The Changing Role of Schools in Asian Societies: Schools for the Knowledge Society

The Changing Role of Schools in Asian Societies Walk into a classroom in Tokyo, New York, London or Rotterdam, and the...

Author: Kerry J. Kennedy | John Chi-Kin Lee

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The Changing Role of Schools in Asian Societies

Walk into a classroom in Tokyo, New York, London or Rotterdam, and the similarities in structure, activity, purpose and style will outweigh differences in language, dress and ethnic characteristics. Learning is regulated and rationed, teaching is a process or oneway transmission of knowledge, students need to be docile and conformist, assessment needs to sift and sort the bright from the not-so-bright, and rewards will be given to those who successfully negotiate this regime. But are these the kinds of places that can meet the needs of the ‘net generation’? The Changing Role of Schools in Asian Societies is concerned with the debate about the nature of modern schooling in Asia. Traditionally schools have been seen as historical constructions reflecting the social, economic and political needs of the societies that invest in them. As Asia faces the challenges posed by the ‘knowledge economy’, its schools have taken on a new and quite different importance. This informative book outlines the broad policy contexts in which these transformations are taking place and the practical strategies that are needed to meet this objective. The authors argue that the future of Asian societies depends on a transformation that requires a fundamental restructuring of schools as we know them while maintaining their long-held cultural values. This valuable insight: ● ● ● ●

provides an overview of educational issues in Asian societies; establishes a broad theoretical framework in which these issues can be understood; contextualizes issues by providing country case studies; acknowledges the important role of culture influencing educational priorities.

It should be of interest to all those working in education policy and comparative education. Kerry Kennedy is Professor and Dean in the Faculty of Professional and Early Childhood Studies at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. John Chi-kin Lee is Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is also Dean of the Faculty of Education and Director of the Centre for University and School Partnership.

The Changing Role of Schools in Asian Societies Schools for the knowledge society

Kerry J. Kennedy and John Chi-kin Lee

First published 2008 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon. OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business. © 2008 Kerry J. Kennedy and John Chi-kin Lee All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Kennedy, Kerry J. The changing role of schools in Asian societies : schools for the knowledge society / Kerry J. Kennedy and John Chi-kin Lee. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Education—Economic aspects—Asia—Cross-cultural studies. 2. Educational change—Asia—Cross-cultural studies. 3. Education—Effect of technological innovations on—Asia—Cross-cultural studies. I. Li, Zijian, 1960- II. Title. LC67.A78K46 2008 370’.95—dc22 2007023206 ISBN 0-203-93759-7 Master e-book ISBN ISBN-10: 0–415–41200–5 (hbk) ISBN-10: 0–203–93759–7 (ebk) ISBN-13: 978–0–415–41200–1 (hbk) ISBN-13: 978–0–203–93759–4 (ebk)

Kerry would like to dedicate this book to the most recent member of his family, Zoe King, and John would like to dedicate it to his parents, Ms Chan Sau Fong and Mr Lee Leung Wai.

Contents

List of illustrations Preface 1 Introduction: schools for the ‘Asian education century’: priorities and challenges

ix x

1

PART I

Cultures and contexts influencing schools in Asia

7

2 Schools for the ‘net’ generation in a diverse Asia

9

3 Schools and the economy: a human capital perspective

21

4 Policy contexts for lifelong learning

32

5 Global imperatives and local values: negotiating change in traditional societies

47

6 Creating citizens for globalized states: traditional values for new times

57

7 Examination and assessment cultures

72

PART II

Strategies for change in Asia’s schools 8 Curriculum reform: school-based curriculum development as a strategy for Asia’s schools

87

89

viii

Contents

9 Teaching and learning: interaction between East and West

108

10 Leadership for school development

123

11 Teacher development: issues and challenges

139

12 Evaluation for educational improvement

159

13 Conclusion: schools for an ‘education century’ in a divided Asia

174

Notes References Index

184 185 217

Illustrations

Figures 3.1 The economy as a key driver of educational reform 4.1 Basic structure of a lifelong education system within a learning society Tables 1.1 International Monetary Fund categorization of selected Asian economies 1.2 Current and future needs for primary teachers in Asia 2.1 Differing views of Asia: the accounts of two United Nations agencies 2.2 Selected indicators relating to human development in Asia 2.3 An overview of each country’s performance in the school report 2.4 Commitment to education by countries in Asia as measured by selected financial indicators 3.1 The scope of educational reform in the Asia-Pacific region, 1997–2002 4.1 Theoretical underpinnings of different approaches to human capital development 4.2 A comparison of different approaches to learning 7.1 Exemplars of classroom-based assessments in selected Asian societies 8.1 Brief comparison of curriculum reform in selected Asian societies 10.1 Possible influences of societal–cultural forms on the formation of school leaders from Chuxiong, rural China 11.1 Types, functions and approaches to lesson observation in Guangzhou and Hong Kong

28 44

3 4 11 12 17 18 24 35 37 79 92 129 143

Preface

The idea for this book developed because we wanted to understand what was happening to schools in Asia. We wanted to draw on our different histories, backgrounds and experiences to help us with this task. We wrote the book over a two-year period and contributed equally to its development – thus the responsibility is ours. Yet we have also benefitted from the assistance and support of others. We would like to thank Dr Yin Hongbiao, Dr Angel Au and Mr Sam Ho for checking the references and the text. Dr Gordon Joughin provided important advice for one of the chapters in Part I and Professor Michael Williams gave invaluable advice on improving the chapters in Part II. We are also grateful to our institutions – the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Institute of Education. It is not possible to do this kind of work without support and encouragement from the places in which we work. Discussions with colleagues and students, feedback on work in progress, questioning of ideas and emerging understanding are all part of universities and we have benefitted from all of these. We hope that our work might prove useful to the ongoing debate about the changing role of schools in the societies we have studied and that more work in a similar vein might follow. In many senses, as we shall explain later, we feel we have only just begun to understand some key issues that affect schools in a diverse and challenging part of the world. We want to encourage further work that is regionally and comparatively based. Why did we focus on the relationship between ‘schools’ and ‘the knowledge society’? It was not so much that we wanted to advocate such a relationship but rather that for many policy makers the relationship appeared to be unquestioned. As curriculum reform documents emerged in the twenty-first century, it became clear that the demands of the so-called ‘knowledge economy’ were being translated into demands for certain kinds of schooling, whether that schooling was in Europe, North America, Australia or Asia. Given our location, interests and concerns, we wanted to see what these demands meant for schools in Asia – not so much as economic constructions but as social constructions. The ‘knowledge economy’ may well have fuelled education reform in the region and elsewhere but we were interested in how a social institution such as the school was able to respond to new demands. This issue was of particular interest because schools in Asia have been traditionally elite institutions, particularly in

Preface

xi

those societies with colonial histories. We wanted to explore in more detail how schools were involved in multiple social and economic interactions at a point in time where there was much discussion and debate about the potential of Asia to contribute to shaping the twenty-first century. We have begun the task here but it is only a beginning. The evidence is overwhelming that schools in this new century may well turn out to be even more important to societies and individuals than they have ever been in the past. We hope this book makes some contribution to understanding this phenomenon and the challenges it poses for us all. Kerry J Kennedy The Hong Kong Institute of Education Hong Kong July 2007

John Chi-Kin Lee The Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong July 2007

1

Introduction Schools for the ‘Asian education century’: priorities and challenges

The concept of the ‘Asian century’ has become popularized in the light of the spectacular economic growth seen in many parts of Asia. Dollar (2007, p.2) has pointed out that ‘between 1990 and 2005, developing economies of Asia accounted for 44 per cent of global economic growth, measured by purchasing power parity. The established industrial powers of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) accounted for 41 per cent’. Yet economic growth cannot be considered in isolation as a necessary good, so that Dollar (2007, p.14) goes on to argue that one key outcome of such growth needs to be ‘good economic governance’. For him, such governance ‘provides wide economic opportunities to the populace through measures such as broadbased public education’. It might be argued, based on this implicit connection between the economy and education, that alongside economic growth, the ‘Asian century’ might become synonymous with an ‘Asian education century’ since, as we show in Chapter 3, education can be seen not only as an output of economic growth but also a major input to it. This idea of an ‘Asian education century’ has driven us in the writing of this book. We wanted to explore the issues that characterize the ‘Asian education century’, conscious that this term is usually constructed in economic rather than social terms. We were particularly aware that if education were to be a driver for the future then it could not be the same education that existed in many Asian countries for most of the last century. Thus our focus in this book is on identifying new ways of thinking about education in Asia, new strategies for change and new ideas that would prepare young people for the knowledge economies that are starting to characterize the regions. In undertaking this task we were confronted by two realities. First, the contexts and cultures of Asia are multiple, diverse and rich in history and tradition. Educational developments in the twenty-first century have emerged from these contexts and we wanted to acknowledge them. While the focus on economic growth in the region might be seen as a particular outcome of processes related to globalization, we were anxious not to miss the relevance of local values and priorities. We wanted to see what, if any, were the interactions between global and local imperatives and how different parts of Asia dealt with these.

2

Introduction

The second reality with which we were confronted was that the educational change literature is predominantly Western in origin. We realized that that if we were to examine development in the ‘Asian education century’ we had no choice but to apply these Western constructs to what is currently happening across Asia. We were also conscious that these constructs, while Western in origin, had to be implemented in local Asian contexts, so we wanted to see how receptive these contexts were to non-indigenous ideas. The success or otherwise of using this approach is something that we shall return to in the final chapter. We realized as we commenced our writing that to talk about ‘Asia’ as though it is an unproblematic and uncontested concept would be naïve. We were attracted to Connery’s (2006) view that Asia is ... a constructed category, and we cannot resort to some level of empirical geographical truth to firmly establish its limits, or to judge whether Japan could actually ‘leave Asia’ or Australia could join it. As most scholars within the growing field of new regionalism would agree, no region, sub-national or supra-national, can be wholly self-evident. I would suggest, though, that, to paraphrase Fredric Jameson, we cannot not regionalize. Relationality and aggregation will be part of all spatial imaginaries – no nation-state can be imagined in isolation. This relationality – whatever its material or geopolitical dimension or determination – will always have an ideological character. In Chapter 2 we have spent some time exploring and seeking to identify different dimensions of Asia as a ‘constructed’ concept because we felt it was important to capture and highlight Asia’s diversity from the very beginning of the book. Throughout the book we have tried to draw examples from across the region to illustrate that ‘Asia’ as a construction is not just an ‘imaginary’. For people whose daily lives take place in this ‘constructed’ Asia, there are real demands, challenges and needs. We have tried to highlight these realities as they apply to schools and their communities across the region. In Chapter 2, what we have regarded as ‘Asia’ for the purposes of this book will be made more concrete and while some will contest our own construction we simply present it as one that has suited our purpose for this particular book. In seeking to focus on a particular region of the world, albeit one that has achieved much prominence in recent times, we were also conscious of another point made by Connery (2006) that ‘often, a regional narrative can serve important functions in disrupting national or global narratives’. Globalization theorists of different kinds have often constructed a discourse around the nation state as though it is no longer relevant to the needs and concerns of individuals so that the global is privileged over the local in such discourses. We wanted to subject such discourses to critical scrutiny in this book, not so much at the level of theory as at the level of daily realities. We acknowledge, of course, the significance of a more integrated and interconnected world community underpinned by extraordinary advances in information and communications technology.

Introduction

3

Yet from the beginning we were not convinced that this kind of infrastructure necessarily meant the end of the nation state (Ohmae 1996) or even presaged a severe diminution in its role. Focusing on Asia and its diversities has allowed us to explore these ideas in greater depth and we shall return to the issue of globalization in the final chapter. Given that we have taken as our starting point the links between education and the economy, one of the key issues that stood out to us was that of the disparities and differences across the region. The simplest classification system seemed to highlight the polarized nature of the region in economic terms as shown in Table 1.1. It is of interest to note in Table 1.1 that as far as the IMF is concerned, India and China are still classified as ‘developing economies’ although there is no rationale given for this classification, since ‘rather than being based on strict criteria, economic or otherwise, this classification has evolved over time with the objective of facilitating analysis by providing a reasonably meaningful organization of data’ (International Monetary Fund 2006). Even though this kind of classification is somewhat instrumental, it raises interesting questions about the way the region is viewed and the criteria that are used to make judgments about it. In Chapter 2, a number of other classifications systems will be analysed and it will be possible to compare those with the one used in Table 1.1. Even though the IMF classification here is somewhat crude, it does highlight the ‘economic divide’ between different parts of Asia, and with reference to Hong Kong and China the differences within the same country. The data in Table 1.1 are somewhat crude, but they prepared us for examining economic disparities and searching for solutions that might explain how a resource such as education is affected by these disparities. While the divide between advanced and developing economies is somewhat stark, there are other differences across the regions that are more subtle. One of these relates to teachers. Across the region, teacher demand will vary over the next decade and these variations are highlighted in Table 1.2. Table 1.1 International Monetary Fund categorization of selected Asian economies Categorization

Country/Society

Advanced

Hong Kong SAR Japan Korea

Singapore Taiwan Province of China

Developing

Bangladesh Bhutan Cambodia India Indonesia Lao PDR Malaysia Myanmar

Nepal Pakistan Philippines Sri Lanka Thailand Vanuatu Vietnam

Source: based on International Monetary Fund (IMF) (2006)

4

Introduction

Table 1.2 Current and future needs for primary teachers in Asia Area

Number of teachers in 2004 (millions)

Projected number in 2015 (millions)

Percentage (decline/ increase)

World East Asia and Pacific South and West Asia

26.1 9.4 4.4

25.8 7.4 4.7

–1.1 –21.3 7.6

Source: based on UNESCO Institute of Statistics (2006b), p.42

These variations are regionally sensitive reflecting similar variations in the projection of the global school-age population. Overall, there is a projected increase globally of 14 million primary-age pupils (13.5 per cent), but a decline in lower secondary (7 million or 7.4 per cent) and senior secondary pupils (5 million or 5.5 per cent) (UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2006b, p.15). Yet these global population figures mask significant regional variations. In East Asia and the Pacific, for example, there are marked declines in the primary-age population (18.6 per cent), lower secondary (15.1 per cent) and senior secondary (16.1 per cent). In South and West Asia there are corresponding increases of 4.6, 1.1 and 4.2 per cent (UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2006b, p.15). Thus, if our ‘Asian education century’ thesis is correct, then different parts of the region face very different challenges, just on the single front of teacher supply and demand for mass education. In terms of the project we have undertaken in this book, we wanted to see how the issue of teachers – acknowledged as the key resources for educational reform – impacted on the way different parts of the region responded to the challenges for change. This focus on demographics referred to above highlights perhaps one of the most significant education challenges facing Asia. In 2004, 52 per cent of the global primary-school population lived in the region and by 2015 this figure is projected to change only marginally to 51 per cent, with the numbers increasing in South and West Asia over this time (UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2006b, p.15). This school age population alone will require some 12 million teachers in 2015 representing about 47 per cent of the worldwide teacher workforce. The sheer scope and size of the task of educational reform given these figures are staggering. What is more, the demands in South and West Asia where the schoolage population is increasing are demands placed on some of the poorest parts of the region. Here the task of reform is even more difficult, especially in terms of attracting, training and retaining qualified teachers. Another window on the scope of the issue of making this ‘Asia’s education century’ is to consider the number of teachers that need to be supported so that they can implement reform programmes. It has been estimated that in 2004, there were approximately 26 million teachers in the region, – about 18 million in East Asia and the Pacific and 9 million in South and West Asia (UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2006b, p.22). Yet it is not just the quantum of teachers that is the issue,

Introduction

5

although that in itself represents a very significant challenge. Schools are located in a variety of settings that themselves create unique issues for education systems. Singapore, for example, has a land mass of just 680 square kilometres compared with 9.6 million square kilometres in China. By way of another contrast, Bhutan’s land mass is 46,500 square kilometres, 67 per cent of which is forest. The administration of these three systems is a fundamentally different task, yet the needs of students, whether in the western provinces of China, at different ends of Singapore or in the mountainous regions of Bhutan, are basically the same. They all require highly qualified teachers, modern school buildings, relevant and engaging curricula, fair and transparent assessment systems and pathways to further education and training. Yet achieving these goals will require different strategies, different levels of resources and different priorities in Bhutan, Singapore and China. The demands of the physical environment are themselves significant factors in determining the way education systems can go about the process of educational change and reform. For this reason we wanted to examine a wide variety of reforms across different parts of the region. At times this has meant providing illustrative snapshots of different societies conscious that we could not provide a comprehensive coverage of reforms in every society. It has become common recently to talk about the ‘digital divide’, meaning the divide between the world’s ‘information rich’ and ‘information poor’. Statistically at least it is possible to demonstrate the extent of this divide. In the USA it has been estimated that 63 per cent of the population are internet users, in the European Union, 44 per cent, in East Asia and the Pacific, 7.4 per cent, and in South Asia, 2.6 per cent (World Bank 2007b1). As we commenced this project, we wondered whether, in the end, it might be necessary to talk about a broader ‘education divide’ in the region – a divide that parallelled the digital divide but had implications that were broader and deeper. We wanted to explore this issue as we proceeded, conscious of Asia’s diversities and differences and the demands that were being made for modern education that could meet new social and economic needs across the region. We shall return to this issue in the concluding chapter.

How the book is structured In order to achieve our purposes in seeking to understand better schools in Asia, we divided the book into two parts and each of us took major responsibility for one part. Part I, overseen by Kerry Kennedy, focuses on the contexts and cultures influencing change in schools across Asia. Part II, overseen by John Lee, deals with strategies that are available for schools to bring about change. The parts are not mutually exclusive since we seek to show how the strategies outlined in Part II are themselves embedded in social and cultural contexts. We hope this structure will provide both the ‘big picture’ of cultural and social influences in Asia’s schools as well as the details about specific strategies being used to facilitate change. In Part I, ‘Cultures and contexts influencing schools in Asia’, there are six chapters. Chapter 2 seeks to portray the diversity that characterizes Asia and the schools and education provision that result from this diversity. Chapter 3 examines

6

Introduction

new versions of human capital theory and its impacts on the construction of schooling in Asia. Chapter 4 explores the key implication of new approaches to human capital theory in terms of policy contexts for, and issues related to, lifelong learning. Chapter 5 highlights local values in Asian societies and how these can interact with imperatives for educational change. In Chapter 6, the issue of citizenship education across national contexts in Asia is discussed to show how in many ways it is at odds with initiatives for educational change. Chapter 7 examines examination cultures across Asia since these have played such a significant role influencing educational policy and practice in the region. In Part II, ‘Strategies for change in Asia’s schools’, there are six chapters. Chapter 8 discusses school-based curriculum development as a change strategy and its use in schools in selected Asian societies. Chapter 9 addresses teaching and learning perspectives in Asian schools and highlights selected examples of pedagogy and studies of classroom environments. Chapter 10 examines leadership for school development under the impact of culture. Chapter 11 explores issues related to teacher development while Chapter 12 focuses on evaluation for school development, which encompasses external inspection, examination and assessment, and school self-evaluation. Finally, we have to say that from the beginning we were overwhelmed by the project that we set ourselves. Yet we were convinced that it was important work because in many different ways Asia was coming to be seen as an area of the world that would have a major impact in the twenty-first century. Whether or not it will be an ‘Asian century’ is still a matter for debate; and whether it will be an ‘Asian education century’ may well depend on the part of the region under discussion, resources, their availability and their use. One thing is clear: we need to know more about schools and education in Asia – the demands, the challenges, the issues and the ways in which change is being addressed. It has been our aim in this book to deal with all of these in order to provide a baseline analysis at this stage in the new century. It is our hope that it will signal a new interest in Asia and its schools that will match the expectations currently held of this part of the world.

