The global and the local: diverse perspectives in comparative education 9789463006521, 9789463006538, 9789463006545, 9463006540

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The Global and the Local

THE WORLD COUNCIL OF COMPARATIVE EDUCATION SOCIETIES Series Editors: Suzanne Majhanovich, University of Western Ontario, Canada Allan Pitman, University of Western Ontario, Canada Scope: The WCCES is an international organization of comparative education societies worldwide and is an NGO in consultative partnership with UNESCO. The WCCES was created in 1970 to advance the field of comparative education. Members usually meet every three years for a World Congress in which scholars, researchers, and administrators interact with colleagues and counterparts from around the globe on international issues of education. The WCCES also promotes research in various countries. Foci include theory and methods in comparative education, gender discourses in education, teacher education, education for peace and justice, education in post-conflict countries, language of instruction issues, Education for All. Such topics are usually represented in thematic groups organized for the World Congresses. Besides organizing the World Congresses, the WCCES has a section in CERCular, the newsletter of the Comparative Education Research Centre at the University of Hong Kong, to keep individual societies and their members abreast of activities around the world. The WCCES comprehensive website is http://www.wcces.com As a result of these efforts under the auspices of the global organization, WCCES and its member societies have become better organized and identified in terms of research and other scholarly activities. They are also more effective in viewing problems and applying skills from different perspectives, and in disseminating information. A major objective is advancement of education for international understanding in the interests of peace, intercultural cooperation, observance of human rights and mutual respect among peoples. The WCCES Series was established to provide for the broader dissemination of discourses between scholars in its member societies. Representing as it does Societies and their members from all continents, the organization provides a special forum for the discussion of issues of interest and concern among comparativists and those working in international education. The first series of volumes was produced from the proceedings of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies XIII World Congress, which met in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 3–7 September, 2007 with the theme of Living Together: Education and Intercultural Dialogue. The first series included the following titles: Volume 1: Tatto, M. & Mincu, M. (Eds.), Reforming Teaching and Learning Volume 2: Geo JaJa, M. A. & Majhanovich, S. (Eds.), Education, Language and Economics: Growing National and Global Dilemmas Volume 3: Pampanini, G., Adly, F. & Napier, D. (Eds.), Interculturalism, Society and Education Volume 4: Masemann, V., Majhanovich, S., Truong, N., & Janigan, K. (Eds.), A Tribute to David N. Wilson: Clamoring for a Better World The second series of volumes has been developed from the proceedings of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies XIV World Congress, which met in Istanbul, Turkey, 14–18 June, 2010 with the theme of Bordering, Re-Bordering and new Possibilities in Education and Society. This series includes the following titles, with further volumes under preparation: Volume 1: Napier, D.B. & Majhanovich, S. (Eds.) Education, Dominance and Identity Volume 2: Biseth, H. & Holmarsdottir, H. (Eds.) Human Rights in the Field of Comparative Education Volume 3: Ginsburg, M. (Ed.) Preparation, Practice & and Politics of Teachers Volume 4: Majhanovich, S. & Geo-JaJa, M.A. (Eds.) Economics, Aid and Education Volume 5: Napier, D. B. (Ed.), Qualities of Education in a Globalised World

The third series of volumes has been developed from the proceedings of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies XV World Congress which met in Buenos Aires, Argentina, June 24-28, 2013 with the theme of New Times, New Voices. This series will include a number of volumes under preparation including: Volume 1: Gross, Z. & Davies L. (Eds.) The Contested Role of Education in Conflict and Fragility Volume 2: DePalma, R., Brook Napier, D. & Dze Ngwa, W. (Eds.) Revitalizing Minority Voices: Language Issues in the New Millennium Volume 3: Majhanovich, S. & Malet, R. (Eds.) Building Democracy through Education on Diversity Volume 4: Olson, J., Biseth, H. & Ruiz, G. (Eds.) Educational Internationalisation: Academic Voices and Public Policy Volume 5: Astiz, M. F. & Akiba, M. (Eds.) The Global and the Local: Diverse Perspectives in Comparative Education Volume 6: Acosta, F. & Nogueira, S. (Eds.) Rethinking Public Education Systems in the 21st Century Scenario: New and Renovated Challenges, New and Renovated Policies and Practices

The Global and the Local Diverse Perspectives in Comparative Education

Edited by M. Fernanda Astiz Canisius College, USA and Motoko Akiba Florida State University, USA

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-94-6300-652-1 (paperback) ISBN: 978-94-6300-653-8 (hardback) ISBN: 978-94-6300-654-5 (e-book)

Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands https://www.sensepublishers.com/

All chapters in this book have undergone peer review.

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved © 2016 Sense Publishers No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgementsix 1. Introduction: Diverse Perspectives on the Global-Local Analysis in Comparative Education Research M. Fernanda Astiz

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2. Globalization, Innovation, and Cultural Resistance to Educational Reform: Lessons from International Testing 11 David H. Kamens 3. Comprehensive Sexual Education in Latin America: Human Rights Education and Women’s Rights Paola Fajardo-Heyward 4. The Effects of Normative Assumptions on Micro-Level Actions in Education: The Contextualized Impact of Teaching with ICT in Turkey and the USA Alexander W. Wiseman, Petrina Davidson and Fawziah Al-Bakr 5. Traveling Teacher Professional Development Model: Local Interpretation and Adaptation of Lesson Study in Florida Motoko Akiba

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6. Globalized Local & Localized Global in a Women’s Education Project in Pakistan99 Ayesha Khurshid 7. The New Models of Public Policy on Early Childhood Education and Care in Spain: Trends and Implications Ana Ancheta Arrabal and Jing Zhang

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8. The Shadow Education Market of a Mass Higher Education Institution in Argentina Florencia Cámara and Héctor R. Gertel

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About the Contributors

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As editors of this book we would like to express our gratitude to many people who contributed to a successful completion of this volume. Several chapters of this book emanated from papers presented at the XV World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES) congress held in Buenos Aires, Argentina from June 24–28, 2013. The book would have not been possible without the diligent work and assistance of the organizers of the congress. We are grateful to Norberto Fernandez Lamarra, President of the Argentine Society of Comparative Studies in Education (Sociedad Argentina de Estudios Comparados en Educación, SAECE), and VicePresident of WCCES who hosted the congress and to his team: Felicitas Acosta, Cristian Pérez Centeno, Mónica Marquina, and Guillermo Ruiz, among many others. We are also thankful to Suzanne Majhanovich and Allan Pitman, the editors of the series, for inviting M. Fernanda Astiz to take the leading role in coediting this book. Their patience and support throughout the process are most appreciated. In the same vein, we express our gratitude to Michel Lokhorst and his staff at Sense Publishers who were responsible for the publication of this volume of the WCCES series. Most importantly, we thank the contributors of the chapters for deciding to submit their manuscripts, and for their openness to the suggestions for improvement that both the editors and reviewers made to each manuscript. We are thankful to the reviewers for their professionalism. They provided authors and coeditors with conscientious and constructive feedback; special thanks go to: David Baker, Jason Beech, Mark Bray, Amita Chudgar, Lorrei DiCamillo, Guillermo Ruiz, Kate Riordan, Arathi Sriprakash, David Suárez, and Alexander Wiseman and his doctoral students at Lehigh University. It has been a long, yet meaningful journey to engage in this project. We needed to overcome several personal and work-related challenges to complete this book. Thus, we are thankful to our husbands and students for their patience with limited time we could spend with them and their support of our work on this project. M. Fernanda Astiz is also grateful to Canisius College for granting a sabbatical leave to finalize this book and other projects. M. Fernanda Astiz Motoko Akiba

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1. INTRODUCTION Diverse Perspectives on the Global-Local Analysis in Comparative Education Research

This book is one of the several volumes that emanated from the diverse thematic groups that provided coherence to the program of the World Congress of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES) held in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2013. This congress, as well as previous ones, provided opportunities for educational researchers, practitioners, and those working in policy environments from around the world to share and discuss their work in their respective areas of scholarly interest and practice. This book is a testament of those fruitful discussions, the varied worldviews and voices present in the field of comparative and international education, and an example of international collaboration. Although the chapters in this book present different approaches to the discussion of “the global and the local” in comparative education research, and highlight converging trends in policy patterns as well as contextual divergences in practice, they all point to a sine qua non postulate in today’s comparative educational research agenda: globalization is a key analytical tool that cannot be left out of any serious attempt at explaining current education policy and practice around the word. They also illustrate that local factors continue to be central in shaping educational developments (a process reminiscent of the term “glocalization”, coined by Robertson, 1995; Drori, Hollerer, & Walgenbach, 2014). All the chapters reaffirm, in one way or another, that the concept of globalization facilitates understanding, while the “global-local” or “global similarities-national differences” dyads provide insights to the interplay of global trends and influences with different degrees of local implementation, adaptation, and interactions in contexts such as regions, countries, communities or even particular educational institutions (see, for example, Astiz, Wiseman, & Baker, 2002; Dale & Robertson, 2002; Carney, 2003; Baker & LeTendre, 2005; Astiz, 2006; Wiseman & Baker, 2006; Zajda & Rust, 2009; Schriewer, 2012; Arnove, 2013; Mundy, Green, Lingard, & Verger, 2016; Ramirez, Meyer, & Lerch, 2016). Moreover, as a whole, this book underscores a very important fact in comparative educational research: world culture understood as the current values and ideas about the schooling process and reforms, and their organizational frameworks that are diffused around the world planting seeds of “silver bullets” or “best practices”

M. F. Astiz & M. Akiba (Eds.), The Global and the Local, 1–10. © 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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(Meyer, Boli, Thomas, & Ramirez, 1997; Ramirez, 2012) permeates our academic thinking about the process of educational policy and practice. Indeed, regardless of theoretical affiliations, there is a tendency to believe that in today’s world, “localities” have relatively little wiggle room to define or imagine their own education policy, and that there is a “global institutional environment” (or narrative) that is at play, which guides and promotes the so-called “transferring or borrowing” of common, context free, educational models intended to solve educational problems around the globe (Cowen, 2009; Steiner-Khamsi, 2012). This view has become normative even when examples of local resistance and counter global movements have been debated and academically explored. Examples of these types of thinking abound in the literature and are indeed not new to educational comparatists (Dale, 2000; Anderson-Levitt, 2003; Steiner-Khamsi & Slope, 2006; Akiba & LeTendre, 2009; Popkewitz & Rizvi, 2009; Crossley, 2010; Carney, 2014; Beech, 2011; etc.). This global society narrative imagines “localities” and their educational projects embedded in a supra-national world; indeed “localities” imagine themselves in that fashion, altering their policies and structures by mirroring (or in compliance with) those context free imagined models (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Ramirez, 2012). Likewise, their policy actions legitimate them as members of the supra-national community. Failure to conform to those global forms positions “localities” as noncredible global actors. But how is that process of compliance handled locally? How close are the reforms implemented to world cultural blueprints? These are the overarching questions that guide the chapters of this book. That is, these contributions address the question of “diffusion,” “convergence,” and “decoupling” (also referred to as “resistance” or “divergence”). However, not all chapters evaluate global influences and practices in the same fashion. Their different analytical approaches rely on how the studies are conceptualized and on where they centre the source of their explanations. In other words, the chapters differ in the level of analysis they employ: some are more global, some more local (macro or micro levels), some find a junction point (meso); some are primarily quantitative while others use qualitative methods or mixed methods. One should clarify here that context may not necessarily refer to national or subnational governance levels, but also to organizational and sectorial ones. The approaches taken in these chapters are representative of the prevailing globallocal views in the field of comparative education. On the one hand, some arguments are presented in a straightforward and linear manner, and attribute local outcomes or challenges to the spread and implementation of the “one-size-fits-all” neo-liberal agenda that dominated part of the international educational discourse from the 1980s to the early 2000s; although it could also be argued that this discourse is still present today. These analyses identify global economic transformation and international agencies and lending institutions as the masterminds of market – based solutions based on efficiency and accountability for struggling government-run services. Though with different degrees of complexity, they point to global reforms as constraints and to the importance of local contexts in the shaping of educational institutions and 2

Introduction

practices. Other analyses included in this book present a more complex and nuanced view. Their theses emphasize universalistic values and characteristics privileged by the western and developed world and anchored, at least in part, in the authority of science. These values and characteristics come from the comparative education field itself and are channelled through technical advice and international strategies and organizations of all kinds. It is not surprising that in the cases and contexts where these analyses take place, and where education reforms are externally endorsed as legitimate, decoupling may happen. The major questions of the chapters that take this approach problematize how national-level policies are “closely linked to the rise of explicit global structures in the educational field” (Ramirez, Meyer, & Lerch, 2016, p. 47) but depending upon their topic and emphasis, their analyses address a combination of the following questions: • Where does the disconnect between global narratives and practice in education come from? • How are educational reforms modified contextually? Are some of those favored reforms running counter to the taken-for-granted universal assumptions or local beliefs and cultures? • Why are some educational reforms borrowed and/or adopted while others are not? • Why are certain cases taken as examples of successful educational change? • Are those diffusing and/or copying mechanisms happening from one country to another, from north to south or within a region? • Why are education reforms successful only in certain contexts despite similar technical advice and implementation methods? • Are education reforms locally desirable and/or voluntary adopted? Under what circumstances? This volume composes an interesting and diverse set of examples of the globallocal connection story. Collectively, the chapters in this book amply show that glocalization is indeed a multi-layered process that involves the diffusion, adoption, and adaptation processes between global and local levels. All chapters highlight structural as well as agency processes and underscore important cultural divergence. At times, uncoordinated efforts in reform development and implementation are at the root of the observed local variation. Another important contribution of the book is that it documents the common struggles across a wide range of organizations and nations to conform to the globally acclaimed best practices. Thus, the book offers an opportunity to compare and evaluate the various paths world culture takes across and within regions, from country to country, and sometimes, from organization to organization, and the unintended consequences of educational reform efforts geared to produce univocal successful outcomes. This book offers an integrated collection of empirical and conceptual studies that exemplify the growing body of literature in the field of comparative and international education on globalization and its effects. To guide the reading of this book, the 3

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coeditors have organized the chapters by sets of studies that provide a coherent narrative that spans from a more general approach to the analysis of “glocalization” to particular case studies that dip into the characteristic of localities and organizations. The first two chapters focus on a macro level (Chapter 1 by Kamens, Chapter 2 by Fajardo-Heyward) and the following two chapters focus on comparison of multiple countries or regions (Chapter 3 by Wiseman, Davidson, and Al-Bakr and Chapter 4 by Akiba). The last three chapters are single case studies (Chapter 5 by Khurshid, Chapter 6 by Ancheta Arrabal and Zhang, Chapter 7 by Cámara and Gertel). As such, readers can approach the volume from beginning to end or they can focus their attention on particular chapters based on their specific interests. ABOUT THE CHAPTERS

The first two chapters situate their analyses more at a macro level. In the opening chapter David Kamens considers a number of possible effects that globalization and its agents, such as international testing, are having on national educational systems. He also considers sources of resistance to these trends. First, Kamens argues that global trends and theories of development have an important influence in shaping national curricular emphases, defining what critical knowledge is and what subjects must be taught in the 21st century. He then contends that international testing already is, and will continue to be, a powerful influence in standardizing national cognitive cultures. As well as others (see Dieter-Meyer & Benavot, 2013), Kamens claims that another major influence of testing is that it has an important impact on how educational policies or practices in countries with high test scores become models for “best practices” and “borrowing”. As such, testing affects the rate of educational innovation cross-nationally, particularly of those reforms that may have major effects in improving student achievement locally such as addressing equity issues. Kamens maintains that the process of standardization may, however, encounter resistance from national and local elites whose culture and interests it may affect. He considers examples where those policies are either resisted or adopted but not fully implemented, thus resulting in decoupling. He suggests that the tension between local traditions and practices, power groups, and international trends (and their supporters) will continue to be an important element in the evolution of national educational systems. For Kamens, whatever the specific outcomes of the tensions among those key players may be, it is clear that education is no longer a local or national enterprise. In her contribution to this book, Paola Fajardo-Heyward analyses how countries in Latin America reconcile their desire to embrace global human rights education (HRE) with the pressures from domestic actors with socio-cultural and religious values contradicting human rights. She particularly looks into what factors make countries adopt certain global initiatives on one subset of women’s rights: comprehensive sexual education, which comprises education on women’s reproductive systems. 4

Introduction

Requirements for such education, demanded by the international treaties, are controversial and thus politically burdensome for governments torn between external pressure to adopt global beliefs and internal pressure to uphold the values shared by their domestic population. However, the trend towards HRE has successfully influenced policies on education in some countries but not in others. FajardoHeyward’s chapter provides a discussion on what accounts for such variance among Latin America countries. She concentrates her attention on two successful cases: Argentina and Colombia. Results from her study reveal that the spread of human rights norms tends to be faster among countries that are located in the same region. Using a cost-benefit analysis, Fajardo-Heyward suggests that part of the explanation for the widespread support for women’s rights in the region can be explained as a beneficial decision for new democratic governments eager to repair their reputation at the international level and to reduce uncertainty surrounding their performance. However, while it can be argued that several common factors (such as culture, traditions, past experiences, and other shared traits) make regions prone to embrace certain norms, the decision of whether or not to adhere to international norms can also be explained by looking at how states benefit from supporting international treaties in the domestic arena. As Fajardo-Heyward indicates, ratifying certain global treaties and adopting global practices increase governments’ credibility not only globally but also among domestic constituencies. The various Latin American examples discussed in her chapter provide insights on the factors that might allow countries to translate their commitment to women’s rights into the implementation of policies in the educational realm. In particular, an active and broad movement that connects both external and domestic actors from different organizations and backgrounds seems to be an important condition to advance on the inclusion of sexual education in the national curriculum. The case of Argentina and Colombian illustrate this point. The chapters that follow engage in comparisons between countries (macro-micro levels). Alexander W. Wiseman, Petrina Davidson and Fawziah Al-Bakr use evidence from the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) to investigate expectations and outcomes of information and communication technology (ICT) based instruction in an economically developed (USA) and an emerging (Turkey) economic system. The goal of their study is to reveal whether there is global alignment in ICT use or if there is evidence that the effect of ICT in teaching and learning depends on the level of economic development. This topic is of much interest, particularly for two reasons highlighted by Wiseman et al.: (1) empirical research increasingly recognizes the potential of ICT use in classrooms to improve learning and increase achievement in mathematics and science, both of which are often associated with the development of knowledge economies, and (2) this research in turn justifies governments’ ICT investment in education, a trend that appears in both developed and developing economies. Yet, there is conflicting evidence regarding whether this investment is justified, if teachers effectively 5

