Global Perspectives on Education Research

Lori Diane Hill, Felice J. Levine, Lori Diane Hill, Felice J. Levine

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780815356271
• eBook ISBN: 9781351128407
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Global Perspectives on Education Research echoes the breadth and scope of education research worldwide. It features the work of established and emerging scholars from a range of universities and research institutions in Africa, Europe, and North America. The book's ten chapters are organized around four themes: Education Policy, Teaching and Learning, School Context and Student Outcomes, and Assessment and Measurement. Each chapter offers cross-cultural, transnational, or comparative insights on some of the most pressing challenges and promising opportunities for improving education around the world. Across thematic areas, these perspectives shape new ways of understanding context as an influence on, and a framework for, conceptual insights into education policy and practice at the international, national, and local levels. With chapters on topics including the cultural complexities of literacy, the effect of socioeconomic inequality on student learning, and the tension between education for global competitiveness and education for global citizenship as national policy strategies, Global Perspectives on Education Research addresses issues and questions that will interest education researchers, educators, policy makers, and societal leaders worldwide.

This volume is a publication of the World Education Research Association (WERA). WERA is an association of major national, regional, and international specialty research associations dedicated to advancing education research as a scientific and scholarly field. WERA undertakes initiatives that are global in nature and thus transcend what any one association can accomplish in its own country, region, or area of specialization.

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PART I

Global Perspectives on Education Policy

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1

LITERACY AND LANGUAGE DIVERSITY

Challenges for Education Research and Practice in the 21st Century¹

Ingrid Gogolin

Caring for access to ‘literacy’ is a fundamental assertion of public education systems around the world. In the first section of my contribution, I will refer to notions of ‘literacy’ and language that are embedded in European philosophical and educational traditions for the purpose of making my further arguments more transparent. To the best of my knowledge, these traditions were, and still are, influential in the conceptualization of educational systems around the world. In Europe as well as in many other countries, however, critical debates on the appropriateness of education systems to fulfil the promise of making children literate are underway. These debates are accompanied by endeavours to ‘modernize’ understandings of educational aims. In the second section of my contribution, I aim to shed light on one specific discourse of public dissatisfaction with the results of education and schooling which deals with the metaphor of ‘21st century skills and competences.’

The core arguments of two exemplary initiatives in this discourse and their concepts of skills and competences will be presented. I will show that literacy is a fundamental, but not purposefully pursued element of the perceptions of appropriate educational outcomes. In view of the high relevance of literacy and language capabilities, a glance in the actual language reality – with respect to societies as well as individuals – appears worthwhile, because this stimulates considerations about general prerequisites for language acquisition and the development of literacy which children bring to school. As can be shown by data of the world’s languages on the one hand, and by observations of the most recent patterns of migration on the other, large parts of the world are actually multilingual.

A growing number of children and youth live in multilingual environments and develop complex language repertoires – although often not exactly the ones that are expected by the respective education systems. In many of the systems, monolingual language development is considered as the ‘normal’ prerequisite for learning and can thus be the general basis for teaching. Research shows, however, that multilingualism is not only influential on language acquisition and development, but also on learning in general and should thus be taken into consideration in the organization, contents and methods of teaching. In the light of insights about the actual linguistic texture of many areas of the world, this requirement applies to major parts of school populations around the world and not only to exceptional cases. On this background, I finally present a few thoughts about future education research that takes the actual reality of multilingualism and language diversity into account, including the necessity of building innovative theoretical concepts which can appropriately capture this diversity as a ‘normal’ condition of teaching and learning in the 21st century. I will argue that this requirement can build on theories and research on bilingualism as a starting point; this perspective, however, does not cover the whole complexity of factors which are related to multilingualism in the context of teaching and learning.

