far-reaching primary education policy, Uganda serves as a compelling case study. With both quantitative and qualitative data from over 400 Ugandan schools and communities, the book analyzes grade repetition, private primary schools, and school fees, viewing each issue as an illustration of the connection between access to education and education quality. This analysis finds evidence of a positive association, challenging a key assumption that there is a trade-off or disconnect between efforts to improve access to education and efforts to improve education quality. The book concludes that embracing the complexity of education systems and focusing on dynamics where improvements in access and quality can be mutually reinforcing can be a new approach for improving basic education in contexts around the world.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Sarah Kabay
Keyword(s):  
International Education ◽  
Primary Schools ◽  
Primary Concern ◽  
Access To Education ◽  
Global Learning ◽  
Grade Repetition ◽  
The World ◽  
Access And Quality

The fact that millions of children around the world are unable to read, write, or perform basic mathematics has come to be called the “Global Learning Crisis.” Delayed but ever-increasing recognition of the crisis has made it a primary concern, if not the primary concern of the field of international education and the Education for All movement. Work to address the crisis in many ways depends upon how it is understood. This introductory chapter argues that a key theme of the discourse on the Global Learning Crisis is that it is the result of a disconnect or negative association between access to education and education quality. This chapter lays out how the book investigates this idea by conducting a case study of Ugandan primary education, with empirical analysis of three issues: grade repetition, private primary schools, and school fees, viewing each issue as an illustration of the connection between access and quality.

Defining Access and Quality in International Education

2021 ◽  
pp. 7-23
Author(s):  
Sarah Kabay
Keyword(s):  
International Education ◽  
Education Quality ◽  
Education For All ◽  
Access To Education ◽  
Global Learning ◽  
Education Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
Health Infrastructure ◽  
Access And Quality ◽  
Key Dimensions

Access and quality are key dimensions of any public service—health, infrastructure, and, of course, education. The terms are particularly ubiquitous in the field of international education, where over the past two decades they have been used to categorize both the challenges facing the Education for All movement and the work to address them. This chapter analyzes how these terms have been defined and used in the international education literature, and in particular focuses on understanding the connection between them. The discourse often presents access to education and education quality as either independent or competing concerns and uses them to explain the Global Learning Crisis. The chapter reviews evidence on the association between access and quality, laying the foundation for this theme to continue throughout the book.

Complexity as a Subject and Method in International Education

2021 ◽  
pp. 24-34
Author(s):  
Sarah Kabay
Keyword(s):  
International Education ◽  
Complex Adaptive Systems ◽  
Adaptive Systems ◽  
Complex Adaptive System ◽  
Global Learning ◽  
Education Access ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Access And Quality ◽  
The Brain

The motivating premise of this book is that in a dynamic and complex system such as education, access and quality must be considered together. From the synapses that form in the brain to the dynamics of a classroom, to large networks of schools and education systems, the activity and structure of education is defined by connectivity, interaction, and interdependence: key features of complexity and complex adaptive systems. This book uses principles from research on systems and complexity in order to better understand the Global Learning Crisis. This chapter presents a brief review of research on complexity, considering primary education as a complex adaptive system, and also describes how complexity research suggests a mixed methods approach and other methodological strategies.

Mathematical Formalism and Political-Economic Content

2012 ◽  
pp. 82-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Foley
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Statistical Methods ◽  
Complex Adaptive System ◽  
Economic Modeling ◽  
Qualitative Properties ◽  
Mathematical Methods ◽  
Econometric Methods ◽  
Statistical Fluctuations ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
New Thinking

Mathematical methods are only one moment in a layered process of theory generation in political economy, which starts from Schumpeterian vision, progresses to the identification of relevant abstractions, the development of mathematical and quantitative models, and the confrontation of theories with empirical data through statistical methods. But today the relevant abstract problems of political economy are modified to fit available mathematical tools. The role of empirical research in disciplining theoretical speculation, on which the scientific traditions integrity rests, was undermined by specific limitations of nascent econometric methods, and usurped by ex cathedra methodological fiats of theorists. These developmentssystematically favored certain ideological predispositions of economicsas a discipline. There is abundant room for New Thinking in political economy starting from the vision of the capitalist economy as a complex, adaptive system far from equilibrium, including the development of the theory of statistical fluctuations for economic interactions, redirection of macroeconomics and financial economics from path prediction toward an understanding of the qualitative properties of the system, introduction of constructive and computable methods into economic modeling, and the critical reconstruction of econometric statistical methods.

The Nexus Between Urbanisation and Human Empowerment: Income Group Based Findings of Bidirectional Causality

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-15
Author(s):  
Christos Kollias ◽  
Panayiotis Tzeremes
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Positive Association ◽  
Income Group ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Access To Education ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Significant Positive Association ◽  
Public Action ◽  
Income Groups ◽  
Democratic Rule

Abstract The economic and social drivers of democratisation and the emergence and establishment of democratic institutions are longstanding themes of academic discourse. Within this broad body of literature, it has been argued that the process of urbanisation is also conducive to the emergence and consolidation of democracy through a number of different channels. Cities offer better access to education and facilitate organised public action and the demand for more democratic rule and respect of human rights. The nexus between urbanisation and human rights is the theme that is taken up in the present paper. Using a sample of 123 countries for the period 1981–2011, the paper examines empirically the association between urbanisation and human empowerment using the Cingranelli-Richards Index. In broad terms, the findings reported herein do not point to a strong nexus across all income groups. Nevertheless, there is evidence suggesting the presence of such a statistically significant positive association in specific cases.

Hybridität als Motor und als Ergebnis von Sprachwandel

Glottotheory ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Csaba Földes
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Adaptive System ◽  
Complex Adaptive System ◽  
Explanatory Variable ◽  
Essential Factor ◽  
Language Functions ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
Linguistic Innovation

AbstractThis paper deals with constellations in which, as consequences of linguistic interculturality, elements of two or more languages encounter each other and result in something partially or completely new, an – occasionally temporary – “third quality”, namely hybridity. The paper contributes to the meta-discourse and theory formation by questioning the concept, term and content of “linguistic hybridity”. It also submits a proposal for a typology of linguistic-communicative hybridity that consists of the following prototypical main groups, each with several subtypes: (1) language-cultural, (2) semiotic, (3) medial, (4) communicative, (5) systematic, (6) paraverbal and (7) nonverbal hybridity. At last, the paper examines hybridity as an explanatory variable for language change. In conclusion, hybridity is generally a place of cultural production, with special regard to communication and language it is potentially considered as an incubator of linguistic innovation. Hybridity can be seen as the engine and as the result of language change, or language development. It represents an essential factor by which language functions and develops as a complex adaptive system. Hybridity operates as a continuous cycle. By generating innovation, it triggers language change, which in turn, leads to further and new hybridizations. The processuality of hybridity creates diversity, while at the same time it can cause the vanishing of diversity.

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