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implement ICT investments, whether they receive adequate support for ICT integration in teaching practices, and if ICT is used for remedial instruction instead of developing critical thinking and complex problem-solving skills. Evidence from their study suggests that global expectations differ from the national level implementation, despite the fact that the ICT-related discourse was largely shared between Turkey and the US. In Turkey, after controlling for socioeconomic level and parents’ education variables, students’ computer use for processing and analyzing data was positively associated with student math achievement scores. Also, teacher age positively predicted student math achievement scores. Apart from these two effects, none of other ICT-related independent variables at the classroom level were significantly associated with student math achievement scores. The analyses resulted in no statistically significant association from any of the ICT-based instruction independent variables for the US sample, but a somewhat significant negative association for computers used for practicing. The authors suggest that in spite of a lack of evidence supporting ICT-use for student success, the tremendous influence of normative global education policy drives national governments to look to ICT as a savior of both education and the economy and to adopt policy and fund ICT-related programs. In the second chapter in the sequence of comparisons between countries, Motoko Akiba discusses the original version of lesson study in Japan, its emergence as a global model of teacher professional development, and its interpretation and adaption in Florida, USA. Akiba uses a sense-making perspective in organizational context as a theoretical framework to investigate: (1) The characteristics of the lesson study practice in Japan and organizational contexts that support the practice, and (2) the process by which a global model of lesson study interacts with local organizational contexts and routines of teacher professional development in Florida. Florida is the first state in the United States that has been promoting the use of lesson study with funding from the federal government. For her mixed-method comparative study, Akiba collected both qualitative and quantitative data from Ibaraki, Japan and Florida, USA from 2011 to 2014. Data gathering focused on the identification of various types of learning opportunities teacher received through lesson study, and the organizational contexts that support these learning opportunities. Results from Akiba’s study reveal that in the original Japanese model, lesson study provides teachers with multiple opportunities to observe teaching and student learning within and beyond their schools. In addition, lesson study is a dominant form of professional learning practiced by every teacher in Japan. This institutionalized form of professional development across the country is supported by educational leaders, collective ownership of research-based professional learning processes, and the work schedule of teachers that embeds lesson study as part of the daily responsibilities. On the other hand, these characteristics of lesson study as a teacher-driven research process practiced by Japanese teachers seems to have been removed from the Florida practice. Instead, organizers and trainers who introduced lesson study to 6

Introduction

district leaders modified the process of lesson study over time, and interpreted lesson study through a lens of existing district-driven professional development models to fit into the existing organizational contexts. The reform context of the Race to the Top Program also shaped how lesson study was promoted in Florida. As Akiba suggests, it is of extreme importance to keep studying local variations and adaptations of globally focused reforms efforts in order to understand the way teachers’ work lives are impacted by the national, state, and local policies promoting various global ideas and models such as lesson study, student-centred instruction, and teacher evaluation. The remaining chapters are single case studies. In her study on women’s education project in Pakistan, Ayesha Khurshid looks into the impacts of international development agencies and non-governmental organizations on the developing countries’ educational systems. Her contribution shows how local actors translate, implement, and contest global agendas and policies tending to employ universal approaches to issues pertinent to women’s education and empowerment. Khurshid uses ethnographic data collected from women teachers from marginalized communities in Pakistan to show how they mobilize local understandings of “wisdom” to define and embody women’s education and gender empowerment. According to Khurshid, on the one hand, teachers approach women’s education as a tool to support their individual rights and, on the other hand, to present it as a prerequisite to strengthen their families and communities. Her contribution informs us that these lived realities of women teachers challenge the global perception of women’s education for Muslim women and women from developing countries to change the institutions of family and community. Her chapter contributes to expand the scholarship focusing on the importance of social and historical contexts in which actors engage with global agendas, policies, and practices. In addition, it also blurs the distinction between global and local by showing how each global is localized in the lived experiences of actors on the ground. In their chapter, Ana Ancheta Arrabal and Jing Zhang, analyse how early childhood education and care (ECEC) as a right for all young children has gained legitimacy in recent years not only worldwide but particularly in Spain. While international organizations advance ideas about the importance of providing high quality ECEC especially for young children who are vulnerable and disadvantaged, this is far from being the reality in many countries around the world, even in those considered developed economies such as Spain. Globally, there is a great variety of provision and financing models for ECEC, for example, the public sector has dominated the provision of ECEC in many developed countries, while the private sector has played a more prominent role in much of the developing world. Yet, according to Ancheta Arrabal and Zhang, ECEC still remains a peripheral concern within the educational systems almost everywhere, characterized by insufficient resources and fragmented planning. Ancheta Arrabal and Zhang present the challenges that ECEC has faced in Spain due to major socioeconomic and political difficulties during the past decades. Those 7

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difficulties have led to a major variation in the quality of ECEC, especially after the increasing demand and expansion of privatization in the Spanish education system. Their study analysed public and private ECEC enrolment data from the Spanish autonomous communities to examine the impact of the 2012 Educa3 plan, which introduced a new policy management model and funding of ECEC in Spain. Their conclusions highlight that the increasing demand and expansion of the system led to a proliferation and lowered overall quality of ECEC services. In turn, this situation increased economic inefficiency and inequity in access to quality ECEC services. In addition, their data show that the availability and access to ECEC services in Spain have followed a trend of marketization through expanding models of public management such as state subsidies to private providers or a mixed model through public-private partnership. Because there is no national program in Spain to ensure access to pre-primary education for children from low-income families, recent changes in the funding and provision of ECEC affects the availability and access of ECEC to the most vulnerable sectors of the population. The authors warn that public-private partnerships need to be regulated by the government regarding the cost of ECEC services. They think it is the only possible solution to protect the right of all young children and their families to receive high quality ECEC services in an equitable manner. The last chapter of this book, authored by Florencia Cámara and Héctor Gertel, examined the determinants of private supplementary tutoring (PST)—a form of shadow education, based on a survey of 360 students enrolled in the National University of Córdoba in Argentina which asked them about the PST use before they entered the university. This contribution is extremely valuable due to two main reasons: (1) it is the first study that looks at PST in Latin America, and (2) the demand for PST has increased worldwide especially for remedial courses designed to prepare students for entrance examinations at higher education institutions. Cámara and Gertel’s study provides the following insightful results. First, contrary to the finding from other countries on the unequal access to PST between high- and low-income students, they did not find any statistically significant relationship between parental education level (a proxy of income level) and access to PST in their study. They speculated that this unexpected finding may be explained by the free and open higher education admission policies in Argentina, and the high rate of high school dropout among low-income students. Second, in all four schools (medical sciences, law, dentistry, economic sciences) in the university, the students that came from outside Córdoba were more likely to have used PST as well as students whose high school concentration did not match their university majors. Cámara and Gertel conclude that PST in higher education is a growing and highly concentrated industry in Argentina. For instance, their study revealed that in the four examined schools at the University of Córdoba near 7,000 candidates used PST (1/3 of total pre-registered candidates). 8

Introduction

As a whole, the contributions to this book enhance our understanding of globalization and its effects on education policy implementation and practice. The diverse views and approaches included in this volume point to the unique features of this book: it identifies the importance of examining national and local educational contexts through a systematic global framework. The book is also distinctive as it points to the importance of schooling as an institution both within and across national contexts (Meyer, 1977; Ramirez, 2012; Baker, 2014) despite the different theoretical and methodological approaches used across these chapters. Much is to be learned from this collective effort. The holistic approach employed in this book moves comparative education beyond a conglomeration of isolated local events to pay attention to global trends. In this regard, the book brings new questions about globalization and the imperatives of education policy and practice by suggesting that while schooling systems are certainly influenced by their environments, they are more than passive and receptive institutions in the global arena. In summary, the book offers examples of how globally recognized cultural and educational norms can be linked to local educational initiatives, while questioning a unidirectional linkage and acknowledging the complexity and multidirectionality in the relationships between global and local. Although for the most part the contributors recognize the institutionalization power of global educational goals, they also underscore the richness of contextual factors that may create opportunities for innovation, or may serve as constrains in the implementation process. The task for educational comparativists is to continue to unpack how globalization interacts with local societies and educational organizations. In this way we will be better positioned to understand the global-local reality and to better inform policies and practices for improving education. REFERENCES Akiba, M., & LeTendre, G. K. (2009). Improving teacher quality: The U.S. teaching force in global context. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Anderson-Levitt, K. (Ed.). (2003). Local meanings, global schooling: Anthropology and world culture theory. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Arnove, R. F. (2013). Introduction: Reframing comparative education: The dialectic of the global and the local. In R. F. Arnove, C. A. Torres, & S. Franz (Eds.), Comparative education: The dialectic of the global and the local (4th ed., pp. 1–26). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Astiz, M. F. (2006). Policy enactment and adaptation of community participation in education: The case of Argentina. In D. P. Baker & A. W. Wiseman (Eds.), The impact of comparative research on institutional theory (pp. 305–332). San Diego, CA: Elsevier Ltd. Astiz, M. F., Wiseman, A., & Baker, D. (2002). Slouching towards decentralization. Consequences of globalization for curricular control in national education systems [Special Issue on Globalization]. Comparative Education Review, 46(1), 66–88. Baker, D., & LeTendre, G. (2005). National differences, global similarities. World culture and the future of schooling. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Baker, D. P. (2014). The schooled society. The educational transformation of global culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

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M. F. Astiz Beech, J. (2011). Global panaceas, local realities: International agencies and the future of education. Franskfurt: Peter Lang. Carney, M. (2014). Personal-rule in Asia’s family-controlled business groups. In G. S. Drori, M. A. Hollerer, & P. Walgenbach (Eds.), Global themes and local variations in organization and management perspectives on glocalization (pp. 219–231). New York, NY: Routledge. Carney, S. (2003). Globalisation, neo-liberalism and the limitations of school effectiveness research in developing countries: The case of Nepal. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 1(1), 87–101. Cowen, R. (2009). The transfer, translation and transformation of educational processes: And their shape shifting? Comparative Education, 43(3), 315–327. Crossley, M. (2010). Context matters in educational research and international development: Learning from the small states experience. Prospects, 40(4), 421–429. Dale, R. (2000). Globalization and education: Demonstrating a common world culture or locating a globally structured educational agenda? Educational Theory, 50(4), 427–434. Dale, R., & Robertson, S. L. (2002). The varying effects of regional organizations as subjects of globalization of education. Comparative Education Review, 46(1), 10–36. Dieter Meyer, H., & Benavot, A. (2013). (Eds.). PISA, power, and policy: The emergence of global educational governance. Oxford, UK: Symposium Books. Drori, G. S., Höllerer, M. A., & Walgenbach, P. (Eds.). (2014). Global themes and local variations in organization and management: Perspectives on glocalization. Abingdon, OX: Routledge. Meyer, J. W. (1977). The effects of education as an institution. American Journal of Sociology, 83(1), 55–77. Meyer, J. W., & Rowan, B. (1977). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology, 83(1), 340–363. Meyer, J. W., Boli, J., Thomas, G. M., & Ramirez, F. O. (1997). World society and the nation-state. American Journal of Sociology, 103(1), 144–181. Mundy, K., Green, A., Lingard, B., & Verger, A. (Eds.). (2016). Globalization and education policy: Key approaches and debates. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Popkewitz, T., & Rizvi, F. (2009). Globalization and the study of education: An introduction. Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, 108(2), 7–28. Ramirez, F. O. (2012). The world society perspective: Concepts, assumptions, and strategies. Comparative Education, 48(4), 423–439. Ramirez, F. O., Meyer, J. W., & Lerch, J. (2016). World society and the globalization of educational policy. In K. Mundy, A. Green, R. Lingard, & A. Verger (Eds.), Handbook of global policy and policy making in education. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Robertson, R. (1995). Glocalization: Time-space and homogeneity-heterogeneity. In M. Featherstone, S. Larch, & R. Robertson (Eds.), Global modernities (pp. 25–46). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Ltd. Schriewer, J. (2012). Meaning constellations in world society. Comparative Education, 48(4), 411–422. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2012). Understanding policy borrowing and lending. Building comparative policy studies. In G. Steiner-Khamsi & F. Waldow (Eds.), World yearbook of education 2012: Policy borrowing and lending in education (pp. 3–17). Abingdon, OX: Routledge. Steiner-Khamsi, G., & Stolpe, I. (2006). Educational import: Local encounters with global forces in Mongolia. New York, NY: Macmillan. Wiseman, A. W., & Baker, D. P. (2005). The worldwide explosion of internationalized education policy. In D. P. Baker & A. W. Wiseman (Eds.), Global trends in educational policy. International perspectives on education and society (Vol. 6, pp. 1–22). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science. Zajda, J., & Rust, V. (Eds.). (2009). Globalisation, policy and comparative research. Discourses of globalisation. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.

M. Fernanda Astiz Canisius College USA 10

DAVID H. KAMENS

2. GLOBALIZATION, INNOVATION, AND CULTURAL RESISTANCE TO EDUCATIONAL REFORM Lessons from International Testing

GLOBALIZATION AND ITS AGENTS

Globalization as an empirical reality has been the subject of much theorizing. This work has produced both useful insights on the process and important empirical analyses (e.g., Meyer & Hannan, 1977; Collins, 1979). One point that is central to all these approaches is the idea that in a loosely structured, decentralized system of nation-states a good deal of diffusion occurs. Whole sets of institutions that were once found only in the West are now found almost everywhere. These include: mass education; science; higher education; democratic political institutions; modern public and private bureaucracy; and capitalist economic institutions (Collins, 1979). The agents of diffusion are various and multiple. International organizations like the World Bank and UNESCO are one source. Regional organizations like the European Union are another. In addition, there are a host of other agents, e.g., cadres of experts and academic economists like Jeffry Sachs at Columbia University, who advise countries on a variety of areas of development. Thus there are highly developed social networks promoting diffusion for all but the most isolated countries, e.g., North Korea. A particularly important empirical finding of this research is how speedily this diffusion process has been working in the mid and late 20th century across the world. Diffusion of modern institutions and organizational forms has been much more rapid than many theories would have predicted. Adoption of the modern primary school curriculum, for example, was complete by the 1930s in the West and countries that subsequently became independent quickly adopted very similar categories of knowledge that they expected young people to learn (Meyer, Kamens, & Benavot, 1992). Meyer, Boli, Thomas and Ramirez (1997) emphasize that one reason for this is that the goal these institutions are intended to pursue became urgent in the late 20th century for all nations. That goal was to become a modern nation-state that was a successful participant in the international economy and political system. The West was a model of such success, but once its institutions had diffused and had become adapted to local environments the model became universal, shedding its Western roots. Math and science, for example, are generally not viewed as ‘Western’ subjects and remnants of colonialism. Neither is the English language. It has become a global M. F. Astiz & M. Akiba (Eds.), The Global and the Local, 11–29. © 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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language, prominent in primary and secondary school systems, even in countries that had no previous experience with English either through colonialism or trade relations (Cha & Ham, 2011). ‘Glocalization’ has also turned it into a language that has many local roots as well. This chapter considers the effects that globalization is having on national curricula and educational practices. Currently one of the important agents of global models of education is the rapidly emerging system of international testing (see Meyer & Benavot, 2013). This has become such an important source of accountability of national education systems in the thinking of much of the contemporary policy world that OECD has made participation in such test cycles mandatory for all its members (Kijima, 2013). In this line of thinking participation in assessment has become the marker of nation-states that are attempting to become ‘modern’. Thus it increases the credibility of national elites as actors in global society. As a result advantages flow to individual nation-states that choose to participate in TIMSS or PISA. Empirical research shows that those who do are more likely to receive credit, loans, and foreign aid than those who don’t (Kijima, 2010). As a result voluntary participation in both PISA and TIMSS cycles of testing has spiralled. Thus it is reasonable to think of testing as an important agent of contemporary models of education for global society. The chapter is organized into two main sections. The first considers the effects of testing on curricula and educational practice in promoting global trends. The second considers sources of cultural resistance at the national and local level. These tend to be partial victories for alternative practices rather than outright rejection of global models because many of the features of this model have successfully diffused and become taken for-granted. NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL REGIMES AND TEST SUCCESS

One of the presumptions of testing regimes is that they help highlight models of national education that are the most successful in preparing students for participation in the economy and society. This, of course, rests on the assumption, rarely tested, that test performance is indicative of national success in the global economy and political development (see Hanushek & Kimbo, 2000; Hanushek & Woessmann, 2006; Ramirez, Luo, Shofer, & Meyer, 2006; Wahlberg, 1990). As international testing regimes grow and mature, nations will face the dilemma of whether to develop their educational systems in ways that parallel the testing protocols. Countries that align their educational systems to international testing regimes will have the best chance of attaining high scores on these tests. Given the many beneficial consequences that flow from mere participation in international testing, many countries will decide to enter this competition (Kijima, 2010). Thus testing will drive many of the reforms that educators will imagine. If the past is any guide and if the current reform movement toward more national testing and teacher accountability continues to have legs, countries will be faced with narrowed choices of models of education 12

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to adopt based on past test experience. A small number of models now exist and have become highly publicized. First, there is the well-known Asian model which is well defined and has produced stunning achievement over a short period of time. Another model that is less well defined, and expensive, is the Finnish one, which has captured attention in the West. Others may emerge as well. The important point is that educators will be under pressure to adapt world models to their own educational systems. The model of organic evolution of national systems will be under siege and fade, as nations hurry to catch up using the most current world models of success. There are limits to this process, which we discuss. But a good deal of change will result from exogamous sources. One result is that path dependence may be reduced as nations become integrated into a global system that defines standards of success and methods to achieve them (for an opposing view, see Cummings, 1999). Copying these models will entail wider changes in education and society. Given the difficulty of navigating such broad scale changes through national political systems, one can expect a good deal of partial innovation and ‘tinkering’ at reform (Tyack & Cuban, 1995). At present there are several models of success. One is Asian and the other Scandinavian. The Asian model, for example, is successful because it restricts educational and economic opportunity and ties it to academic success. Rationing opportunities and tying them to national testing systems appear to pay off in standings on international tests. Students are motivated to learn material that will be tested; teachers teach to the test; and national tests are used to determine students’ career and life chances. These experiences produce excellent results on high stakes international test competitions. Many of the countries whose students have scored well on international tests are ones that have highly competitive and exam driven educational systems, e.g., South Korea; Japan; China. These countries have national curricula and extensive state control of education (Baker & Stevenson, 1991; Baker & LeTendre, 2005). In such societies students are highly motivated and experienced in high stakes testing. They are also likely to take such tests seriously since their own experience shows them that tests can make or break an educational career. Students cram for months and years for these national tests since low scores doom their chances for college or for entry into a good college. As a result test motivation, and anxiety, is high. By rationing educational chances and linking them to national test performance, political regimes can induce high levels of discipline and motivation. There are fewer models of success in the West. Test discipline and achievement is weaker in much of the Western world, precisely because such structures are absent that link student test scores to careers in such a make or break fashion. In the developed world test discipline is undermined by the plethora of choices and career opportunities available to many students (Charles & Bradley, 2008). Higher education has become mass education, so that it is broadly available. And single tests are becoming less important in structuring careers. It is being discarded in many 13

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countries on the grounds that it is undemocratic and a source of wasted talent and opportunity. Students are therefore less serious about tests, and less motivated and less practiced in the art of high stakes testing. They also know that educational and occupational opportunities are relatively plentiful and not restricted to technology and science. Students may therefore not test as well, and instead may reserve their energies for subjects and careers that interest them. There are, however, a few Western models of testing success. Finland has become the poster child or ‘white knight’ as one of the few Western models of success. Adopting this model, however, will probably require wider reforms in social policy than is characteristic of much neo-liberal educational thinking. And these reforms fall outside the current reform discourse concerning privatization; pay for results; and repeated internal testing regimes to assess performance and teacher accountability. The few developed countries whose students do well in international testing, i.e., Finland and Belgium (Flemish speaking Flanders), appear to do so because of policies that broadly affect access to education and good instruction. These policies affect families and education directly. First, family friendly social policies help maintain student health, nutrition and well-being among all sectors of the population. This includes broad access to pre-school. Canada, for example, has a similar set of social policies and its early childhood test scores are dramatically higher than those of U.S. preschoolers (Merry, 2013). Secondly, they make access to good teaching broadly available. In Finland, teaching is a respected profession with rigorous selection standards. 7% of those applying are admitted to its education schools vs. 50% to M.A. education programs at Stanford and Harvard (The Economist, Oct., 2012). And national policy insures access to good teachers by regulating their assignment across schools—a measure also practiced by Cuba (Carnoy, 2007). Lastly, students take schooling seriously because it engages them and because they live in societies where education is broadly respected as a source of prosperity. These are export driven economies where innovation is crucial for national economic success. These societies appear to instill academic rigor in the curriculum without developing testing regimes that are analogous to those in which international high stakes tests are embedded. TEST SCORES AND THE DEMISE OF MACRO POLICY

