This study examines how education can disrupt threats of conflict, specifically in the presence of ethnic diversity. We present a historical analysis of Botswana, using methods of process tracing drawing on documents, in-depth interviews, and Afrobarometer survey data. Postindependence Botswana engaged in redistribution of educational access…

Since the 1940s, the concept of community participation has framed, mobilized, and legitimated national development agendas in the Singida Region of rural central Tanzania. Based on 19 months of ethnographic and archival research, this study examines the forms of community participation elicited through state and international development…

This article discusses admissions policies to higher education during the Communist regime in Bulgaria (1946-89). It argues that under the conditions of the Bulgarian Communist regime, admissions policies were not only a component of the higher education system--viewed as an institution--but part and parcel of the process through which power was…

In Uganda, the implementation of universal primary education (UPE) in 1997 and universal secondary education (USE) in 2005 have led educational policy makers, teachers, parents, and students to seek creative solutions to the problem of ensuring educational quality as schools incorporate 4 million more students. Some Ugandans worry about…

Recently, Latin America has seen the advent of research activities to meet the call for research that long preceded them and of the full-time research faculty who engage in them. These developments have taken place as the region partakes in contemporary worldwide trends that have affected universities elsewhere: the consequences of the increased…

This paper tried to show that education is one of the mechanisms developed by the dominant segments of (or the segments competing for influence in) Brazilian society, through direct initiatives and/or use of the political system, to enforce their respective interests. (Author/RK)

The present research was undertaken to identify sociocultural variables that influence whether Russian-speaking parents living in Estonia choose Russian, Estonian, or bilingual (Russian and Estonian) instruction for their children. To examine which sociocultural variables are related to parents' choice of language of instruction, 346…

Reviews French educational reform projects of the past 30 years, and offers some explanations for their failure. Discusses groups with a vested interest in continuing reform, the lack of national consensus on educational policy, and the discontinuity of political leadership. (34 references) (SV)

Discusses the origins and policy characteristics of the Education for Self Reliance project in Tanzania and the Secondary Schools Community Extension Project in Papua New Guinea. Compares the sociopolitical climate, the policy characteristics, the role of academic assessment, policy change, and examples of the existing policy in the two countries.…

Examines explanations for lack of progress by Muslims in English education in East Bengal, colonial British India (now Bangladesh). Argues that urban-based, elitist English education failed to provide opportunities to rural Muslim farmers, and that, after the British formulated educational policies meeting Muslim needs, that community responded…

This first of three articles in a symposium on the research effort of the International Association of the Evaluation of Educational Achievement is an historical portrait of the IEA studies providing insights concerning the methodological and political aspects of a large-scale, multinational research project. (Editor/SJL)

Explores China's experience in developing higher education alternatives as a means to resolve contradictions between a revolutionary ideology of mass participation and the natural exclusiveness of conventional higher education. Describes six official and several unofficial forms of alternative higher education serving specific populations or…

Traces the development since 1957 of Malaysian education policies aimed at providing equitable access to higher education. Suggests that these policies have increased representation of the Malay underclass in tertiary institutions and the professions, but have had little effect on intraethnic class inequalities. 46 references. (SV)

Chinese "people-managed schools" began in the 1940s as popular voluntary village schools providing flexible relevant education to rural peasants, but are regarded today as low status and low quality. This change reflects the Chinese Communist Party's incremental move away from both decentralized decision making and populist education to…