Seminars

Peking University has been urged to achieve world-class level in the coming decade. The university issued a plan to reform its faculty appointment and promotion systems in 2004. The plan received strong responses and was hotly debated. The debate touched on the fundamental issue: successful adaptation of the European-American education system to China has not been matched with continuity with the traditional Chinese spirit of higher learning. After reviewing the historical achievements of Peking University, using the event as an indicative case, and locating Peking University’s contemporary reforms in historical and international contexts with due regard for cultural and social issues, the chapter captures China’s experience as its higher education institutions re-enter the world community.

YANG Rui is the Director of Comparative Education Research Centre, and an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong. Before coming to Hong Kong, he was a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University in Australia. He received his PhD in comparative studies in education policy from the University of Sydney. He has taught and researched in Guangdong and Hong Kong and, in Australia, in New South Wales, Western Australia and Victoria. An expert in Chinese higher education and in the internationalisation of Chinese universities, he has published widely in these areas, and has an established international reputation in the field. His current interests are in the fields of comparative and international studies in education, higher education, education policy and development in Chinese societies, the changing nature of academic work, and international politics in educational research.

21.00; Monday 20 April 2009

401 Meng Wah Complex

The seminar could be viewed from the webcast: http://www.uwex.edu/ics/stream/session.cfm?eid=15174&sid=23390

COMPARATIVE EDUCATION:

The Construction of a Field

Speaker: Maria Manzon

Despite its long history and widespread institutionalisation into university courses, professional societies, and specialist publications, questions about the nature of comparative education remain. That comparative education is institutionalised as a distinct area of inquiry does not necessarily imply, much less justify, its intellectual legitimacy as an independent field.

I address the problem of why the intellectual and the institutional trajectories of this field diverge. I contend that comparative education is a field constructed not purely based on cognitive criteria, but also by power relations associated with social structures and human agency, and discourse.

Employing sociological analysis and philosophical argumentation, I examine the literature on the field’s intellectual definitions and institutional histories in English, Spanish, Chinese and French, obtained mainly from three international surveys covering 52 countries, and triangulated by interviews with 28 comparative education society leaders and participant observation.

This research demonstrates that the institutional and intellectual forms of comparative education diverge due to the dialectic between factors of structure-agency and epistemology. The field of comparative education is thus constructed through the interaction of sociological and epistemological forces which comparativists codify into the discourses on and institutions of comparative education. When appropriate combinations of intellectual and institutional legitimacy coalesce, a relatively sustainable field emerges.

This study elucidates the power-knowledge relations shaping academic fields, and the positional nature of institutional histories and intellectual definitions. It probably represents the first globally comparative analysis of what comparative education is, offering a holistic framework for understanding its shaping by sociological and epistemological forces.

Maria Manzon is a Research Associate of CERC, HKU and former Assistant Secretary General of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies. Her publications include two edited books: Comparative Education at Universities World Wide, Charl Wolhuter, Nikolay Popov, Maria Manzon & Bruno Leutwyler (Eds.) (2008), 2nd ed., Sofia: Bureau for Educational Services, and Common Interests, Uncommon Goals: The Histories of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies and its Members, Vandra Masemann, Mark Bray & Maria Manzon (Eds.) (2007), Hong Kong/ Dordrecht: CERC/Springer. She is Editor of CIEclopedia, an online ‘who’s who’ database for comparative and international education founded by Teachers College, Columbia University and currently hosted by CERC at HKU in co-sponsorship with major universities worldwide.

12.45 – 14.00; Wednesday 15 April 2009

G01 Hui Oi Chow Science Building, HKU

CERC: Millennium Development Goals Seminar Series

Millennium Development Goals:

Background, Discourse, Implications

Speaker: Dr. Bjorn Nordtveit

Chair: Prof. Nirmala Rao

The Comparative Education Research Centre (CERC) is pleased to introduce a series of seminars on the topic of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), with a special focus on the MDGs’ implications for education. The eight MDGs range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by 2015. The MDGs are consi-dered as a universal framework of development agreed to by 190 of the world’s countries, all the world’s leading development institutions, as well as a number of civil society and business associations.