In regard to educational reforms, it seems the effects of globalization and testing have been rather limited, mostly targeted at teachers and teaching practices. This in part happens because of two common assumptions about education that globalization and the testing enterprise have fostered. In the effort to rationalize their societies, elites have accepted two ideas about schooling: (1) a ‘school’ is a ‘school’ wherever one is encountered. Hence rationalized designs of schools are plausible, wherever there are schools. And (2) there are ‘good’ schools and ‘bad’ schools. As a result of 14

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these rationalized theories of education, most of the reforms that have come out of the testing movement are school based. One counterproductive result of this diffusion process has been the reification of test scores as results of school systems per se. Like elites the public has come to believe that schooling can be rationalized to produce desired results. This belief has led to the search for characteristics of ‘good’ schools and PISA research has produced models of them. One perverse effect of this hunt for the ‘magic bullet’ (or bullets) is that it tends to drive out discussions of macro policy from the debate. Social inequality and macro policies that address its effects on learning and test performance, for example, tend to disappear from discussion. Instead the public is treated to debates about privatization of public schooling; pay for performance; teacher selection and certification; lengthening the school day; the role of principals as leaders; collegial school organization; and increased testing to ensure accountability etc. This has led to a strange phenomenon: the concern about test scores and schools has led to the disappearance of macro social policy from the debates. This I believe is largely a consequence of the fact that even the powerful OECD education sector operates in a de-centralized nation-state system where national elites have considerable control over both the testing process and the debate about what are acceptable approaches to educational reform (for an opposing view see Meyer & Benavot, 2013). Given the inertia in both national educational systems and their associated political systems, the space for reform is relatively limited. And it is tied to practices that are acceptable to national and local elites. That is one reason that proposed reforms are so often narrow and targeted at schools and teachers. Other kinds of reforms might be politically controversial or de-stabilizing, e.g., funding for different sectors; social welfare policy; rural vs. urban development; etc. Given the public concern for accountability, countries with high test scores have become the reigning ‘models’ of how to organize school systems. While it is widely understood that these systems per se cannot be transplanted from one society to another, nevertheless there is widespread interest in borrowing pieces of these systems that seem closely related to student test success. However, reform of education poses serious political challenges for national elites. As education becomes a central societal institution in society all groups have a stake in it (Baker, 2014). The most powerful groups are therefore likely to strongly resist changes in education that affect their interests. One result is that reforms of education are likely to be narrow in scope so that they have wide support among stake holders. Thus reform of teacher selection, certification and teaching practices are the most common remedies chosen for poorly performing educational systems. For example, in an unpublished paper Heyneman and Lee (forthcoming) show that half of the countries that did badly on the 2003 PISA tests immediately enacted some kinds of educational reforms often targeted at improving teacher selection and practices. This analysis suggests that testing is not likely to lead to major reforms of education. Instead more limited efforts to improve teaching and teachers’ education 15

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and training will be implemented in hopes of improving test performance. These reforms have two advantages over other strategies. First, they are more amenable to policy manipulation than changing macro policies. And secondly, they may produce less political conflict. This is especially true where teacher unions are weak. Testing may also serve another purpose for national regimes and their reform agendas. Instead of driving educational reform, test results may be used to legitimate an already established reform program. Test results can thus be useful in pushing through reforms that already have political support behind them (Takayama, 2010; LeTendre, Baker, Akiba, & Wiseman, 2001). In New Orleans and Washington, D. C., for example, poor test results of minority students have been effectively used by the movement for ‘charter schools’. Their goal entails undermining the funding of public education in favor of publicly funded private education run by non-profit and for profit groups. New Orleans as a result has been almost completely converted to ‘charter schools’; and one half of Washington students now attend such schools. Testing has helped legitimate this narrow search for reforms. By focusing on school based sources of achievement it has helped move discussion away from wider reforms that might have much stronger effects on learning, ambition and achievement. The contemporary debate is a logical outcome of focusing exclusively on educational systems and assuming that test scores reflect primarily the effectiveness of their design and execution. Shanghai’s 2009 test results highlight the importance of national macro policy and its disappearance from much of the discussion. In a re-analysis of these data, Dronkers (2014) shows that the high scores of the Shanghai sample are in part due to unmeasured selectivity. The Shanghai sample excluded Chinese migrants who were not legal residents of the city in contrast to Hong Kong and Macao which did not. Dronkers points out that, “the selectivity of the Shanghai sample doesn’t invalidate the whole PISA data collection but it should make us aware of some important limitations of the PISA data.” Thus even the technical issue of sampling is not immune to distortions produced by governmental macro policies. In the case of China, it involves policies governing internal migration and legal residency. The same problem affects discussion of ‘over achievement’ by Asian first world countries and the contrasting ‘under-achievement’ of many first world European countries on international tests. There are many reasons for these differences. However, one effect of talk of ‘under-achievement’ in a context in which the public thinks of ‘good schools’ vs. ‘bad’ ones is that it drives out discussion of macro policies affecting inequality in education. It takes them off the public agenda in favor of school related influences. These are largely irrelevant to issues such as the extent and quality of pre-school education and its effects on later achievement (Merry, 2013) or the paucity of baccalaureat and arbitur degree holders in France and Germany, which limits access to university education (see the chapters in Shavit, Arum, & Gamoran, 2007). Despite this irrelevance, concern with designing schools continues. However, research has made it clear that macro policy is more important in many areas than school linked factors. In the case of children national social policy concerning 16

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children’s health, early educational access and opportunity to learn appear much more important than strictly educational reforms. Canada, for example, has much higher child test scores at age 3 and 4, before kids enter school, than the U.S. (Merry, 2013). And these persist and are correlated with PISA test scores when students are 16. The evidence suggests that social policies that support families’ health and welfare and ensure pre-schooling for all children may be more important for achievement than strictly educational reforms at the school or classroom level. Yet such policies are extremely controversial and unlikely to be enacted in societies like the U.S. since they involve the extension of social citizenship. The narrative about ‘under-achievement’ in this context functions as a smoke screen that conceals and retards discussion of social inequality and its effects. Recently what has become clear is that rising inequality in society parallels the growing inequality of educational opportunity in the U.S.; France; Germany; and elsewhere. Instead of widening equality of opportunity for education, changes in the economy have narrowed the window of opportunity. Recent studies show that in many societies social class background has become increasingly linked to educational attainment. This is particularly true in societies that are experiencing growing income inequality. As a result, America is becoming less meritocratic than Scandinavia, Canada and other nations that have made significant investments in early education and family welfare (Shavit et al., 2007). Much of this results from macro social policies that affect income distributions as well as policies that affect family support and welfare One policy implication of this point is that American and European educators and leaders should be more concerned with macro social policy and less with educational policy per se. They should worry less about international test scores and more about the distribution of health and welfare among families with young children. The latter are more likely to affect school outcomes than strictly educational reforms. They should also be more concerned with pre-school and elementary education and invest heavily in these years. This advice will be very difficult to implement given the contemporary emphasis on schools as sources of excellence. This issue displaces concern from macroeconomic and social policy and focuses it on schools and teachers. It also legitimates a focus on school design instead of family social welfare and other policies that affect access to and success in schooling. And it allows school officials and politicians to avoid discussing the more controversial issues of poverty, nutrition, and student health as causes of low achievement. The result is a search for reforms of schools that promise immediate pay-offs and that are politically easy to implement. Teachers and teaching become the targets of reform. EFFECTS ON SCHOOLED KNOWLEDGE

Another lesson from international testing is that such testing may be an important driver of national curricula and educational standards in the future. This is a hunch 17

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but a plausible one. TIMSS and PISA were introduced in the 1990s and 2000 as international testing regimes. Just 20 years later these testing programs are now part of an extraordinary global social movement sponsored by the wealthy OECD countries to ‘benchmark’ educational regimes and measure them against international standards. This movement has expanded rapidly and now includes emerging countries as well. It in turn has spurred a good deal of comparative and national assessment among poorer countries, which are also looking to ‘benchmark’ their systems against their neighbors (Kamens & Benavot, 2011). Thus the countries involved in this comparative process are growing rapidly. PISA already has 65 to 70 countries signed up for the 2014 round of testing. And many more are doing their own assessments or regional assessments. Some of this testing may even be preparatory for later joining the circle of ‘winners’ who are in the PISA and TIMSS rounds, since participation in national assessments is a good predictor of later participation in international testing (Kijima, 2013). Thus, there is now intensified international competition centering on high stakes testing. This has led to strong international concern over a limited number of subjects and emerging international standards of excellence in these areas. Thus the core intellectual areas of the curriculum have been narrowed to include primarily math, science and reading. Competence in the national language is also a part of standard assessments. Other subjects have been and will be added. Testing will undoubtedly move to include assessment of competence in the current world language, English. PISA and TIMSS are also expanding their testing to include other subjects thought to be important to 21st century citizens, such as civics and world geography. TIMSS has already devised an international civics test that has been tried and analyzed in 1997 and 1999 (see Kijima, 2013, p. 128 for a list of tests that have been administered). One effect of international testing is to arbitrarily narrow the focus of the curriculum to subjects that are presumed to influence economic growth and other desirable outcomes. A plausible outcome is that countries in the future will emphasize only those subjects that are included in international testing regimes. Thus national curricula will increasingly include subjects that testers in the developed world believe are really important subjects for 21st century economic and social development. World theories of development will determine the content of national curricula. Subjects that are not tested will not count, e.g., local languages; local and regional history; local and regional geography; religion; art; music; and physical education. As a result they may be dropped or de-emphasized in national schooling. This has already happened to the arts, music and physical education in the U.S. in response to financial stress brought on by lower tax revenues and funding crises. This process suggests that national curricula will come to be highly aligned with international testing regimes. Countries are currently changing their curriculum to include these subjects or to give more emphasis to them. Thus those subjects deemed to make students fit to be 21st century citizens will be emphasized and others will be discarded and minimized. These processes may end up squeezing good deal 18

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of diversity out of national curricula and end up aborting the historical process of adding new secular subjects to schooling in favor of fewer subjects deemed to be linked to economic development and world citizenship (Meyer et al., 1992). The new subjects tested will stress cosmopolitan knowledge over local knowledge and will focus on those subjects that are built upon universalistic cosmologies and bodies of knowledge. These subjects will be aligned with the major institutions of the 21st century: science/technology; capitalism; democracy; and bureaucracy (read rational organization). This will include: the study of diversity; human rights; regional and world history. The latter will trump national history and local history. In China, for example, world history and world geography (not local or regional geography) became a standard part of the curriculum in the 1990s. In Korea, students are also required to take world geography and world history. Similarly, recent reforms in India have made world history and world literature a requirement (Asia Society Newsletter, Dec. 15, 2011). The study of ethnicity at regional and world levels will also flourish in conjunction with civics. Civics has already replaced history and geography as subjects in national curricula (Wong, 1991). Studies of these subjects at the local or provincial level will decline along with local history. World languages and the national language(s) will also prevail over local languages. India, for example, now requires English and the national language (Hindi) plus a local language, instead of just two languages (Asia Society Newsletter, Dec. 15, 2011). Cha and Ham (2011) show that cross nationally English has become the leading second language in high schools and middle school curricula. This occurs whether or not a country has had a prior historical experience with English as a major language either through colonization or trade. In China, for example, English became mandatory beginning in elementary school recently. English language study had already been instituted in all other grades by the 1995–97 reforms. In Korea English has been a required language throughout schooling since 1945. One consequence of this movement will be a reduction in world linguistic diversity. Languages that are not taught in school will lose out and die. Globalization, and its carrier testing, may also accelerate efforts to standardize major languages between societies so that there is a ‘standard’ version of the language worldwide. This is already happening with Spanish. According to The Economist (June 1st–7th, 2013 p. 80), the official language academies of the various Spanish speaking countries are now working to smooth out the disruptive differences and create a kind of ‘general Spanish’. This is likely to happen to other major languages. Other changes are also likely. While science and math will have a revered place, statistics; forecasting; accounting; and programming may also gain access to privileged places at the table. The use of computers in education has already been assessed in 1989 (Kijima, 2013 p. 128) and statistics has long been a part of the testing regime in mathematics. Lastly, even world religions will receive preference over local ones in curricula. In this sense the testing regime may be one of the carriers of what Meyer refers to as “world culture” (Meyer et al., 1997). 19

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Many of these changes are already taking place and current evidence suggests that countries are quickly changing their educational curricula and structure to meet these new agendas and standards. They are also aligning their educational systems to be isomorphic to the global models of education and the international testing regime. Whether this process is a fortunate one or not depends on answers to two separate questions. First, there is a question of relative values. How much value does one place on the local cultures, e.g., languages that are being destroyed by this process? This is an issue that can only be resolved through national political processes. Secondly, what are the social consequences of this culture shift? For example, how does it affect educational opportunity for rural populations, minorities and the working poor? One can imagine a number of scenarios of both empowerment and dis-empowerment as a result of such a shift toward ‘world knowledge’ systems and away from local ones. Much will probably depend on macro social policies that countries choose that affect the distribution of child health, pre-schooling chances and opportunities to learn across national populations. WORLD DIFFUSION OF A SHARED ‘SCHOOLED’ CULTURE

Much like the ‘Flynn effect’ of growing I.Q. scores across generations, an expanding international testing regime may have the effect of actually helping to produce a cognitive world culture (Baker, Eslinger, Benavides, Peters, Dieckmann, & León, 2015). Schools will teach to the tests and emphasize primarily those subjects that are tested. And successive generations of students will become increasingly adept at taking these tests. They will begin to think like the testers. A test taking mentality and set of skills associated with test success will flourish and spread both within and across countries. As schooling and its culture penetrates families and the workplace, society will become even more ‘schooled’ (Baker, 2014). Knowledge will increasingly be defined as what schools teach and their standards of excellence will define who possesses the most cultural capital in society. International testing ratchets up this process by aligning the subjects and standards across societies. It is entirely plausible that these benchmarking processes will tighten the correlations between subject test scores across the curriculum and over time as nations race to improve their curricula and practices to meet world standards. This is already happening within the PISA and TIMSS’s protocols and between them (Kamens & Benavot, 2011). In time it may even produce higher mean scores and lower standard deviations across countries on international tests. Already the PISA inter-correlations of test scores are very high. These effects will occur if international testing leads countries to align their curricula and subject emphases to those of the testing regimes. Current reform processes already taking form across Europe could speed up this process. If the Bologna process really takes off and European and other university systems begin standardizing their credits, degrees and admission standards, it is not unthinkable that PISA or TIMSS could play an important part as guarantors of 20

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universalistic admission standards, or more radically as evidence of the equivalence of degrees in various subjects (Powell, Bemhard, & Graf, 2012). If this process of standardization gets legs it will involve over 40 countries and they will need ready access to some kinds of tests. PISA and TIMSS have the great advantage of being up and running and being housed in well-funded organizations that have experience. Once this happens, it will have strong ripple effects on the rest of national educational systems in ways that have been discussed and many more that can’t be foreseen. MODELS OF ‘BEST PRACTICES’

Another current effect of international achievement testing is that it informs popular and elite conceptions of what countries are the international models of achievement. This includes perceptions of potential reforms that can be borrowed to boost one’s own national achievement level. Finland, for example, has become the West’s answer to the Asian ‘tigers’. PISA has touted a number of reasons for Finland’s success, e.g., more collegial vs. bureaucratic school structures; close collegial monitoring of younger teachers; high levels of pre-schooling for all, etc. (see the essays in Meyer & Benavot, 2013). These policies then function as prescriptions for reform. Thus it is arguable that international testing will increasingly affect the rates and cycles of reform across countries. In the first instance it provides models from which to borrow potentially useful reforms. And secondly, the announcement of PISA and TIMSS results structures the timing of reform cycles. Those countries that do badly are politically humiliated and often experience a sense of crisis. A common political response is to immediately introduce new reforms designed to improve teaching and learning (Baker & LeTendre, 2005; Takayama, 2010). In the U.S., for example, low scores in math and science have led to calls for and efforts to develop a standardized core curriculum that all students must be exposed to and tested on and tougher standards of achievement (e.g., McKnight, 1987; Mullis & Jenkins, 1988; Stevenson & Stigler, 1992). However, as noted earlier, testing may have a conservative effect on the types of reform politicians are likely to consider. By directing focus to factors within educational systems that research suggests have strong effects on learning and test scores, testing legitimates a very narrow search for reform. This is politically convenient and expedient. Reforms of school practices are less controversial, for example, than trying to equalize funding between rural and urban areas or between different sectors of education, e.g., lower education vs. high school vs. higher education. Teachers and teaching are also probably easier targets for reform. Teachers are often politically weak. As a result remedying teaching is where the bulk of education reforms occur. In addition, there is strong political support for accountability and transparency in education. International testing has thus begot more national assessment. Many countries are instituting their own assessments and designing them on the basis of the PISA tests. In interviews with 37 country representatives Breakspear (2012) found 21

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that many are now using testing both to monitor their own educational systems for accountability and to ensure that students are prepared to increase their country’s standings on the formal PISA assessments in the future. This has produced in many cases specific plans for improvement and specific targets for improvement in the next round of international tests. These same nations are also using assessment to monitor the performance of sub-national groups in their countries that have done poorly in the past. While this lesson suggests that rates of borrowing and cycles of reform will be fed by international testing and may speed them up, there is good reason to be wary of the outcomes of this process. Reform will happen but there are often substantial obstacles to the effective implementation of innovations that seem to have much promise in boosting student achievement. School systems like other organizations have histories which produce a good deal of inertia. Implementation of reform is thus problematic and in the history of educational reform there is a good deal of evidence of dis-implementation. Whether reforms will be implemented successfully depends heavily on whether they find support within nations from groups whose practices and policies have already been institutionalized. CULTURAL RESISTANCE: EFFECTS OF NATIONAL CONTEXTS

Regional Ethnic-Religious Cultures In many societies schooling inducts students into national and religious cultures. The National University in Qatar, for example, is explicitly mandated to uphold Arab culture and expose students to its central tenets as part of its charter (Powell, 2012). Implicitly this means strengthening public knowledge and acceptance of conservative Sunni versions of Islam. This has meant a commitment to a variety of conservative educational practices, e.g., the segregation of men from women in the classroom; restrictions on curricular matters; school dress codes for women; and monitoring the religious content of courses and the religious conduct of students and faculty. The U.S. has also witnessed anti-intellectual assaults on the curriculum from fundamentalist groups on the far right. While biology has long been a bone of contention, the new hostility on the right to evolutionary biology and climate science appears to be part of a general attack on science. Public opinion polls show that conservatives over time have gone from supporting science and federal funding for it to being opponents of both (Gauchat, 2012). In the case of biology recent polls have found that 33% of American adults do not believe in evolution (PEW Report on Religion, Feb. 2, 2014). This is particularly true of Republicans (43%). And among religious groups 64% of white evangelical Protestants reject evolution (PEW Report on Religion, 2013; Blow, 2014). This has led to attacks on science curricula in middle school and high school. Where these groups are politically powerful, states often allow or even mandate the teaching of ‘creation science’ as well as standard 22