Part I


2

Schools for the ‘net’ generation in a diverse Asia

Introduction Confucian academies, Buddhist viharas, Hindu asramas, Islamic maktabs and madrasahs, all provide evidence of the importance of learning and education in the history of Asian societies. Linked to religious or ethical systems, these indigenous forms of education focused on the development of the individual as the foundation of social living and development. At times these systems of thought existed independently and at others they interacted as migration and sometimes aggression saw one system replace another. The link between religion and education is by no means unique, finding a clear parallel with the West where premodern times were also characterized by religion’s claim over the educational process. This process in the West, just as in Asia, was necessarily one where education was an elitist enterprise focused on transcendental objectives. Just as such a concept was discarded in the West under pressure from developmental needs, so too was it rejected in Asia under pressure from Westernization. In its place came the idea of mass education, linked initially to the needs of modern, and subsequently postmodern, economies. The nature and forms of mass education will be an important focus of this book. As important, therefore, as indigenous forms of education have been to Asia’s cultural development, it is mass forms of education that have stimulated modern growth and development. In the process, of course, such education has also influenced cultural development and has often challenged indigenous forms of knowledge. This does not mean that indigenous knowledge has been altogether discarded as Asia has geared itself to compete with the West in a globalized economy. As will be shown in subsequent chapters, there have often been attempts to fuse the best of both East and West into modern Asian solutions for growth and development. In seeking to understand better current constructions of schooling in Asia, it is important to take notice of the contexts that have created them. The purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to provide an overview of schools and education provision in Asia, especially the social, political and economic contexts that have influenced them.

10


Schools in Asia and their social contexts Asia is characterized by diversity rather than uniformity. This diversity is shown in its geographies, its histories, its cultures, its religions and its languages. In 2006, Asia’s estimated population was 3,667,774,066 representing 54.6 per cent of the world’s population (Internet World Stats 2006). Across the region this population is divided across urban and rural areas – on average, some 40 per cent of people live in urban areas and this figure is projected to grow by 2025. Yet this average figure – taken from projections made by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (2006) masks extremes such as 100 per cent urbanization in Hong Kong and Singapore and 16, 21 and 20 per cent in Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam respectively. Alongside this urban rural divide is a digital divide that is both international and intraregional. Internet penetration in Asia has been estimated at 9.9 per cent of the population compared with 23.1 per cent in the rest of the world (Internet World Stats 2006). Yet within the region the penetration rate varies from 0.1 per cent in Tajikistan to 69.2 per cent in Hong Kong (Internet World Stats 2006). It is not easy, therefore, to make generalizations about Asia and its regions and it is certainly not possible to regard it as a ‘single’ entity. Not only are generalizations difficult to make – there is not always agreement on exactly what is and is not included in Asia. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), for example distinguishes between ‘Asia and the Pacific’ and then divides Asia into four broad geographic areas as shown in Table 2.1. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), on the other hand, distinguishes only between East Asia (and the Pacific) and South Asia, thus collapsing some of the UNESCAP categories but excluding ‘north and central Asia’ altogether! The UNDP configurations are also shown in Table 2.1. The Asian Development Bank, on the other hand, has configured the region as East and Central and Asia (Armenia, Azerbaijan, China, Hong Kong China, Kazakhstan, Republic of Korea, Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Taipei China, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan), Mekong (Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam), South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka), and Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore). Where is the real Asia in all this? Clearly, the regional categories referred to above – and other variants of them – are socially constructed, reflecting in different ways historical developments, agency memberships, cultural similarities and geographic proximity. Milner and Johnson (2004), in a very illuminating paper, have shown how ‘the idea of Asia’ has been a contested one throughout history irrespective of whether the perspectives have been indigenous or Western. Thus the apparent confusions as illustrated in Table 2.1 are not just recent, and the choice of what to include and what to exclude is as much political as it is social and cultural. What is important to note is the broad scope of the region that bridges Europe and the Pacific Ocean, its consequent complexity and thus the

Table 2.1 Differing views of Asia: the accounts of two United Nations agencies

UNESCAP a

Countries

UNDP b

East and North-East Asia

China Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Hong Kong China Japan Macao China Mongolia Republic of Korea

East Asia

Southeast Asia

Brunei Darussalam Cambodia Indonesia Lao People’s Democratic Republic Malaysia Myanmar Philippines Singapore Thailand Vietnam

South and South-West Asia

Afghanistan Bangladesh Bhutan India Iran (Islamic Republic of) Maldives Nepal Pakistan Sri Lanka Turkey

South Asia

North and Central Asia

Armenia Azerbaijan Georgia Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Russian Federation Tajikistan Turkmenistan Uzbekistan

Central and Eastern Europe

Key a The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific b The United Nations Development Programme

12


inherent difficulty of reaching any simple definition. It seems that the countries of the Pacific, whether they be the islands in the mid-Pacific or European outposts such as Australia and New Zealand, have the least claim to be either geographically or culturally related to Asia. This is clearly demonstrated by the United Nations agencies where there is a designated category for ‘Pacific’ countries. Thus these areas will not be referred to in this book. The other countries referred to by UNDP and UNESCAP will be, although not equal attention will be paid to all of them. As themes and issues are discussed, examples from different parts of the region will be highlighted. As will become clear throughout the book, there are few if any generalizations that can be applied to Asia that needs above all to be appreciated for its diversity. Table 2.2 Selected indicators relating to human development in Asia HDI Countries ranka

High development e 7 Japan 22 Hong Kong, China (SAR) 25 Singapore 26 Korea, Rep. of 34 Brunei Darussalam 61 Malaysia Medium development e 74 Thailand 79 Kazakhstan 81 China 84 Philippines 93 Sri Lanka 98 Maldives 105 Turkmenistan 108 Indonesia 109 Vietnam 110 Kyrgyzstan 113 Uzbekistan 116 Mongolia 122 Tajikistan 126 India 129 Cambodia 130 Myanmar 133 Lao People’s Dem. Rep. 134 Pakistan 135 Bhutan 137 Bangladesh 138 Nepal

HDI value 2004

Gross enrolment ratio (%) 2004b

Education TAI indexc valued

Primary

Secondary

Tertiary

0.949

100.4

101.6

54.0

0.94

0.698

0.927 0.916 0.912 0.871 0.805

108.1 – 105.1 109.2 93.5

84.9 – 90.9 93.6 75.8

32.1 – 88.5 14.7 32.4

0.88 0.91 0.98 0.88 0.84

0.455 0.585 0.666 – 0.396

0.784 0.774 0.768 0.763 0.755 0.739 0.724 0.711 0.709 0.705 0.696 0.691 0.652 0.611 0.583 0.581

98.5 109.2 117.6 112.4 97.7 103.5 – 117.0 98.0 98.0 99.8 104.4 99.9 116.2 136.6 96.5

77.3 98.1 72.5 85.9 82.5 72.8 – 64.1 73.5 88.0 94.6 89.5 81.8 53.5 29.4 40.0

41.0 48.0 19.1 28.8 – 0.2 – 16.7 10.2 39.7 15.3 38.9 16.4 11.8 2.9 11.3

0.86 0.96 0.84 0.89 0.81 0.87 0.91 0.83 0.81 0.92 0.91 0.91 0.90 0.61 0.69 0.76

0.337 – 0.299 0.300 0.203 .. .. 0.211 .. .. .. .. .. 0.201 .. ..

0.553 0.539 0.538 0.530 0.527

116.4 82.1 – 108.9 113.9

45.9 27.2 – 51.3 45.7

5.9 3.2 – 6.5 5.6

0.66 0.46 0.48 0.46 0.51

.. 0.167 .. .. 0.081

Sources: United Nations Development Programme (2006), pp.283–286; UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2005a); United Nations Development Programme (2001)


13

Key to Table 2.2 a ‘The human development index (HDI) is a composite index measuring average achievement in three basic dimensions of human development – a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living.’ (United Nations Development Programme 2006, p.407) b ‘Gross enrollment ratio, primary is the number of pupils enrolled in primary, regardless of age, expressed as a percentage of the population in the theroetical age group for primary education. Gross enrollment ratio, secondary is the number of pupils enrolled in secondary, regardless of age, expressed as a percentage of the population in the theoretical age group for secondary education. Gross enrollment ratio, tertiary is the number of pupils enrolled in tertiary, regardless of age, expressed as a percentage of the population of the five-year age group following on from the secondary school leaving age.’ (UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2005a) c ‘The education index measures a country’s relative achievement in both adult literacy and combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment. First, an index for adult literacy and one for combined gross enrolment are calculated. Then these two indices are combined to create the education index, with two-thirds weight given to adult literacy and one-third weight to combined gross enrolment.’ (United Nations Development Programme 2006, p.394) d The technology achievement index (TAI) is a composite index designed to capture the performance of countries in creating and diffusing technology and in building a human skills base. The index measures achievements in four dimensions: technology creation, diffusion of recent innovations, diffusion of old innovations and human skills. (United Nations Development Programme 2001, p.246) e ‘All countries included in the HDI are classified into three clusters by achievement in human development: high human development (with an HDI of 0.800 or above), medium human development (HDI of 0.500–0.799) and low human development (HDI of less than 0.500). (United Nations Development Programme 2006, p.275)

Education and development in Asia Given the geographic, cultural and political diversities in Asia, what can be said about educational provision in Asia? Table 2.2 shows a number of common indicators used by UNDP to rate human development in general and educational participation in particular. These indicators are important for giving a general view of the region but they also need to be understood within a broad social context before any assessment can be made about their implications for educational provision. These issues will be addressed in the analysis below. The majority of Asian countries are ranked as ‘medium’ development with only four ranked as ‘high’ development while none is ranked as ‘low’ development. This kind of broad banding is generally helpful in distinguishing between ‘high’, ‘medium’ and ‘low’ development but within the ‘medium’ development countries that account for most of Asia, the range of HDI values is large: from 0.784 (Thailand) to 0.527 (Nepal). This divergence in HDI is a good indicator that differences do exist across the region although it is not explicit about the nature of those differences. For this reason, Lewin (1997) suggested a finer-grained banding that sought to identify six separate groups of Asian countries with similarities linked to indicators in addition to the HDI. Whichever approach is adopted, what seems clear is that human development as a composite of indicators relating to income, health and education seems to have been a priority for many Asian countries, even though country efforts have been differentiated and equal outcomes have not been achieved. What seems to have been avoided in Asia, however, is an extreme generalized hardship found in ‘low’ developed countries such as those of sub-Saharan Africa.

14


Yet despite the progress of Asian countries in relation to human development, these indicators should not mask a reality pointed out by Hirosato (2001) that within the region, ‘900 million still live on less that $1 a day’. This disparity was further highlighted recently by Haruhiko Kuroda, President of the Asian Development Bank, in a speech highlighting the theme, ‘the two faces of Asia’: In this region of increasing prosperity, one in five people still cannot access safe drinking water. Half the population is without proper sanitation. In this region of rising aspirations, more than 4 million children will die this year, never reaching their fifth birthday. And the same rapid development that has raised living standards from Shanghai to Mumbai has put the region’s ecosystems in peril – endangering the livelihoods of the poor. Absolute poverty is declining. But inequality is growing. Poverty – in all its aspects – is still our region’s most daunting problem. (Kuroda 2006) These disparities make educational provision complex and problematic, especially since the HDI is also composed of indicators relating to health and income. Providing for the needs of the ‘knowledge’ economy, whether it is in terms of improved health, improved opportunities for income generation or improved access to education, will not be the same in urban metropolises such as Shanghai, Mumbai and Djakarta as it will be in emerging agricultural economies in countries like Bhutan or in many rural areas that still predominate throughout the Asian landscape. At the same time access to health and education in urban areas remains a problem as young people migrate from the country seeking a new city life (Kennedy 2003). There is not one human development solution for Asia, but many depending on contexts, circumstances, resources and policies. There is, not unnaturally, a significant but nor perfect correlation between the HDI and the education index (EI) – development and education go together. Again, even though most countries fall into the ‘medium’ development range, there is considerable diversity in national EIs. This range is an indication that the participation rates in school and adult education vary considerably across the region. As Table 2.2 shows, this range goes from 0.96 in Kazakhstan to 0.46 in Pakistan. School education participation remains a key issue for many countries especially in secondary education where countries like Cambodia and Pakistan still have participation rates as low as 29.4 per cent and 27.2 per cent respectively. Even a growing economic giant like India has a rate just above 50 per cent while China’s is just over 70 per cent. Most of the medium development countries are in the 70–80 per cent range compared with the high 90s for most of the high development countries (Hong Kong being the exception). Recently the World Bank released a major policy paper that highlighted the potential of secondary education in achieving social and economic objectives in those countries where participation rates are low:


15

Secondary education ... has been shown to contribute to individual earnings and economic growth. It is associated with improved health, equity, and social conditions. It buttresses democratic institutions and civic engagement. And the quality of secondary education affects the levels above and below it – primary and tertiary education. (World Bank 2006a, p.17) Given the goals relating to the universalization of primary education are almost universal in the region, it seems that a key priority for the future in those countries where participation rates are either moderate or low will be secondary education. For those countries where participation rates are already high, the issues are likely to be quality – ensuring that secondary education can meet the needs of globalized economies and technology development. These twin issues of access and quality in terms of secondary education will undoubtedly have a high priority as the new century progresses. The technology achievement index (TAI) shown in Table 2.2 ‘aims to capture how well a country is creating and diffusing technology and building a human skills base’ (United Nations Development Programme 2001, p.46). Despite what appear to be relatively low indices, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Singapore have been classified as ‘leaders’ in the field; Hong Kong and Malaysia are classified as ‘potential leaders’, Thailand, the Philippines, China, Iran, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India as ‘dynamic adopters’ with Pakistan and Nepal as ‘marginalized’ (Hill and Dhanda 2003, pp.1025–1026). This range of TAIs throughout the region is problematic. Deolalikar et al. (1997), Stiglitz (2003) and Lin (2004) have pointed out that technology development is crucial to the future economic growth of the region as economies become more integrated globally and as the nature of work changes towards the development of value-adding industries. What is clear from the TAIs in Table 2.2 and the analysis provided in the previous paragraph is that not all countries in Asia are in a position to benefit from technology development in the same way. There are considerable disparities both within the region and internationally referred to by Hill and Dhanda (2003, p.1029) as a ‘digital divide’ that creates the ‘information rich’ and the ‘information poor’. This digital divide can also be documented within countries as well as across countries and it hinders not only economic development but social development as well. In searching for an explanation of variable rates of technology development but also ways of responding to them, Tilak (2004) has shown how higher education development and technology development are related: the higher the participation rate in higher education the more likely it is that technology development can be accelerated. As Table 2.2 shows, the gross enrolment rate in higher education is extremely variable across the region, thus providing one possible explanation for the varying rates of technology development. Tilak (2004) therefore recommends that increased effort ought to be made to expand higher education in the region. Such a recommendation would not be popular with governments because of the cost implications and in addition it questions traditional development thinking that

16


sees educational development proceeding from lower to higher levels. Yet his point underscores the importance of education development in the region and its relationship to economic and social outcomes. Finally, it is clear that hi-tech educational solutions appropriate in the most advanced technological nations will not be suitable for the majority of countries in Asia, simply because of the lack of technical infrastructure. Given the importance of technology to development, these are issues of some significance for countries in the region when it comes to considering the nature and purpose of education in the twenty-first century.

Commitment to education Leung (2001) has argued that East Asian values and cultures go a long way towards explaining the success of Asian students in large-scale international student assessments. This supports the view that there is a strong cultural commitment to education within Asia – especially at the level of the family. Yet Sen (1999, p.3) has argued that at the level of nations within Asia there does not appear to be an equal commitment to human development in general and education in particular. He refers to ‘the eastern strategy’ that started in Japan and spread to other parts of East and Southeast Asia where the emphasis was on the provision of basic education for as many people as possible. Yet this has not been the case in India with the result that high levels of illiteracy continue to exist. Sen does not advance the argument that there are distinctive cultural characteristics in East and Southeast Asia that have led to this discrepancy. Yet it is clear that different kinds of commitment to education certainly result in different outcomes. Most commentators seem to agree, for example, that the extension of basic education enabled economic growth and development in East and Southeast Asia, yet the links to social and political development are less clear. India, for example, has a much greater commitment to democracy than China even though general levels of education are lower. Thus as important as commitment to education seems to be, it is only one input into creating fairer and more just societies. Another way of regarding commitment to education in Asia has been promoted by the Global Campaign for Education, ‘a coalition of development organizations, civil society networks and teachers’ unions’. It published a report on fourteen Asia-Pacific countries’ commitment to education (Asian South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education 2005) using a range of indicators including completion rates for basic education, public versus private provision of schooling, gender equity, quality inputs and overall equity. It provided the outcomes in the form of a ‘report’ card for each nation and an overall ranking as shown in Table 2.3. When conceived of in this way, commitment can be seen as multidimensional rather than relying on any simple consideration such as provision of education. Some countries (e.g. China and Malaysia) do well on basic provision but very little is known about how this provision extends to the poor, ethnic minorities and other disadvantaged groups so they both score poorly on overall equity. Public provision of education is highly valued by the groups composing this report so ‘user pays’ approaches in Vietnam, China and Indonesia come in for criticism


17

Table 2.3 An overview of each country’s performance in the school report Basic State Quality Gender Overall Marks Grade Rank education action inputs equality equity Weight Bangladesh Cambodia China India Indonesia Malaysia Nepal Pakistan Papua New Guinea Philippines Solomon Islands Sri Lanka Thailand Vietnam

24%

24%

24%

24%

4%

Out (A–F) Out of 100 of 14

E E B D C A E E

B C F E F C F F

D D A D E A D D

C D A D B A D E

E F F E B F E F

50 46 63 43 42 82 35 24

E E C E E A F F

7 8 5 9 10 2 11 14

D B

F B

D C

D B

E B

33 70

F C

12 4

D A A B

F A B F

E D A C

F A A B

F F A B

25 79 86 56

F B A D

13 3 1 6

Source: Asian South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education (2005), p.27

since such approaches are seen to conflict with equity principles. Commitment to education, therefore, is highly value-laden, reflecting deeply entrenched ideologies about who should be included in educational provision, how such provision should be resourced and even how classroom inputs are best delivered. On these criteria, it is clear that across the region there is considerable variation in commitment considered as a multidimensional ideologically oriented construct. This value-laden nature of commitment is not always recognized especially when UNDP analyses ‘commitment to education’ based on a number of financial indicators. Commitment in this context becomes a measure of the extent to which a country is willing to invest resources into education. For governments, there are always opportunity costs in resource allocation, so at one level resources can be seen as a useful way of indicating support for education. Table 2.4 provides two key indicators of resource allocation: commitment – percentage of GDP spent on education and percentage of total government expenditure on education. The first point to note about these indicators is that there is no obvious relationship between level of development and expenditure on education. Thus Japan (HDI value: 0.949) spends 3.7 per cent of GDP on education representing 10.5 per centof its total expenditure whereas Bhutan (HDI value: 0.538) spends 5.2 per cent of GDP representing 12.9 per cent of its total expenditure. The trend for countries with a low HDI value (e.g. Bangladesh and Nepal) to spend relatively high proportions of their budget on education (15.5 and 14.9 per cent respectively) can also be seen in Table 2.4.

