Educational Improvement Science in International and Comparative Perspectives

• In Event: Educational Improvement: Fundamentals, Comparative Perspectives, and International Cases

Proposal

The power of protest relies largely on how education may be improved to promote equity, inclusion and quality of human life around the globe. But what we have observed in the past and today are often reform failures in many educational systems. A critical question is - why do educational reforms often fail or at least not as intended by educational reformers? To help tackle such puzzles, this presentation explores two urgent questions: 1) what may be an alternative approach that results in desirable educational changes, i.e., improvement? and 2) how may the alternative approach have recently re-emerged internationally and globally? The two questions are important and relevant to almost all educational policymakers, implementers, educators, parents, researchers, and the general public.

Although the idea of educational improvement was valued even in ancient times, with a still enlightening Confucian belief emerged two thousand years ago: “If improved one day, do so from day to day, and let there be again and again” (The Great Learning), only recently in the early 2000s has educational improvement become a new field of interdisciplinary inquiry for educational change (Berwick, 2008; Bryk, et al., 2015; Lewis, 2015), modelled from improvement science emerged from the fields of business and public health.

With international and comparative frameworks, this presentation extends what have been explored in the existing literature and critically frames three core dimensions of the emerging Educational Improvement Science: 1) discipline-guided; 2) systems-thinking; and 3) evidence-based, which ensure improvers that the process of educational improvement is monitorable and improvement objectives are achievable (Langley, et al., 2009). It also highlights two key approaches for the success of educational improvement, i.e., the building of improvers’ capacities and that of professional improvement communities (PICs).

Comparative case study approach is employed to examine specific, international cases identified from Canada, China and Pakistan. The Canadian case highlights the success of provincial reform of education in Ontario during Premier Dalton McGuinty’s tenure over a decade in 2003-2013. The China case focuses on the new improvement movement of weak schools experimented in Shanghai since the 2010s. The Pakistani case looks at the implementation of single national curriculum (SNC) which began in 2021, all over the country, related challenges, current status and outcomes. It is confirmed through the practices of Canadian, Chinese and Pakistani improvers that these approaches support the accomplishment of improvement objectives and institutional and systemic advancement in terms of learning, teaching and schooling.

Reflecting on the experiences of educational improvement in Canada, China and Pakistan, this study further theorizes the emerging Educational Improvement Science by grounding it on several philosophical concepts, e.g., that imperfection is universally nature and realistic, and that the only thing unchanging in the world is change (The Book of Change). Additionally, it helps empower comparativists with an alternative, more dynamic, and multiperspectival lens to critically interrogate educational ideals, realities and possibilities when we are re-imagining the power of protest in the post-Covid era.

Authors

• Jun Li, Western University

• Maria I Khan, University at Albany - SUNY