Decentralization, democratization and the global politics of community-based schooling

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

One of the biggest sources of conflict in educational systems around the world stems from the politics of decentralization. While increased decentralization is often touted as essential to assuring robust levels of democracy and community participation, it is also often criticized as a mechanism of neoliberal austerity and privatization. Each of the papers on this panel provides a case study whereby grassroots actors in disparate parts of the world have engaged with the politics of decentralization by building alternative community-based schools which challenge ´mainstream´ educational systems in more or less contentious ways. Community-based schools are broadly defined as any type of formalized alternative education program that is strongly rooted in the identities and realities of local citizens and social movements.
The panel begins with an exploration of the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) attempt to transform public schooling by Rebecca Tarlau. Tarlau argues through her case study research that although decentralization does not necessarily lead to democratization, it can create opportunities for local empowerment. The next presentation also draws from a case in Latin America. D. Brent Edwards takes a critical look at the implementation of Education with Community Participation program (EDUCO), at the local level. He argues that community-based management programs such as EDUCO do not necessarily facilitate meaningful community development and that education practitioners and educational organizations should instead focus on other notions of community development and empowerment. In the next presentation, Andria Timmer turns to Europe to explore the case of education of a minority group in Europe, the Roma. She shows that while decentralization of education in Hungary did exacerbate segregation of the Roma in school, it also allowed for some new innovative schooling alternatives for the Roma. Next, Richard Bamattre describes how community-based schools in Zambia developed as a result of the retreat of the state into the educational sphere. His presentation explores the complex relationship between state and society within a larger social political perspective on decentralization within the context of Zambia. Finally, Deanna Hill shows how many of these themes are also evident in the development of a charter school by a local community in an eastern city of the United States.
As a set, these presentations contribute to a growing area of research that seeks to examine how local-level grassroots actors are experiencing, evaluating and engaging with transnational processes of educational policy-making in more or less strategic ways (e.g. Astiz, Wiseman, & Baker 2002; Daun 2007; Rhoten 2000; Warren and Mapp 2011). A key line of inquiry underlying each paper is whether or not the various community-based schooling initiatives spawned by the politics of decentralization in recent decades have promoted authentic and empowering forms of democratization, or whether decentralization merely represents a retreat of political investment in and responsibility for the institution of public education.
A unifying theme is to consider the struggles, strategies and successes that characterize community-based schooling initiatives in different parts of the world as well as how these disparate projects interface with broader-level trends in educational policy-making. The papers are grounded in theory-driven empirical research drawn from a global sample of case study data. The case studies take a critical look at how grassroots actors affiliated with various types of alternative community-based schooling initiatives have engaged with the global politics of decentralization in terms of opportunity and empowerment as well as opposition and protest.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Rebecca Clothey, Drexel University

Individual Presentations

• Social Movement-Led Democratic Governance of Public Education: The Case of the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement - Rebecca Tarlau, Penn State University

• Evolving the Neoliberal Accountability Perspective on Community-Based Management: From Systems Theory to Social Capital and Community Empowerment - D. Brent Edwards Jr., University of Hawaii; Evelyn Avalos, University of Dundee

• Decentralization, Centralization, and Minority Education in Hungary - Andria Timmer, Christopher Newman University

• Between the State and Society: Community Schools in Zambia - Richard Bamattre, University of Minnesota

• Building a Community Organized Charter School through Charter School Policy in the United States - Deanna Hill, Drexel University; Rebecca Clothey, Drexel University