Table 2.4 Commitment to education by countries in Asia as measured by selected financial indicators Public expenditure per student as a % of GDP per capita 2004 b

as % of GDP

as % of total government expenditure

Tertiary

Medium development 74 Thailand 79 Kazakhstan 81 China 84 Philippines 93 Sri Lanka 98 Maldives 105 Turkmenistan 108 Indonesia 109 Vietnam 110 Kyrgyzstan 113 Uzbekistan 116 Mongolia 122 Tajikistan 126 India 129 Cambodia 130 Myanmar 133 Lao People’s Dem. Rep. 134 Pakistan 135 Bhutan 137 Bangladesh 138 Nepal

Public expenditure on education 2002–2004 a

Secondary

High development 7 Japan 22 Hong Kong, China (SAR) 25 Singapore 26 Korea, Rep. of 34 Brunei Darussalam 61 Malaysia

HDI value 2004

Primary

HDI Countries rank

0.949

3.7

10.5c

22.6

22.3

17.1

0.927 0.916 0.912

4.7 3.73 4.6

23.3 – 16.1

15.9 – 18.5

21.8 – 24.9

67.9 – 5.0

0.871 0.805

4.44 8.0

9.1e 28.0

– 18.7

– 26.4

– 102.4

0.784 0.774 0.768 0.763 0.755 0.739 0.724 0.711 0.709 0.705 0.696 0.691 0.652 0.611 0.583 0.581

4.2 2.4 2.1g 3.2 3.1d 8.1 – 0.9 – 4.4 – 5.6 2.8 3.3 2.0 1.3c

40.0f 12.1e 13.0g 17.2 – 11.2d – 9.0 – 18.6c – – 16.9 10.7 14.6e 18.1c

13.8 10.1 – 11.7 – – – 2.6 – 7.7 – 15.7 6.7 9.3 6.5 –

13.0 7.9 – 10.0 – – – 4.9 – 14.5 – 14.6 9.2 17.4 – –

22.7 6.2 – 14.5 – – – 15.6 – 21.2 – 25.0 8.8 – – –

0.553 0.539 0.538 0.530 0.527

2.3 2.0 5.2c 2.2 3.4

11.0 8.5d 12.9c 15.5 14.9

6.7 – – 7.0 12.4

8.9 – – 13.5 10.5

82.4 – – 33.1 72.7

Key a Source: United Nations Development Programme (2006), pp.319–322; UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2006a) b Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2005a) c Data refer to 2001 d Data refer to 1998 e Data refer to 2000 f Data refer to 2005 g Data refer to 1999


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Yet it is not a universal trend because Pakistan is low on all measures. Thus it seems that the commitment of resources is a necessary but not sufficient condition to facilitate educational development. When that commitment is lacking, the result is that which is evidenced in Pakistan – low levels of basic education, low levels of participation in secondary education and low adult literacy rates – yet what else must countries do to make financial commitment work? First, it needs to be acknowledged that in some parts of the region, education development has been hindered by war and social dislocation (e.g. Cambodia and Vietnam), by regimes inhospitable to education (e.g. Myanmar), or by political upheavals (Central Asian Republics). It is of interest to note that in all these cases, apart from Myanmar, there is now a strong commitment to education suggesting that upheavals are not an insurmountable barrier to development – although they remain a major and unfortunate interference. From another perspective, Lewin (1997) refers to the internal efficiency of education systems that enables them to use resources wisely and focus on enhancing educational quality. He attributes large class sizes and teacher-dominated pedagogy in East Asia as key factors in enabling broader participation. He also refers to graduation rates, repeater rates and dropout rates as key indicators of internal efficiency (Lewin 1997, p.111). Where the latter two rates are high, greater costs are incurred than in systems where these rates are not high. Thus the way governments manage their education systems plays a fundamental role in ensuring that public funds can ensure optimal outcomes. Such a principle is easy to enunciate but more difficult to implement when it comes to considering the geographic diversities that characterize Asia. The vast expanses of India and China easily give rise to a rural–urban divide that leads almost naturally to differentiated educational services in different regions. Agricultural societies such as Bhutan and Nepal have far more difficult challenges in educational provision than Hong Kong and Singapore. Part of this is geographic, but another part is simply the size of the budgets available in the different jurisdictions. Thus as national budgets increase in East and Southeast Asia, more money becomes available for education. When this has to be dispersed over relatively small geographic areas, and when it is dispersed with high degrees of internal efficiency, the advantages over jurisdictions responsible for large rural areas are clear. Thus while financial indicators are a useful tool for examining commitment to education, they tell only part of the story. Each national jurisdiction struggles with unique problems as it seeks to provide education on a mass scale and it is often recognized, as in the case of China, that private resources will be as important as public resources and that local revenue will need to supplement national revenue. In some regions this solves problems and in others it exacerbates them, creating even greater divides within countries. Nevertheless, governments seek solutions that suit their own circumstances and their own ways of creating much-needed human capital – there is no general panacea in a region as diverse as Asia.

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The challenge ahead As the twenty-first century progresses, education may assume even greater importance than it did in the previous century. Part of the reason for this will be the economic utility of education that is the focus of the next chapter. Yet economics alone is not important enough to dictate the future of schools in the region. As shown throughout this chapter, the challenges confronting Asian countries will depend on a range of factors: level of development, resource availability, national priorities, social and economic circumstances, cultural norms and geographic realities. The press of global challenges may well be a common element in the consideration of many governments in formulating education policies, but it is local circumstances dictated by regional diversities that will determine responses. Common challenges and local responses may well be a fitting theme for this book as subsequent chapters explore how cultures, contexts and strategies interact as different societies respond to the challenges confronting schools. Schools for Asia’s ‘net’ generation are bound to be different from their twentieth-century counterparts – just how different and why will be explored in the remainder of the book.

3

Schools and the economy A human capital perspective

Introduction Links between schools and the economy are by no means new (Easton and Klees 1992), yet in many Asian countries they have developed a new status. Attempts have been made to show how ‘new growth theory’ in economics (Romer 1994), with its focus on learning and the role of new knowledge in stimulating economic development, is linked to curriculum reforms across the Asia-Pacific region (Kennedy 2005). Yet Lin (2004, p.4) has argued that ‘new growth theory’ itself is not sufficient to explain fully how economies grow. He points specifically to the newly industrialized economies of Asia and argues that investments in education in these countries have not been greater than in other more developed countries. These views deserve further scrutiny, yet it does seem that many Asian countries have come to recognize the value of education in a new way; and not just for some students, but for all students. While this is not unique to Asia, there are two aspects of schooling that make it a distinctive move on the part of Asian governments: 1 2

Education has traditionally been an elitist activity in Asia and responses to the idea of mass education have been much slower than in the West. The rationing of education has often resulted in the development of examination cultures and transmission modes of learning that have been inimical to the kind of pedagogies promoted by Western progressivism, pedagogies that have enjoyed a new lease of life under the impetus of ‘new growth theory’. (Kennedy 2005)

The purposes of this chapter, therefore, are to explore in some detail why investment in human capital has been given a new priority for most Asian nations; how such investments have the potential to change the face of schooling in the region; and what are the likely implications of these changes. At the same time, an attempt will be made to explore how generalizable these new emphases are across the region given its diversities and the salience of local priorities.

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Investments in human capital: global pressures and local needs Human capital theory, developed in the 1960s, provided a rationale for investment in education and that rationale has now become part of accepted wisdom: many economists have pointed out that education and training create assets in the form of knowledge and skills which increase the productive capacity of manpower in just the same way as an investment in new machinery raises the productive capacity of the stock of physical capital. (Woodhall 1987, p.1) Yet well before that, indeed centuries before, it was recognized than an educated class was necessary for smooth and efficient government. Thus in China the education of a scholar–official class was a priority, irrespective of the political orientation of different emperors since it was recognized that public administration needed to be constant and ongoing. Yet by the early twentieth century it was equally recognized that such an elitist approach to education would not serve the needs of the modern nation state and the education of scholar–officials was abandoned. In industrial societies, education needs to be more distributed and initial formulations of human capital theory provided the rationale for doing so: an educated workforce was a more productive workforce. Lewin (1997, p.88) pointed out that primary school gross enrolment ratios in Asia are high, but there is a fall-off when it comes to secondary and tertiary. He also makes the point that such ratios are no higher for the newly industrialized economies of Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea) than for other parts of Asia. Thus while there has been progress in the wider distribution of education in Asian countries, it has not extended to all levels of education. Behrman et al. (2003) have also pointed out that education has not been extended equally to all individuals in the community, so that disadvantaged groups in particular often miss out. This tends to support the argument advanced by Lin (2004) that the widespread extension of education was not a precondition for economic development in countries like China, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore. What, then, is the current status of education in modern Asian nations? Ritchie (2003) has argued that to understand current policy education priorities in Asia, it is important to understand the role played by the Asian financial crisis in 1997. He has argued that prior to that date, the governments of Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, for example, had relied excessively on foreign capital and a low level skills base for economic growth in an increasingly technologically sophisticated world. There was some commitment to human capital development in education policy prior to 1997 yet ‘in virtually every country the crisis elevated the issue to prominence as part of a strategic imperative to transition from manufacturing-based economies to “knowledge-based” economies’ (Ritchie 2003, p.4). Thus after 1997, education and the economy in many Asian

Schools and the economy

23

countries became inextricably linked. Education became part of micro-economic reform designed to support new imperatives in the macro economy – the socalled ‘knowledge economy’. Deolalikar et al. (1997) lend support to Ritchie’s (2003) argument that the conditions of Asia’s economic development prior to 1997 were somewhat fragile when it came to human resource development. There is agreement that most Asian countries, although not all, had focused on human capital development at the level of basic education and that this had been sufficient, even for the socalled ‘Asian miracle’ achieved by the newly industrialized economies. Yet this level of human resource requirement was inadequate for sustainable economic development. Deolalikar et al. (1997, p.132) argued that while most of the analysis relating to the Asian financial crisis has focused on the need for new institutional structures to support financial decision-making, the real problem for future growth may be ‘gaps in human skills and technological capabilities’. These gaps are not the same across the region but are dependent on context and level of development: for the Southeast Asian tigers [it is] the lack of an adequate supply of well trained technicians, engineers and scientists ... for the advanced economies of East Asia ... further acceleration of growth would require technological progress attainable through new innovations that stem from a sophisticated endowment of human capital, that is absent in these economies. Universal primary education and elitist forms of secondary education had provided the basis for the first phase of the so-called ‘Asian miracle’, but they could not sustain further growth. As Deolalikar et al. (1997, p.132) point out, what was needed after 1997 was ‘product innovation’ and ‘technological innovation’ that required higher level outcomes than could be delivered by basic education. Education policy in the region needed to be reoriented if such outcomes were to be achieved. There is, after 1997, an amazing convergence of education policy across the region especially as it relates to the school curriculum. Table 3.1 gives some indication of the extent to which reform agendas have characterized the Asia-Pacific region in the post-Asian financial crisis period. The sample of reforms outlined above does not exhaust the extent of the reform agenda in the region. In some other cases aid agencies influence the nature of reforms being addressed. In the Central Asian republics, for example, where education development is supported by the Asian Development Bank, there is still a focus on the needs of the economy, but the priority is ‘quality enhancement ... Reforming the contents and processes of education to improve quality and relevance ... This involves developing new curricula, introducing modern textbooks and teaching materials, retraining teachers in subject content and teaching methodologies, and strengthening student assessment systems’ (Asian Development Bank 2000, p.2). This kind of reform priority suggests that access to education is not such a problem as its relevance. This is similar to many of the countries outlined in Table 3.1.

Table 3.1 The scope of educational reform in the Asia-Pacific region, 1997–2002 Country

Policy

Year

Emphasis

China

Curriculum Reform of Basic Education

2001

Hong Kong, SAR

Learning for Life – Learning Through Life Learning to Learn: The Way Forward in Curriculum Development Competency Based Curriculum

2000

‘Focus on students’ learning interests and experience, including knowledge and skills which are necessary for lifelong learning’ (Huang 2004b, p.106) ‘To build a lifelong learning society’ (Education Commission 2000, p.34)

Japan

The Education Reform Plan for the 21st Century

2001

Korea

Adapting Education to the e Information Age Smart School Curriculum

2001

Philippines

Restructured Basic Education Curriculum

2002

Singapore

Thinking Schools, Learning Nation

1997

Taiwan

Moving Towards a 1998 Learning Society and Action Plan for Educational Reform

Thailand

National Education 1999 Act, 1999

Indonesia

Malaysia

2000

2002

1999

‘Help students to build up their capabilities to learn independently’ (Curriculum Development Council 2000, p.3) ‘To develop a process-oriented way of teaching multicultural attitudes and behavior such as tolerance, mutual-respect, mutual understanding, and recognition of religious, ethnic, and cultural diversities and differences’ (Baidhawy 2004) ‘Establish an educational philosophy suitable for the new century and improve the provision for education’ (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) 2001) ‘A reform of the educational system for the new society through ICT’ (Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (Korea) 2001c) ‘To foster the knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate for success in the Information Age’ (Pang 2005) ‘Raising the quality of the Filipino learners and graduates and empowering them for lifelong learning’ (Division of Digos City 2006) ‘A “learning nation” envisions a national culture and social environment that promotes lifelong learning in our people’ (Ministry of Education (Singapore) 2007) ‘Curriculum designed for the new century: developing humanitarian attitudes, enhancing integration ability, cultivating democratic literacy, fostering both indigenous awareness and a global perspective, and building up the capacity for lifelong learning’ (Ministry of Education (Taiwan) 2003) ‘1) lifelong education for all, 2) participation by all segments of society, and 3) continuous development of the bodies of knowledge and the learning process’ (Office of the National Education Commission (Thailand) 2003, p.7)


25

In Bhutan, on the other hand, 2007 is the target date for the achievement of universal primary education while ‘the economy is being progressively transformed from subsistence farming to a broader cash-based economy’ (Department of Education (Bhutan) 2003, p.4). Bhutan is still in the stage of expanding access and while this does not preclude quality enhancement, it is a different kind of reform priority. Yet, as will be shown in the following section, expanding access is just the first step in creating a skilled workforce and may not of itself create the kind of workforce that is needed. This is one lesson learned from the newly industrialized economies after 1997. Human capital needs are not static: they change as the economy changes and if education is to deliver relevant knowledge and skills, it must change as well. This issue will be addressed in the following section.

Human capital needs and the changing face of schooling in Asia While the upgrading of human capital is a common need across the region, it does not take place in a vacuum and it cannot take place without certain preconditions being met. For example, in reflecting on priorities in Mongolia, Weidman (2001, p.5) noted that most educational buildings are now more than 20 years old and are in acute need of renovation and refurbishment. Heating systems in many school buildings either do not function or are in poor condition, a major difficulty in a country that experiences such severe winter conditions. Much of the equipment in schools is also in poor condition. These issues are not usually the subject of discussion when it comes to educational reform but it is clear that in some countries, such conditions may well act as significant impediments to reform. With a similar focus to that of Mongolia, Vietnam has also identified multiple objectives in its development plan for the year 2010. On the one hand ‘the 10 year Strategy lays out a vision of Vietnam “step by step moving towards a knowledge-based economy”’ (World Bank 2001a, p.15). Yet just like other Asian countries before it, Vietnam needs to consolidate the achievements of the illiteracy eradication and primary education universalization programme, provide universal access to lower secondary education, create an enabling environment for distance education and life-long learning, modernize teaching methods and upgrade the quality of staff and school infrastructure (World Bank 2001b, pp.57–58) That is to say, the eventual goal may be the ‘knowledge economy’, but the process of preparing education systems for it requires that basic issues be addressed before a more far-ranging reform agenda can be addressed.

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The nature of this ‘more far-ranging reform agenda’ can be seen in societies like Hong Kong and Singapore. In these societies, the reform agendas build on the expansion of basic education that has already been achieved. Tan and Gopinathan (2000) have highlighted the main elements of the curriculum reform agenda in Singapore: It focuses on developing all students into active learners with critical thinking skills and on developing a creative and critical thinking culture within schools. Its key strategies include (1) the explicit teaching of critical and creative thinking skills; (2) the reduction of subject content; (3) the revision of assessment modes; and; (4) a greater emphasis on processes instead of on outcomes when appraising schools. (p.7) Under the banner of ‘ability driven education’ (Tan 2005, p.446), this new policy direction, that fits into the Thinking Schools, Learning Nation theme announced by the government in 1997, ‘aims to equip and prepare students to meet the challenges in a knowledge economy by taking into consideration their individual abilities and talents (Tan 2005, p.447). This focus on all students rather than just elite students is a significant change in policy direction. It signals a move away from a fixed curriculum for all students, greater flexibility for schools and more choice for students. Importantly, it recognizes that there are multiple domains in which students might excel, so there is no longer an exclusive emphasis on academic achievement. To give real effect to this, changes have been introduced to what counts as school achievement. In 2004 it was announced that the ranking of schools on academic achievement in ‘O’ levels would be replaced by a more broad band approach ‘so as to support and encourage schools in their efforts to provide an all-round education’ (Ministry of Education (Singapore) 2004a). In Hong Kong the Education Commission (2000) announced its vision for schools in the twenty-first century: ● ● ● ● ● ●

to build a lifelong learning society to raise the overall quality of students to construct a diverse education system to create an inspiring learning environment to acknowledge the importance of moral education, and to develop an education system that is rich in tradition but is cosmopolitan and culturally diverse (p.5)

Soon after, the Curriculum Development Council (2001a) provided a curriculum response: ‘our overarching principle is to help students Learn to Learn, which involves developing their independent learning capabilities leading to whole person development and life-long learning’ (Curriculum Development


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Council 2001a, p.10). The achievement of this objective rests on changes to curriculum, teaching and assessment. Kennedy (2005, pp.105–112) referred to the main outlines of the reforms. School subjects were grouped into key learning areas, thus encouraging more integrated approaches to curriculum development and a focus on generic skills. There was also recognition that responsibility for the school curriculum is shared between the schools and a central curriculum agency. While the former are encouraged to experiment and respond to their local communities, there is also an injunction to provide students with access to a curriculum that reflects the principles of the reform. Assessment for learning was promoted as a key element of the reforms especially as an alternative to testing. Four cross-curriculum perspectives were identified to support student growth and development as citizens and as learners (moral and civic education, reading, project learning and using information technology) and the focus is to be on learners and their needs. All of this was to be encapsulated in a learning culture that valued student-centred approaches to teaching. Another element in the reform agenda was referred to as ‘the no loser principle’. The reforms were designed so that ‘there should not be, at any stage of education, dead-end screening that blocks further learning opportunities’ (Education Commission 2000, p.36). The Secondary Schools Placement Test was to be eliminated; the five bands of secondary schools were reduced to three; O levels and A levels were to be replaced with a single Form 6 examination and all students were to complete a full six years of secondary education. Under the reforms, education was for all, not just an elite and there were meant to be pathways through the system rather than barriers. Taken together, the cases of Mongolia, Vietnam, Singapore and Hong Kong demonstrate the diversity of schooling in the region and the dangers of trying to draw generalizations. Nevertheless, Kennedy (in press a) has tried to show that despite the diversity it is possible to see patterns in the development processes across the region. Figure 3.1 is an attempt to show that despite different developmental needs, economic drivers remain at the forefront of curriculum and instructional reform processes. Figure 3.1 acknowledges the pervasiveness of economic priorities for all countries, but recognizes that countries across the region respond according to their capacity. Some countries, largely high development countries (see Chapter 2), respond immediately and have moved to reform the school curriculum so that it can meet the needs of the ‘knowledge economy’. Other countries have to address mediating factors such as access to education, an adequate teacher workforce, new educational resources and appropriate buildings before they can address major curriculum issues. In all cases, however, there is an emphasis on aligning schools to changing economic priorities, however those priorities might be defined. It is not always an easy task as shown by the case of the Philippines.

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Cultures and contexts influencing schools in Asia Key driver of curriculum and instructional reform

Knowledge economies requiring ‘ideas’ and ‘innovation’

Curriculum and instruction need to be reformed

Schools need to be the engine rooms for innovation

Different countries respond according to capacity

If medium development they address mediating factors

If high development they address reform

Social values and loyalties are priorities for all countries

Figure 3.1 The economy as a key driver of educational reform (based on Kennedy in press a)

Amante (2003, p.275), as reported by the Asian Development Bank (2005, p.77), diagnosed the problems of Filipino education in the following way: The low level of benefits derived from the Philippine education, especially at the secondary and tertiary levels, is traceable to the unemployability and low productivity of Philippine labor. In turn, these could be attributed to inadequate investments and low levels of technology utilized by business establishments and the very thin economic base of the country.


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The Philippines has not been short of educated labour. According to data shown in Table 2.1 in Chapter 2, it has a gross enrolment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary of 82 per cent and an education index of 0.89. Nevertheless, the above quotation suggests that the Filipino labour force simply does not meet the needs of employers. Yet it is even more complicated than this would suggest. The Asian Development Bank (2005) has suggested that where the supply of labour cannot meet the needs of industry, this acts as a disincentive for industry to invest in high-tech developments since the assumption is that there will be no labour to manage or use it. This is a most ‘unvirtuous’ circle that appears in the Philippines to perpetuate a preference for academic rather than practical education with the result that the mismatch continues with drastic consequences for the employment prospects of individuals and economic growth. Thus the provision of education alone is not sufficient to meet the economic needs of any nation: education must be aligned to human capital needs if it is to play a constructive role in the economic life of nations. As will be shown in subsequent chapters, this is not the only role for education to play in society but it has become an increasingly important one in modern Asian nations.