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biology. Thus tax dollars are being used to support the teaching of pseudo-science and its religious foundations in 14 states and an unknown number of school systems (Kirk, 2014). Similarly in other societies educational officials may find themselves committed to developing intellectual support for traditional regimes, nationalistic culture and the religious cultures that sustain both. This is likely to be the case in ethnic states and in nation-states that define themselves as religious. In Russia, for example, the Orthodox Church has experienced a renaissance. Between 1991 and 2008 the proportion of the population identifying themselves as Orthodox Christians (but not members of the church) climbed from 31% to 72% (PEW Report on Religion, 2014). Thus many of the Orthodox Church’s teachings and attitudes toward curricular content and educational practice now have strong popular backing. This includes strong backing for traditional Russian nationalism; language; and culture. And it involves a strong condemnation of Western culture and its liberalism, e.g., the emphasis on human rights; tolerance of homosexuality; and support for women’s rights at the expense of patriarchy and family values. The mission of education is defined as building a common religious and ethnic culture not producing ‘world citizens’. This is a repetition of themes common to Western education in the 19th century. The meaning of education may therefore not be standard across societies. These variations will impact parts of the curriculum and educational practices. While it is important to recognize the differences that national cultures and regional civilizations produce (e.g., Cummings, 1999), it is important also to realize that these are adaptations around common themes established by globalization. They have not proven to be obstacles to the spread of mass education and higher education across nations; to the enrolment of women; to the expansion of science; to the spread of English as the major international language in curricula; and to the development of fairly standardized curricula in major areas. Policy Contexts and the Failure of “Best Practices” Nations also differ in the policy choices they make that affect educational institutions. One of the things we learn from studies of testing is that we should be cautious about the idea that one can pick and choose educational reforms without being concerned about the larger context of which they are a part. The idea of “best practices” itself may be a pernicious outcome of international testing. In fact Hanushek (2004) has raised the question of whether there are indeed any “best practices”. Based on the PISA results, Finland; Belgium (Flanders); Shanghai; and the Asian ‘tigers’ have become the poster children for educational excellence everywhere. But the larger contexts which play an important part in determining high achievement in these countries may be hard to replicate in other places. That is a message no one wants to hear. And it is one that PISA officials and other experts spend a good deal of time denying. 23

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As it becomes common to think of schools as rational organizations led by ‘rational actors’, the importance of local/national contexts of education as causal determinants of school outcomes fades into the background. They are seen as the ‘noise’ and not the ‘signal’ in efforts to harness school systems to national goals and standards. Yet it is clear from case studies and longitudinal assessments that these contexts play an important part in the success or failure of schooling (see Meyer & Schiller, 2013). Part of the larger context of Finland, for example, is the extensive level of pre-school training all children get; the high levels of social equality and family friendly social policies; the low levels of poverty in the population; and a declining birth rate that lowers the number of children per school and per teacher. Similar factors are important elsewhere. As Martin Carnoy (2007) shows that in the case of Cuba, relative social equality and the fact that children are full time students who do not work helps explain part of its success in boosting achievement. Cuba has the highest achievement levels in Latin America. There are also other societal differences that are important. One is the degree of central control of the educational system and its salary structure. High control allows both Cuba and Finland to distribute highly trained teachers more equitably across schools. Cuba and Finland both also appear to have a management system that monitors younger teachers to ensure competent teaching for all students. Both also keep teachers with the same pupils over multi-year periods. This surrounds pupils of all social class levels with literate adults who matter and who know them. Coleman made much the same case for the success of American Catholic schools. Societies also differ in the level of national control of the curriculum; access to education; and the opportunity to learn (Baker & Stevenson, 1991). For example, China and other Asian countries that do well on international tests share similarities in the extent of national control of education. The details differ but these systems have similarly rigid, exam driven structures and these similarities produce many commonalities in student behavior, parents’ responses and the significance of school or test performance for later careers in education and the economy (Ma, Jong, & Yuan, 2013; Meyer & Schiller, 2013). In China, for example, the penalty for failure or low performance on national college exams is a life of poverty outside the middle class. It will also include a life time of knowing that one has disappointed one’s parents. The one child per family policy also means that parents’ only hope for educational and later economic success is their child’s performance. Those who do poorly are ‘failures’. Many parents sacrifice to send their children to ‘cram schools’ that help prepare them for the national exams. In Shanghai, for example, with 80% of students going on to postsecondary education, competition on the national college exam is fierce. Students are tests in three compulsory subjects (English; Math; and Chinese). The exam is almost the exclusive determinant of the quality of college/university one will be able to enter. So success on it is critical for one’s post high school career. This system 24

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prepares students for high stakes tests and contributes to their motivation in taking them. Other factors unique to particular countries in their historical development are important and certainly cannot be replicated by rational planning. In the case of Flanders, literacy was linked historically to membership in the Lutheran religious community. Illiteracy meant being condemned to a life of celibacy. Illiterates who could not read the Bible were not admitted to communion. And as a non-member, one could never marry. This tradition of family literacy has been carried down and, as Paul Andrews (2011) shows, helps account for Flanders high level of performance on international achievement tests. These are all examples of contexts which produce high performance on international achievement tests. Borrowing given educational practices and policies may not produce the same effects when these larger contexts are absent. And replicating these larger features of societies is a very politically contentious issue. This does not mean that we should cease looking internationally for better models of successful schools and teacher training. But it does suggest that we should temper our expectations about the results such borrowing will bring. Educators need to become very hard headed and experimental with regard to reform and teach their audiences to have a similar mentality. Organizational Sources of Failure: De-Coupling of Reform from Practice Another lesson from the history of reform is that ‘borrowed practices’ often do not survive in new habitats. That is to say they may remain on the books but be ignored in practice. Systematic implementation of reform will not occur when the reforms conflict with local expectations or well understood rules and practices. Practitioners and local educators will be motivated to de-couple such borrowed practices or reforms from the actual structures of schools. The rhetoric of reform continues in the intended curriculum but in practice dies. Much of the history of educational reform in the U.S., for example, is a study of dis-implementation, e.g., the new math. Tyack and Cuban (1995) describe this process of reform as ‘tinkering’. It does not change basic educational structures. When reform runs into political, cultural or economic obstacles, it loses traction. This idea suggests that globalization and the testing enterprise may succeed in producing reforms that diffuse. But many of these reforms are likely to be de-coupled from practice in national educational systems when they arrive. They will not be implemented, but may remain as parts of the intended curriculum. In China, for example, reforms in the 1990s designed to produce more creative and imaginative students were effectively scrapped as part of the actual implemented curriculum in the classroom. The problem was that they were in conflict with the exam centric culture of the entire system and teachers’ practices of emphasizing rote learning that prepared students for tests. Thus while they remained a part of the intended 25

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curriculum of the 1995 reforms, they were never really implemented. The rhetoric lives on but reform of actual practice does not occur. This discussion suggests that many reform attempts will be limited by the inertia built into actual educational arrangements. And in many societies these structures are system wide, e.g., national exam systems. They are therefore hard to alter. In fact this is probably one of the reasons that proffered reforms are typically so limited and tend to be focused on teaching and teachers. Other features of schooling are harder to change e.g., those that provide benefits to powerful constituencies. The political message is clear and conservative about borrowing “best practices”. While there are competitive world pressures pushing school systems in similar directions, schools are also institutions with particular local and national histories. These histories affect the kinds of reforms that are possible and that will work. It is unlikely, for example, that French policy makers could imagine de-centralizing their educational system to levels that are common to Americans. Nevertheless, France is talking about giving local schools more autonomy. They too are listening to the OECD’s recommendations on effective schools and have studied the results of international testing. Whether such reforms will take and work in such a historically centralized system remains to be seen. A lot of tailoring will be required to make them fit. CONCLUSION

Globalization spawned the international testing regime which has quickly gathered steam as the world agent of accountability of national educational systems. The testing enterprise has matured and gained credibility, so that it now has a large core of nations who are stable participants. It also has secure and stable financing. These developments have made it a leading edge of the world educational reform movement. I have argued that this set of changes makes the international testing regime a very potent but limited agent of change of national educational systems, and societies. Testing is likely to be a major carrier of ‘world culture’—cognitive knowledge systems diffused by schooling (Meyer et al., 1992, 1997). And these regimes are likely to be drivers of educational reform cross nationally. They are one source of standardization of national curricula. Testing has helped implement and assess subjects that have become the agreed upon requirements for 21st century societies to develop and prosper. These become strengthened as parts of national curricula. This process produces more cultural uniformity across nations. At the same time, diversity declines as subjects that are not tested become marginal or dropped from national curricula entirely, e.g., local languages; local history. In regard to educational reforms, it seems the effects of globalization and testing have been rather limited, mostly targeted at teachers and teaching practices. In the effort to rationalize societies, elites have accepted two ideas about schooling: (1) a ‘school’ is a ‘school’ wherever one is encountered. Hence rationalized designs 26

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of schools are plausible, and context free. And (2) there are ‘good’ schools and ‘bad’ schools. As a result of these rationalized theories of education, most of the reforms that have come out of the testing movement are school based. This has led to a strange phenomenon: the concern about test scores and schools has led to the disappearance of macro social policy from the debates. Issues like social inequality and related macro policies have become submerged in debates about education. This I believe is largely a consequence of the fact that even the powerful OECD education sector operates in a de-centralized nation-state system where national elites have considerable control over both the testing process and the debate about what are acceptable approaches to educational reform (for an opposing view see Meyer & Benavot, 2013). Given the inertia in both national educational systems and their associated political systems, the space for reform is relatively limited. And it is tied to practices that are acceptable locally. That is one reason that proposed reforms are so often narrow and targeted at schools and teachers. Other kinds of reforms might be politically controversial or de-stabilizing, e.g., funding for different sectors; social welfare policy; rural vs. urban development; etc. The localization of control of national systems also determines whether policies recommended will actually be implemented. When prevailed upon by national elites to accept reforms, local elites and educators may find it expedient and rational to decouple such reforms from their current practices. This idea suggests that the contest between local traditions, practices and power groups and international agents, their culture and practices will become an increasingly important driver of the evolution of national educational systems. Whatever the specific outcomes of this competition, it is clear that education is no longer a local or even national enterprise. International achievement testing is one of the agents responsible for transforming education into a global activity based on shared understandings of relevant knowledge, standards of performance and best educational practices. Its future effects on this process are worth exploring. REFERENCES Andrews, P. (2011). Curriculum models and PISA outcomes: Mathematics instruction in Flanders and Finland. Presented at Conference on PISA, Albany, NY. Baker, D. (2014). The schooled society: The educational transformation of global culture. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Baker, D., & LeTendre, G. (2005). National differences, global similarities. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Baker, D., & Stevenson, D. (1991). State control of the curriculum and classroom instruction. Sociology of Education, 64(1), 1–10. Baker, D., Leon J., Benavides, M., Eslinger, P. J., Peters, E., & Dieckmann, N. F. (2015). The cognitive impact of the education revolution: A possible cause of the Flynn effect on population IQ. Intelligence, 49, 144–158. Blow, C. (2014, January 4). The New York Times, A17 Breakspear, S. (2012). The policy impact of PISA: An exploration of the normative effects of international benchmarking in school system performance (OECD Education Working Papers, No.71). Paris: OECD Publishing. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.ortg/10.1787/5k0fdfqffr28-en

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D. H. Kamens Carnoy, M. (2007). Cuba’s advantage: Why students in Cuba do better in school. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Cha, Y., & Ham, S. (2011). Educating supranational citizens: The incorporation of English language education into curriculum policies. American Journal of Education, 117(2), 183–209. Charles, M., & Bradley, K. (2009). Indulging our gendered selves? Sex segregation by field of study in 44 countries. American Journal of Sociology, 114(4), 924–976. Collins, R. (1979). The credential society. New York, NY: Academic Press. Cummings, W. (1999). The institutions of education: Compare, compare, compare. Comparative Education review, 43(4), 413–437. Dronkers, J. (2014). Are the PISA results for Shanghai biased? Retrieved from http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/web/profile/j.dronkers.htm Gauchat, G. (2012). The politicization of science in the public sphere: A study of public trust in the U.S., 1974–2010. American Sociological Review, 77(2), 167–188. Hanushek, E. (2004). What if there are no “Best practices”? Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 51(2), 156–172. Hanushek, E., & Kimko, D. (2000). Schooling, labor force quality and the growth of nations. American Economic Review, 90(5), 1184–1208. Hanushek, E., & Woessmann, L. (2006). Does educational tracking affect performance and inequality? Differences-in-differences evidence across countries. The Economic Journal, 116(150), 63–76. Kamens, D. H., & Benavot, A. (2011). National, regional and international learning assessments: Trends among developing countries, 1960–2009. Globalization, Societies and Education, 9(2), 285–300. Kijima, R. (2010). Why participate? Cross national assessments and foreign aid to education. In A. W. Wiseman (Ed.), The impact of international achievement studies on national education policymaking. Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing Group Limited. Kijima, R. (2013). The politics of cross-national assessments: Global trends and national interests (Unpublished Dissertation). Stanford University, Stanford, CA. Kirk, C. (2014, January 26). Map: publicly funded schools that are allowed to teach creationism. Thousands of schools in states across the country can use taxpayer money to cast doubt on basic science. The Slate. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/01/creationism_in_ public_schools_mapped_where_tax_money_supports_alternatives.html LeTendre, G., Baker, D., Akiba, M., & Wiseman, A. (2001). The policy trap: National educational policy and the third international math and science study. International Journal of Educational Policy Research and Practice, 2(1), 45–64. Ma, X., Jong, C., & Yuan, J. (2013). Exploring the reasons for the East Asian success on PISA. In H. Meyer & A. Benavot (Eds.), PISA, power and policy. Oxford: Symposium-Books. McKnight, C. (Ed.). (1987). The underachieving curriculum: Assessing U.S. mathematics from an international perspective. Champaign, IL: Stipes Publishing. Merry, J. J. (2013). Tracing the deficit in PISA reading skills to early childhood: Evidence from the U.S. and Canada. Sociology of Education, 86(3), 234–252. Meyer, H., & Benavot, A. (Eds.). (2013). PISA, power and policy. Oxford: Symposium-Books. Meyer, H., & Schiller, K. (2013). Gauging the role of non-educational effects in large scale assessments: Socio-economics, culture and PISA outcomes. In H. Meyer & A. Benavot (Eds.), PISA, power and policy. Oxford: Symposium-Books. Meyer, J. W., & Hannan, M. (1977). National development and the world system. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Meyer, J. W., Kamens, D. H., & Benavot, A. (1992). School knowledge for the masses: World models and curricular categories in the twentieth century. London: Falmer Press. Meyer, J. W., Boli, J., Thomas, G. M., & Ramirez, F. O. (1997). World society and the nation-state. American Journal of Sociology, 103(1), 144–181. Mullis, I., & Jenkins, L. (1988). The science report card: Elements of risk and recovery. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service. PEW Report on Religion. (2013, December 30). Public’s views on human evolution. Retrieved from http://www.pewforum.org/files/2013/12/Evolution-12-30.pdf

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Globalization, Innovation, and Cultural Resistance Powell, J. (2012). Small state, large world, global university?: Comparing ascendant national universities in Luxembourg and Qatar. Current Issues in Comparative Education, 15(1), 100–113. Powell, J., Bernhard, N., & Graf, L. (2012). The emergent European model in skill formation: Comparing higher education and vocational training in the Bologna and Copenhagen processes. Sociology of Education, 85(3), 219–240. Ramirez, F. O., Luo, X., Shofer, E., & Meyer, J. W. (2006). Student achievement and national economic growth. American Journal of Education, 113(1), 1–31. Shavit, Y., Arum, R., & Gamoran, A. (2007). Stratification in higher education. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Stevenson, H., & Stigler, J. (1992). Why our schools are failing and what we can learn from Japanese and Chinese education. New York, NY: Summit Books. Takayama, K. (2010). Politics of externalization in reflexive times: Reinventing Japanese education reform discourses through “Finnish PISA success.” Comparative Education Review, 54(1), 51–75. Tyack, D., & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering toward Utopia: A century of public school reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wahlberg, H. J. (1990). Science, mathematics, and national welfare: Retrospective and prospective achievements. International Journal of Educational Research, 14(4), 343–351. Wong, S. Y. (1991). The evolution of social science instruction (1900–1986): A cross-national study. Sociology of Education, 64(10), 33–47.