In the first seminar in this series, Bjorn Nordtveit will give a presentation on the background and discourse of the MDGs, with a special focus on basic education. The MDGs are drawn from the actions and targets adopted during the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000. They combine many of the commit-ments made separately at international conferences and summits, including the World Declaration on Education For All (EFA) adopted in 1990. The MDGs are based on time-bound and measurable targets accompanied by indicators for monitoring progress.

The MDGs offer a positive discourse that emphasize the sense of common purpose, equality, tolerance and solidarity – in a world in which there is shared responsibility and will to work together to eradicate poverty, illiteracy and “under-development.” The narrative is one of measuring change set in motion, not one of analysis of the causes of poverty, nor of questioning the notion of poverty in itself. References to the MDGs targets in policy documents and action plans, although often decorative, tend to consider them in quasi-religious terms, as an absolute reference for the development path of a nation. This has been criticized as a reduction of development to a standardized, pre-packaged solution and an outdated version of the rich nations’ standard model. Within such a perspective, some basic education pro-grams (MDG target no. 2) may have evolved into mass enroll-ment of children in low-quality schools that rationalize social stratification and ultimately lead to rural exodus, thereby creating unemployment and frustration.

Dr. Bjorn Harald Nordtveit joined HKU as a Research Assistant Professor in May 2006. He has more than 14 years of experience working in the developing world, mainly with the World Bank in Africa and UNESCO in Southeast Asia. He has also worked for the United Nations Security Council in Iraq, the World Food Pro-gramme, and the U.S. Department of Labor.

12.45 – 14.00; Monday 6 April 2009

205 Runme Shaw Building, HKU

Recent held seminars

Research Seminar presented by

Comparative Education Society of Hong Kong (CESHK), and Comparative Education Research Centre (CERC), Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong

PUZZLING OUR WAY FORWARDS:

the Comparative Education which

no one invented yet

Robert Cowen

Emeritus Professor, University of London Institute of Education

Chair: Dr Yang Rui

The academic field of study called ‘comparative education’ has grown fat (and to some extent prosperous). It is fat in the sense that it is successful: it has its journals, its research contracts, its books, its professional Societies, and its ‘world-famous’ scholars – these days more widely spread out across the world. It has its ‘research quest- ions’ (‘how far may we learn anything of practical value from the study of foreign systems of education’). It has its methodologies. Everyone knows that 'it compares'. 'Context' is important. Unfortunately this historical baggage – of the traditional research question, the anxiety about methodologies and – even worse – ‘context’, and the assumption that if an article does not have a comparative form (A v. B) then it is not a comparative article – has meant that doing new thinking is either not seen as really necessary; or where it is seen as necessary, it is difficult to do. New thought often gets re-captured by old assumptions.

In fact there are a few scholars whose work is very refreshing: the names of Popkewitz, Arnove, Steiner-Khamsi, Torres, Schriewer, Dale, Phillips, Lawn, and Ninnes come to mind. I will illustrate briefly some of the perspectives of some of these scholars, showing how and why I think their ideas are extremely valuable.

I will then sketch a comparative education of my own which is not yet written out. I will begin from the ‘Three or Four T?’ Problem: transfer, translation and transformation, among other things showing how these three processes are made more visible and thus more easily analysed under ‘transitological’ conditions.

Then I will discuss the concept of 'shape-shifting' in comparative education. We have narratives. We have a lot of them. But I will suggest that we need some approximation of a solution to shape-shifting as a theory problem if we are going to move forward, both theoretically and in terms of the complexity of the issues we address. Finally I will show how this (4T + S) style of 'puzzling our way forwards' has remarkably little connection with the routine assumptions carried in the historical baggage of 'comparative education'.

Robert Cowen is Emeritus Professor of Education in the University of London Institute of Education, a former President of the Comparative Education Society in Europe, and a Senior Research Fellow of the University of Oxford. He has been a Professor or Visiting Professor in the University of Brasilia, the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, the University of La Trobe in Melbourne, and SUNY, Buffalo. His recent publications include ‘Comparing and transferring: visions, politics and universities?’ in Higher Education and National Development: universities and societies in transition, David Bridges, Terence McLaughlin and Jolanta Stankeviciute (eds.) Routledge: London, 2007, as well as with Andreas Kazamias (eds.) International Handbook of Comparative Education, just published by Springer this March 2009.