Implications of a human capital perspective for schooling in Asia What is clear from the above analysis is that schools have an important role to play in Asian countries in the twenty-first century. Yet it is not an uncontested role since it has been argued that schools are not the only or even the most important sites for learning. Heckman (1999, p.20), for example, argued that popular discussions of skill formation almost always focus on expenditures in schools or on educational reforms and neglect important noninstitutional sources of skill formation, which are equally important, if not more important, producers of the varieties of skills that are useful in a modern economy. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD 2001) also suggested scenarios for the future of schooling that envisaged less reliance on formal schooling and more reliance on a ‘networked’ community to deliver learning outcomes valued by the community. Thus if schools are to remain important in Asia’s future, they cannot be the schools that have come to characterize mass education in its present form. What kind of schools will be needed in the future? As can be seen from the analysis in the previous section, a key part of the policy discourse in the region is related to the ‘knowledge economy’ and the need to develop a workforce that can meet the needs of such an economy. A significant assumption of this emphasis is that the knowledge and skills needed for the ‘knowledge economy’ will be different from what is needed for an agricultural economy or manufacturing-based economies. Kennedy (2005) has argued that the unique needs of the ‘knowledge economy’ are linked to ‘new growth theory’

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in economics (Romer 1994), referred to earlier in this chapter. The key element of ‘new growth theory’ is its assumption that economic growth is fuelled not so much by investment in machinery and equipment as by the new ideas and innovative processes that people apply to business and industry. ‘Ideas-generated growth’ requires investment in people who are creative, innovative and problemsolving and who can apply these attributes to increasing efficiency and enhancing technological development. The ‘knowledge economy’ is driven by ‘knowledge workers’ equipped with very specific skills and attributes. The implications for schools are quite significant. The emphasis needs to be not so much on traditional academic disciplines as integrated learning areas and generic skills, on assessment for learning rather than examinations and on studentcentred learning rather than teacher-directed instruction. Kennedy (in press a) has put it this way: Such agendas seek to remove barriers whether they be subject boundaries, teacher dominated classroom strategies or the undue influence of testing and examinations. In this they are consistent with the economic impetus that is driving them: creativity, innovation and problem solving, so necessary to the new economy, can only be nurtured in classroom environments that are unconstrained in terms of teaching style, learning opportunities and assessment practices. A liberalized curriculum is a reflection of the needs of a liberal economy. This requires a significant shift for many schools, not only in Asia but elsewhere as well. The enormity of the agenda can be seen in the reform initiatives in Hong Kong and Singapore described above. The focus of ‘new growth theory’ is learning whether the learning takes place in schools, in homes or on the job. Schools, so often characterized as ‘learning organizations’, need to become just that if they are to contribute to the ‘knowledge economy’. While the economic impetus for this focus on learning is new, it is obviously not a new idea for educators or schools. Yet more often than not schools in many Asian countries have become part of the process for selecting a small number of students to proceed to the next stage of education. They are now being called on to cater for all students, since societies cannot afford to squander their human resources and elites can no longer carry the burden for change and innovation that is seen to drive economic growth. This expansion of education opportunity is an economic necessity but can also serve as a mechanism for social justice since education can benefit all groups in society in ways that have not been possible in the past. The challenge for all education systems is to develop policies and the accompanying practices that will lead to transformations in classrooms. Kennedy (in press a) has shown the fragility of this process when it comes to actual implementation of reform efforts. In Asia the challenges are perhaps even greater than in the West. The kind of pedagogies and classroom practices being promoted to produce creative and innovative ‘knowledge workers’ are very much akin to the kind of pedagogies associated with Western progressivism (Kennedy 2005). The difference


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is that now such foci as child-centred instruction, activity learning and self-assessment are directed towards the instrumental ends of producing workers who are more self-reliant, more creative and with better skills for cooperation and team work since these are the values and attributes that will support the ‘knowledge economy’. This is very much a challenge for notions of the teacher as ‘maestro’ – a key image of teachers in East Asian societies. This issue of how teachers in Asian schools confront these new demands given cultural and local images of the teaching profession will be pursued in more depth in a later chapter. It is a significant issue since successful implementation of any reform effort rests with these teachers. In order to facilitate this new work of teachers, policy makers across the region have gone to some length to establish policy frameworks that signal the new directions to be taken. These frameworks will be the subject of the following chapter. They indicate the importance that is now attached to ‘learning’, as distinct from ‘schooling’, in the region and the new role of schools in contributing to the economic transformation of nations.

4

Policy contexts for lifelong learning

Introduction Speaking at the opening of a high-level Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Beijing in 2001, President Jiang Zemin made the point that ‘education is the foundation for human capacity building, and learning is the basic means by which to improve people’s capability’ (Jiang 2001, p.2). His address was followed by one from the Sultan of Brunei who highlighted the same issue, though he put it a little differently: I would first like to make the point that there is nothing new about technological change. Nor about the need for human creativity and innovation. The new century, however, puts them in a new dimension. This is, of course, because of the rapid developments taking place in technology. These mean that we have to acquire skills and knowledge continually and quickly. (Sultan of Brunei 2001, p.7) These two regional leaders, from countries with vastly different political and social systems, had a common vision about the important role of learning in the social and economic circumstances that characterized the new century. Their views were by no means unique, but in the context of the particular APEC meeting they had inaugurated, they took on a particular meaning as shown in the following quotation which characterizes the discourse of the meeting: The challenges created by the new economy emerge at many levels. ... Individuals from their student days and throughout their working lives face the need to continually update their knowledge and skills as part of a lifelong learning society. The challenges require stakeholders to question many traditional ways of thinking about, for example, technological change, work organization, management practices, employment practices, education and training and market behaviour, and adopt a new concept of development to step up human capacity building (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Secretariat 2001, p.12)


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Learning here is directly related to the needs of the economy – what in other parts of the meeting was referred to as the ‘knowledge economy’. What is more, there is a specific link drawn here between these economic learning needs and ‘a lifelong learning society’. This economic construction of lifelong learning is important to understand and it has been the subject of much academic debate and discussion that has been largely negative. Some writers, for example, have seen this economic emphasis on lifelong learning as a product of the postmodern condition (Edwards and Usher 2001) or late modernity (Hake 1999), suggesting that current policy priorities are a reflection of the new demands imposed by post-industrial societies. Edwards (2002) used the Foucaudian concept of ‘governmentality’ to highlight the role of the state in supporting lifelong learning to meet important economic objectives. A number of writers point to the origins of lifelong learning and compare these with the current economically determined approaches. The difference in approach can be quite revealing. Bagnall (2001), for example, calls these current approaches ‘culturally regressive’, while Griffin (1999) explains the changes in terms of the difference between ‘social democracy’ and ‘neo-liberalism’ to highlight the theoretical constructions influencing lifelong learning. Field (2000) also makes much of the origins of lifelong learning in order to highlight the differences between current policies and the views of practitioners in the field. Coffield (1999) goes even further by linking lifelong learning to mechanisms of social control. Peters (2001) criticizes the way in which current policies remain uncontested by many educators since he was able to identify ten key areas for critique relating to current conceptions of lifelong learning. Negativity towards current conceptions of lifelong learning is undoubtedly the dominant motif of these critiques, despite the enthusiastic endorsement of politicians as shown above. Han (2001) has shown that the kind of analysis revealed in the above critiques is also helpful in understanding Asian contexts for lifelong learning. In his review of the development of lifelong learning in six Asian countries, he makes the point that global issues and concerns rather than purely local priorities have stimulated the development of national lifelong learning systems. He marks the take-off date as the Asian financial crisis commenting that ‘the transition from industrial to information or knowledge economy became an urgent issue’ (Han 2001, p.87). He also noted that different countries had different starting points depending on the development of their economies but that the trajectories were all the same: a fundamental restructuring of entire national education systems. The pervasiveness of lifelong learning as a policy priority, reflected in the advocacy by politicians, the scepticism of many academics and the actual pace of implementation, raises a number of important issues that will be explored in the remainder of this chapter. The economic rationale for lifelong learning will be explored in greater detail in the following section since it will be difficult to understand the dominant economic discourse if the relationship between lifelong learning the economy is not well established. At the same time, the diversity that characterizes Asia, which was referred to in Chapter 2, also has the potential to

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influence lifelong learning so that alternative constructions of lifelong learning will also be explored. Finally, an assessment will be made of lifelong learning’s potential contribution to schools in Asia.

Approaches to lifelong learning: issues and perspectives Lifelong learning: economic constructions for knowledge societies In the previous chapter reference was made to ‘new growth theory’ in economics as the basis for current thinking about human capital development in modern societies. Such a development is not unrelated to lifelong learning, so it will be helpful to understand the basic elements of new growth theory as a means of understanding better the significance of lifelong learning as a policy priority in some parts of the region. In seeking to extend the application of ‘new growth theory’ to lifelong learning, this section will build on the work of Kennedy (2005). Kennedy (2005) identified two approaches to human capital theory and they are summarized in Table 4.1. Table 4.1 reduces a complex literature, largely economic in nature and documented in Kennedy (2005), to an easily understandable graphic. Its main purpose is to highlight the main features of different ways of thinking about the relationship between economic growth and the contribution that education can make towards it. Yet the literature itself does not always present these approaches in such a dichotomized way. Maré (2004, p.7), for example, pointed to the contribution that new growth theory (which he refers to as ‘endogenous growth theory’ or EGT) has made to the more traditional view of human capital development: The renewed emphasis on these issues, evidenced by the development of EGT, reflects in part dissatisfaction with the lack of attention paid to the process of discovery within the neoclassical growth framework. Assuming growth in productivity, as is done in the neoclassical growth model, is sufficient to generate sustained growth in output but it is not very informative about what is driving growth or whether policy can influence it. Arnold (1994) made a similar point when he argued that new growth theory ‘fills an important gap in the neoclassical theory by providing a rigorous description of the source of technological progress’. The key issue to understand in all of this is that technological change, acknowledged in both neo-classical and new growth theories as the key determinant of economic growth, is stimulated in new growth theory by highly educated individuals capable of making creative and innovative decisions about both processes and products. Thus Temple (2002, p.41) has commented: when a relatively large number of skilled people are available, more become engaged in R&D activities, more ideas are generated or implemented, and this raises the long-run growth rate.


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The argument does not rest on any assumptions about the role of universities as themselves providers of research. In the framework of new growth theory, education is important because some of the educated will create new ideas in the private sector, not because the educated engage in university research. Research funded by the state may be an important complement to privately funded R&D, but the claim that education matters for growth has greater generality.

Table 4.1 Theoretical underpinnings of different approaches to human capital development

Assumption

Human capital development as a static process: educated workers improve productivity

Human capital development as a dynamic process: workers with the capacity to produce new ideas can enhance technological innovation

Education can contribute to economic growth but its contribution is exogenous to the economic system through the creation of human capital

Education can contribute to economic growth but its contribution is endogenous to the economic system because of the presence of human capital within the system Theoretical basis is ‘new growth theory’ Education’s contribution to economic growth is measured through the creation of innovation and new ideas that improve efficiency or result in new and improved products There are no limitations on investment in education since new ideas and innovation will always result in efficiencies and improved product development Education is a dynamic variable – the focus is on what is learnt and how it is learnt as well as on ‘quantity’ Learning is the central process in developing innovative and creative workers The content of the curriculum is of central concern to the development of human capital that has the potential to contribute to the creation of new ideas and innovation

Theory

Theoretical basis in neoclassical economics Contribution Education’s contribution to economic growth is measured through the assessment of both private and social rates of return on investments made in education Investment Investment in education is potential limited by diminishing rates of return on the investment

View of education

Education is a static variable – the focus is on ‘quantity’ with little concern for content

View of learning

Learning is important but what is learnt and how it is learnt are not of central concern The content of the school curriculum is of little concern to the economic potential of education

View of curriculum

Source: Kennedy’s (2005, pp. 6–9) review of an extensive literature

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It is important to note two emphases here: the focus on research and development as the generator of new ideas and the assumption that such activities need not be confined to traditional institutions such as universities. In these twin senses, new growth theory does not necessarily privilege the existing educational status quo. While it assumes a high level of aggregate skills in the community, it does not assume that these will be available from traditional sources or that learning will be confined to prescribed periods of the life cycle. ‘Learning by doing’, ‘learning on the job’ and ‘learning through synergy with other educated learners’ are seen to be important ways to create new ideas, and very often as substitutes for formal accredited learning. Thus while new growth theory unleashes learning as a key process in the innovation process that can lead to technological change, it is probably more of a challenge for existing approaches to education than it is a support. It is of particular interest to note in the particular context of this chapter, that the kind of learning being advocated is related to adults rather than to school students. Other literature referring to education’s impact on economic growth makes a similar assumption – it is adult learning that makes the difference (Patrinos 1994; Dahlin 2002). Hallegatte (2004, p.16), in developing a model for long-term exogenous growth, made a direct link to the importance of lifelong learning: The model also emphasizes the importance of the worker’s ability to shift from one technology to another one during their work life. It supports (i) a higher initial education than strictly required by current technologies; (ii) lifelong learning facilities to help workers to adapt to new technologies; (iii) a continuous adaptation of the education system to the most recent technologies. Levin (2002, p.17) also linked endogenous growth theory to lifelong learning when he argued that post-compulsory education and continuing education enables societies to capitalize quickly on new knowledge through a higher level of general technical literacy, information flows that provide quick access to the latest developments, and widespread research and inquiry that can generate technical advance. From Levin’s perspective, these benefits were such that they justified government support for lifelong learning, since the outcomes in the form of enhanced economic growth was a general good rather than just a private good for the individuals concerned. While ‘new growth theory’ privileges adult learning in the ways described above, there are implications for all levels of education, largely because of the very traditional nature of both compulsory and post-compulsory education throughout much of Asia, and indeed the world. The World Bank has recently highlighted the differences between these traditional approaches to education and what is required when education is driven by concerns for lifelong learning (World Bank 2003, p.xx).


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Table 4.2 A comparison of different approaches to learning Traditional learning model

Lifelong learning

The teacher is the source of knowledge. Educators are guides to sources of knowledge. Learners receive knowledge from People learn by doing. the teacher. Learners work by themselves. People learn in groups and from each other. Tests are given to prevent progress Assessment is used to guide learning until students have completely strategies and identify pathways for mastereda set of skills and to ration future learning. access to further learning. All learners do the same thing. Educators develop individualized learning plans. Teachers receive initial training plus Educators are lifelong learners. Initial ad hoc inservice training. training and ongoing professional development are linked. ‘Good’ learners are identified and People have access to learning permitted to continue their education. opportunities over a lifetime. Source: World Bank (2003, p.xx)

Ruth Kagia, the World Bank’s Director, Education, is in no doubt about the purpose of the kind of lifelong learning being promoted here: ‘Lifelong learning is education for the knowledge economy’ (World Bank 2003, p.xiii). From this perspective, all levels of education need to be aligned to make lifelong learning a reality from the early years through to post-compulsory education. The knowledge and skill set to achieve this end has been clearly specified: mastery of technical, interpersonal, and methodological skills. Technical skills include literacy, foreign language, mathematics, science, problem-solving, and analytical skills. Interpersonal skills include teamwork, leadership, and communication skills. Methodological skills include the ability to learn on one’s own, to pursue lifelong learning, and to cope with risk and change. (World Bank 2003, p.xx) ‘New growth theory’, the ‘knowledge economy’ and lifelong learning are, therefore, integrally linked. The latter is seen not so much as an extension to existing education systems, as a radical transformation of them. Traditional curriculum and ways of teaching and learning are inimical to the needs of an economy requiring new ideas and innovation. Elite education systems that cater for the needs of a minority will not fuel the kind of lifelong learning culture advocated by agencies such as the World Bank. The impact of this economic construction of learning on regional education policies has been demonstrated amply by Han (2001) and there is little doubt about its importance. A key question, however, is

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whether it is the only way in which lifelong learning has been constructed in Asia. This issue will be addressed in the following section.

Lifelong learning: local contexts and alternative constructions As shown in the previous section, lifelong learning has been identified as a policy priority and its influence can be seen in specific policy approaches across the region. While the World Bank has been a keen promoter of lifelong learning, it has not been alone in doing so. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (2004), the International Labour Organization (2004), the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Secretariat 2001) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), are all in accord about the importance of lifelong learning to the region. Yet the specific contexts in which lifelong learning are promoted can often tell a different story from the international policy discourse. Local needs and priorities can still dictate policy within countries. The cases of Japan and Nepal demonstrate this point well.

Japan Narushima (2002) has shown how Japan has had a tradition of public adult education – more often referred to as social education – at least since the end of the Second World War and how this tradition was expanded into life–long learning policy within a specific legislative framework in the 1990s. Shiraishi (1998, p.7), reflecting on this transition, pointed out that ‘lifelong integrated education’ started to influence Japan in the 1960s following the use of the term by UNESCO, but by the early 1980s the term ‘lifelong learning’ started to be used in official government reports. One of these reports provided the new rationale for such learning (Shiraishi 1998, p.8): ●

●

●

to remedy the evils brought about by the diploma society and to aim at creating a society in which one’s learning outcome attained at different periods throughout one’s life is adequately valued without reference to a formal school record the increasing demands for learning for spiritual enrichment and the enjoyment of life in the face of rising income levels, expanding leisure time, aging of the population, and the maturation of Japanese society the need to incessantly acquire new knowledge and skill in the face of highly developing science and technology, the information society, internationalization and changes in the industrial structure.

Gordon (1998) makes the point that as lifelong learning became an official part of Japan’s education policy in the 1990s, it also became more centralized and bureaucratized, a point also made by Narushima (2002). At the same time, lifelong learning policy has made little impact on increasing access to university education for adults or influencing the career-oriented academic nature of primary


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and secondary schooling. Nevertheless every municipality in Japan is likely to have its kôminkan or citizens’ hall that plays an important role in providing access to activities for many people (Gordon 1998, section 4): Kôminkan offer a wide variety of classes, hold meetings, allow residents to hold meetings, provide physical education and recreation activities, sponsor lectures and exhibitions, publish and make available books and other materials, and sponsor other types of activities. In 1992, Japanese residents used kôminkan 260 million times for all types of activities, which included 8.7 million people taking courses and classes. The important point to note about this idiosyncratic provision of lifelong learning is that it has grown out of a local tradition of community-based social education, and it is directed at local issues such as the need to provide for an aging population and the equal need to counter the rigidity of other sectors of education. While terminology such as ‘lifelong learning’ has been co-opted from international policy discourse, its rationale is not overly economic. As Shiraishi (1998, p.9) pointed out with reference to the 1987 report that first introduced the concept of lifelong learning: in this proposal, however, the economic aspects of this necessity are not directly indicated. Rather, the focus is on the individual learner in the expression ‘the integrative development of life-long professional capacities’ in which the link is made between life-long learning and economic factors. That is, lifelong learning as it has emerged in Japan as a policy construct is connected to the local rather than the global, with the social and political rather than the economic. It is lifelong learning ‘with Japanese characteristics’.

Nepal If lifelong learning has a role to play in an advanced industrial society such as Japan, what is its role in an agricultural society such as that of Nepal? The International Labour Organization (2002a) has described Nepal as the world’s 12th poorest country, with an annual per capita of $241, the lowest in the South Asian region. About 38 per cent of its 23.2 million population live in poverty. The country’s economy is still predominantly based on agriculture, which is heavily dependent on the monsoon. According to the census 2001, ‘46.3% above 6 years of age and 56% above 15 years of age are illiterate’. Similarly, according to the annual school based data of MOES, 2000, ‘of the total primary school age children 19.6% are never enrolled in school 45.4% of the children enrolled in primary schools drop out without completing grade five’.