David H. Kamens Northern Illinois University USA

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PAOLA FAJARDO-HEYWARD

3. COMPREHENSIVE SEXUAL EDUCATION IN LATIN AMERICA Human Rights Education and Women’s Rights

INTRODUCTION

Since the end of the Cold War, international organizations and global movements have pressured governments to internalize human rights norms as parts of their national laws and policies. More recently, the international community took steps to encouraged governments to include human rights content on states’ national curricula. This effort is known as the Human Rights Education (HRE) initiative, which was launched at the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993. The initiative’s goal is to increase individuals’ knowledge on both global human rights norms and the mechanisms available for their enforcement (Mihr, 2009). The Vienna Declaration and Program of Action, also adopted in 1993, called governments to include human rights in their state curriculum in an effort to ensure the “full development of the human personality” (United Nations, 1993, p. 25). Although a declaration does not imply a legal obligation, the Vienna Declaration set in motion a global process focused on education. After the 1993 Declaration, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted the UN Decade for Human Rights Education (1995–2004) and the UN World Programme for Human Rights Education (2005–2019). The HRE initiative is a concerted effort to mobilize governments to use education as the main avenue to ensure children access to several global human rights values, including gender equality (United Nations, 2005, p. 3). Starting in 2006, UN World Programme for Human Rights Education highlighted the link between education on women’s rights and the increase of women’s agency (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2006, p. 12). The origin of this idea can be traced to the earlier work of global women’s rights movements prevalent at the end of the 1970s as well as international women’s rights treaties. The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) adopted in 1979, identified education as a mechanism for levelling the field for women. Both the UN World Conference on Human Rights in 1993 and the UN World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995 echoed CEDAW and restated the pivotal role of education on reducing gender discrimination. Increasing women’s access to education has also been a goal held by other global actors, such as the anti-poverty movement, several international organizations, and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). M. F. Astiz & M. Akiba (Eds.), The Global and the Local, 31–52. © 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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This confluence of efforts from different actors positioned both women’s rights and gender equality as global values. Thus, the HRE initiative can be seen as the more recent effort to compel governments to recognize and reproduce such values at the local level. The process by which HRE has been adopted by governments has been the focus of several studies that document how HRE transforms (or fails to transform) national identities (Ramirez, Suarez, & Meyer, 2007; Cardenas, 2005). Yet, few studies have explored the process by which governments decide the specific set of human rights that will be included into their national education. The adoption of global initiatives such as HRE is controversial: global norms that emphasize individual rights often collide with socio-cultural and religious values upheld by domestic groups. For instance, in the specific case of women’s rights, policy changes derived from global norms on issues such as sexual education can be opposed by domestic actors whose identity is defined by religion and traditional values. How do countries reconcile their desire to embrace global rights and the pressures from domestic actors who oppose them? What factors make this process more likely? This chapter seeks to clarify this process by looking at the way in which HRE has influenced policies on education among Latin American countries on one subset of women’s rights: comprehensive sexual education. This is comprised on education on women’s reproductive systems based on knowledge as well as scientifically accurate information on contraceptive methods (Center for Reproductive Rights & United Nations Population Fund, 2013). Access to sexual education is a right included in several international women’s treaties. Specifically in the case of women’s rights and education, articles 5 and 10 of the CEDAW requires states to provide equal access to education regardless of gender as well as to review the content of textbooks and curricula to ensure the “access to specific educational information to help to ensure the health and wellbeing of families, including information and advice on family planning” (art. 10 b.). The requirements demanded by the international treaties are controversial and thus politically burdensome for governments torn between external pressure to adopt global beliefs and upholding the values shared by their domestic population. However, the HRE has successfully influenced policies on education in some countries. What accounts for such variance? Understanding the way in which states select and interiorize global initiatives is important and can help advance our knowledge on the factors that help or retard the process of internalization of specific human rights, such as women’s rights. To that end, this chapter is divided in four sections. The next section reviews the link between HRE initiative and women’s rights, the third section reviews existing theoretical arguments used to explore the process by which global values are adopted by governments. The fourth provides a discussion on the cases of sexual education policies in several countries in Latin America, particularly the case of Argentina and Colombia. The last section includes a discussion and conclusions for future research. 32

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HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS

The human rights movement in Latin America is distinguished by its strong presence since the early forties (Cleary, 2007). This explains why efforts for including human rights education in Latin America can be identified as early as the 1970s. However, such attempts were successfully blockaded by the non-democratic regimes that controlled the region at the time (Magedazo, 2005). During the 1990s, as democracy spread throughout the region, governments reignited their support for human rights, particularly economic and social rights (Suarez, 2007). As a result, on November 17 of 1998, the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) adopted the Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in the Area of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, also known as Protocol of San Salvador. The protocol declared education as a right on its own, and called OAS’ members to respect and enforce it. Most importantly, the Protocol highlighted the role of education in the strengthening of individuals’ human rights and human dignity (OAS, n.d. a). The emphasis given on human rights and democracy provided the space for advancing women’s rights as well. The new democratic governments embraced global treaties regarding women’s rights and worked towards the adoption of regional instruments focused on the protection of women. Figure 1 shows the percentage of countries that had ratified the CEDAW over time (both globally and at the regional level). As shown in the Figure, ninety percent of the countries in Latin America ratified this treaty between 1980 and 1990. Moreover, Latin American countries interiorized elements of the CEDAW into their national legislation (OECD, 2010). For instance, gender equality under the law was legally provided in eight countries before CEDAW entered into force. After its ratification, six more countries adopted this right into their national constitutions (Kaidbey, 2003, p. 14). As shown in the Figure, CEDAW received steady levels of global support. Still, the fast pace in which the region embraced this treaty is surprising, especially taking into account its monitoring system. Members of the CEDAW are required to submit a report on their effort to implement the Convention to the Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women. The Committee can also question members on specifics and express concerns derived from the information included in the report or additional sources.1 Non-Governmental Organizations as well as private individuals can present information or complaints to the Committee. The multiplicity of actors increases states’ risks of being negatively targeted by the Committee, which is potentially damaging to a government’s reputation. Women’s rights have also been at the centre of several regional mechanisms created during the last two decades. In 1994, the OAS adopted the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women “Convention of Belem do Para” (CoBP), which entered into force in 1995. Figure 1 displays the percentages of countries that ratified this agreement. As seen

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Figure 1. Women’s rights instruments. Percentage of countries that ratified CEDAW (global and regional) and the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence Against Women. Source: United Nations Treaty Collection. Information on the ConBdP was extracted from the Organization of American States (n.d. b)

in the Figure most of the countries in the region ratified the Convention within the year after its inception. As of 2014, the Convention was ratified by thirty-two out of thirty-four state members of the OAS. This Convention is interesting because it was the first regional agreement that focused on violence against women, establishing a clear connection between violence and discrimination of women’s rights (Tiroch, 2010). As it is in the case of the CEDAW, the CoBPs recognizes the link between violence and education: the CoBP requires member states to modify educational content to ensure gender equality as well as to ensure that women’s rights are included in the educational content at all levels of education.2 In addition, and similarly to the CEDAW, the CoBP envisioned a strong monitoring system. The convention came to fruition due to the work of the Inter-American Commission of Women, an organism inside of the OAS. As part of the pre-existing Inter-American Human Rights system, the CoBP is connected to supervisory organisms such as the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights.3 This adds an extra layer of monitoring, since states and individuals can resort to the Commission or the Court to report violations to the CoBP. Moreover, since 2004 the OAS’s Inter-American Commission of Women has served as an extra monitoring body in charge of producing reports on members’ anti-violence efforts. 34

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Governmental support for global and regional instruments for the protection of human rights and women’s rights contrasts with the national policies adopted by Latin American regimes. The region successfully increased the number of girls and women enrolled in education. In fact, higher schooling attainment among women manifested earlier in Latin America than in other developing regions (Ñopo, 2012). However, this is only one of the goals included in the HRE. Unfortunately, changes to the contents of national education failed to reach the expectations generated during the 1990s (Cardenas, 2005, p. 368). Specifically, problems persist on the issue of sexual and reproductive rights, which are included in several women’s rights treaties. In 2010 a study by the Interamerican Institute of Human Rights on curricular content in Latin America found that these rights remain excluded from national curricula in most of the countries (p. 70). The lack of quality of education on women’s reproductive rights has left the region vulnerable to several problems. For instance, a 2007 report by The United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) found levels of adolescent fertility in Latin America far superior than the world average. In addition, according to the same report, births to adolescent mothers represented the largest fraction of total births. No other region in the world registered such a high rate. The report argues that deficient levels of sexual education are partially responsible for these concerning statistics (p. 5). The problems are also related to sexual health problems: during early 2000s, the region saw statistics on numbers of people infected with HIV, as well as other reproductive and sexual health problems increased rapidly, particularly in the Caribbean region (L’Homme & Henriquez, 2010, p. 24). These problems motivated the 2008 Ministerial Declaration “Preventing through Education,” a regional initiative signed by several ministers of education and health. Under this declaration, governments agreed to provide young individuals with an education “that includes comprehensive education on sexuality both as a human right, as well as one that contributes to present and future quality of life” (UNFPA, 2003, p. 13). When the Declaration was launched, the ministers of education made the commitment to review their countries’ educational policies, teacher training curricula, and national laws. Figure 2 displays the sexual education policies existing in countries in Latin America.4 While virtually all countries have policies on the issue, a more nuanced look reveals interesting differences. The different policies on sex education in Latin American can be classified in three groups: there are countries in which sex education is not recognized or included as a required subject; there are countries in which sex education is recognized (and in certain cases required) and it is part of the national curriculum; and there are countries with comprehensive sexual education programmes. As shown in Figure 2, policies on sexual education have changed during the last three decades. Although the percentage of governments with a comprehensive sexual education programme is still small, the percentage of countries that had included the issue of sexual education as part of their national curricula has increased substantially during the last thirty years. It is important to 35

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mention that especially after the Ministerial Declaration of 2008, a large number of countries had addressed the issue of reproductive health from a biological point of view, partially including sexual education as a mechanism for preventing the spread of sexual diseases and/or HIV.

Figure 2. Policies on Sex Education in Latin America (1990–2015). The information employed on the figure was obtained from: CLADEM (2014), Ramirez (2010), and Hunt, Flor and Monterrosas (2012) and additional research by the author

Understanding the process by which governments have interiorized HRE on women’s rights, particularly reproductive health, presents a challenge. In a region that has expressed high levels of support for these rights—either by signing and ratifying global treaties or by creating regional ones—what accounts for the differences between interiorizing and implementing policies on sexual education? WHY THE CHANGES? THEORETICAL ARGUMENTS

The support for women’s rights treaties in the region can be explained by several arguments common in the human rights literature. The arguments are divided between those that emphasize the role of external forces and those that highlight domestic factors. This section reviews these arguments. External Level Explanations In a globalized world, international organizations and global movements have gained increasing influence over states’ domestic decisions. During the last two decades, international organizations, global NGOs, and states have created a solid network of treaties and norms aimed at spreading the human rights regime. Indeed, countries in Latin America that are connected to these international networks are more prone to adopt and develop human rights education than other countries in the region with fewer connections to the international networks (Suarez, 2007). 36

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One line of thought understands the adoption of HRE as part of the socialization of human rights norms. Socialization is defined as the process by which international norms and values are internalized and implemented domestically (Risse, Ropp, & Sikkink,, 1999). Under this view, the incorporation of human rights in the content of education curricula is aimed at ensuring that individuals accept the validity and relevance of international norms and, more importantly, that the local cultures and identities are transformed so they are in line with such norms. In addition, and particularly in Latin America, the ongoing processes of both transition to democracy and liberalization, highlighted the relevance of issue of education on human rights.5 For the international community, individuals’ knowledge and understanding of their rights were both necessary to ensure the survival of democracy. The HRE initiative was pivotal in changing the way in which individuals and governments perceive the idea of citizenship, which was no longer associated with states but instead with international values and norms developed from the global level (Ramirez, Suarez, & Meyer, 2007). In addition, the process of socialization of human rights changed the way in which states treated special groups, such as minorities and women. Women’s rights norms emphasize the need for eliminating gender discrimination, and ultimately are aimed at empowering women. The HRE movement increased awareness of women’s rights, which coincided with the global attention to women’s conditions experienced during the early 1990s. In 1993 The UN World Conference on Human Rights emphasized the need for states’ members to improve their respect for women’s rights and to work toward the elimination of discrimination and violence against women. The programme of action derived from the Conference suggested that the protection of women’s rights should trump states’ traditional and customary practices.6 From that point on, a new norm about the practices encompassed under the term “violence and discrimination against women” took shape at the global level. That same year the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, expressing the concerns for the persistence of several forms of discrimination and stating that states should change discriminatory practices, especially in the field of education (United Nations, 1993). As a consequence of these two milestones, the UN Commission on Human Rights, an agency inside the United Nations framework, appointed a Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women in 1994. According to the mandate of the Special Rapporteur, inadequate sex education constitutes a direct state action that violates women’s reproductive rights and as such is considered as violence against women (United Nations, 2009). The link between education on reproductive rights and violence against women was then reinforced at the International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo in 1994. The Conference brought attention to the issues of sexual education and other reproductive rights by tying them to states’ efforts to support economic development.7 The fact that women’s reproductive rights were included in all these instances exemplifies the salience of the issue for the international community and the changes on the expectations for states’ domestic practices. 37

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As these events suggest, the international community worked progressively on the formulation of a more nuanced definition of the multiple issues covered by the generic term women’s rights. This process reached its peak in 1995 when the United Nations held the World Conference on Women, which embodied the commitment of the international community to work on women’s empowerment. By doing so, the international community changed slightly the expectations on states’ obligations, not only by reinforcing the connection between reproductive rights and gender equality but also by defining new obligations for states. Under the new framework states are required to eliminate discriminatory practices regardless of their own views and customary practices. This process was mirrored regionally, as the aforementioned work of the Inter-American Commission of Women and the evolution of the CoBP suggest. The OAS was thus at the forefront of the global work towards the elimination of discrimination and violence against women. The support by Latin American governments for women’s rights treaties can also be understood as a process of policy diffusion (Berry & Berry, 2007). As is evident in Figure 1, the spread of human rights norms tends to be faster among countries that are located in the same region: the percentage of countries that embraced CEDAW in Latin America reached higher levels much earlier than the rest of the international community. While it can be argued that several common factors (such as culture, traditions, past experiences, and other shared traits) make regions prone to embrace certain norms, there are other explanations that highlight the process by which governments decide to follow their peers. While states are independent, their decisions are still conditioned by the policies adopted in other countries (Simmons & Elkins, 2004). States feel compelled to enter treaties that other neighbours are embracing (Simmons, 2000). In the case of women’s rights, research suggests that policies against violence spread across countries in the same region due to learning and emulation of other nations (Htun & Weldon, 2010b). While similar, these two mechanisms are different. For instance, governments could be motivated to adopt policies used in neighbouring countries after learning from the policy implementation and its impact.8 Likewise, social movements can learn from the experiences of other movements and replicate their strategies. However, this approach assumes that governments and policy decision makers are fully capable of learning from all experiences and policies, which is hardly the case. Rather than learning from all experiences, governments tend to pay close attention to some cases more than others such as policies used by neighbours, and import such policies in a rapid manner (Weyland, 2005). Another mechanism that can be at play is the process of emulation, which is described as the adoption of policies used by other countries in order to gain legitimacy and recognition at the international level. Hence, the rapid ratification of women’s rights mechanisms portrayed in Figure 1 could be caused by actors’ efforts to signal to others their willingness to follow global values, overcome the legacies of former acts of violence, and adhere to emerging norms on what is recognized as acceptable behaviour for governments. In short, rather than looking at the efficiency of policies, 38

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governments supported women’s rights and HRE in an attempt to resemble others and redefine themselves as “modern” and “liberal” (Weyland, 2007). A similar emulation process can help to understand the global pressures on countries for adopting international norms. The process of norm diffusion can be useful to explain the rapid adoption of several human rights treaties. Norms on women’s rights and the practices that were progressively added to the term have evolved and spread to other countries (Lutz & Sikkink, 2000). According to this argument, norms evolve until they reach a tipping point, and then they “cascade” (or spread rapidly) to other countries. Once a norm reaches this tipping point, it becomes the general acceptable behaviour inside a group and thus, spreads rapidly. Evidence of a norm cascade can be the aforementioned agreements adopted by Latin American countries that stressed gender equality. Once a considerable number of countries ratified CEDAW, they moved toward additional treaties and declarations which affirm the existence of the norm. While these arguments help to explain governments’ decisions to create and implement treaties, this process is different from the translation of a norm into domestic legislation, meaning, the process by which treaties will likely change domestic laws and practices.9 These arguments cannot help us to make sense of the differences in the way in which governments in Latin America have faced the issue of sexual education. If the global norms were a substantive pressure on governments, why were some countries capable of ignoring this pressure on the issue of reproductive rights? If the creation of a regional identity was defined by the support for human rights and HRE, why did only a few countries work in a public policy on sexual education? The answers to these questions are related to arguments that look into the domestic particularities of the states. Domestic Institutions and Actors States embracing international norms presents interesting challenges and opportunities. The decision of whether or not to adhere to an international treaty can be explained by looking at states’ interest and their expectations on the costs and benefits derived from the treaty (Hathaway, 2007). For governments of young democracies, signing human rights treaties helps to reduce uncertainty surrounding the political regime. Partaking in human rights treaties communicates to the global and local constituencies the government’s willingness to ensure the survival of democracy. Moreover, governments that are trying to distance themselves from their authoritarian past are prone to support treaties in order to validate their democratic status to the international community (Htun & Weldon, 2010a). Thus, the widespread support of women’s rights in the region can be explained as a beneficial decision for strategic democratic governments eager to repair their reputation at the international level. Governments can benefit from supporting international treaties in the domestic sphere as well. Ratifying human rights treaties increases governments’ credibility 39

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among domestic constituencies and also deters non-democratic forces from challenging the new political establishment (Moravcsick, 2000). The democratic transitions experienced in the region were accompanied by high levels of social mobilization. Because of the relative power that several groups achieved during this time, support for human rights treaties was instrumental for Latin American governments to appease social movements and signal their willingness to welcome and respect their active role. As stated in the Protocol of San Salvador signed in 1988: The States Parties (…) agree that education ought to enable everyone to participate effectively in a democratic and pluralistic society and achieve a decent existence and should foster understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations and all racial, ethnic or religious groups and promote activities for the maintenance of peace. This regional commitment was translated into action: by 2003, HRE was present in the curricular guidelines of most of the countries in the region (Suarez, 2007, p. 331). In the case of women’s rights, the expectation was similar: HRE and education on women’s rights were important to change discriminatory practices, improve women’s participation in society, and increase women’s wellbeing (Stromquist, 2005). The adoption of global norms such as HRE can also be explained by the behaviour of domestic private actors. The role of domestic non-state actors on the spreading of human rights has been widely recognized: international norms have better chances of impacting national laws when domestic actors actively pressure their governments to take such steps (Sikkink, 1993). For women’s movements, for instance, supporting HRE was an avenue to increase public awareness on women’s rights, and in doing so, change society’s views on gender issues. With larger audiences backing them up, these groups have been able to increase their pressure on states for the fulfilment of obligations acquired at the international level. For instance, in 2005 a Colombian local attorney filed a complaint at the Constitutional Court arguing that the abortion ban existing at the time violated women’s rights treaties signed by Colombia (Reuterswärd, Zetterberg, Thapar-Björkert, & Molyneux, 2011). From that point on, the debate on abortion turned into a discussion of human rights norms, which was made possible in part due to the already present knowledge of human rights among the population as well as a campaign on education on reproductive rights (Roa & Potts, 2009). Thus, framing an issue such as abortion under the light of governments’ international obligations was a strategic choice made by the proabortion movement. This choice allowed the movement to find supporters beyond the scope of their traditional social base, undercutting the role of other influential actors, such as religious and conservative groups (Reuterswärd et al., 2011, p. 811). However, domestic groups are not always supportive of global norms. While the embrace of democracy in Latin America widened the space for political participation, this did not mean that all groups embraced liberal values derived from 40

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global human rights and in this case, women’s rights treaties. Conservative groups and other actors mobilized to oppose external influences. Especially considering the issue of reproductive rights, domestic groups voiced their opposition to what they considered an ideological imposition from global organizations. They have also successfully forced governments to change their policies on some women’s rights. This is the case in Nicaragua, a country in which abortion was legal under certain circumstances prior to 2008. In 2006, a coalition of religious groups set in motion an initiative aimed at adopting a total ban on abortion. By emphasizing religious views, this movement gained a powerful bargaining position, which explained why the Nicaraguan penal code adopted in 2008 punishes women and medical personnel involved in abortion in all circumstances (Reuterswärd et al., 2011, p. 821). The case also evidences problems when trying to explain norms diffusion by emphasizing domestic actors over external forces. First, while non-state actors are instrumental in the process of mobilizing domestic support, they also depend on the alliances with transnational networks (Keck & Sikkink, 1998). Such coalitions are not fixed: they often change depending on the issue that is being debated. As was previously mentioned, since the 1990s the international community has qualified the type of practices included under the term “women’s rights.” As a result, governments are expected to observe and provide for women’s rights that range from access to political representation to maternal health services. Given the different nature of these rights and issues, the way in which domestic actors react to each issue varies. For instance, the legitimacy of women’s political rights is hardly disputed in Latin America, and because of this several countries have embraced political quotas and other mechanisms to foster women’s political participation. However, the issue of sexual rights and sexual education does not generate the same broad support. Understanding the way in which sex education has been incorporated into states’ education curricula would require an approach that not only looks into the connections of domestic and external actors but also at the particular positions of relevant domestic actors around this specific issue (Htun & Weldon, 2010a, p. 208). ISSUE NETWORKS, HRE, AND SEX EDUCATION