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‘Literacy’ and ‘Language’ – Understanding the Terms in a European Tradition

The European historical tradition of neo-humanism was influential for the development of education systems in many countries worldwide. In this tradition, the aim and scope of the implementation of public education systems is the inclusion of everybody – irrespective of descent or belonging – into structured processes of getting access to the basic cultural skills, identified as literacy and numeracy. As Wilhelm von Humboldt stated, education in this sense should be open to everybody: to the lowest hireling as well as to the person of high standing.² By education, so the assumption was, the populations of the (emerging) nation states in Europe would get access to participation in the (also emerging) public spheres of their countries and acquire the moral and ethical basis for being an autonomous as well as accountable, upright personality.³ We all know that this historical vision did not transform to actual reality: education does not refrain from exclusion, malefaction or violence, even in their most unbearable forms (Horkheimer, Adorno 1947). Notwithstanding this, the general principles of the neo-humanistic vision of education were and still are rhetorical keystones of many education systems in the world.

Despite all ‘modernizations’ of education theory and concepts, the perception is still vital that literacy and numeracy are fundamental cultural skills and thus core elements of general education (Allgemeinbildung; see for example Caruso, Tenorth 2006). My contribution is based on this assumption, focused on the aspect of literacy in the sense of access not only to the armamentarium of knowing how to read and write, but as a fundamental cultural skill which opens up access to participation in the public sphere and to leading a self-determined as well as socially responsible life – or in other words: as the basis of Bildung (Koller 2012), the un-translatable German term (Rucker, Gerónimo 2017). In this understanding, the term ‘language’ refers to a constantly innovated, variable complex of expressions and makings of meaning which is complementary to, but goes beyond the concept of, ‘languages’ as fixed, although developing conventional systems of signs (Eco 1979; Humboldt 1907). Literacy is based on access to both the command of language in the broad conceptual sense, and the mastery of a language or languages as system(s) of signs.

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Providing access to literacy remains a promise of education systems. Many of these systems not only ‘borrowed’ from European, namely German philosophical traditions in this respect, but also from their later transformation into notions of linguistic ‘normality’ in a nation state and, consequently, its education system. A monolingual condition (or monolingual habitus) is a central feature of these notions: the concept of ‘one state, one language’.⁴ Many education systems worldwide are based on variations of this principle, even in countries which are traditionally composed of multilingual populations (see for the Australian example: Ellis et al. 2011). Well-known variations of this principle can be found in nation states which consider themselves as multilingual, based on compositions of several monolingual territories (in Europe for example Belgium, France or Switzerland, see Helot, Young 2005). Another facet of a monolingual habitus can be found in postcolonial contexts. Here it occurs with respect to power relations between languages (and their speakers): the submission to attaching highest recognition to the conquerors’ languages (see for the example of South Africa: Alexander 2003). My further considerations are guided by these two fundamental features of many education systems: their promise to give general access to literacy on the one hand and their monolingual habitus on the other. The analysis in the following chapter aims to show if and how these features play a role in attempts to ‘modernize’ education systems.

21st Century Skills and Competences

The innovation of education systems worldwide is not least pushed by public complaints about their capability to fulfil the promise of general education – namely: giving all children, irrespective of their descent – access to literacy (as well as numeracy and science, which are not the focus here). Many national education systems are faced with statements like ‘traditional education has failed’. The complaint that education systems do not meet societal expectations is particularly expressed by groups representing economy and the labour market. The players in this respect are manifold. Browsing through documents demanding ‘radical changes’, ‘innovation from scratch’ or the ‘complete redesign’ of education systems shows that the choir of voices is composed of leading international organizations such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) or the World Bank, of powerful foundations (e.g. the German Bertelsmann Stiftung; the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) or consortia of private sponsors, foundations, educational institutions and global enterprises (e.g. the WISE Initiative).⁵ In many cases, governments cooperate closely with these players. One facet of respective activities is the coordinated investment of public and private money into the educational sector. An example of this is the 2010 joint initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation together with 12 other major foundations to commit US$500 million in concert with the US Department of Education, which invested another US$650 million in a ‘historic coordinated effort between the Department of Education and philanthropy’ to education innovation.⁶ Another facet is cooperation in the area of monitoring and evaluating national education systems, as is the case in the large-scale international assessment studies such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) or the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). In an emblematic way, the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation framed the request for a redesign of education systems as follows:

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The demands on learners and thus education systems are evolving fast. In the past, education was about teaching people something. Now, it is about making sure that individuals develop a reliable compass and the navigation skills to find their own way through an increasingly uncertain, volatile and ambiguous world. [. . .] Today, schools need to prepare students for more rapid economic and social change than ever before, for jobs that have not yet been created, to use technologies that have not yet been invented, and to solve social problems that we do not yet know will arise. (OECD 2015, p. 3)

A core metaphor in the discourse about the need of innovation is that of ‘21st century skills and competences’. Whereas in many research publications, ‘skills’ and ‘competences’ are strictly distinct terms (Klieme et al. 2008), other sources – especially those deriving from the more or less political and public discourse – prompt the conclusion that both terms are synonyms or at least vastly overlapping in meaning. A definition that is widely shared in many of the documents that I refer to in this chapter was developed on behalf of the OECD, pointing out that competences involve the ability to meet complex demands, by drawing on and mobilizing psychosocial resources in a particular context (Rychen, Salganik 2003). Skills in this context are seen as the tools that are needed for performing competences.

A number of attempts to operationalize and design sets of ‘21st century skills and competences’ were initiated by the players already mentioned. In order to illustrate the activities, I refer to two examples below.

The first is connected to the OECD, which launched a conference on ‘New Millennium Learners’ (Nusche 2009). As part of the preparations for this conference, a survey was carried out in OECD countries concerning the question if and in what ways the countries had implemented skills and competences in their curricula or other frameworks for the education systems which they considered to be highly relevant for the actual and next generations. The findings that were accumulated in the project were focused on the effects of technologies on learners. ‘Digital skills’ were generally considered to be of major importance (Pedró 2007). A first summary of results was published, focusing on definitions of ‘ICT functional skills’ (skills which are relevant to the use of information and communication technologies applications) and ‘ICT skills for learning’ (skills to combine higher-order learning abilities with functional skills to manage ICT applications) (Ananiadou, Claro 2009, p. 7). In a series of follow-up reports and inquiries initiated by OECD–CERI, the concept of ‘digital natives’ was developed and its implications for education systems were sketched out. The final report of this series of activities includes research findings with respect to economic effects of new technologies, the usage of respective devices by young people and the question of whether the usage of digital technologies has effects on cognitive skills (OECD 2012). Whereas for the first two aspects a number of positive effects were presented, not enough research evidence could be found to support the assumption of critical effects on cognitive skills. On the basis of all considerations, a number of key messages to policy makers and an ‘agenda for the public debate’ were formulated, including ‘the pressing need’ for curriculum reforms, reforms of teacher education and assessment strategies (OECD 2012, pp. 162, 163). As an organizational structure, the ‘Partnership for 21st Century Skills’ was initiated, involving a large number of ICT and other major commercial enterprises (see for the group of founding members: www.oecd.org/site/educeri21st/40756908.pdf, accessed July 28, 2016). Furthermore, OECD created an information platform and blog for the ongoing communication on the development (‘Education & Skills Today’, oecdeducationtoday.blogspot.de/, accessed July 28, 2016).

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The second example is the initiative ‘Assessment & Teaching of 21st Century Skills’. It was initiated by a call to action which was issued in 2008 by three major IT companies: Cisco, Intel and Microsoft. The three companies funded a project from 2009 to 2012 which was managed by the University of Melbourne, Graduate School of Education. The first purpose of the project was the definition of a framework of 21st century skills. Roughly 250 experts from several countries – rese...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Global Perspectives on Education Research
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• PART I Global Perspectives on Education Policy
• PART II Teaching and Learning
• PART III School Context Links to Student Outcomes
• PART IV Assessment and Measurement
• List of Contributors
• Index