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In such a context, education has a crucial role to play at the level of basic education and in particular as a mechanism to ensure equity across gender, ethnic and even caste boundaries. To these ends, the Nepalese government has set targets and goals related to the extension of early childhood care and primary education for all groups in the community as part of its Education for All (EFA) Action Plan (Ministry of Education and Sports (Nepal) 2003, pp.1–8). The target date for achieving key goals in these areas is 2015, but even if adequate progress is made in the sectors referred to above, there remains the significant issue of adult illiteracy. In 2005 the adult literacy rate for the population as a whole was 48.6 per cent (United Nations Development Programme 2005a) and just 34.9 per cent for women (United Nations Development Programme 2005b). The government has set a target of 90 per cent for 2015 and has adopted a variety of strategies in pursuit of that target. One of the strategies is concerned with the development of community learning centres (CLCs) ‘as the community-based physical provisions for learning resources and activities – venue and support system for literacy activities, continuous/lifelong learning, community-based educational forums and income-generating activities’ (Ministry of Education and Sports (Nepal) 2003, p.9). This is the only reference to lifelong learning in the EFA Report, but it is an important one since it is related to out-of-school learning directed at an adult population and designed as a complementary strategy to a raft of other initiatives that focus on schools. Thus in Nepal, lifelong learning takes on a very distinctive form and seeks to address issues of poverty, access and equity. As mentioned in the quotation above, it has some links with the economic needs of individuals, but its social dimensions are at least as important. Some insight can be gained into Nepal’s CLCs from a general review that was carried out by Pant (2003). She and her colleagues in UNESCO’s APPEAL programme identified ‘good practices’ relating to CLCs across the Asia-Pacific region, especially in relation to gender equality and lifelong learning. She identified a significant social role for CLCs (Pant 2003, pp.6–7): the CLC is an institution that aims at empowerment, social transformation and improvement in the quality of life through literacy, income generating skills and social action. An effective CLC ensures the direct participation of the target group, flexibility and community resource mobilization. It also allows for leadership to emerge from the community itself with the support generated through strengthened co-ordination, networking and partnership with various local organizations and agencies. In Nepal, these broader social objectives seemed to come to the fore in the CLCs that were identified. Concerned not simply with literacy training for women, the CLCs also influenced community attitudes towards women and in some cases equipped them with entrepreneurial skills that helped them to become economically independent. As one CLC participant commented (Pant 2003, p.63):


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After six months, I learned to read and write. I also learned how to make masaura (pellets of black gram and vegetables) and snack items. I prepare these things every day besides doing household chores. My daily income is Rs. 50. My parents are pleased. My other sisters have also started income generating activities like mushroom gardening and making incense. Because of me, my parents let them enroll in literacy and post-literacy classes organized by the CLC. The presence of CLCs in a community not only extended education to those people who had not benefited from formal education but also gave them the means to pursue a better life. The links revealed in the above quotation between basic skills, family well-being and social and economic development are very powerful. Thus lifelong learning in Nepal finds its best expression in community development and personal empowerment.

Japan and Nepal: lessons to be learnt Several points can be made about the cases of lifelong learning in Japan and Nepal. In both cases, social policy objectives appear to be dominant although they are of a different kind in each case. In Japan, with an aging population and a school system focused on selection and career development, lifelong learning provides an opportunity to open up learning opportunities on a communitywide basis. These opportunities have become increasingly regulated by government agencies in an attempt to promote lifelong learning on a truly national basis. In Nepal, on the other hand, lifelong learning is associated more with increasing adult literacy and extending access to education in a context where basic education has failed, especially in relation to disadvantaged groups. Lifelong learning policy, therefore, is capable of achieving multiple objectives that have particular relevance or salience in different contexts. As was shown in the case of Nepal, lifelong learning also takes on very particular personal meaning for individuals. In the end, this may be its most enduring contribution to overall development. It is of interest to note in the cases of both Japan and Nepal, that lifelong learning appears to be a strategy that does not so much complement the formal education system but seeks to rectify problems with it. Narushima’s (2002) analysis of the development of lifelong learning in Japan highlighted the importance of broad social education for all citizens, especially after the Second World War. One reason for this emphasis was the perceived failure of schools to educate students broadly. This was a task initially taken up by social education that eventually was transformed into lifelong learning policies. Nepal’s adoption of lifelong learning was also based on the failure of basic education to deliver positive outcomes for all students as evidenced by the current poor adult literacy rate. It seems, based on these two cases at least, that when schools cannot deliver key social policy objectives, lifelong learning becomes a policy option to achieve these broader ends.

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While social policy priorities are dominant for both Japan and Nepal, economic objectives also feature. In Japan, it is by way of promoting income-generating activities for the kôminkan, while in Nepal it is equipping participants with skills that will enable access to engagement in productive economic activities. These kinds of economic objectives, while important, are of a different order from those referred to earlier in this chapter when President Jiang Zemin and the Sultan of Brunei were extolling the virtues of ‘human capacity building’ as a necessary condition for successful participation in the ‘new economy’. It may be, however, that it is not productive to continue dichotomizing the purposes of lifelong learning. Given that lifelong learning can serve both social and economic purposes and that context will determine what takes priority at a particular time, the issue is how the multiple purposes of lifelong learning play out in different contexts. In order to pursue this issue, the final section of this chapter will explore how one country in Asia has responded to lifelong learning as a policy priority.

Lifelong learning’s multiple purposes and its contribution to schools in Asia Han’s (2001) economic analysis of lifelong learning policy in selected Asian countries was helpful in identifying a common accelerator for the development of lifelong learning systems. Granted that there is this commonality across countries, the issue now is to look more deeply within countries to examine whether local policy prescriptions simply reflect this commonality or whether they are capable of also responding to local needs and issues. It has already been shown that there are two faces of lifelong learning, the economic and the social, and that both policy and academic discourse seem to highlight the former rather than the latter. This section of the chapter will use selected country case studies to explore the construction of lifelong learning policy at national level. The construction of national-level policies of any kind is subject to a vast array of influences. Policies often reflect many voices and are often an attempt to reconcile competing interests within a particular society (Kennedy and Howard 2004). When it comes to lifelong learning, China provides an interesting example of national policy construction because of its highly centralized policy-making process. At the international level, external reviewers of China’s economic potential have focused on the needs of a ‘knowledge economy’, including the need to enhance education and learning to improve economic competitiveness (Dahlman and Aubert 2001). Chinese commentators themselves have noted that ‘the Chinese government has embraced the vision of lifelong learning for all in a learning society’ (Ding et al. 2005, p.63). The Ministry of Education’s (2003 cited in International Labour Organization 2002b) New Action Plan for Invigorating Education in the 21st Century, referred to by Ding et al. (2005), noted: With the advent of the new era of reform, opening up and modernization, Mr Deng Xiaoping emphasized time and again, science and education have


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become the key to the achievement of socialist modernization with education as the very foundation. At the great moment when the new century is dawning President Jiang Zemin pointed out with penetration, ‘In today’s world, scientific and technological progress marked by the advancement of information technology happens with each passing day. The speed at which high-tech achievements transform into actual productive forces has become all the faster. The emerging knowledge economy betokens the coming of new and enormous changes in the socio-economic life of mankind ...’ There is thus little doubt that at the highest level in China, the relationship between the new economy and education has been well established and embedded in policy priorities. How is this relationship played out at other levels of the system? Xie (2003), himself an adult educator, reported that at the 16th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party held in November 2001 the ‘development of a lifelong learning-based society and promotion of citizens’ all-round development’ was made one of the objectives of the nation’s ‘overall construction of a well-off society’. Having recognized this broad policy framework, Xie then reports on adult education provision in China so that lifelong learning and adult education become inextricably linked. The former seems to provide new impetus and new meanings around the older idea of adult education. Yet the social purposes of Chinese adult education appear to remain intact with objectives relating to the provision of ‘remedial basic education’ and ‘life education (for) all citizens to satisfy their increasing spiritual demands’ (Xie 2003). From another perspective, even initiatives linked to the provision of educational opportunities for China’s aged population (for example, Universities of the Third Age) have been put under the umbrella of lifelong learning (Xiao 2000). This signals that it is seen as a broad policy construct that can encompass the broadest range of learning opportunities. Ding et al. (2005) provide a different example of lifelong learning when they describe the role of distance education in higher education. Interestingly, they link distance education to both the national education system and the lifelong learning system as shown in Figure 4.1. It seems clear from Figure 4.1 that attempts are being made to view the education system in an integrated education manner. Different elements play different roles but overall they contribute to a broadly based education system catering for diverse groups within society. The key policy thrust may be to promote education for the new economy, but there are many ways in which this is interpreted. At different levels in the system, lifelong learning becomes a more inclusive process that seems to provide access, extend opportunities and removes barriers for many people at different levels in society. This can be clearly seen in Figure 4.1 since if the ellipse entitled ‘Lifelong education system’ is removed, many opportunities for education will disappear from the system, including those referred to by Xiao (2000), Xie (2003) and Ding et al. (2005).

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Cultures and contexts influencing schools in Asia Modern education system with Chinese characteristics

National education system

DE programmes for off-campus learners

Lifelong education system

Information and learning society with knowledge-based economy

Figure 4.1 Basic structure of a lifelong education system within a learning society (Ding et al. 2005, p.64)

In this sense, a focus on lifelong learning complements the national education system and extends it beyond its traditional concerns to ensure greater access over a more extended period of time. Han’s (2003) review of lifelong learning in China confirms not just the direction of lifelong learning in responding to multiple objectives but the absolute necessity of its doing so. He pointed out, like many commentators, that China’s accelerating economic development required that education be available to more and more people in order to provide the necessary human resources for modernization, even to the extent of extending senior secondary education to all students. On the other hand, he referred to the problem of the gap between urban and rural development, a gap that will only widen as economic growth in the urban coastal cities accelerates (a point also made by Dahlman and Aubert 2001). For important social, economic and political reasons this gap needs to be addressed and providing greater access to education is one way to do this. Thus a comprehensive lifelong learning system is seen to be capable of addressing the needs of both urban and rural China – the new economy and the old economy – in the interests not only of economic development but also social cohesion. One set of priorities does not exclude the other and lifelong learning is seen as a bridge between both.


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Conclusion As a policy priority for many countries, lifelong learning poses a key challenge as outlined by the International Labour Organization (2004, p.iii): A major challenge ... is to develop and extend these new approaches to lifelong learning to make it a reality for all. Instead of restricting lifelong learning to a small, elite group, there is now an expectation that it should involve the entire adult population. Lifelong learning is more than just an economic construction for workers in the new economy – it is also capable of serving broader social purposes. This point has not always been recognized by the academic literature on lifelong learning, yet from the cases presented in this chapter, it seems to be a policy reality. Policies on lifelong learning may well have been accelerated by economic considerations, but in their implementation they seem to deal with broader issues and problems in different societies. This is not to underestimate the importance of economic considerations in relation to lifelong learning. There is little doubt that the current policy interest, resources and priorities would not have been allocated to lifelong learning had the economic returns on such investments not been considerable. The underlying rationale for investment in the development of lifelong learning systems was outlined earlier in this chapter and it remains a powerful incentive for governments. Yet as the ILO quotation above indicates, such education cannot be for the elite. As the case of China demonstrated, the prospect of creating even wider gaps between the country and the city is not sustainable in either social or political terms. It is now recognized that lifelong learning needs to be for all citizens. An important feature of the case studies represented in this chapter is the relationship between school education and life long learning. In China, Japan and Nepal it is clear that a good deal of the policy emphasis is on what happens outside of the formal schooling systems although, of course, as shown in Figure 4.1, there may be links. This post-school emphasis is also evident in countries like Korea (Chung 2003) and Thailand (Department of Vocational Education (Thailand) 2003). Yet in Malaysia, lifelong learning is a process that embraces the whole education system from primary school through to university (Rashid and Nasir 2003). This kind of variation is to be expected and indeed has been a major theme of this chapter: local contexts determine policy priorities. Yet Han (2001, p.85) has argued that the economic rationale for lifelong learning has been so powerful that ‘lifelong learning has turned out to be a powerful token for building alternative approaches for the new era education systems in general’. This suggests that despite the different country emphases in lifelong learning policy, education systems as a whole, and not just those parts concerned with post-school options, need to respond to issues such as the expansion of provision, the emphasis on the need for all citizens to be learners

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and the new forms of access to knowledge. The continuation of the kind of traditional schooling that has characterized much of Asia could not meet these new priorities. Schools themselves remain the most pervasive institutions across the region for delivering initial education and providing pathways to future employment and lifelong learning opportunities. If they are unable to respond to new priorities, entire lifelong learning systems will be at risk. The extent to which education systems are able to meet these new challenges at the school level will be discussed in the following chapter.

5

Global imperatives and local values Negotiating change in traditional societies

Introduction The previous chapters have shown how different countries in Asia have responded to new pressures related to the global economy and how new thinking about economic growth and development has led to wide-scale educational reform at all levels. Not all countries have responded in exactly the same way; a theme that has been developed from the beginning of the book has been that Asia’s diversity often leads to different policy responses, depending on the level of development of the country, local priorities and local values. The pace of development can often lead to tensions within countries, especially in relation to the role local values have to play in the ongoing press to make development a priority at all costs. These tensions play themselves out in different ways in different countries and such tensions can impact directly on the extent to which educational reform processes take hold at the local level. In order to appreciate these tensions and their impact, there needs to be a greater understanding of the extent and focus of specific reform movements, and in particular the ways in which these movements challenge existing values. In approaching these issues, Mok (2006, p.13) has made the point that ‘no matter how we assess the impact of globalization, it is undeniable that contemporary societies are not entirely immune from the prominent global forces’. Yet it has become too easy to attribute change processes in the region to broad global social and economic movements that are often portrayed as moving inexorably across the international stage. As Steiner-Khamsi and Stolpe (2006, p.1) have argued in relation to globalization and educational reform in Mongolia: ‘Globalization does capture, in a very broad sense, what has been occurring in Mongolia. This trendy characterization suffers, however, from many short-comings. Among other deficiencies it is devoid of agency, process, and rationale’. It is these very processes of ‘agency, process and rationale’ that will be examined in this chapter to show how different contexts in Asia produce different results in terms of current education reforms. There is little doubt that globalization, no matter how it is understood, is a force exerting pressure on Asian education systems. The economic rationale for reform movements in Asia described in the previous chapter can undoubtedly be linked to a common goal

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on the part of governments to increase their economic competitiveness in a globalized economy. Yet it needs to be remembered that in Asian contexts, values have historically played an important role both politically and personally and they continue to do so. There is no reason to believe that external forces, such as globalization, offer the only explanation for reform efforts and their direction. Indeed, there is a significant literature on ‘Asian values’, some of it specifically in relation to educational reform (Kennedy 2004), indicating how some Asian governments have responded proactively, and some would say negatively, to an increasingly influential international environment. Thus in Asian contexts attention needs to be paid to local values and what role they play as governments grapple with global concerns and issues. The purposes of this chapter, therefore, are to analyse in some detail ways in which the global and the local are balanced in current educational reform efforts. At times the tension between the two is unproductive, and indeed unplanned, and it often serves to overwhelm what might be seen as global priorities. In other cases, the tension has been deliberately embedded in the curriculum itself as a means of asserting the priority of local values. Both of these aspects of the relationship between the local and the global will be examined in the sections that follow. The first section will deal explicitly with the local challenges that have arisen in the face of the general direction of educational reform in Asia.

‘New reforms, old structures’: the challenges of educational reforms in Asia Previous chapters have shown how the demands of the ‘knowledge economy’ have made their effects felt on educational reform policies. Table 3.1 in particular demonstrated the extent of the reform agenda in the region. Whether it is the newly industrialized societies of North and Southeast Asia or more traditional societies, the pressure of educational reform is unmistakable. Cuadra and Moreno identified four key directions of school reform at the secondary level: ●

● ● ●

deferring selection and specialization as the duration of compulsory education has increased avoiding grouping by ability through tracking increasing the status recognition of traditional vocational education departing from the disciplinary tradition of curriculum design and development. (Cuadra and Moreno 2005, pp.91–92)

These areas are consistent with those identified by Kennedy (in press b) in relation to Asia: ● ● ●

a discourse of lifelong learning more integrated forms of curriculum less emphasis on examination and more on assessment for learning

Global imperatives and local values ● ● ● ●

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an emphasis on generic skills some focus on vocational education some focus on more cooperative forms of learning the need for learning to be extended to more students.

The emphasis on each of these reform components varies from country to country, but overall, most of them receives some attention. At first glance, it may seem somewhat incongruous that this kind of reform agenda is linked to the needs of ‘knowledge economies’. Changes such as integrated curriculum, student focused learning and formative assessment can easily be framed within a progressivist educational outlook with its roots deep in the history and philosophy of Western education rather than the needs of Asian societies in the twenty-first century. Some reference has already been made to this change agenda in Chapter 3 but it now requires further exploration. Kennedy (2005, p.12) has argued that the proposed reforms are indeed progressivist, but that they represent not just a single progressivist tradition (e.g. child development), but a blending of the multiple traditions of progressivism as outlined by Kliebard (1986), including social reconstructionist and social efficiency constructions of progressivism. Kennedy (2005) has argued that these apparently competing views of progressivism have coalesced to underpin the current curriculum reform agendas in the region. ‘Social efficiency’ approaches to progressivism, historically linked to the need to provide productive labour (Sneddon), clearly drive the current need for workers who are creative and innovative. Often the term ‘knowledge workers’ is used to categorize the new kind of labour that is now needed in the ‘knowledge economy’ (Harrigan and Dalmia 1991). At the same time, ‘developmentalism’, perhaps the most well-known aspect of historical progressivism (Kilpatrick), can be detected in the student focus of the reforms. Finally, the emphasis on critical thinking and problem-solving skills has the potential to underpin a broad ‘social reconstructionism’, the most radical branch of progressivism (Rugg). According to Kennedy (2005), it is not one of these traditions that dominates the current curriculum agenda in the region: it is an amalgam or pastiche of them all. This pastiche he has called the ‘new progressivism’ (Kennedy 2005, p.13). It typifies what might be called a postmodernist approach to curricula that is more eclectic than traditional approaches, less reliant on a single essentialist perspective, more pragmatic, more diverse and capable of meeting the needs of multiple stakeholders. Such a reform agenda would be challenging in most societies, where conservatism rather than innovation is usually the hallmark of schooling. Yet in many Asian societies, such reforms often strike at the very heart of education systems. The reasons for this vary from country to country, but often the values of the reform agenda are at odds with locally held values. Yet it is not always ‘values’ as understood, say, in the ‘Asian values debate’ (Kennedy 2004). A recent report on the problems for youth in Central Asia is instructive on this point (International Crisis Group 2003, p.10):

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Cultures and contexts influencing schools in Asia Quality education requires the introduction of two crucial elements: interactive methodology and critical thinking. Because of a lack of financial and career encouragement, teachers are relying on old Soviet methods of learning and have no time to develop other skills for children. Child-centred education remains the exception, as children are usually taught what they need for exams, not what they need in real life.