In trying to understand the process by which policies on sexual education have or have not advanced across countries, the issue-network approach allows us to understand the role of the alliance between different networks (local and global), as well as the role played by the government and other domestic actors. Research has shown that the existence of strong social feminine movements is a relevant factor when predicting the adoption of policies focused on women’s rights (Htun & Weldon, 2010b). Yet, in some cases, women’s movements can be overpowered by other domestic groups. This is why an approach that highlights the type of alliances created to advance certain issues can be more helpful in understanding policies of sexual education. 41

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Issue-networks are coalitions of groups that mobilize around a specific women’s rights issue. Their members represent a vast array of groups with dissimilar backgrounds: from feminists, lawyers, health professionals, legislators, among others.10 Thus, the networks not only combine external and domestic forces but a large coalition of groups. The success of the networks is mediated by the characteristics of the institutional setting in which the network is framed, such as the type of government institutions and the relationship between the Church and the state (Htun, 2003, p. 5). Sexual education as an issue is different from other women’s rights issues. From the global human rights norms perspective, sexual education is necessary as it relates to individuals’ ability to make choices about their bodies and their health. According to the aforementioned human and women’s rights treaties, governments should ensure the access to comprehensive, evidence-based, non-discriminatory sexual and reproductive health information (United Nations, 1994). These normative views on reproductive rights motivated the actions of several international organizations such as the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and global feminist networks, among others. These organizations had established connections with domestic social movements, either by providing information, training, or by supporting domestic groups with strategic materials useful to increase mobilization around the issue of sex education. However, the content of sex education provokes strong reactions from multiple sectors. A public policy on sex education can be seen as an attempt at altering the authority held by the Roman Catholic Church over reproductive issues.11 Particularly in Latin America, the Church has traditionally controlled education, as well as other areas related to reproduction such as registries of marriages, births, and separations. Such powerful influence explains the opposition of conservative and religious groups toward the incorporation of sex education in the national education content. For instance, the Catholic Church and other conservative sectors in El Salvador battled such efforts arguing that families, guided by their values and traditions, should be solely responsible for educating their children on sexuality (Rouillon, 2009). In Costa Rica the Church has voiced its concerns about specific sexual education initiatives, since it considers that the content might increase sexual promiscuity (Cruz, n.d.). During the 2000s, several policy projects on sex education discussed in the Congress in Panama faced repetitive opposition from large social groups led by conservative NGOs (ACIPRENSA, 2007). As the examples suggest, the absence of comprehensive national policies on sexual education is not caused by a lack of political initiatives but instead by the strong domestic opposition that they generated. In all these countries the governments had either abandoned the initiatives or remedied the political blockade by adopting executive measures. In order to predict whether or not religious groups will successfully impede the advance of sexual education, it is necessary to consider how they relate to 42

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other actors. The progress and setbacks on the issue of abortion in Latin America illustrate this point. In Nicaragua the Church is supported by both large sectors of the society as well as the most influential media outlets. Due to this fact, the Church was politically salient during the 2006 presidential election. After a very close political race, the candidate from the left, Daniel Ortega, aligned with the Church and consequently, secured his presidency. As a result, Ortega’s abortion stance changed from ambivalence to staunch opposition once he became president in 2007 (Reuterswärd et al., 2011, p. 820). This example suggests that if the Church can mobilize broad sectors of the population and ensure high levels of political support for its position, democratic governments will struggle to adopt a policy on sexual education. Indeed, attempts to advance legislation on sex education in countries in which the Catholic Church is well connected with the population, such as El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, among others, had been repetitively curtailed. For instance, in 2000 the Congress of Honduras approved a law declaring that the government could implement sex education in public schools. While the rationale for the law was the increase of HIV cases and pregnancies among adolescents, its approval was an important victory for the reproductive rights movement. However, attempts at implementing the law failed twice: in 2003 sex education guides for teachers prepared by a partnership between offices of the secretary of education and NGOs were withdrawn by the government because of resistance from religious groups. Then in 2005 the government produced new educative materials for instructors for all levels of education. A year later, the mounting pressure from religious groups forced the government to abandon the guides. While the government’s plan was to review the guide’s content, the sudden crisis created by the removal of the president of Honduras in 2009 halted this process (CLADEM, 2010). However, under certain conditions the Church can be overturned. For instance, Argentina and Colombia are two countries that have taken decisive steps in the design and adoption of sexual education policies. According to recent surveys, the population in both countries is largely Catholic (Pew Research Center, 2014). Despite this fact, or perhaps because of it, strategies implemented by the issuenetworks allowed them to succeed. Focusing on these cases might help to identify factors that should be further studied in the attempt to explain the changes on sex education policies. In the case of Argentina, the close connection between the church and the state during the military dictatorship eroded the church’s level of societal approval (Borland, 2004, p. 331). Thus, social organizations remained fairly independent from the Church. In addition, the women’s movement which played a significant role during the democratic transition reached high levels of social organization and political visibility. This was useful during the mid-1990s, when the discussion on reproductive rights in Argentina reached the national level (Cepeda, 2008). At the time, the issue had advanced at the local level, and some provinces already had approved resources to fund programmes on reproductive rights. Yet, reproductive 43

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rights were at the centre of the national debate in 1995, when the Congress debated abortion rights (Piscopo, 2014). The national discussion re-activated the women’s movement, which from that point on exerted a constant pressure seeking a national policy that framed access to sexual education under a rights perspective, rather than as a health issue.12 This strategy of defining reproductive policies as a human right was extremely important in the Argentinian case. It allowed the issue-network not only to overcome doctrinal opposition from conservative sectors, but also to solidify a broad support from different actors that included women’s rights organizations, groups interested on public health, as well as groups who opposed the growing influence on the Church over domestic policies. The mounting pressure from all these sectors led to the approval of a national law on sexual education in 2006 (Piscopo, 2014, p. 124). In Colombia, the process of adopting a national law on sexual education involved the judicial branch of power as well as the National Constitution. Colombia’s Constitution (adopted in 1991) included language from several human rights instruments, giving them superior status in cases in which they were incompatible with national law. The Constitution also envisioned judicial mechanisms aimed at protecting the most fundamental human rights (Fox, Gallon, & Stetson, 2010, p. 478). One of these mechanisms made it possible for a public school teacher to file a lawsuit that reached the Constitutional Court in 1993. The teacher had been fired because the school considered that one of her sessions on sexual education was inappropriate for the students. In its ruling, the Court demanded that the school reinstate the teacher, and it also required the government to incorporate sex education in the national curriculum.13 In this case, the role of the Constitutional Court was important: the Court’s decision set in motion a process that forced the government to adopt a policy aligned with human rights obligations acquired by the state. As a follow-up, the government commissioned the design of a new policy on sexual education to a group formed by educators and health professionals. The group worked toward a comprehensive policy; however, the opposition from the Catholic Church and other conservative groups eventually weakened the political support for the project. As in the case of Honduras, the political environment was not conducive for the development of the policy: the president at the time faced several problems that involved increasing levels of violence as well as a deep lack of legitimacy due to his alleged alliance with drug trafficking organizations.14 Yet partial success was achieved: the National Education Law adopted in 1994 made sex education compulsory (Ministerio de Educación Nacional de Colombia, 2008). After the adoption of the law, the issue-network kept its momentum. The extensive work of the group of educators and health professionals placed the issue of sexual education in the national agenda. Social organizations, NGOs, universities, and different media outlets developed efforts aimed at educating the population and providing information on sexual and reproductive rights. The work of local actors was also supported by the UNPFA, which provided technical and financial resources 44

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for the government as well as NGOs. As a result of these efforts, in 2003 the National Policy on Sexual and Reproductive Health was adopted. The law specifically states that sexual and reproductive rights are human rights and as such should be protected by the state (UNFPA, 2003). In 2005 the Ministry of Education adopted the pilot plan “Program for Sexual Education and Citizenship Building” which involved several schools from both rural and urban areas, as well as the support of various private organizations. The programme was developed during three years and emphasized the connection between reproductive rights and citizenship (UNFPA, 2003, p. 18). In 2006 the Congress approved changes on the Education Law that required both public and private schools to provide sex education across all levels of education (CLADEM, 2014, p. 283). The process in Colombia highlights the relevance of institutional settings on the probability of advancing public policies on sexual education. Having human rights, specifically women’s rights, included in the country’s legal framework allowed both public and private actors to keep pressuring the government to adopt policies that recognized the relevance of sexual education in the development of all individuals. In addition, and similar to the Argentinian case, the issue-network in Colombia was broad enough to keep mobilizing individuals around the issue of sex education, emphasizing its relationship with human rights, women’s rights, and children’s health. This strategic approach allowed the network to appeal to a broad set of audiences rather than rely solely on the women’s movement. The setbacks experienced in Colombia suggest that conservative groups and religious organizations can keep opposing and successfully impeding the consolidation of a comprehensive public policy on sex education. Here the decision of the issue network of connecting sexual education with women’s rights (instead of framing the issue as related to religion or ideology) allowed the network to grow and reinforce its alliances with powerful actors. The network actively engaged in discussion with the health sectors, the academia, and the media; which allowed it to create and re-create alliances with possible partners at different levels. The case of Uruguay serves as an example to illustrate the need for consistent work by issue networks. Starting in 2005, the new government of a non-traditional party, Frente Amplio, started an ambitious public policy on sex education. The comprehensive policy was developed by the Ministry of Education and other organizations of the civil society and was recognized as one of the best examples of public policies on sexual education by both international and domestic level actors. However, in 2010 the educational authorities appointed by the new administration closed the national programme on sexual education. This was a surprising event since the new executive belonged to the same political party as its predecessor. The new administration’s priorities on education and programmes curtailed the efforts and changed the nature of the programme (UNESCO, 2014, p. 80). The case suggests that even though programmes are set in motion, public support and oversight are needed to consolidate and perpetuate the policies, even after such policies are set in motion. 45

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In terms of important domestic actors, the relevance of the media is particularly interesting. In the case of Colombia, having the support of the media allowed the issue-network to reach out to different groups and to keep the issue on the public agenda. In other countries the media has been less willing to discuss the issue or directly state their opposition to the content of sexual education (Steinhart et al., 2013, p. 636). Countries in which conservative sectors exert control or have a larger influence over major media outlets present a more challenging environment in which issue-networks will face a harder time finding ways to spread their message across different sectors of the population. Finally, and as mentioned before, the Ministry Declaration Preventing through Education signed in 2008 had a positive impact on the development of policies on sexual education. This agreement provided domestic organizations with a strong support from the regional level. The Declaration highlighted the link between lack of comprehensive education and specific concrete health problems. Before and after this regional agreement, organizations such as UNESCO and UNFPA, among others, had worked intensively at producing high quality information that reveals the dimension of a problem partially neglected up to that moment. Local and regional organizations have used the Declaration’s goals to monitor and oversee governmental willingness to achieve them. While there has been progress towards the goals designed in 2008, the declaration has made it possible for different networks to mobilize domestic organizations to hold their governments accountable. Again, the strengthening of the issue-networks will determine to what extent the domestic pressure can force governments to fulfil their promises. Only time will tell to what extent plans adopted under this strategy will be solid enough to survive changes in administrations or funding problems. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

The examples discussed here provide insights on the factors that might allow countries to translate their commitment to women’s rights into national education. In particular, an active and broad movement that connects both external and domestic actors from different fields seems to be an important condition to advance on the inclusion of sexual education in the national curriculum. The case of Argentina illustrates this point, both in the strength of the women’s movement and the alliances with other political actors. The large number and the dissimilar nature of actors who supported the policies against discrimination allowed this country to adopt a policy of sexual education and overcome significant levels of opposition. Further studies should clarify the specific alliances or the weaknesses that might fail to reproduce the Argentinian experience. Another factor that needs to be further studied relates to particular institutions, specifically the judicial system. Existing research on human rights suggests that an independent judiciary is correlated with better levels of respect for human rights (Lupu, 2015). Colombia has a large tradition of judiciary independency, and as it 46

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was discussed, the specific mechanism that connects individuals with the justice system opened the door for the process that eventually culminated on a national and comprehensive policy of sexual education. Future studies should explore whether human’s rights movements or issue-networks on reproductive rights have better chances for pressuring governments to adopt sex education policies when the judiciary is independent. In addition, this study does not address important questions related to the levels of enforcement of sexual education policies. There are several aspects of HRE and sexual education that need to be further explored. First, although several countries had included sexual education in their programmes, future studies should clarify the way in which schools are incorporating such content into their curricula, and whether or not sexual education is focused around biomedical issues or is grounded in reproductive and women’s rights. Second, in several countries education is highly decentralized, which means that in order to be implemented, the central government needs to persuade and bargain with the local elites so the policy on sexual education is not perceived as foreign to their interests and perceptions. Additional research might help to illustrate the way in which the process takes place, as well as strategies used to overcome these difficulties. Third, sex education implies the training of teachers as well as students. Would all individuals be prone to teach contents that are contradictory to their cultures or views? The inclusion of sexual education in the curriculum is as important as the formation and training of teachers who in the end are responsible for students’ education. Programmes for training teachers as well as school administrators are costly, yet they should be an important part of the sexual education policies. Further studies can provide better recommendations by looking at the way in which countries in the region and in other regions have overcome this challenge. Finally, it has been suggested by existing studies that some of the issues included under the “women’s rights” umbrella are more important for some social classes than others (Htun & Weldon, 2010a). In Latin America the largest part of population affected by adolescent pregnancies as well as reproductive diseases are individuals who happen to live in poverty. This is concerning for several reasons: one being the fact that these individuals might be out of the education system, either because they enter the labour force at an early age or because they cannot afford an education. Both of these factors can be addressed by strong redistributive policies as well as comprehensive national education policies. However, these solutions are costly, and thus, might not be a top priority for governments with scarce resources. In addition, the fact that wealthy sectors of the population can access reproductive services by resorting to private facilities makes the issue of reproductive and sexual education a low priority for political elites and a risky issue for political leaders. These two reasons make the adoption of sex education policies extremely difficult in Latin America. This is not necessarily related to the type of democracy that exists in the region, but to the lack of generalized support (and education) for a specific subset of women’s rights. This makes Human Rights Education an important initiative: 47

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if fully implemented, it can help both women and men to be capable of taking autonomous decisions and enjoy dignified lives. NOTES For an extensive description of the monitoring process designed in the CEDAW see: Cusack and Cook (2009). 2 The Inter-American Convention reads: “b. to modify social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, including the development of formal and informal educational programmes appropriate to every level of the educational process, to counteract prejudices, customs and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority or superiority of either of the sexes or on the stereotyped roles for men and women which legitimize or exacerbate violence against women;” AND “to promote and support governmental and private sector education designed to raise the awareness of the public with respect to the problems of and remedies for violence against women” (Organization of American States, n.d. a). 3 The Inter-American Commission of Women was created in 1928 and is part of the Organization of American States. For a comprehensive view on the way in which the OAS works with other regional human rights bodies such as the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and the Special Rapporteurship on the Rights of Women, see Friedman (2009). 4 Available information on sex education policies could only be found for the following countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Sources included governmental websites as well as websites of several multilateral organizations. While preliminary information suggests that several countries in the Caribbean fail to mention or recognize the issue of sexual education (Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Guyana, Haiti and Jamaica) these cases were not included in these calculations. Information for Belize and Grenada could not be found. 5 I understand liberalization as the process by which rights that protect individuals as well as social groups from arbitrary or illegal acts committed by the state or non-state actors are provided. See: O’Donnel and Schmitter (1986). 6 The Programme of Action called for “the eradication of any conflicts which may arise between the rights of women and the harmful effects of certain traditional or customary practices, cultural prejudices and religious extremism” As quoted in Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (2014). 7 The United Nations’ Conference Report (1994, Chapter VII ) reads: “As part of their commitment, full attention should be given to the promotion of mutually respectful and equitable gender relations and particularly to meeting the educational and service needs of adolescents to enable them to deal in a positive and responsible way with their sexuality. Reproductive health eludes many of the world’s people because of such factors as: inadequate levels of knowledge about human sexuality and inappropriate or poor-quality reproductive health information and services; the prevalence of highrisk sexual behavior; discriminatory social practices; negative attitudes towards women and girls; and the limited power many women and girls have over their sexual and reproductive lives. Adolescents are particularly vulnerable because of their lack of information and access to relevant services in most countries.” 8 For instance, studies on health care policies in the OECD countries demonstrate that governments were willing to adopt health-care reforms if the experience of others indicated that they were correlated with less costs (Gilardi, Füglister & Luyet, 2009). 9 In fact, arguments related to policy diffusion focused on the process, not the outcome. These arguments centre their analysis on the process by which policies spread, not whether or not they converge. For a detailed description see Simmons and Elkins (2004). 10 For a complete description of the issue-networks approach, see Htun (2003). 1

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COMPREHENSIVE SEXUAL EDUCATION IN LATIN AMERICA Htun and Weldon (2010b) label these issues as “doctrinal issues,” which implies that states’ policies “contradict the explicit doctrine, codified tradition, or sacred discourse of the dominant religion or cultural group” (p. 210). 12 For a description of the actions of NGOs on the issue see Zamberlin (2006). 13 The Constitutional Court accepted the complaint of a teacher from a rural area who had been fired due to a class on sexuality that she taught in a public school. The Court’s ruling ordered the school to restore the teacher’s position and recognized the need for a national law on sexual education for both public and private education. See Guerrero (1998). 14 For a description of the crisis see Tickner (1998). 11

REFERENCES ACIPRENSA. (2007, September 21). Cuestionan consenso en torno a proyecto de ley de educación sexual en Panamá Activistas homosexuales y feministas la apoyan, grupos pro-familia no fueron consultados. Debate. Retrieved from https://www.aciprensa.com/noticias/cuestionan-consenso-entorno-a-proyecto-de-ley-de-educacion-sexual-en-panama/ Berry, F., & Berry, W. (2007). Innovation and diffusion models in policy research. In P. Sabatier (Ed.), Theories of the policy process (2nd ed., pp. 223–260). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Borland, E. (2004). Cultural opportunities and tactical choice in the Argentine and Chilean reproductive rights movements. Mobilization: An International Journal, 9(3), 327–339. Cardenas, S. (2005). Constructing rights? Human rights education and the state. International Political Science Review, 26(4), 363–379. Center for Reproductive Rights & the United Nations Population Fund. (2013). Reproductive rights: A tool for monitoring state obligations. Retrieved from http://www.reproductiverights.org/document/ monitoring-tool-human-rights-state-obligations Cepeda, A. (2008). Historiando las políticas de sexualidad y los derechos en Argentina: entre los cuentos de la cigüeña y la prohibición de la pastilla (1974–2006). Prácticas de Oficio. No. 2, Retrieved from http://ides.org.ar/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/artic14.pdf CLADEM. (2010). Informe sobre la educación para la sexualidad en Honduras. Comité de América Latina para la Defensa de los Derechos de las Mujeres. Documentos. Retrieved from http://www.derechosdelamujer.org/tl_files/documentos/derechos_sexuales/doc_derechos_ sexuales_10.pdf CLADEM. (2014). A 20 años de la conferencia de El Cairo. Comite de America Latina y el Caribe para la Defensa de los Derechos de la Mujer, CLADEM, Lima, Perú. Retrieved from http://www.cladem.org/ pdf/CLADEM_BalanceCairo+20.pdf Cleary, E. L. (2007). Mobilizing for human rights in Latin America. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press. Cruz, F. (n.d.). ¿Por qué la Conferencia Episcopal de Costa Rica ha dicho que sí a la educación sexual, pero no al programa del MEP en esta materia? Conferencia Episcopal de Costa Rica CONACE. Retrieved from http://www.iglesiacr.com/CONAEDU/Articulos_de_Portada/SEAS/CECOR_NO_ al_programa_del_MEP.html Cusack, S., & Cook, R. (2009). Combating discrimination based on sex and gender. In C. Krause & M. Scheinin (Eds.), International protection of human rights: A textbook (pp. 206–216). Finland: Abo Akademi University. Diaz-Dominguez, A., & Sellingson, M. (2013). The new Pope is from the Americas: How catholic are Americans? Americas Barometer: Topical Brief. Retrieved from http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/ insights/ITB003en.pdf Fox, D., Gallon, G., & Stetson, A. (2010). Lessons of the Colombian constitutional reform of 1991: Toward the securing of peace and reconciliation? In L. Miller & L. Aucoin (Eds.), Framing the state in times of transition: Case studies in constitution making (pp. 467–482). Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace Press. Friedman, E. (2009). Re(gion) alizing women’s human rights in Latin America. Politics & Gender, 5(3), 349–375.