15.00 – 16.30; Friday 20 March 2009

LG02 Hui Oi Chow Science Building, HKU

The seminar is jointly with

Centre of Asian Studies and Hong Kong Educational Research Association

Educating the Future:

Education Research Initiatives in Singapore

Professor S. Gopinathan

Head, Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice

National Institute of Education, Singapore

It is well known that Singapore built a successful post-colonial education system that contributed much to its successful economic transformation and social cohesion in the last four decades. Pragmatism and incrementalism rather than research findings provide the key to understanding Singapore education in this phase of its development. Like many other countries the need to enhance economic competitiveness and rootedness in a rapidly globalising environment is challenging the Singapore model. The government’s response has been to commit some S$150 million dollars to fund education research at the NIE. In this presentation I examine the development of NIE’s Centre for Education Research and the Learning Sciences Lab, the current RD & I Framework, relations with the Ministry and the potential for change that this investment offers.

Professor Gopinathan is currently Head of the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice at Singapore’s National Institute of Education. He has three decades of experience in teacher education and is a former Dean of Education.

In a career spanning over three decades, he has been involved in critical phases of teacher education in Singapore and has served on numerous Ministry of Education review committees. He is founding editor of the Singapore Journal of Education and is currently co-edits the Asia Pacific Journal of Education. He is currently involved in projects to establish teacher training facilities in Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and in Indonesia. He has served as a consultant to the World Bank, reviewing secondary education in sub-Saharan Africa, Unesco, Unicef and the Commonwealth of Learning. His numerous texts are key references to educational development in Singapore.

11.00am – 12.30pm; Wednesday 18 February 2009

LG02 Hui Oi Chow Science Building, HKU

Education and its Ethical Imperative

One World United in Difference

Professor Crain Soudien

School of Education, University of Cape Town

President, World Council of Comparative Education Societies

Chair: Dr Yang Rui

The purpose of this presentation is to make the argument that deep forms of education – as processes involving self-reflection – present the world with the only opportunity it has for managing the real challenges that have come with globalisation. The seminar will argue that globalisation simultaneously creates new possibilities for development while reconfiguring old forms of disadvantage. Central to its unfolding are complex contradictions in which possibility and challenge are in constant articulation. This articulation, against the context of the nation, the region and the globe, takes distinct forms in different parts of the world. The seminar will make the argument that much of the education we provide in many parts of the world is not equal to the challenge constituted by this articulation. The dominant approach in most countries is to move towards an instrumental form of education that emphasises particular kinds of skills and not others. Instrumentality, it will be argued, downplays the classic objectives of modern education. It places emphasis on narrow forms of individualism and weakens the opportunity and indeed necessity for individuals to imagine themselves as citizens of communities that are wider than those of their immediate contexts. In light of this, at the higher education level in particular, comparative education, as a field of engagement with difference, is as relevant as it has ever been. In preparing teachers, educators and policy-makers who have the responsibility of leading and giving content to educational practice in the wider system, the kind of comparative education that is taught, however, has to be informed by an approach which understands how social processes of inclusion and exclusion work. The seminar will attempt an explanation of what such an approach might look like.

Crain Soudien is a Professor in Education and formerly the Director of the School of Education at the University of Cape Town. He teaches in the fields of Sociology and History of Education and has published over 100 articles, reviews, and book chapters in the areas of race, culture, educational policy, comparative education, educational change, public history and popular culture. He is also the co-editor of three books on District Six, Cape Town and another on comparative education and the author of The Making of Youth Identity in Contemporary South Africa: Race, Culture and Schooling and the co-author of Inclusion and Exclusion in South African and Indian Schools. He was educated at the Universities of Cape Town, South Africa and holds a PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is involved in a number of local, national and international social and cultural organisations and is the Chairperson of the District Six Museum Foundation, President of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies and currently the Chair of a Ministerial Committee on Transformation in Higher Education.

12.45pm – 2.00pm; Wednesday 21 January 2009

G01 Hui Oi Chow Science Building, HKU