In addition, a field worker in the region reported that: Some parents are even afraid to lose authority in rural areas. They say, if I allow my son to participate in debate clubs at the school, tomorrow he will say ‘No’ to me, and after tomorrow, he won’t sleep at home, and will do drugs. (International Crisis Group 2003, pp.10–11) Thus the kind of reform agenda described earlier and being pursued in Central Asia challenges the professional values of teachers as well as family values. These internal and external pressures on educational reform are to a large extent unintended, although not unexpected. Nevertheless, they are not uncommon throughout the region as can also be seen in the case of Hong Kong. Kennedy (2005, p.101) described the pre-1997 Hong Kong curriculum as ‘traditional, elitist, competitive, exam-dominated, and bureaucratic’. To some extent, this is understandable since, as an historical construction, Hong Kong’s school curriculum was developed as a colonial artefact. Indeed, the current reform agenda, initiated after Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty, has been aptly titled, ‘post-colonial’ (Kennedy et al. 2004; Kennedy et al. 2006). These are not altogether different tensions from those in Central Asia – tensions between old, established ways of carrying out schooling and what can be seen as the somewhat radical nature of the current reform agenda. It is a clash of professional values that have become part of the very structure of education systems. A specific example will help to demonstrate this point. Lam (2002, p.1) has provided an interesting example of the structural problems confronting reform in Hong Kong when she analysed a new role for statistics education in the mathematics curriculum. In conformity with the reforms, statistics education is being directed towards a student-centred, activity-based, and hands-on approach with students encouraged to collect, present and interpret data, basing their work on concrete examples from everyday life whenever possible. Student learning is expected to progress from concrete to abstract, and calculators and computers are expected to be used to facilitate student learning. Such a description could be applied to almost every area of the school curriculum in Hong Kong, but as Lam (2002) pointed out, the structural impediments are significant. She argued that for mathematics teachers, the more theoretical requirements of university level statistics and their own lack of experiences with

Global imperatives and local values

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new pedagogies and new technologies put the reforms at risk. That is to say, just as in Central Asia, classrooms in Hong Kong are not seen as conducive places for neoprogressivist educational reform. The former Secretary for Education and Manpower, Fanny Law (2000), put it this way: In the final analysis, we must overcome the obstinacy of entrenched practices in the organisation of schools, of classrooms and of teaching itself, such as standard class size, rigid time-tabling, textbook-bound instruction, rote learning, and standardised tests. However, unless people in charge have the courage and conviction to venture into uncharted waters, and are adequately supported, there will continue to be complaints about too much flexibility being an additional burden, and reform will be seen as a fad. The kind of conservatism reflected in this quotation, but also evidenced in the report on Central Asia, is not confined to Asian schools or teachers. Most of the Western literature on reform implementation tells the same story of teacher resistance to change. Yet in many Asian contexts such values are deeply embedded in social and political structures. In Central Asia, for example, it appears that the previous Soviet regimes still exert their effect. In Hong Kong, Chan et al. (2005) have shown how during the colonial period teachers’ work was subject to specific legislation provisions that had the effect of de-professionalizing it. Thus the new expectations of the reform agenda in Hong Kong run up against an institutionalized conservatism that has rarely valued creativity and innovation in classroom practice. Teachers’ ‘resistance’ to change across the region can only be properly understood when it is seen within the social and political conditions that construct it. Two further examples can demonstrate this point as well as highlight once again the diversity that characterizes Asia. Taiwan has been engaged in a similar reform agenda to those of most other countries in Asia (Yang 2001) and it has produced a quite spirited community reaction (Chang 2003). Yet, unlike both Hong Kong and Central Asia, the political context has been one in which democracy has replaced totalitarianism (Huang 2004a) so that the educational reform agenda has been linked to larger expectations related to a broad liberalization agenda. Yet, as the case of textbook reform has shown, while liberalization may be a value when it comes to politics and the economy, it does not always translate well to school curriculum. Li (2002) has reported that some parents in Taiwan have become concerned that when content is not prescribed for textbooks, their children might be disadvantaged when it comes to examinations. The deregulation of textbooks was designed to encourage creativity and innovation but these very qualities are the ones that threaten an examinationdominated culture such as that in Taiwan. The extent of this threat was demonstrated in Taiwan when the Education Reconstruction Front, made up of university professors, issued a statement in 2003 criticising the directions of the reforms and in particular their political manipulation (Chang 2003). Lao (2003, p.8) pointed to the vested interests of

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the National Taiwan University professors, whom they accused of being opposed to the new diversified processes for university entrance, as well as the conservatism within the Ministry of Education and the pro-unification media that constantly sought to undermine the reforms. This highly charged political environment in Taiwan acts as an impediment to successful implementation of the reforms by undermining public confidence and politicizing the reform process. The political construction of educational reform in Taiwan reflects local values in a society whose historical development has been almost synonymous with politics and the constant threat of a life lived in tension with mainland China. A second and quite different example of the way local values impact on educational reform comes from Bhutan. Dorji (2005) has pointed out that the last 40 years of the twentieth century saw accelerated education development in Bhutan. Participation rates in primary schools increased considerably over that period of time, new schools were built and governments recognized the importance of modern education for the country’s development. Yet these advances in modern schooling have not met with 100 per cent acceptance from poor farming communities in Bhutan. Issues of enrolment and retention are very real for these communities and they involve opportunity costs. Dorji (2005, p.11) summarized the problem this way: About two-third of the Bhutanese depend their livelihood on subsistence farming. One of the recent problems that the farming society began to face was a shortage of farm labour – the outcome of increasing development activities, deterioration of traditional system of labour mobilization, increased mammalian pests and rural-urban migration. Obviously, farmers who are confronted with labour shortage would see their children as extra helping-hands to run the farm activities, rather than send them to schools bearing some additional costs. What is more, Dorji (2005) has pointed out that for many parents, increased access to education for their children is not seen as a guarantee for providing access to employment. For many young people, education is the means to secure employment in the city – perhaps in a government job, but such jobs are scarce and competition is high. Thus from a parent’s perspective, they not only lose their children as workers on the farm and have to pay their school fees, but in the end, there may be no jobs for their children anyway. Thus the modernization of education in Bhutan runs directly up against traditional values and despite the government priority given to education, many parents exert personal pressure on potential students to keep them out of school. Thus whether it is Central Asia, Hong Kong or Bhutan – three vastly different geographic and social entities in Asia – there are local values of different kinds that assert themselves to counter the efforts of governments to bring about educational reform. These are very much naturally occurring values reflected in communities and manifested in forms of resistance to educational change. They usually emerge unexpectedly and are difficult to counter in any systematic way.


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Yet they are not the only kind of values that assert themselves in Asian countries. There are also values that are deliberately embedded in the curriculum in an attempt to retain something of the traditional in a fast moving and changing world. The way different countries go about this process of embedding values in modern curricula will be discussed in the next section.

‘Old values for new times’: embedding values in the school curriculum Kennedy (in press b) has made the point that ‘many Asian leaders wanted the benefits of economic globalization but not the social dislocation that seemed to accompany it in the West’. In part, the reassertion of traditional Confucian values in the ‘Asian values debate’ was an attempt to counter more liberal Western values that were seen inevitably to accompany economic globalization (Kennedy 2004). Thus increasing liberalization – whether it was in relation to trade or the school curriculum – was not seen in any way to be a reason for discarding traditional values. In the minds of many leaders there seemed to be an inverse relationship – the freer and more globalized the trading environment and the freer and more liberal the school curriculum, the more necessary it was to retain local values. Nation states in the region may want to produce global workers, but if regional leaders have their way, they will be global workers with local values. These workers will in all probability experience a liberalized school curriculum, compared with the kind of curriculum their elder family members experienced, but their education is not likely to be liberal in every aspect. For example, the citizenship education component of the school curriculum is likely to be deeply embedded in the social and political values of the nation state rather than reflected in its economic values. The ‘Asian values debate’ highlighted Confucian values, or local variants, as remaining constant in the face of economic globalization. These local values find their way into the school curriculum via areas such as moral and civic education. In this way, modern liberal education as reflected in the mainstream curriculum is anchored by traditional values. These values are by no means consistent across the region and will be discussed in the following paragraphs.

Resisting the global: local values in diverse societies Kennedy and Fairbrother (2004, p.294), after reviewing a range of cases that highlighted conceptions of citizenship education in the Asia-Pacific, concluded that ‘Asian citizenship education is characterized more by conceptions of moral virtues and personal values than by civic and public values’. Lee (2004a, p.282) has made the point that ‘the emphasis on spirituality ... is the major difference between Asia and the West in conceptualising citizenship ... spirituality is characterised by an emphasis on the state of one’s inner life’. It was Patrick Henry who said ‘bad men cannot make good citizens’ but in Asian contexts the principle might be better expressed as ‘good people make good citizens’. In these contexts, therefore, the creation of both ‘good’ people and ‘good’ citizens can be

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seen as a legitimate objective of schools. Yet how that objective is achieved differs from one jurisdiction to the next. In the People’s Republic of China, for example, Zhong and Lee (in press) have shown that as the country opened itself up to modernization following the Cultural Revolution, the government moved quickly to supplement political education with moral education as an important component of a broader citizenship education. They have pointed out that in 1988 ‘civics’ was introduced to Year 7 and in the same year a new moral education syllabus was announced with the following emphases (Zhong and Lee, in press): ● ● ●

socialism and collectivism based upon patriotism students’ moral standards and behaviours using a motivational approach to develop self-esteem, self-reliance (independence) and self-strengthening in students.

The important point to note about these emphases is that they emerged in a local context undergoing considerable change where the potential to challenge the values of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) remained, until 4 June 1989 at least, a real possibility. Liberalization in the economic sphere was championed by the CCP as part of the modernization process, but it was not championed in the personal or political spheres. A focus on a specific kind of moral education, therefore, served to highlight a personal conservatism that would not threaten the political status quo. As Fairbrother (2004, p.160) has indicated, students are expected to develop ‘a strong sense of responsibility towards others and [to take] the nation’s development as their own responsibility’. China’s liberal economy, therefore is designed to be fuelled by conservative citizens. In Malaysia, moral education has been used to serve a somewhat different purpose, although perhaps no less political. Bajunid (in press) has pointed out that early in its history, the Malaysian government developed a national ideology known as the Rukunegara: It expressed the pledge of the united efforts in nation-building and citizenship education guided by the principles of Belief in God, Loyalty to King and Country, Upholding the Constitution, respecting the Rule of Law and inculcating Good Behaviours and Morality. These values continue to inform Malaysian education and schools are expected to recite this pledge at least once a week even as the country strives to become the most developed in the region. Curriculum subjects such as history also promote traditional values: ‘dignity, loyalty towards the king and country’s leaders, respect for the country’s emblems, upholding national pride and valuing and practicing Malaysian traditions and values’ (Ahmad 2004a, p.199). Given the commitment of many of its citizens to Islam, it is not unexpected that Islamic values also play a key role in Malaysian school education. There are specific Islamic curricula for primary and secondary schools and Bajunid (in


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press) has pointed out that the way these curricula move from relatively simple to more complex religious concepts has significant citizenship implications: In its philosophy the oneness of the Islamic curriculum fosters citizenship education in all contexts. Muslims are guided on how to live in contexts where the Muslims are in the majority, in the minority or in pluralistic or balanced demographic circumstances. Besides the articles of Faith, Islamic education covers the whole range of Etiquette and Islamic Morality. There is etiquette in daily living, including personal hygiene and self management. There is etiquette towards parents and family and etiquette in social relations. There is also etiquette in the quest for knowledge and in prayer and in pursuit of faith. While there are clearly differences of ideological emphasis in Malaysia and the previous case discussed, that of China, what stands out is the common emphasis on developing ‘moral’ citizens with particular habits of mind and traditional values in the context of a socially cohesive society. What is more, there is also a common emphasis on national loyalty, although, of course, the national state apparatus in each country differs markedly. This emphasis on engendering loyalty to the nation is also characteristic of many other Asian countries, but perhaps nowhere more so than in Japan. Parmenter (2006) has shown how current conceptions of Japanese citizenship education are based on quite strong views of national identity. She quotes from a 2005 curriculum document: As globalization progresses, it will be exceedingly important to deepen understanding of the traditions and culture of one’s own country and region, respect them, and nurture a sentiment of love for one’s hometown and nation in order to live in international society as a Japanese person. Parmenter (2006) refers to this idea as ‘cultural nationalism’ and clearly it is an important tool to try to locate modern, globalized Japanese citizens in their local contexts. It is a deliberate attempt to embrace globalization with a safe and secure national identity. Yet it is not far from this defensive kind of ‘cultural nationalism’ to a more political nationalism that can clearly be seen in Japan in debates over history textbooks (still a very sensitive topic in countries like South Korea and China where the memories of the Japanese invasions are still strong), visits by politicians to national war shrines and the general re-emergence of Japanese patriotism through symbols such as the singing of the national anthem and the raising of the flag in school ceremonies. As Parmenter (2006) has commented, ‘nationalism in school education in Japan is, therefore, starting to appear in more blatant forms than it has done throughout most of post-war history’. These national values, similar to those also evident in Malaysia and China, seem to characterize many Asian countries grappling with globalization and keen to reassert the national over the global. Yet in Japan there is also a unique feature in this assertion of national values.

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Parmenter (2006) has made the point that while the school curriculum in Japan acknowledges that Japanese citizens are part of a global community, it does not acknowledge that they are also Asian. In an analysis of current curriculum documents she shows that education about Asia is almost non-existent. She puts this down to the problems that Japan has so often experienced with its Asian neighbours but also the strong wish to maintain the distinctiveness of the Japanese identity. Even in relation to global identity, the key from a Japanese perspective is to maintain a commitment to local Japanese identity and not be subsumed by the global. When it comes to Japan in Asia, there appears to be an even greater emphasis on uniqueness and what Parmenter (2006) refers to as the idea of Japanese ‘homogeneity’.

Conclusion The school curriculum, therefore, in China, Malaysia and Japan has elements embedded within in it that deliberately seek to maintain traditional values in the face of globalization and global influences in general. Such examples are by no means unique. Wide-ranging educational reform in Thailand, for example, has sought to integrate ‘Thai Wisdom’ into the ongoing reform process in an attempt not to lose local values in what can only be described as a Western educational reform agenda (National Education Public Relations Centre 1999). Similar examples can be found elsewhere as nations with very traditional values seek to retain those values in the face of widespread educational reform. While economic reforms take many countries in the direction of liberalization and while many aspects of the school reform agenda such as integrated curriculum, assessment for learning and student-centred teaching also seek a freer and more liberal curriculum, commitment to local values seek to anchor these reforms in tradition and local values. Ideology does not seem to be a feature in this pattern – whether it is liberal democracy in Japan, communism in China or a ‘soft’ authoritarianism in Malaysia, the focus is on instilling local values and national loyalty in young citizens. These young citizens may be destined to become ‘knowledge workers’, but they will be such workers with traditional values and ideas. Educational reforms in Asia go in two directions at once: forward to the demands of ‘the knowledge economy’ and backwards to the traditions that have sustained these societies over time. Globalization is certainly a feature of the reform agenda, but it is not an inexorable force unable to be resisted. Indeed a great deal of effort at government level is put into such resistance and, perhaps it is this that makes educational reforms in Asia unique.

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Creating citizens for globalized states Traditional values for new times1

Introduction Educational reforms across the region have generally been in the direction of liberalization – a freer economy and a freer curriculum to meet new economic priorities. It might be expected that citizenship education, as a key component of the school curriculum, would be influenced by such changes. Yet this does not seem to be the case. Asian country case studies of citizenship education have shown consistently that citizenship education remains deeply rooted in the conservative values and priorities of nation states (Grossman et al. in press). As pointed out in the previous chapter, in most Asian countries there is likely to be an emphasis on moral rather than civic education, on traditional values rather than new globalized values (Kennedy and Fairbrother 2004). This suggests a dichotomy between public policy and private morality as Asian nations play a larger role on the international stage against a backdrop of value systems derived from tradition. A key issue for consideration, therefore, is how education systems will prepare young people to be international and local, traditional and modern, forward looking and backward looking. Currently, the liberalizing discourses of economic and curriculum reform sit side by side with the conservative discourses of citizenship education in Asian schools. The explicit education of students for citizenship is a common feature of the school curriculum in Asian schools although there are important variations form country to country (Lee et al. 2004). Its content and substance, mode of delivery, priority and the way it is received by students will vary in different country contexts. This chapter will examine citizenship education across national contexts but especially in relation to the dominant discourses about learning, individuals and the desired outcomes of schooling that have been highlighted elsewhere in this book. The key issue is whether national citizenship education in the future can continue to draw on tradition in order to withstand the pressure exerted by the macro forces of economic change and the micro forces of curriculum change. Can globalized economies, liberalized curriculum reform and conservative national citizenship education continue to co-exist in the future?

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Cultures and contexts influencing schools in Asia In order to address the question, this chapter will:

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review the main features of dominant liberalized discourse influencing schools identify competing discourses likely to influence citizenship education, and review specific examples of citizenship education in the region.

A liberalized curriculum for a liberalized economy The contexts that are bound to influence citizenship education – the macro economy and micro-level curriculum reform – have been described in the previous chapters. The character and direction of these reforms deserve further consideration. The dominant characteristic of economic reforms has been liberalization – economic development is seen to be dependent on new ideas and innovation, thus highlighting the important role of individuals and learning in the economic system. A similar emphasis can be seen in the reform of the school curriculum. As has been shown, across many societies in the region, curriculum is now designed to be less academic, less examination oriented, less elitist, more inclusive, more integrated, more learning oriented, more creative and more critical. These at least are the policy directions, if not the on-ground realities. Such liberalization has not been without accompanying restraints, such as regimes of testing at the international level and increasing emphasis on the monitoring of student learning outcomes through mechanisms such as the Basic Competency Assessment in Hong Kong. Yet, as has been shown elsewhere, this curriculum liberalization has not been applied to citizenship education. There is not a single case in the region where the nation state has eased its grip on citizenship education as a major means of inducting young citizens into the culture and values of the nation state itself. This is as true for the People’s Republic of China as it for Thailand, for Japan as it is for Malaysia, for Korea as it is for Pakistan. Contrary to the prediction of globalization theorists (e.g. Ohmae 1996) that the nation state would wither away, citizenship education continues to promote the supremacy of the nation state. It often does so with values and priorities that are in contradiction to a policy environment where liberalization rather than uniformity has become the driving force. As powerful as this liberalizing agenda has been in the economic sphere, it inevitably runs into competing discourses that are more social or political in nature. A good example is China which currently pursues economic liberalization relentlessly within the framework of a one-party state that seeks to derive part of its legitimacy from traditional moral values (Fairbrother 2006). These competing discourses have shown themselves particularly influential in relation to citizenship education. The nature of these alternative discourses and the way in which they reinforce the nation state will be explored under three broad headings.

Creating citizens for globalized states

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Geopolitical realities have strengthened the nation state If the speed and pace of globalization in the late twentieth century seemed to suggest that nation states would play a diminished role in determining issues related to their development and growth, then catastrophic events of the early twenty-first century suggested an altogether different scenario. The emergence of a new form of international terrorism in September 2001 and subsequent acts of global terrorism in Bali, London, Spain and Saudi Arabia have led to a strengthening of nation states in their resolve to combat terrorism and protect citizens. New security legislation in places like the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom has restricted individual liberties and rights while giving to the state powers of coercion and detention that are often outside the purview of both legislative and judicial review. Individual nation states have waged wars without the backing of the United Nations and often in violation of international legal agreements. Despite widespread domestic opposition and even opposition from members of the international community, these wars have continued unabated. There is little doubt that at the mid-point of the twenty-first century’s first decade, nation states are as strong as they ever were. These broad global trends are also reflected in the region. North Korea’s nuclear ambitions in North Asia impact directly on South Korea, China and Japan and cause spirited debate and discussion at the highest levels. Islamic radicalism in the region is represented by groups such as Jemaah Islamiah which, according to Kirk (2006, A15), influences that part of the region that includes ‘the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, through Indonesia to Malaysia and southern Thailand’. Pakistan’s Islamic connections with Afghanistan ensure that the broad contours of the post 9/11 world continue to be represented in the region. Radical groups in India such as the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and Lashkar-e-Toiba attest to the widespread nature of Islamic radicalism in the region. There is no predictability in terrorist activities – whether it is the Mumbai train bombings in July 2006, the Bali bombings in October 2002 or insurgent activity in the Philippines and Thailand. Such activities inject a strong element of uncertainty across the region. More particularly, such trends are a powerful impetus for action at the level of the nation state to protect local values against global threats of all kinds whether they are social, political or economic. These geopolitical realities within the region are negotiated within political systems that share little in common. For example, South Korea, Japan, Thailand (before the coup of September 2006), the Philippines and Taiwan represent liberal democracies in the region. Malaysia and Singapore have democratic institutions but their democracies are often seen to be less liberal. At the other extreme is the People’s Republic of China, the Socialist Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea that are all controlled and dominated by a single political party. To this mix must be added military regimes in Myanmar and Pakistan, together with Thailand, where at the time of writing the military had suspended the Constitution and installed an interim government answerable to the military leaders responsible for the coup.

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Different political systems within nation states have one thing in common: the need to create citizenship education that supports the status quo and thus reinforces the individual nation state. Whether it is the liberal democracy of Japan or the totalitarianism of China, the focus for citizenship education is national needs and aspirations as seen from the perspectives of the different countries. There does not appear to be a relationship between the political system of a country and the form that citizenship education takes. All political systems require legitimacy whether they are democratic or totalitarian and citizenship education is one means of providing this legitimacy. There is no incentive for a liberalized citizenship education in a region of distinctive and traditional nation states.

Experience with supranational governance has reinforced the role of nation states Supranational entities seemed to characterize the decades following the Second World War. There are examples from both outside and within the region for example, the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the North Atlantic Free Trade Association (NAFTA), the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). In a sense, the virtue of working outside the nation state has therefore been embraced. Yet none of these bodies has really emerged as more than a collection of nation-states seeking their own interests rather than global bodies taking a global perspective. This difference is quite significant. The United States’ rebuff to the UN over the war with Iraq demonstrated only too well the power of a single nation state despite its membership of such a multilateral body as the UN. In a different context, the rejection of the proposed EU Constitution by member states such as France and the Netherlands showed a marked reluctance on the part of national citizens to opt for supranational citizenship. At the same time, within the region, the ASEAN’s inability to deal with human rights and political issues in a single member state such as Myanmar demonstrates the inability of loose regional groupings to take concerted action on significant issues. Finally, the internal tensions in the WTO between rich and poor nations have demonstrated the limits of supranational bodies to take a global perspective. Supranational bodies have not moved towards international governance in the sense that national priorities have become submerged into global priorities. The priorities of nation states, not those of the global community, continue to drive supranational bodies. In terms of citizenship education, this ambivalence towards genuine supranational governance, as distinct from participation in supranational bodies, means that constructs such as ‘global’ education and ‘global’ citizenship are really quite restrictive. While all nation states wish to produce citizens who can participate in the ‘global’ economy, it does not follow that such aspirations lead to the adoption


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of ‘global’ citizenship. Citizenship remains firmly located in nation states and citizenship education can be seen as the anchor designed to assure this outcome. Within the region, tradition and local values become an important means to provide a very distinctive citizenship education.