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P. Fajardo-heyward Gilardi, F., Füglister, K., & Luyet, S. (2009). Learning from others: The diffusion of hospital financing reforms in OECD countries. Comparative Political Studies, 42(4), 549–573. Guerrero, P. (1998). Pasado, presente y futuro de la educación sexual en Colombia. Revista Colombiana de Psiquiatría, XXVII(4), 303–314. Hathaway, O. (2007). Why do countries commit to human rights treaties? The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 51(4), 588–621. Htun, M. (2003). Sex and the state: Abortion, divorce, and the family under Latin American dictatorships and democracies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Htun, M., & Weldon, L. (2010a). When and why do governments promote sex equality? Perspectives on Politics, 8(1), 207–216. Htun, M., & Weldon, L. (2010b). The civic origins of progressive policy change: Combating violence against women in global perspective, 1975–2005. American Political Science Review, 106(3), 548–569. Hunt, F., & Monterrosas, E. (2012). Evaluación de la implementación de la Declaración Ministerial Prevenir con Educación 2012 del acuerdo a la acción: Avances en Latinoamérica y el Caribe. New York, NY: Federación Internacional de Planificación de la Familia and Coalición Mesoamericana para la Educación Integral en Sexualidad. Retrieved from http://www.coalicionmesoamericana.org/ sites/default/files/EvaluacionDeclaracionMinisterial2012.pdf Inter-American Institute of Human Rights (IIDH). (2010). Informe Interamericano de la educación en derechos humanos. San José, Costa Rica: Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos. Kaidbey, M. (2003). Gender equality and women empowerment: The Latin American and Arab experiences. Annual Conference of the Center for the Global South at the American University, Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://www.weforum.org/pdf/Global_Competitiveness_Reports/ Reports/gender_gap.pdf Keck, M., & Sikkink, K. (1998). Activists beyond borders. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. L’Homme, C., & Henriquez, C. J. (2010). Education youth and development: UNESCO in Latin America and the Caribbean. (OREALC/2010/PI/H/4 August). Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ images/0018/001891/189108e.pdf Lupu, Y. (2015). Legislative veto players and the effects of international human rights agreements. American Journal of Political Science, 59(3), 578–594. Lutz, E., & Sikkink, S. (2000). International human rights law and practice in Latin America. International Organization, 54(3), 633–659. Magendazo, A. (2005). Pedagogy of human rights education: A Latin American perspective. Intercultural Education, 16(2), 137–143. Mihr, A. (2009). Global human rights awareness, education and democratization. Journal of Human Rights, 8(2), 177–189. Ministerio de Educación Nacional de Colombia. (2008). Antecedentes: Programa de educación para la sexualidad. Retrieved from http://www.mineducacion.gov.co/1621/article-172453.html Misgeld, D. (1994). Human rights and education: Conclusions from some Latin American experiences. Journal of Moral Education, 23(3), 239–250. Moravcsik, A. (2000). The origins of human rights regimes: Democratic delegation in postwar Europe. International Organization, 54(2), 217–252. Ñopo, H. (2012). New century, old disparities: Gender and ethnic earnings gaps in Latin America and the Caribbean. New York, NY: World Bank Publications. O’Donnel, G., & Schmitter, P. (1986). Defining some concepts. In G. O’Donnell, P. C. Schmitter, & L. Whitehead (Eds.), Transitions from authoritarian rule: Comparative perspectives (pp. 5–36). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. OECD. (2010). Atlas of gender and development: How social norms affect gender equality in nonOECD countries. Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/document/50/0,3746,en_2649_33935_44810034_1_1_1_1,00.html Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. (2006). Plan of action: World programme for human rights education. New York, NY: United Nations, United Nations Educational, Social, and Cultural Organization, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Retrieved from http://www.ohchr.org/ Documents/Publications/PActionEducationen.pdf

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COMPREHENSIVE SEXUAL EDUCATION IN LATIN AMERICA Organization of American States. (n.d.a) Additional protocol to the American convention on human rights in the area of economic, social and cultural rights, protocol of San Salvador. Retrieved from http://www.oas.org/juridico/english/treaties/a-52.html Organization of American States. (n.d.b). Multilateral treaties. Retrieved from http://www.oas.org/ juridico/english/sigs/a-61.html Pew Research Center. (2014). Religion in Latin America: Widespread change in a historically Catholic region. Retrieved from http://www.pewforum.org/files/2014/11/Religion-in-Latin-America-11-12PM-full-PDF.pdf Piscopo, J. (2014). Female leadership and sexual health policy in Argentina. Latin American Research Review, 49(1), 104–127. Ramirez, A. (2010). Sistematización sobre educación de la sexualidad en América Latina. CLADEM. Retrieved from http://www.cladem.org/images/archivos/publicaciones/regionales/desc/ EDUCACION.pdf Ramirez, F., Suarez, D., & Meyer, J. (2007). The worldwide rise of human rights education. In A. Benavot, C. Braslavsky, & N. Truong (Eds.), School knowledge in comparative and historical perspective. CERC studies in comparative education (Vol. 18). The Netherlands: Springer Science & Business Media. Reuterswärd, C., Zetterberg, P., Thapar-Björkert, S., & Molyneux, M. (2011). Abortion law reforms in Colombia and Nicaragua: Issue networks and opportunity contexts. Development and Change, 42(3), 805–831. Risse, T., Ropp, S. C., & Sikkink, K. (1999). The power of human rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roa, M., & Potts, H. (2009). High impact litigation and access to abortion in Colombia. Health Exchange News. Retrieved from https://healthexchangenews.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/high-impact-litigationand-access-to-abortion-in-colombia/ Rouillon, J. (2009, June 30). Dura crítica de la Iglesia por la educación sexual escolar. La Nacion. Retrieved from http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1156544-dura-critica-de-la-iglesia-por-la-educacionsexual-escolar Sikkink, K. (1993). Human rights, principled issue-networks, and sovereignty in Latin America. International Organization, 47(3), 411–441. Simmons, B. (2000). International law and state behavior: Commitment and compliance in international monetary affairs. American Political Science Review, 94(4), 819–835. Simmons, B., & Elkins, Z. (2004). The globalization of liberalization: Policy diffusion in the international political economy. American Political Science Review, 98(1), 171–189. Steinhart, K., Kaenel, A., Cerruti, S., Chequer, P, Gomes, R., Herlt, C., & Horstick, O. (2013). International networking for sexuality education. Sex Education, 13(6), 630–643. Stromquist, N. (2005). Women’s rights to adult education as a means to citizenship. International Journal of Educational Development, 26(2), 140–152. Suarez, D. (2007). Human rights and curricular policy in Latin America and the Caribbean. Comparative Education Review, 51(3), 329–352. Tickner, A. (1998). Colombia: Chronicle of a crisis foretold. Current History, 97(616), 61–65. Tiroch, K. (2010). Violence against women by private actors: The Inter-American Court’s judgment in the case of Gonzalez et al. (“Cotton Field”) v. Mexico. Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law Online, 14(1), 371–408. UNESCO. (n.d.). Declaracion prevenir en educación. Retrieved from http://www.unesco.org/new/ fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/FIELD/Santiago/pdf/declaracion-prevenir-educacion-espanol.pdf UNESCO. (2014). Comprehensive sexuality education: The challenges and opportunities of scaling-up. Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002277/227781E.pdf UNICEF & Economic Comission for Latin America. (2007). Teenage motherhood in Latin America and the Caribbean. Challenges, 4. Retrieved from www.unicef.org/lac/desafios_Nro4_eng_Final% 281%29.pdf

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P. Fajardo-heyward United Nations. (1993). Declaration on the elimination of violence against women (United Nations’ General Assembly Res. 48/104). Retrieved from http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/48/ a48r104.htm United Nations. (1993). Vienna declaration and programme of action. Retrieved from http://daccess-ddsny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G93/142/33/PDF/G9314233.pdf?OpenElement United Nations. (1994). Programme of action of the international conference on population and development. Cairo, Egypt: Author. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/popin/icpd/conference/offeng/ poa.html United Nations. (1994). Report of the international conference on population and development. United Nations Population Information Network. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/popin/icpd/conference/ offeng/poa.html United Nations. (2005). Plan of action for the first phase of the world programme for human rights education. New York, NY: United Nations. Retrieved from http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/ Publications/PActionEducationen.pdf United Nations. (2009). 15 Years of the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Retrieved from http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Women/15YearReviewofVAWMandate.pdf United Nations. (n.d.). United Nations treaty collection. Retrieved from https://treaties.un.org/Home.aspx? lang=en United Nations Fund for Population (UNFPA). (2003). Colombia adopts national policy on sexual and reproductive health. UNFPA Global Population Policy Update.. Retrieved from http://africa.unfpa.org/public/cache/bypass/home/parliamentarians/pid/3615;jsessionid= A5DDEE5956D74943416593596272A4A0.jahia01?newsLId=7294 United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. (2014). Women’s rights are human rights. New York, NY: United Nations. Retrieved from http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Events/WHRD/ WomenRightsAreHR.pdf Weyland, K. (2005). Theories of policy diffusion: Lessons from Latin America. World Politics, 57(2), 262–295. Weyland, K. (2007). Bounded rationality and policy diffusion: Social sector reform in Latin America. Princenton, NJ: Princenton University Press. Zamberlin, N. (2006). Las organizaciones de la sociedad civil en el campo de la salud sexual y reproductiva. Cuadernos de CLASPO, Argentina. Retrieved from http://www-lanic.lib.utexas.edu/ project/etext/llilas/claspo/cca/cca0010.pdf

Paola Fajardo-Heyward Canisius College USA

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ALEXANDER W. WISEMAN, PETRINA DAVIDSON AND FAWZIAH AL-BAKR

4. THE EFFECTS OF NORMATIVE ASSUMPTIONS ON MICRO-LEVEL ACTIONS IN EDUCATION The Contextualized Impact of Teaching with ICT in Turkey and the USA

INTRODUCTION

Evidence increasingly suggests that the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in classrooms has the potential to improve student learning and increase achievement in mathematics and science (Grinager, 2006). Education policymakers also largely assert that access to ICT-based education has the potential to prepare students for the global economy (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2013). Additionally, adoption of ICT policies and practices are seen as a way to prepare and develop students for participation in a global knowledge economy. This evidence and these beliefs have contributed to the rationalization of decisions made by the governments of both developed and developing countries to increase ICT investments in education as a means to improve students’ academic achievement. Adopting ICT-focused education policy is increasingly seen as a means to improve a country’s level of development, and schools are generally the site where this policy is implemented (Yusuf, 2005). Initiatives such as One Laptop per Child in Peru and One iPad per Child in Turkey distribute laptops or iPads, respectively, to individual students for classroom instructional use. While investments in ICT infrastructure and education-related applications are increasingly embedded in national educational policy worldwide as an important pillar of human capital development, evidence is less clear about whether teachers and students efficiently and effectively use these resources, or whether the time and money that governments spend on ICT-based educational infrastructure and instruction is resulting in improved teaching, learning, and human capital development. Therefore, there is a gap between ICT-related education policy and the measurable impact of ICT investments and computer use on student learning outcomes worldwide. Despite the dominant discourse, which positively correlates ICT use in classrooms with students’ learning outcomes, there is conflicting evidence regarding ICT investments and teachers’ and students’ computer use. For example, a recent metaanalysis conducted in Turkey found that computer-assisted instruction in science and mathematics was more effective than traditional teaching (Yesilyurt, 2010). Yet, another meta-analysis emphasized that educational technology applications M. F. Astiz & M. Akiba (Eds.), The Global and the Local, 53–75. © 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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have had a small effect on students’ mathematics achievement (Cheung & Slavin, 2013). Additional research indicates a weak relationship between math achievement and students’ and teachers’ technological use (O’Dwyer, Russell, Bebell, & Seeley, 2008). In fact, cross-national evidence suggests that computers are often used by classroom teachers for remedial instruction instead of enrichment, critical thinking, or complex problem solving (Wiseman & Anderson, 2012), especially in developing country contexts. Technological investments by policymakers often ignore teachers’ willingness or ability to use existing ICT resources in their classroom environments and daily instruction. In other words, the evidence regarding the impact of ICT-based instruction on student knowledge and skills is inconclusive, in spite of the dominant voices consistently advocating for the positive impact of ICT on education. The research reported here focuses on the development of policy and practice related to ICT-based instruction in two significantly different systems. These two systems represent different levels of economic and technological development. The USA represents a developed and technologically-advanced educational system; whereas, Turkey represents an emerging economy with diverse approaches to educational technology in classrooms. In each system, the evidence examined below investigates the degree to which ICT-based instruction associates with student achievement and the degree to which ICT instructional use varies by teacher and context. The contrasting contexts of Turkey and the United States provide one window into the global discourse related to the use of technology for instruction and connected by educational policy worldwide to bolster the economic productivity of both individuals and nations. THE GLOBAL ICT DISCOURSE

The global educational discourse since the beginning of the 21st century has connected the implementation of ICT programs in schools to nations’ technological, social, political, and economic well-being (Voogt & Pelgrum, 2005; Yusuf, 2005). As a result, national educational policies in many nations propose that ICT-based instruction contributes to students learning 21st century skills, such as the ability to handle information, solve problems, communicate, and collaborate (OECD, 2001). These educational policies often support or are a response to national economic and development agendas. For example, Turkey’s efforts to become an economic and political member of the European Union have been well-documented, and have resulted in overt attempts by Turkish policymakers to align Turkish economic, political, and social institutions – including the educational system – with European Union goals and objectives. Likewise, documents from highly developed economic communities like the European Union and the United States elaborate on this global ICT discourse in ways that share several key themes related to the development of a knowledge economy and the relevance and seeming necessity of ICT-based instruction. 54

The Effects of Normative Assumptions on Micro-level Actions in Education

The European Union (EU) discourse is especially relevant for emerging economies in the EU’s shadow, such as Turkey. In the European Union, the discourse around the role of technology for knowledge economy development is direct. The European Commission (2015) states, “Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) help us learn better, more efficiently and creatively, to innovate, to solve complex problems and access wider and more up-to-date knowledge.” Improved learning capacity, effectiveness and creativity are frequently referred to as hallmark characteristics of knowledge economy development, where the creation of new knowledge and the commodification of this knowledge define its economic power. The European Commission (2013, p. 2) also asserts that “EU education is failing to keep pace with the digital society and economy. Digital technologies are fully embedded in the way people interact, work and trade; yet they are not being fully exploited in education and training systems across Europe.” This suggests that there is a lack of competitiveness within the European Union and its member countries, especially in terms of the contribution that national educational systems are making toward the establishment of knowledge economies through information and communication technology knowledge and skills development. The European Commission (2013, p. 4) suggests that although education may not be adequately contributing to the development of a knowledge economy across Europe and within the EU’s member nations, it is also the solution (see Wiseman et al., forthcoming). Only if educational institutions change the framework conditions in which they operate will they grasp the opportunities that ICT provides. Open learning environments require the leaders of educational institutions to play an active role by: providing a strategic vision; transforming siloed institutions into connected learning communities and rewarding professionals for innovative teaching approaches. The European discourse, therefore, emphasizes the integration of ICT into classroombased teaching and learning with the expectation that learning communities and innovative educational practices will develop as a result. In other words, there is a context of competition and crisis articulated in these policy documents that suggests the solution to both national educational and economic challenges is to embed ICT into the instructional practice and classroom learning around the European Union, regardless of local community conditions, student backgrounds, or evidence on best teaching practices within local schools and classrooms. The European Union is not alone in its policy-level support for ICT-based instruction and technology-enhanced education. These examples from the EU policy literature are a relevant bridge between both the Turkish and US cases. From a Turkish perspective, the EU emphasis on educational technology for economic development is especially meaningful to a nation that is economically emerging within the shadow of a strong economic community like the EU. From the US 55

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perspective, the EU case is an example of how a competitive and relatively strong coalition of developed economies ties ICT and education together in relation to the knowledge economy and national economic development. For example, national US policy frequently aligns with an agenda to increase economic, social, and political productivity through the introduction and implementation of ICT in schools and classrooms, Today, we live in a technology and media driven environment, marked by access to an abundance of information, rapid changes in technology tools and the ability to collaborate and make individual contributions on an unprecedented scale. Effective citizens and workers must be able to exhibit a range of functional and critical thinking skills, such as: information literacy, media literacy, ICT (information, communications and technology) literacy. (P21: Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2015) The notion that “today” there are new technological, informational, and labour market challenges that require all individuals to possess high levels of ICT capacity (i.e., knowledge and skills) is not a new one; however, it is a discourse that has been repeatedly emphasized throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries. This historical shift towards an educational focus on developing students for participation in a local, national, and global knowledge economy also emphasizes the importance of ICTbased instruction within schools and classrooms. For example, in an amendment to the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act, the U.S. Congress (2015, S.250-52) embedded the imperative to develop ICT-based instruction for the creation of a knowledge economy by designating that the local use of funds allocated by the Perkins Act: …shall be used to support career and technical education programs that – (4) develop, improve, or expand the use of technology in career and technical education, which may include – (A) training of career and technical education teachers, faculty, and administrators to use technology, which may include distance learning; (B) providing career and technical education students with academic and career and technical skills (including the mathematics and science knowledge that provides a strong basis for such skills) that lead to entry into the technology fields; or (C) encouraging schools to collaborate with technology industries to offer voluntary internships and mentoring programs, including programs that improve the mathematics and science knowledge of students. Therefore, the implementation of ICT-based instruction and the imperative of developing a U.S. workforce for the local, national, and global knowledge economy involve teacher professional development in ICT-based educational methods, increasing the ICT capacity of U.S. students, and partnering U.S. schools with the private sector in order to provide work experience and on-the-job training in ICTrelevant careers. 56

