Emergent Issues in Education

Comparative Perspectives

Edited by Robert F. Arnove, Philip G. Altbach, and Gail P. Kelly

Subjects: Education
Series: SUNY series, Frontiers in Education
Paperback : 9780791410325, 376 pages, July 1992
Hardcover : 9780791410318, 376 pages, July 1992

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Table of contents

Introduction
Robert F. Arnove, Philip G. Altbach, Gail P. Kelly

Part One: Trends in Comparative Education

1. Debates and Trends in Comparative Education
Gail P. Kelly

Part Two: World Trends in Education

2. Compulsory Schooling in the Western Cultural Context
John Boli and Francisco O. Ramirez

3. Patterns in Higher Education Development: Toward the Year 2000
Philip G. Altbach

4. Donor Agencies and Third World Educational Development, 1945–1985
Edward H. Berman

5. Modernization without Westernization: Assessing the Chinese Educational Experience
Ruth Hayhoe

6. The Neo-Conservative Paradigm: Recent Changes in Eastern Europe
Tamas Kozma

Part Three: Theoretical Frameworks

7. Conceptualizing Education and the Drive for Social Equality
Joseph P. Farrell

8. Conceptualizing the Role of Education in the Economy
Peter Easton and Steven Klees

9. Education and the State: From Adam Smith to Perestroika
Martin Carnoy

Part Four: Contemporary Reform Movements and Emergent Issues

10. Reforming Educational Governance: Centralization/Decentralization
Noel F. McGinn

11. Public and Private Sectors in Education in India
Jandhyala B. G. Tilak

12. Comparing National Systems of Secondary School Leaving Examinations
Harold J. Noah and Max A. Eckstein

13. A Cross-National Study of Teachers
Harry Judge

14. Education Reform in Britain and the United States
Miriam David

15. Effective Schools in Comparative Focus
Henry M. Levin

Part Five: Assessing the Outcomes of Reforms

16. Policy Impact of IEA Research
Torsten Husén

17. Education, Women, and Change
Gail P. Kelly

18. National Literacy Campaigns in Historical and Comparative Perspective: Legacies, Lessons, and Issues
Robert F. Arnove and Harvey J. Graff

Notes

Contributors

Index

Description

In Emergent Issues in Education, leading scholars in comparative education and in the politics, sociology, anthropology, and economics of education illuminate worldwide trends in critical issues that confront policymakers and practitioners in different national settings.

Among the topics raised and analyzed are the organization, governance, and financing of education; the content of curriculum, texts, and tests; and the quality and nature of teacher training. Among the issues examined is the tension that has emerged between the imperative to achieve equality of educational opportunity and the concern of educational decision makers to maintain and upgrade the quality of academic offerings.

Aspects of this tension are manifested in the reform movements of the 1980s, especially the "excellence movement" that has resurfaced in the United States. Reform movements are evident in countries that have experienced increased enrollment at all levels of schooling in the post-World War II period. In the United States, as elsewhere, there has been a reassessment of the relevance of education to the economy and polity, and of the role of government and industry in education.

Robert F. Arnove is Professor in the School of Education at Indiana University, Bloomington. Philip G. Altbach is Professor and the late Gail P. Kelly was Professor in the Department of Educational Organization, Administration, and Policy at the State University of New York, Buffalo.