Liberalization may serve to reinforce nation-based values The protracted debate on Asian values in the last decade of the twentieth century (Kennedy 2004) demonstrated in part the schizophrenia of many Asian leaders who wanted the benefits of economic globalization but not the social dislocation that seemed to accompany it in the West. The reassertion of traditional Confucian values that featured so strongly in the debates was an attempt to counter more liberal Western values that were seen inevitably to accompany economic globalization. Many Asian leaders saw that it was possible to embrace the global economy, but not the values of many Western countries. Thus increasing liberalization of trade was not seen in any way to be in opposition to the retention of traditional values – indeed in the minds of many leaders there seemed to be an inverse relationship – the freer and more globalized the trading environment, the more necessary it has been to retain local values. Nation states in the region may well have given priority to a global economic agenda, yet it is clear from the above that such a priority does not extend to social and political dimensions of life. Nation states may want to produce global workers, but they will be global workers with national values. These workers will in all probability experience a liberalized school curriculum, compared with the kind of curriculum their elder family members experienced, but their citizenship education is not likely to be more liberal. The citizenship education component of the school curriculum is likely to be deeply embedded in the social and political values of the nation state rather than reflected in its economic values. This means there will always be a continuing tension between a liberalized economy, a liberal curriculum and conservative citizenship values. This is likely to be a key issue for educators in this new century and it will manifest itself in a number of different ways. The final section of this chapter will explore the challenges associated with this issue.

Alternative visions for citizenship education for the future: conservative values in uncertain times There are three broad areas in which citizenship education in the future has the potential to be influenced by the tension between liberal curriculum values and conservative citizenship values: content of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Each of these will be discussed in turn with an emphasis on the likely construction of citizenship education for the future and its challenges.

The content of citizenship education During the last three decades of the twentieth century, different educators often made the case for global education or a globalized civic education to be part of

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citizenship education or even to replace traditional citizenship education programmes. The views of these educators were often driven by commitments to ‘one world’ philosophies or simply by the desire to break down the negative effects of nationalism. Increasingly globalized economies would also seem to signal some support for a citizenship education that was more global in nature if citizens are to have the capacities and understandings to interact successfully on the global stage. Yet is this a powerful enough rationale for new forms of citizenship education? Education for global citizenship is likely to be as elusive in the future as it is in the present. This may seem counterintuitive yet it can be understood once it is realized that nation states are concerned with more than their economies, even though this concern might often seem to dominate public discourse. In most societies there is also a concern for stability, social cohesion, shared values and social justice, and these are more likely to drive citizenship education than a state’s commitment to free market economics. This is particularly so in light of increasing geopolitical instability. Therefore, local values that have dominated citizenship education in the past are likely to continue to do so in the future. The real challenge for citizenship education in the content domain will be the tension between these local values and increasing global commitments. While citizenship education will remain nationally oriented, future citizens will increasingly find themselves involved globally, whether it is for work, leisure, business, politics or humanitarian purposes. They will inevitably be called upon to make judgements about global events. They will need to be able to play a role on the global stage, understand global issues and appreciate the perspectives of others in seeking to solve global problems. The challenge for national citizenship education is to consider how it can deliver these outcomes in an increasingly globalized environment and amidst global instability and upheavals.

Pedagogy The thrust of curriculum reforms in relation to pedagogy is towards student-centred teaching and active inquiry-oriented learning and away from transmission modes, rote learning and drill. As shown earlier in the chapter, this kind of pedagogy is associated with the development of creativity, problem-solving, and critical thinking – the ingredients of the ‘new’ economy. On the other hand, its links with progressivist pedagogies and constructivist ideas about teaching and learning are also obvious. In the broader framework of this paper, this kind of pedagogy can be considered a liberal pedagogy that acknowledges the student as a ‘knowledge maker’, the teacher as a facilitator of learning and classrooms as communities of learners. Can such pedagogy contribute towards citizenship education in the future? This kind of pedagogy would be more than appropriate for a citizenship education that was committed to the development of creative and critical citizens. Yet it is a particular challenge when citizenship education is conceived of as a ‘received’ body of citizenship knowledge and skills that students must master.


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When, for example, citizenship education consists of a single national history, understandings about the political system, participation in symbolic ceremonies and even prescribed service activities that demonstrate students’ commitment to other members of the community, then there is not much room for an active pedagogy. Students are usually not given much choice about these areas of the curriculum – they are not meant to be knowledge constructors in citizenship education lessons. Many of the country case studies in this book attest to this and it follows naturally from the desire of nation states to promote particular values and understanding as part of their ‘national stories’. Thus a liberal pedagogy runs into the problem of conservative content that favours a more restrictive pedagogy. It is likely that a conservative pedagogy will contribute to the development of a passive and uncritical citizenry rather than an active citizenry. Yet as this new century has already shown, these new times are ones that demand much more from citizens than uncritical acceptance of government actions and societal values. The challenge for national citizenship education will be to produce citizens who value their nation and its values to the point where they can make judgements about infringements of those values and then take action to defend them. This is too big a task for pedagogy alone and a simple change in pedagogy will not necessarily achieve the desired outcome. Thus the challenge remains of building an active citizenry with a conservative pedagogy based on national values and priorities: it is perhaps the greatest challenge that can be undertaken by citizenship educators in the future.

Assessment The curriculum reforms envisage assessment that is formative rather than summative, focused on learning rather than selection and portfolio based rather than examination based. The direction of these reforms is on individual achievement and monitoring the progress of individual students towards learning outcomes. Individual differences in learning are expected and the role of teachers is to monitor these differences and provide the appropriate learning support to help students progress towards the desired outcomes. These principles are based on the assumption that learning is the key to success in the future – for both individuals and societies. It is not enough any longer to rank and select individuals since societies in the future will need all citizens to learn and contribute productively, not just the elite. This approach to learning highlighting individual student progress is barely a reality in most classrooms across the region, which is still characterized by examination cultures and selection procedures at different stages of schooling. Where these cultures are less emphasized such as the United States, Australia and New Zealand, there are now testing regimes imposed on schools and classrooms by governments that do not trust classroom assessment processes to deliver the kind of accountability seen to be necessary in today’s environment. Citizenship education has not been immune from these testing procedures as evidenced by the civic education component of the National Assessment of Educational Progress in the

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United States and the Citizenship Assessment Project in Australia. Governments appear to want aggregated data about student learning outcomes and they want it for citizenship outcomes as much as they do for mathematics or literacy. This trend is likely to continue in the future as governments increasingly seek confirmation that future citizens are being prepared to support the values of the nation state. Assessment is not only an educational tool – but a political one as well. Rigid assessment regimes usually focus on prespecified outcomes stressing knowledge rather than action. This kind of assessment is unlikely to support the development of individuals who can take their roles in civil society as informed citizens capable of understanding complex multifaceted citizenship issues. Yet in the future, all citizens will need to have knowledge, skills and dispositions that will enable them to engage with civic issues. The kind of assessment associated with the reforms can achieve this objective because it is focused on the individual but external tests imposed on schools for accountability purposes cannot. Aggregated data might provide indicators of system-level learning but they cannot help individuals to learn. Assessment needs to provide feedback to individuals so that they can improve their learning and unless it does this learning becomes defined by test results. Such results do not contribute to the development of citizens and they cannot help future citizens to be prepared for the challenges that will inevitably confront them.

Regional examples of citizenship education: reinforcing the nation state The ideas and principles referred to above play themselves out in specific citizenship education programmes across the region. In an important sense, it is not possible to generalize about these programmes since they derive their form and substance from local needs, priorities and values. What they share is a commitment to individual nation states. Three particular societies have been chosen to demonstrate both the diversity of citizenship education across the region as well as its common objective. An important point to appreciate is that in each case there are local aspirations to modernize the education system and the issue is where does citizenship education fit into such aspirations? The three societies chosen are Hong Kong, Japan and Pakistan.

Hong Kong On 1 July 1997 Hong Kong ceased to be a British colony and reverted to Chinese sovereignty. Despite the similarities between citizenship education polices in England and Hong Kong in the colonial period (Fairbrother 2006), since the handover there has been a concerted attempt to reinstate China as the source of national pride for the people of Hong Kong. The issue is not a simple one because there is often a conflation between cultural affiliation and political dominance. Fairbrother (2004) has shown how university students can easily distinguish between these two emphases. For many Hong Kong students, and


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even some students on the mainland, cultural affiliation with Chinese values comes relatively easily but it does not imply an acceptance of the dominant oneparty political system. Anson Chan, the former Chief Secretary for Administration in the first handover Hong Kong SAR government, highlighted this issue when she said ‘the real transition is about identity and not sovereignty’ (Chan 1998, 11 June). She went on to talk about the ‘spiritual propriety of Hong Kong’s return to the Mainland’, while also outlining her views on the role of democracy and its place in creating personal and social identities. This context is an important one to keep in mind when it comes to citizenship education in post-handover Hong Kong. Kennedy (2005) has analysed citizenship education in post-handover Hong Kong in the context of the widespread curriculum reforms that were initiated in 2001. He identified two main themes that infuse the whole curriculum, with one of them given specific expression in what is now called Moral and Civic Education – one of four key tasks identified as part of the general reform of the school curriculum (Curriculum Development Council 2001b). These themes are given expression in the core values advocated by the curriculum reform, ‘perseverance, respect for others, responsibility, national identity and commitment’. National identity is the only explicitly political value here – the others are more personal and it is this twin emphasis on the political and the personal, the nation and the individual that defines citizenship education in post-handover Hong Kong. The national emphasis in citizenship education is given expression in the adoption of ‘national identity’ as one of the seven goals of the curriculum reforms (Curriculum Development Council 2001b). Yet there is no formal ‘national identity’ curriculum or even political education such as there is in the other parts of China (Fairbrother 2004). Rather, national identity education has been infused into the school curriculum as part of the education reforms process. In responding to a question in the Legislative Council about the role of history teaching and national education, the Secretary for Education and Manpower outlined the following initiatives related to the formal curriculum (Li 2005): ●

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From September 2004, a strand of National Identity and Chinese Culture has been added to the primary school curriculum of General Studies. Additional topics to enhance students’ understanding of the motherland are incorporated into the Personal, Social and Humanities Education curriculum at different key stages. In the proposed new senior secondary curriculum, elements of national education are also found in Liberal Studies. Two compulsory units, namely Hong Kong Today and Modern China are included in the learning area of Society and Culture. In addition to the formal curriculum, the Minister also identified activities such as: ‘teacher development programmes ... subsidies to support national education ... invitations to Mainland scholars to give talks under the programme of Understanding Contemporary China – Talk Series ... a military

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Cultures and contexts influencing schools in Asia summer camp for Hong Kong students ... various activities such as flag-raising training, museum learning activities, exhibitions, garrison visits, essay competitions ... educational activities ... during National Day celebration each year.’ (Li 2005)

In addition to these activities in the school system, national identity has been promoted through public events such as the introduction of the Chinese national anthem as a TV feature at 6.30 p.m. each day, the visit to Hong Kong of ‘patriots’, such as the Chinese astronaut, Yang Li Wei, and Olympic gold medallists as well as organized study tours to Beijing. The Chinese government’s aspirations for Hong Kong have been unmistakable as shown in this extract from President Hu Jintao’s (2003) speech at the inauguration ceremony for a statue to commemorate Hong Kong’s return to China: With the rising of the Five-Star Red Flag and the Regional Flag of the SAR over Hong Kong, the vast land of China was a scene of jubilation and people from all corners of the world were focusing their attention upon Hong Kong. A new leaf was turned thereafter in the annals of Hong Kong. It is the common aspiration of the compatriots of Hong Kong as well as the Chinese people of all ethnic groups to have this monument established, so that our descendants would forever remember the major event of Hong Kong’s return to the motherland in the annals of history and carry forward the great spirit of patriotism for generations to come. It is not unreasonable, of course, to pursue such an aspiration since most nations attempt to instil a love of the nation in young people. Nevertheless, there has been criticism of these attempts to instil national identity in young people. One pro-democracy supporter, for example, was reported as saying that the programme of visits to Hong Kong by the astronaut and Olympic medallists were ‘part of a cynical attempt to manipulate the emotions of Hong Kong children’. Instead he would prefer to encourage ‘creative thinking among pupils by asking them their opinions on political issues related to China – such as their views on the significance of flag-burning – and forcing them to grapple with what China means to them as citizens of Hong Kong’ (Murphy 2004, p.2). This is an ongoing tension in national identity education in Hong Kong. One further attempt to reinforce national identity education has been the establishment of the National Education Centre. Chan (2005, p.4) has pointed out that the Centre was established with the support of the then Chief Executive, Tung Chee-hwa, as an ‘independently funded NGO [with] support from the education and manpower bureau’ (Murphy 2004). The foundation head of the Centre, Yeung Yiu-chung, made the purpose of the Centre very clear (Chan 2005, pp.4–5): We don’t need to foster Hong Kong identity ... the Hok Yau Club survey showed there is greater need to focus on building a national, China-focused identity ... one quarter of students surveyed don’t even consider themselves


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Chinese ... if we want to make one country, two systems a success then we have to strengthen people’s sense of one country. The tension expressed here between Chinese identity and Hong Kong identity is not a new one in Hong Kong and it precedes the handover. Yet in the new political environment it is often seen as a barrier to the full recognition of Chinese sovereignty and thus the efforts to build a new Chinese identity through the school curriculum. As a complement to this national emphasis in civic education is an equally strong emphasis on personal values mediated very much through a Confucian ethic. Lee (2004b) has highlighted what he sees as the rationale for focusing on individual moral development in the Asian context: When referring to individuality (rather than individualism as it is in the West) the emphasis is placed on the quality of the inner being (in terms of spirituality) and the development of individual character. This explains the orientation towards defining civic education in terms of moral education (or moral education in terms of civic education). (p. 283) It is important to understand that this emphasis on ‘self-cultivation’ is deeply cultural, having its routes in Confucianism and its popular expression through modern Confucian humanists such as Tu Wei-ming (Tu 1999a, 1999b). Yet this emphasis on personal morality is not divorced from the political, as Kennedy (2005, p.141–42) has pointed out: Thus while moral education may seem to be purely personal and even inward looking, it is not in its Confucian form just about personal piety. Good people make good citizens and good citizens act morally and they expect their governments and their leaders to do the same. The moral purposes of society, and in particular the political sphere, are underpinned by a moral education that takes the individual as a starting point. The expectation is that critical mass, once achieved, will secure the broader purposes. Self cultivation is not about selfishness. Individuals are always part of a whole whether it is the family, society or the broader environment and moral education is designed as much for the whole as it is for individuals. In this sense, then, the personal and the national come together in Hong Kong’s civic education. Drawing on the nationalist, and indeed patriotic, aspirations of Beijing’s centralist totalitarian government and a revived Confucianism that focuses on civic morality, both moral and civic education seek to incorporate young people into a conception of the state that has its roots in a Chinese nationalism that is as real as it was in China’s dynastic period. Hong Kong’s young citizens may be workers in the knowledge economy but they will equally be citizens of the new China as it makes its way in a competitive and globalized world.

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Japan Geographically close to China, citizenship education in Japan has nevertheless taken on different forms in response to local values and conditions. A very new spirit behind civic education was announced by the new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (2006) at his first Cabinet Meeting: ‘We will immediately engage ourselves in rebuilding education, to nurture people who value their families, their communities, and their country, and who are filled with rich humanity, creativity and discipline’. By 15 December 2006 both Houses of the Japanese parliament had passed reforms to the 1947 Fundamental Law of Education with significant implications for civic education. As reported in the New York Times (Onishi 15 December 2006b), the changes highlighted ‘“love of country,” “public spirit” and “tradition,” and gives the country’s political leadership greater control over the schools’. Onishi (15 December 2006a) commented: Abe is pushing Japan to rebuild national pride and to claim a larger role in the world after six decades of constitutionally enforced pacifism and reticence. But to critics, especially of the education law, the steps taken Friday move Japan away from its postwar ideals and hark back to the expansionist imperial Japan of the 1930s. While the legislative basis for this change is new, the general trend and direction towards more nationalistic forms of civic education in Japan is not. Parmenter (2006) pointed to actions that have been taken in some prefectures to make patriotism an explicit part of school education event to the extent of providing students with grades for such a component of the curriculum. She has also pointed to examples of the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education making the use of the national flag and national anthem compulsory in school ceremonies with punishments for teachers who do not comply with the directive. The legislative action taken by Shinzo Abe’s government will in all likelihood cement these directions in Japanese civic education. The radical nature of these new directions in Japanese civic education can be better understood when it is recalled that until now civic education has been a mechanism of post-war reconstruction. In that context, ‘the ideal of democracy and pacifism has been emphasized especially in the curriculum and textbooks of civic education and extra-curricular activities’ (Fujita and Wong 1998/1999, p.29). Ikeno (2005, p.97) identified three distinct foci of civic education in the post-war period with the most recent being one in which citizenship education ... is undertaken so that children acquire knowledge about and an understanding of society, the ability to consider and make judgments concerning problems in society, the skills and abilities to perform their role in society, and the will, interest, and attitude to participate in society.


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In the current environment in which Japan has sent troops to support the United States in Iraq and when North Korea represents a very real threat to Japanese security, the principles of the post-war settlement no longer seem to hold. As Shinzo Abe (2005, p.3) pointed out in a talk to the Brookings Institution: ‘when after a national debate, we write a constitution with our own hands, that will truly mark the completion of Japan’s independence’. It is this spirit of independence that underpins the proposed reforms to civic education – an independence that does not seem afraid of reigniting the spirit of Japanese nationalism. Ironically it is international conditions that have led to this reassertion of nationalism by Japanese politicians and resulted in the first legislation since the end of the Second World War that has openly endorsed patriotic education in Japanese schools. Yet, as shown earlier, this direction has not appeared suddenly but seems to be part of deeper feelings about the nation that have been beneath the surface of Japanese society. Perhaps these feelings were reflected in debates about the portrayal of Japanese history in textbooks and visits to war shrines by former Prime Minister Koizumi. Yet what is important to note in terms of civic education is that increasing internationalization has not led to a greater commitment to global values and perspectives but rather to a greater reliance on national values and priorities.

Pakistan If civic education in Hong Kong and Japan is directed towards winning the allegiance of young people to the secular nation state, then in Pakistan it is the Islamic state that seeks the hearts and minds of young people. Recent reviews of civic education in Pakistan point to the centrality of an Islamic religious framework in Social Studies, the school subject in which citizenship education is embedded (Dean 2005; Ahmad 2004b). Dean (2005, p.40) put it this way: ‘The nature of the aims and objectives indicates that the curriculum makes no distinction between Islamic education and citizenship education. Social studies education must produce true practicing Muslims citizens who will work to strengthen the Islamic state’. Textbooks, which Dean (2005, p.40) describes as central to civic education, seek to achieve this curriculum objective in ways that appear to be anything but civic. According to Dean (2005, pp.40–41), the textbooks reviewed in her study portrayed democracy as limited to voting, equated good citizenship with being a good Muslim, promoted patriotism towards Pakistan as an Islamic state, regarded Pakistan as culturally homogeneous and advocated support for whatever government was in power. Thus textbooks seem to translate a distinctive view of the Pakistani citizen that is consistent with the overall objective of social studies education outlined above. Ahmad’s (2004b) analysis of a different set of Pakistani textbooks is broadly consistent with that of Dean. Yet he goes one step further with the assertion that ‘the selection of material and their thematic sequence in the textbooks present Islam not simply as a belief system but a political ideology and a grand unifying

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worldview that must be accepted by all citizens’ (Ahmad 2004b, p.45). He relates this ideology to political events in Pakistan that saw the overthrow of a democratically elected government in 1977 and the imposition of a military dictatorship under General Zia-ul-Haq. Religion became the means of both unifying the nation and imposing an ideology that provided not simply spiritual direction but more importantly political legitimacy. It is in this context that civic education in Pakistan needs to be understood. The religious character of the formal school curriculum in Pakistan, as it relates to civic education, is also reinforced in other ways, especially through the system of madrasas, ‘Pakistani religious schools that breed extremism of many hues’ (International Crisis Group 2002, p.i). Such schools are common in many Islamic countries and in Pakistan they are embedded in the history of the country with different governments seeking either to reform them or co-opt them for their own purposes. As the International Crisis Group (2002) has pointed out, while the madrasas have been associated in recent times with jihadism and radical Islam, this is not their main function and the majority of them do not function in this way. Yet they do represent the religious texture of Pakistani society, representing as they do different Islamic sects and seeking as they do to prove the superiority of their own particular religious perspectives. It is an uncompromising fundamentalism that characterizes the madrasas and their teaching. The International Crisis Group (2002, p.3) concluded that ‘despite state intervention, the curricula is still based on traditional literature and teaching methods. Its rationale of existence remains virtually unchanged and as emotive as ever: to defend the faith of Islam – if need be through jihad’. A society that supports such schools, either directly or indirectly, will find little difficulty with a civic education steeped in a single worldview religion. One follows from the other and is explicable only in terms of local cultures, beliefs, politics and values. It is these that construct civic education in Pakistan and in other parts of the region as well.

