Leaving No One Behind: Incorporation of the Marginalized in World Education Reform, 1960-2020

• In Event: Global Education Reforms: Discursive Trends and Policy Impact, 1960-2020

Proposal

Since the mid-20th century, a world culture promoting the values of equal opportunity and educational justice has risen and expanded (Bromley 2014; Koo and Ramirez 2009). The idea that every individual—regardless of their gender, race, class, disability, or citizenship —deserves quality education and that national authority should strive to realize this ideal became legitimated and widely accepted. More recently, the Sustainable Development Goals clearly state that ensuring inclusive and equitable education is one of the key objectives of humanity (UN, 2015). Undoubtedly, the key to achieving this goal is to effectively incorporate historically excluded, marginalized individuals into the education system. However, whether ambitious global initiatives remain empty rhetoric or are concretized in policy at a local level is a different story (Kavale and Forness 2000; Mundy 2006; Sukati 2015). Furthermore, the rise of illiberalism and exclusionary nationalism in recent decades poses a threat to the liberal ideas of equity and diversity (Bromley et al. 2023; Guillén 2018; Mearsheimer 2019; Schofer, Lerch, and Meyer 2022), impeding the progress toward a more inclusive education system. Against this backdrop, I ask: to what extent have countries around the world introduced policy changes to incorporate historically disadvantaged populations into education over time, and what factors have been behind these reforms? Additionally, which marginalized groups have been gaining more (or less) attention over time and across different contexts?
To answer these questions, I mainly draw on WERD and sociological institutionalist theory. Preliminary findings suggest that global institutional influences do matter, including through normative and coercive pressure. However, domestic factors such as the level of liberal democracy and educational equality are also related to the number of reforms for the marginalized. I also found that there has been a significant increase in reforms for the marginalized starting in the 1990s, propelled by the Education for All movement, but a slight decline in such reforms in the most recent decade, possibly reflecting the illiberal reaction to progressive ideals.

Author

• Jieun Song, Stanford University