Reform; Global Perspectives in Comparative Education

• In Event: Reform; Global Perspectives in Comparative Education

Proposal

Changing school systems requires a carefully crafted enabling environment around capacity, trust and accountability that can unleash teachers’ and schools’ ingenuity and build capacity for change. Much has been written about trust, accountability and capacity in education. What Trust, Accountability, and Capacity in Education System Reform adds to the literature, beyond a comprehensive analysis of these concepts, is a systematic and insightful discussion of the interrelationships between these concepts and how they affect education systems. The first part of the book offers a powerful framework to understand the dynamic nature of systems and system change, where initial starting points for change, in terms of trust between key stakeholders, the capacity they have to change and improve, and how they are held accountable for certain behaviours or performance vary and will provoke vastly different outcomes within education systems. Trust, accountability and capacity allows us to understand education systems from the perspective of inter-stakeholder relations (across the locational levels and for various demographic groups) and how these are situated both temporally, as well as within the wider socio-economic, cultural and political context.
The second part of the book illustrates the intricate relations between trust, accountability and capacity with chapters from the Netherlands, Austria, Singapore, Kenya, Chile, Finland, South Africa and the U.S. Each of the country chapters applies the conceptual framework from the first part of the book to understand some of the most prominent problems in education: inequality and segregation, lack of professional agency of teachers, corruption, overburdening bureaucracy and the loss of legitimacy of public education. It is through the understanding of the interrelationships between trust, accountability and capacity that policy-makers and practitioners can address some of the most persistent challenges in education.
At CIES the book editors (Professor Ehren and Dr Baxter) will present the conceptual framework from the first part of the book, followed by an interactive Q&A panel with contributing chapter authors. Our session can be organized both on-site and online, or using a blended approach depending on travel restriction in place at the time of the conference.

Authors

• Carmen Montecinos, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso

• Thomas Kaye, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

• Shu Shing Lee, NIE