The Effects of Normative Assumptions on Micro-level Actions in Education

The evidence from national and global policy documents suggests that there is a globally-shared discourse on ICT-based education that emphasizes the need for technology in education in order to develop a workforce for the knowledge economy, and that there is an imperative for educational systems to provide ICTrelevant learning opportunities for educators and students alike. In both the European Union and the United States, specifically, this shared discourse does not calculate the contextual effects of implementing ICT-based instruction in local communities, schools, and classrooms. Instead, there is an obviously-announced imperative to incorporate and overtly teach about and with ICT in order to enhance the individual and national productivity for the labour market and economy. The question that remains, however, is the extent to which this globally-shared and overtly pro-ICT discourse is implemented within local contexts and classrooms. In other words, does the global rhetoric match the local reality? RESEARCH ON ICT AND EDUCATION

ICT includes any variety or combination of technology, including telephones, televisions, e-readers, computers, databases, and e-mail (Livingstone, 2011). Although the technology component of ICT is most often the focus of ICTrelated policies, it is the ability to process and communicate information that such technology renders possible that is the substantive focus of ICT implementation in schools (Katz & Macklin, 2007; Levy & Murnane, 2007). Because of the widely disseminated model of mass education systems worldwide and the widespread nature of ICT, educational systems are used as a primary means to introduce ICT literacy to students through classroom instruction and learning. Research on ICT and education, however, tends to focus on one or more of four basic categories. The link between ICT use and student achievement is chief among research literature topics on ICT and education. Next is the empirical description and analysis of ICTbased classroom instruction. This is closely followed by empirical investigations of variation in ICT implementation. A fourth way to categorize the wide literature on ICT and education is to consider the contextual effects of education and the ways that social and educational context impact ICT-based education and its effects on teaching and learning. Each of the categories is further explained in the sections below. ICT and Student Achievement Despite being considered a panacea to the rising issues that accompany an increasingly interconnected world, research has been unable to consistently relate gains in student learning and ICT use. Researchers struggle to identify a direct link between financial and political investments in ICT to improve education (Zhao & Frank, 2003). However, numerous causes for this lack of consistency have been described, including the limited ability of standardized tests to evaluate 57

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the cognitively complex processes that ICT-based education is often assumed to facilitate (Kaffash, Kargiban, Kargiban, & Ramezani, 2010). Studies focusing solely on the quantity of ICT hardware neglect the question of how it is implemented by individual teachers in their classrooms, yet the quantity of available ICT or frequency of ICT use in classrooms has not been shown to influence student achievement (Lei & Zhao, 2005). There is also literature which highlights the ways that ICT-based instruction is more often used for remediation or lower-level cognitive functions in classrooms than higher-level functions (Wiseman & Anderson, 2014). The impact of information and communication technology on student achievement, however, continues to be a highly contested area within the research literature. Schacter (1999) reviewed research at the end of the 20th century and found mixed effects of ICT-based instruction in relation to student achievement. While some studies report significant gains in achievement and critical thinking skills among students (Chandra & Lloyd, 2007; Haddad & Draxler, 2002; Spiezia, 2011; Yesilyurt, 2010), others report wide variations in the creation of meaningful instruction using technology (Jung, 2005; Kozma, 2008; Pelgrum, 2001; Smerdon et al., 2000; Zhao & Frank, 2003). Sometimes the differences between higher- and lower-order thinking using ICT is attributed to teacher knowledge and skills about using technology for instruction; however, the research is inconclusive about what the contributing factors are (Haddad & Draxler, 2002; Hew & Brush, 2007; Kozma, 2003, 2008; Zhao & Frank, 2003). Wiseman and Anderson (2014) analysed teachers’ self-reported data about technology use in the classroom alongside with student self-reported data about what kinds of learning activities teachers asked them to do using classroom-based technology. The findings suggest that technology is most frequently used to memorize and provide basic knowledge, while evaluating and synthesizing information are much less likely to be the focus of ICT-based instruction (Wiseman & Anderson, 2014). ICT-Based Classroom Instruction Just as technology is increasingly prevalent in the business and social realms, so too is its appearance in educational systems (Yusuf, 2005). Beyond implementation for educational logistics, such as taking attendance and calculating grades, ICT is becoming an integral part of education. However, having the technology available in classrooms does not necessarily mean that all teachers and students maximize the related possibilities. Integration of ICT into classroom instruction takes different forms based on the available technology and the teachers’ and students’ attitudes and willingness to engage with the technology (Angeli & Valanides, 2005). Although the possibilities of ICT integration in classroom practices are numerous, technology (when available) is often used for functional or low-level cognitive activities like writing papers, developing presentations, performing descriptive research, or publishing results. While these are valuable skills, they do 58

The Effects of Normative Assumptions on Micro-level Actions in Education

not encompass the full capacity of ICT integration in classroom instruction or use for teaching and learning (Kozma, 2003). In short, there are commonly two ways in which ICT has been used for instruction: (1) the full integration of technology into daily and ongoing instructional practices, and (2) the treatment of ICT as a separate or supplemental tool (Kaffash et al., 2010; Law, Lee, & Chan, 2010; Voogt & Pelgrum, 2005). International discourse reflects this trend, as well. For example, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) acknowledges the shift from technological literacy, or ICT skills as a separate subject, to knowledge deepening or creation, where ICT is used as an integrative tool to enhance learning (Kozma, 2003). Variations in ICT Implementation Increased ICT infrastructure and classroom resources do not automatically mean that ICT is extensively used for practical or learning purposes. Variations in ICT implementation can result from three major obstacles identified by Pelgrum (2001): (1) an insufficient number of computers, (2) teacher’s lack of technological expertise or experience, and (3) limited internet access. A teacher’s attitude toward technology can also account for variations in ICT implementation within schools (Zhao & Frank, 2003). Evidence also suggests that teachers’ use of computers varies from teacherto-teacher in spite of similar levels of access to computers among those teachers (Smerdon et al., 2000). Therefore, there are variations in infrastructure and resources, which simply refer to the hardware and software available for instruction and learning, and there are variations in the ways that ICT is used by teachers and students regardless of available infrastructure and resources. Still, ICT includes instructional technology outside of traditional computers. For example, interactive whiteboards are used across grade and subject levels. Video conferencing technologies are another means to bring the world beyond the school into the classroom (Selwyn, 2003). The challenge of ICT implementation, then, is that despite the popular perception that ICT use in the classroom systematically improves students’ learning, the complex contextual influences at work in each situation measurably influence how teachers and students use ICT for instruction and learning (Facer, Furlong, Furlong, & Sutherland, 2003). Contextual Effects in Education Curricular content, organizational structures of schools, and local and national policy decisions have a direct influence on teachers’ use of ICT in the classroom (Zhao & Frank, 2003). Contextual variations influence the types and quantities of ICT available for teachers’ and students’ use and the opportunities for professional development for ICT implementation (Kaffash et al., 2010). Research indicates 59

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that influences at the school level have the most significant impact on teachers’ implementation of ICT practices, with the principal contributing heavily to these factors (Law et al., 2010). Classroom practices are mediated by multiple contextual levels, including top-down pressure, such as results from national assessment policies or global discourse, as well as bottom-up agency, such as local culture or a teacher’s preferences and influences (Sutherland et al., 2004). Additionally, the subject matter being taught influences the ways ICT use is integrated into teaching (Sutherland et al., 2004), as ICT would not be used to teach language the same way it would be to teach science. The prevalence of ICT-related policy connecting ICT-based education to national economic development and the wide research base connecting ICT to student achievement, classroom instruction, and context suggest that there are widespread expectations and structures, which have contributed to normative assumptions about the purpose and implementation of ICT-based instruction worldwide. To address these assumptions, a neo-institutional perspective provides a macro-level framework, but it is not clear if these shared macro assumptions translate to micro-level practice. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Educational system legitimacy is enhanced through institutionalization—when a policy becomes adopted not only at the international level, but also across national contexts (Drori, 2008). For example, the global script highly values equity of access for both male and female students. As a result, all nations have adopted policies stating their commitment to providing equal educational opportunities to all children. This global script is adopted at a national level, in one way, to prove the nation’s legitimacy as a global actor. However, despite the formal adoption of such educational policies, the actual enactment differs across contexts, a phenomenon known as decoupling. Although there are a variety of perspectives that could be used to examine ICT discourse or local implementation of ICT-based instruction, a neo-institutional perspective provides the opportunity to explore how global discourse mediates local enactment. This perspective considers both global influences and local context for examining the intersection of global policy discourse with local implementation. Much of the literature suggests that global and national level policy provide the script for local level enactment, but it is also possible that local level legitimated scripts for ICT-based instruction influence the development of ICT-related policies in national education systems worldwide (Wiseman, Astiz, & Baker, 2013). Still, classroom-level implementation and student outcomes may decouple from formal policies (Weick, 1976). Another component highlighted by neo-institutional theory – legitimacy seeking – could be described as an additional contributor to this phenomenon of decoupling between policies and implementation, as countries may adopt or publish official policies regarding ICT-implementation even though they are not reflected in daily educational experiences (Jepperson & Meyer, 2011). 60

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Neo-institutional theory provides a conceptual framework to explore the diffusion of global discourse and the legitimacy seeking and decoupling that occur as a result of the adoption of global scripts. One way that local level activity may push national and global policy is through scripting. Scripting occurs at the collective level when specific models become the general norm across contexts (Drori, 2008; Jepperson, 2002). These scripts, or shared discourses, serve as models for the formal adoption of policy at the national and global levels (Drori, 2008), and are the basis for normative assumptions about ICT-based instruction. When shared values are passed from the local to the national and global levels (or vice versa), individual actors, such as districts, schools, or teachers, may impose their own interpretations of ICT-based instruction, which results in varying degrees and types of implementation within a shared or normative framework. This gap between collectively-shared values and their local implementation is described as decoupling (Wiseman & Chase-Mayoral, 2013). Regarding ICT policy and practice, Voogt and Roblin (2012) characterize this gap in relation to the intended curriculum, which consists of macro-level beliefs about ICT use, and the implemented curriculum, consisting of more micro-level and local curriculum. Wiseman and Chase-Mayoral (2013) note that there is a mismatch between the worldwide expansion of ICT policy and the actual accessibility of ICT-resources at the local level. Although expectations may be shared on an international policy level, this does not mean that they are implemented equally across all contexts, nor that micro-level agency impacts macro-level policy. Critiques of Neo-Institutional Theory Despite its ability to examine phenomena on the macro level, neo-institutional theory is often challenged to provide adequate explanations of local variation that are more explanatory than the decoupling rationale provides. However, one way to address this critique is to explore the interaction of both globalization and contextualization (Wiseman & Chase-Mayoral, 2013). Critiques of a neo-institutional explanation of micro-level perspectives assert that the micro- and macro-levels exert influence on each another, but that there is a dominance of the macro-level discourse influencing micro-level enactments. Although this may further reinforce the international dialogue, it is also more of a linear process of dominance and resistance, according to some critics. For example, the international discourse surrounding ICTimplementation is further perpetuated by the adoption and enactment of ICT-related education policies at the local levels. The policy and research literature reviews provided above confirm this conclusion. With its emphasis on scripting, decoupling, and legitimacy seeking, neoinstitutional theory provides a lens to examine how the discourse surrounding ICT implementation aligns at the global level, but deviates between and within nations. Overall, there is agreement across national educational systems that ICT has the 61

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potential to foster active learning and higher-order thinking only if it is used by teachers to create new pedagogical practices instead of using it to supplement instruction (Alexander, 1999; Jonassen, 1999; Smeets, 2005). Given the potential effects of ICT on student learning and achievement based on normative assumptions at the national policy level, it is hypothesized that: H1:  Teachers’ ICT-based classroom instruction positively associates with students’ math achievement scores. This hypothesis represents the ‘alternative’ hypothesis, and if supported would suggest that there is a tight link between the global discourse surrounding ICTbased instruction and the implementation and impact of ICT-based instruction in classrooms. The policy-oriented discourse heavily supports this hypothesis, but the empirical evidence reported in the literature is inconsistent. Therefore, we also present a contrasting hypothesis, which is more consistent with the findings reported in the research literature. H2a: Teachers’ ICT-based classroom instruction is not significantly positively associated with students’ math achievement scores. This hypothesis represents the ‘null’ hypothesis, and if supported would suggest that there is no significant evidence linking the global policy discourse and the implementation and impact of ICT-based instruction. There is also the possibility that there are varying degrees of coupling between the global discourse and the local implementation of ICT-based instruction, which would lead to mixed comparative results for the Turkish and American samples. A neo-institutional approach to this hypothesis suggests that there is large decoupling occurring between the global discourse and local implementation. Since the gap between ICT policy discourse and local implementation has been consistently shown in other research to often be large and consequential, it is expected that this hypothesis will be supported by empirical analyses. However, the differing contexts between Turkey and the US, especially in relation to their respective levels of national economic development, suggest that this hypothesis is more likely to be confirmed in the Turkish than the US context. H2b: Teachers’ ICT-based classroom instruction varies by teacher and context. This final hypothesis suggests that contextual variation is largely responsible for the results related to the previous two hypotheses. In other words, if the first part of the second hypothesis is supported by the evidence, then the first hypothesis is not supported and this final hypothesis is. Or, if the first part of the second hypothesis is not supported by the evidence, then the first hypothesis is supported and the final hypothesis is not supported. There is significant opportunity for variation within the bounded rationality of the broader ICT-based education model that could lead to significant overlap in ICT-based instruction while also demonstrating limited but measurable variation between the Turkish and American contexts. 62

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METHODOLOGY

In order to empirically test the above hypotheses, this study analyzes data from the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (i.e., TIMSS, 2011). TIMSS data have been collected every four years since 1995 with the purpose of examining global trends in mathematics and science achievement at the fourth and eighth grades (Mullis et al., 2009). The TIMSS 2011 International Database includes data on student achievement as well as student, home, teacher, school, and curricular background information (Foy, Arora, & Stanco, 2013). TIMSS 2011 covers data for 63 countries and 14 benchmarking participants. Two country samples were selected from TIMSS 2011 for this study in order to compare the ICT policy and implementation phenomenon in two countries that have different social, economic, and political contexts, but share the same, or similar, ICT-related educational policies and goals. These two countries are Turkey and the United States. The sample size for Turkey included 1801 8th grade students and 68 math teachers. The sample size for the USA included 2474 8th grade students and 177 math teachers. The sampling process consisted of a two-stage random sample design. In the first stage, a sample of schools was chosen, then, during the second stage, one or more intact classes of students were chosen from each of the sampled schools (Joncas & Foy, 2012). Since this research focused on 8th grade students in Turkey and the USA, the target population was all students in their eighth year of formal schooling in Turkey and the United States and their math teachers. Variables Individual 8th grade students’ math achievement scores serve as the dependent variable. Descriptive statistics for the dependent variable are in Table 1. Math achievement score is a continuous variable that was estimated as “plausible values” (Foy, Arora, & Stanco, 2013) in the TIMSS data due to the multiple test booklets used during the administration of the TIMSS math assessment. In this research, the first plausible values were used to represent students’ math achievement. The variable name is MATH_ACH. Independent variables at the student level consist of control variables that account for socioeconomic status (SES) and other contextual effects that previous research has shown have significant and persistent impacts on student achievement. Descriptive statistics for all dependent variables are in Table 1. Level of Home Study Support is an indicator of possessions at home. This control variable was added as an indicator of SES and is a categorical measure coded as ‘0= neither own room nor Internet connection’, ‘1= either own room or Internet connection’, ‘2= both own room and Internet connection’. The level of home study support variable name is POSSESSI. Parents’ Highest Education Level is an indicator of parents’ highest education level. It is a categorical measure recoded as ‘0= some primary, lower secondary, or no

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school’, ‘1 = lower secondary’, ‘2 = upper secondary’, ‘3 = post-secondary but not university’, ‘4 = university or higher’. The parents’ highest education level variable name is PARENTS. Independent variables at the classroom level consist of predictor variables related to teachers’ use of ICT-based instruction or ICT-based classroom activities or as a control variable. Computers for Classroom Instruction is an indicator of whether a teacher uses computer in classroom instruction. It is dummy coded (0 = No, 1 = Yes). The computers for classroom instruction variable name is COM_INST. Teachers’ Age was entered as control variable. It is a categorical measure recoded as ‘0= under 25, 1 = 25–29, 2 = 30–39, 3 = 40–49, 4 = 50–59, 5 = 60 or more’. The teachers’ age variable name is AGE_TCHR. There is only one group of independent variables representing the effects of teachers’ ICT use on students’ math achievement scores. These three variables were taken from classroom-level data where teachers reported how often their students do certain activities. These variables were used as an associated measure representing the types of activities teachers who use computers for classroom instruction provide for their students. Computers Used for Exploring shows the frequency of students’ computer use for exploring mathematics principles and concepts during math lessons as reported by teachers. It is an indicator of how often students, who have access to Internet and computers in their classrooms, use computers for exploring mathematics concepts. This is a categorical variable which was recoded as ‘0 = never or almost never’, ‘1 = once or twice a month’, ‘2 = once or twice a week’, and ‘3= every or almost every day’. The computers used for exploring variable name is COM_EXP. The other two independent variables representing the types of computer-related activities that teachers engaged students in are computers use for practicing and for processing. Computers Used for Practicing shows the frequency of students’ computer use for practicing skills and procedures during math lessons as reported by teachers. It is an indicator of how often students, who have access to Internet and computers in their classrooms, use computers for practicing skills and procedures. This is a categorical measure which was recoded as ‘0 = never or almost never’, ‘1 = once or twice a month’, ‘2 = once or twice a week’, and ‘3 = every or almost every day’. The variable name is COM_DO_P. Computers Used for Processing shows the frequency of students’ computer use for processing and analyzing data during math lessons as reported by teachers. It is an indicator of how often students, who have access to Internet and computers in their classrooms, use computers for processing and analyzing data. This is a categorical measure and recoded as ‘0 = never or almost never’, ‘1 = once or twice a month’, ‘2 = once or twice a week’, and ‘3 = every or almost every day’. The variable name is COM_PRCS. Data Limitations One of the limitations of the research was that TIMSS data includes only computer related questions even though educational technology is an ever-changing 64

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phenomenon. For example, in the USA data, 56.7% of the variance in math achievement scores occurred at the classroom level, however, only 7.3% of the variance in student mathematics achievement could be explained with these independent variables. Therefore, there is a need to investigate other ICT-related devices as well. In many schools in both Turkey and the USA, it is likely that teachers use educational technologies other than computers, such as iPads, Kindles, or projectors, in mathematics instruction. Similarly, there were several other data-specific limitations. For example, the variable for teachers’ age is categorical, however, distances for each category were not equal, which again posed a challenge to interpreting the results. Also, TIMSS data does not provide direct questions regarding teachers’ ICT use. Rather, the questions pertain to students’ computer use in math courses based on teachers’ observations. In this study, these variables were used as a proxy measure of teachers’ computer use. There is a need for more concrete variables regarding how teachers actually use computers in their classroom instruction. RESULTS

Descriptive statistics for variables at both the student and classroom levels are presented in Table 1. Turkey’s student achievement ranges from 105.73 to 839.23 with a standard deviation of 115.40; whereas, the USA’s ranges from 267.44 to 738.32 with a standard deviation of only 73.21. Turkey’s mean student math achievement score is 464.08 and the USA’s is 507.96. At the student level, these descriptive statistics show that the USA has a slightly tighter distribution of math achievement scores than Turkey does, and the central tendency of the USA’s distribution is shifted slightly higher than Turkey’s. The USA mean scores are significantly higher than Turkey’s as a result (p