Conclusion More liberal economies and more liberal curricula might suggest similar changes for citizenship education. Yet what seems to be the case is that social and political values rather than economic values drive curriculum, pedagogy and assessment for citizenship education in the future. As shown in the cases of Hong Kong, Japan and Pakistan, the nation state will continue to protect itself with its national citizenship education programmes. Yet the history of the twenty-first century to date suggests that more will be needed. Issues that will confront governments in the future will require citizens who are not only loyal to the nation state but who can make judgements about the role of the nation state in complex and uncertain global contexts. Can national citizenship education achieve this objective? This is an issue of choice for nation states since there is nothing inevitable about the form and purposes of citizenship education. In this postmodern world, ways need to be found to integrate national values education with skills and capacities that will assist


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future citizens to be appropriately loyal to the nation state but not necessarily blind to its faults. This will require, in the words of Stiglitz (2002, p.x), a capacity ‘to view problems in a dispassionate way, to put aside ideology and to look at evidence before making a decision about what is the best course of action’. This may require too much from politicians for whom ideology rather than objective decision-making is the norm. Yet there needs to be a commitment to produce citizens who are loyal and critical, national and global and culturally sensitive but questioning. They need to have a concern for their own communities but also for the international community as well. Without such citizens, politics and ideology will dominate both national and global contexts. To avoid this outcome does not necessarily signal an ‘end to ideology’. It does mean, however, that policy makers and politicians need to be more cognizant of their capacities to construct citizenship education in different ways. In the future, citizenship education needs to support the nation state as well as recognize new global realities that are both economic and political in nature. It is in the recognition of these multiple perspectives that citizenship education in the future rests. Multiple realities are the hallmark of national and global living in the twenty-first century and multiple realities need to characterize citizenship education and help it achieve new objectives in the uncertain times that face the Asia of the twentyfirst century.

7

Examination and assessment cultures

Every year in South Korea for one day, usually in December, airplane routes in Seoul are redirected for an hour, government workers are told to report to work an hour later than usual, police cars are placed on emergency standpoint. Prior to this day, high school seniors have stopped cutting their fingernails, drinking milk, taking showers and eating seaweed soup, and some pay a special visit to temples or shrines. These students are also traditionally given special presents of traditional candy, forks, and glutinous rice cake. Versions of these activities can also be annually seen in various other Far East Asia countries. What is going on? It is time for the taking of the college entrance examination. (Gray 2001)

Introduction Examinations are not a unique feature of education systems in Asia but they have been a dominant feature for some time, and they continue to be so as the above quotation clearly indicates. Yet Lee (2001, p.10) identified a trend in Korea and Japan where assessment reform policies appeared to be moving towards ‘diversification/loosening’ compared with England and the United States where assessment policies were characterized as moving towards ‘unification/tightening’. Lee (2001, p.11) described the different operational approaches to assessment reform: ‘more uniform curriculum and high-stakes assessment with a focus on academic achievement were expected in England and the U.S., whereas more adaptive curricula and flexible assessments towards whole-person education were expected in Korea and Japan’ (Lee 2001, p.11). Lee’s analysis is only partially correct. As this book has shown, there is certainly a widespread curriculum reform agenda across the region. Yet as this chapter will demonstrate, curriculum reform is not accompanied by equally broad assessment reform. There are two key issues that shed light on why Lee’s initial analysis appears to have been somewhat premature. The first issue is related to the increasing importance attached to participation in international large-scale assessments such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and similar literacy, civics and science studies run by


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the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). Asian countries are usually well represented in these studies1. What is more, Asian students are often seen to perform very well. Yet on closer analysis, this performance is not uniform across the region. East Asian students – from Hong Kong, Korea, Japan and Taiwan, along with students from Singapore – are often ranked close to the top. Yet students from other Southeast Asian countries – the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia – often come near the bottom. Clearly, geography is not the key factor since Singapore students situated in Southeast Asia do very well. These regional disparities are not easy to explain. Thus one outcome of such international studies and their results is that assessment has remained centre-stage across most of the region although it is not the kind of assessment referred to by Lee (2001). It seems important to try to understand why this has been the case. A second issue relates to the purposes of assessment and the cultural contexts in which they are embedded. Biggs (1996) has argued that the focus on examinations in the so-called ‘Confucian heritage cultures’ (CHCs)2 is a distinctive feature that has impacted on student learning (this issue is explored at some length in Chapter 9). By extrapolation, it might also be argued that the kind of learning that has habituated CHC students to examinations may also assist them to do well in large-scale international assessments. This cultural argument has not been uncontested (Morrison 2006) but the issue remains that certain forms of assessment such as examinations have been privileged in some Asian countries in ways that they are not in many Western countries. Yet this argument does not directly address the issue of regional disparities because examinations are as prevalent in Southeast Asia as they are in East Asia. How do culture, learning and assessment interact across the region to produce these disparities and is culture the only explanatory variable of interest? The issues outlined above create a rich yet complex backdrop against which to examine assessment policy and practices across the Asia-Pacific region. The purposes of this chapter, therefore, are to: ●

●

●

identify the distinctive characteristics of assessment across the region and seek to account for this distinctiveness investigate the role that international large-scale assessments currently play in the region and how these are related to other dominant assessment modes explore the cultural contexts of assessment in the region and identify the way such contexts facilitate or restrict assessment practices.

The purposes of assessment: selection or learning? Assessment for selection Public examinations remain a topic of community interest and concern in many Asian countries. The reasons for this interest vary but there can be little doubt about the public profile examinations have in many Asian societies. It might be the

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15,000 students in Bangladesh who were expelled for cheating in the 2001 public examination (Lawson 2001), the threat to stability and cohesion now said to be posed by the competitive college entrance examinations in China (Hartman 2006) or the extensive public consultations that were undertaken in Hong Kong in 2005 when the government decided to do away with both the Hong Kong Certificate of Education (Form 5) and A levels (Form 7) and introduce a single public examination at the end of Form 6 (Education and Manpower Bureau 2005). Examinations attract this public attention because they are part of the social structure of many Asian societies, providing the main pathway to further study in elite institutions such as prestigious secondary schools or universities. Examinations are by no means a modern phenomenom in Asian societies since ‘the first written public examinations were introduced over 2000 thousand years ago, in China, to select the most able citizens for positions in the civil service and to reduce the effects of patronage’ (World Bank 2001c). This historic function of public examinations is now widespread, although the destinations of successful examinees are now more diverse. Yet public examinations have continued to function as a selection mechanism screening out some students and endorsing others for further education. This process of selection does not operate in a vacuum, despite the continuing belief in public examinations as an objective selection mechanism. Examination systems have created their own distinctive social and cultural practices that have become embedded in many Asian societies. These practices, which will be reviewed in the following section, create an important context for understanding broader issues of examinations and assessment in the region.

‘Cram schools’ as a social practice: highlighting examination cultures in the region The most noticeable social practice emanating from the strong examination culture in the region and certainly the most well documented, is the cram school – ‘juku’ in Japan, ‘buxiban’ in Taiwan, ‘hagwon’ in Korea, ‘tutorial school’ in Hong Kong and ‘tutorial’ in India. Bray and Kwok (2003, p.611) have conceptualized the activities of these cram schools under the broader more positive practice of ‘private supplementary teaching’ since not all private tutoring arrangements take place in dedicated tutorial centres. Kwok (2004a, p.64) has also pointed to the negative connotations of ‘cramming’ in the sense ‘that it is related to rote learning’. The broader term is preferable in describing the breadth of activities in which students engage outside the formal schooling system. Nevertheless, the negative aspects of ‘cramming’ for examinations cannot be dismissed, ‘because a major purpose of tutoring is to help pupils to gain qualifications, demand tends to increase close to the major public examinations, and then abruptly to decline once the examinations are over’ (Bray and Kwok 2003, p.614). Cram schools, private tutoring and public examinations are, therefore, inextricably linked. There are significant pedagogical implications that flow from this link. Kwok (2004a, p.71) has referred to the ‘idol’ tutors who ‘delineated piecemeal educational processes and outcomes, entirely determined by open examination results.


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Their marketing styles and pedagogical characteristics reinforced open examination pressure and encouraged students to value the importance of open examinations to their life/career’. From the point of view of students themselves, cram schools provided ‘shortcuts to learning, thorough past examination paper analysis, and even seemingly reliable open examination tips in Hong Kong, Taipei and Tokyo’ (Kwok 2004a, p.70). Foondun has also reported in the Southeast Asian context the negative aspects of what he refers to as ‘private tutoring’ that results in an emphasis ... on specific examination skills ... [and] ... inordinate cramming and learning by heart lengthy lists of verbs, comparatives, masculine and feminine, singulars and plurals etc ... But there is worse. In one examination, examiners found 40 scripts of 40 pupils identical. The teacher admitted that ‘he had prepared about 100 possible questions and made his pupils learn the answers to them by heart.’ (Foondun 2002, p.505) Given the negative impact of cram school and private tutoring activities, why do they persist? As Foondun (2002, p.503) has noted, it is not that governments are unaware of either the purpose or function of such extra-classroom activities. Yet whether it is in Singapore, Korea, Indonesia or Myanmar, attempts at control have been largely unsuccessful. Kim and Lee (2002, p.2) have argued with reference to the Korean context that cram schools are ‘perfect substitutes’ for public schools and therefore at least as important to the community that provides direct support for them. The reasons for such support are multiple and Kim and Lee (2002, p.25) have implicated government education policies: The theory and empirical evidence provided in this paper strongly suggest that rampant private tutoring is a market reponse to the under provision of public education and the heavy regulation and strict controls of the government. It is predicted by our model and confirmed by our empirical finding that students with high academic ability, high family income, and whose parents are highly educated, spend more on private tutoring because their educational demands are not properly met by the formal school system that is provided by the government. Foondun (2002, p.491) agrees that it is the element of competition in the education system that gives private tutoring its edge as families seek to gain a relative advantage for their children ‘in the education race’, whether it is at primary or secondary level. As long as there is a prize at the end of the race – whether it is entry to an elite secondary school or university – then competition becomes the dominating force that guides the behaviour of parents. Kwok (2004b, p.8), with special reference to Hong Kong, has argued that modernization, economic growth and technological advancement provided ‘the ultimate causative forces’ influencing

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the availability of private tutoring in a meritocratic society where ‘education was the major screening device for upward social mobility’. The real outcome of the ‘race’, therefore, is inter-generational social and economic gain. It is this for which parents are willing to pay and for which so many students suffer what the Koreans call, ‘ipsi-jiok ... entrance examination hell’ (Kim and Lee 2002, p.4). While Kwok (2004b, pp.10–11) has highlighted the social and economic contexts in which cram schools and private tutoring seem to thrive, he has also referred to the broader cultural contexts of Confucian heritage societies as a factor that helps to explain why it is that success in examinations is so important. He argued that while such an explanation is widespread, he does not believe that there is sufficient evidence to support it at this stage. Other writers, however, have been less reticent to attribute cultural factors as causes of parental commitment to examination success. Gray (2001), in his review of Zeng (1999), makes the point that the test is not viewed primarily as an aptitude or I.Q. test, as in the West; rather, what is being measured is how well trained a student is. In other words, what is valued is not the ability to acquire information, to efficiently learn new things, and make connections between them, but the personal qualities – discipline, obedience, ‘spirit,’ a good memory, the ability to postpone gratification – of the individual who can successfully pass the test. These are Confucian virtues that both Gray (2001) and Zeng (1999) see as operating principles in modern Confucian heritage cultures. Nguyen et al. (2005, p.407) have summarized a range of literature supporting the idea that cultural factors do play a significant role in different aspects of teaching and learning for students in Confucian heritage cultures. This is an issue that will be returned to in the third section of this chapter. Yet as Kwok (2004b, p.10) has pointed out, cram schools and private tutoring are also features of many non-Confucian heritage societies in which case the ‘cultural’ argument becomes less persuasive. Even in a mainly Confucian heritage culture like Singapore, it has been argued that the examination system is not so much a relic of Confucianism as a sorting device to ensure racial equality and harmony (Moore 2000). It is this meritocratic aspect of the exam system that may be generalizable across Asian cultures, even if it is most deeply embedded in Confucian heritage culture countries. Meritocracy implies competition for limited opportunities and it is this competition that seems to encourage parents to seek whatever means they can to assist their children to do well. The number of ‘cram schools’ and private tutoring classes across different societies is almost impossible to estimate as is the level of access to them. Bray and Kwok (2003, pp.612–613) have reported figures based on non-representative sample surveys carried out in both Asian and non-Asian countries. Foondun (2002, pp.488–489) also reported the results of a number of surveys attempting to capture the extent of private tutoring in Mauritius and a number of Southeast Asian countries. Kim and Lee (2002) used household survey data to develop a theoretical model for explaining the extent of private tutoring in Korea. The figures


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vary from country to country but it seems, based on these surveys, that very significant numbers of students in places like Japan, Korea and Taiwan are accessing after-school tuition. One area where there seems to be agreement is that private tutoring is primarily accessed by high-ability students who have wealthy parents in an attempt to provide an even greater advantage for these students. Examinations themselves may be an objective selection device but cram schools and private tutoring ensure that the rich will have an advantage over the poor and that meritocracy will thus favour the rich. In this context, it is a myth that public examinations provide a level playing field for all students. Private tutoring ensures that students from well-off families will always have the edge in the meritocratic race that is mediated by public examinations.

Assessment for learning: alternative approaches to assessment and their impact in the Asia-Pacific region Public examinations systems have been characterized as promoting ‘assessment of learning’ rather than ‘assessment for learning’ (Assessment Reform Group 1999). Such a distinction is an important one in educational terms. Assessment of learning is a summative process that seeks to find out what students know at a particular point in time – at the end of a unit of work or a key stage of schooling. It is a measure or judgement about what learning has taken place. This is what public examinations do: measure what students know and then rank them from most knowledgeable to least knowledgeable. Assessment for learning, on the other hand, is any form of assessment that provides feedback to students on the progress they are making in their learning. It can take many forms ranging from questions asked by a classroom teacher, to classroom tests and checklists that students themselves can use to monitor their own learning progress. The purpose of such assessment is to improve learning and move students from where they are to where they need to be. It does not compare students in any way – it simply tries to assist students to improve their learning. This approach to assessment has gained in popularity in many Western countries in recent times. The importance of this trend was best demonstrated when the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) declared that ‘teachers using formative assessment approaches guide students toward development of their own “learning to learn” skills that are increasingly necessary as knowledge is quickly outdated in the information society’ (OECD 2005, p.22). ‘Formative assessment’ is an older term than ‘assessment for learning’ but its meaning is similar. Such approaches seek to make assessment a more relevant and meaningful process for students and are directly related to improving student learning. It stands in contrast to the structural rigidity represented by public examination systems that seek to rank students. Yet there is not a widespread movement across Asia to promote and adopt these classroom-based forms of assessment. Nevertheless, there are examples that are worth noting. An external evaluation of Thailand’s current approaches to assessment articulated a rationale for adopting new forms of assessment that could well be

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applicable across the region: ‘The current understanding of assessment models and procedures used in Thailand rewards conformity, memorisation, recall and knowledge reproduction. Teachers need a significant amount of training and guidance in new and alternative methods of assessment’ (Office of Commercial Services (Queensland University of Technology) 2002, p.28). This view was supported within Thailand when the Secretary General of the Office of the National Education Commission proclaimed publicly that: assessment is the key factor that can affect the learning behavior. Without the reform of assessment, it is rather difficult to reform learning. In order to expand the scope of evaluation and assessment beyond the multiple-choice type of tests, Section 26 [i.e. of the National Education Act, 1999] states that educational institutions shall assess learners’ performance through observation of their development; personal conduct; learning behavior; participation in activities and results of the tests accompanying the teaching-learning process commensurate with the different levels and types of education. (Kaewdang 1999) Thailand’s emphasis on more classroom based assessments is related to its current educational reform agenda. Thus there is little indication of how successful these attempts will be. Hong Kong, on the other hand, has had a relatively long history of attempting to introduce new forms of assessment (Yu et al. 2006). The current reform agenda in Hong Kong is no exception but there seems little reason to believe that it will be any more successful than previous attempts (Fok et al. 2006). Carless (2005, p.51) has shown how difficult assessment reform is in Hong Kong and proposed a somewhat complex framework to try to account for Hong Kong teachers’ resistance to such reforms. It includes micro-level factors such as personal beliefs and values as well as macro-level factors such as the existence of high-stakes examinations. Assessment reform, at least in Hong Kong, does not appear to be an easy task. Hong Kong and Thailand are not alone in their attempts to introduce new forms of assessment into their education systems. There is also evidence of similar reform in countries like China (Gu and Berry in press; Gao 2005; Han 2006), the Philippines (Department of Education (Philippines) 2004) and Singapore (Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board 2006; Sellan et al. 2006). Yet such reform agendas in no way challenge the public examination systems in these countries. Perhaps more importantly, such attempts at innovation differ in form from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and across the region there is no agreed definition of these classroom-based assessments. Table 7.1 shows different approaches to classroom-based assessments being used in different countries. There are a number of points to make about Table 7.1. Apart from China, there is no evidence in any of these countries that assessment reform is part of a broader reform agenda. The China examples, however, appear to be forms of assessment that are outside the mainstream – additional to the examinations that remain the real high-stakes events for students. The Singapore example of Project Work is


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Table 7.1 Exemplars of classroom-based assessments in selected Asian societies Country

Source

Example of classroom assessment

China

Gu and Berry (in press) Gao (2005)

Oral assessment Assessment Saloon: A Developing Technique for Student Assessment Cambridge Young Learners Test

Yan (2006) Malaysia

Lim and Zhao (2005)

Indonesia

SEAMEO Secretariat (1998) Continuous (formative) student assessment is practised widely and is the responsibility of each school. There are several types of formative assessment, i.e., monthly mid-term and final term examination. The results of the formative assessment would affect the result of the final term exam, the summative assessment

Philippines Department of Education (Philippines) (2004) Singapore

Mathematics assessments are usually given in the form of formative tests such as short tests or monthly tests

Assessment for Learning: Practices, Tools and Alternative Approaches

Singapore Examinations and Formative Assessment Strategies Assessment Board (2006) Sellan et al. (2006) Project Work Fan and Quek (2005) Integrating New Assessment Strategies into mathematics Classrooms: What have we learned from a CRPP mathematics assessment project?

somewhat different. Project Work is a compulsory GCE A level subject and the nature of the subject requires new approaches to assessment. The real reform is in the nature of the subject; new approaches to assessment simply follow. The mathematics example in Singapore is part of a research project and does not appear to be systemic. Similarly in the Philippines, what is on offer is a single set of teacher inservice activities focused on assessment for learning and seemingly outside of any broader assessment reform process. What the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) refers to, however, under the guise of ‘formative’ assessment, is really a regime of testing geared to preparing students for the final examination. Thus apart from the assessment policy directions referred to earlier in Hong Kong and Thailand, there is no coherent approach to assessment reform in the region. As Table 7.1 shows, attempts at changing assessment practices or highlighting alternative practices across the region are fragmented and piecemeal. Examinations continue to reign supreme as the dominant mode of assessment in Asia. This suggests that the so-called ‘international transfer of assessment’ (Sebatane 2000) does not apply in the region, at least when it comes to classroom-based assessments. Yet it can be detected in other forms of assessment.

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There is a new layer of national and international assessments in the region – summative rather than formative, competitive rather than learning oriented and increasingly used by governments to measure national educational progress. These will be discussed in the following section.

The role of large-scale assessments in assessment reform policy Kellaghan and Greaney (2001, p.87) have commented that: the most remarkable development in assessment towards the end of the 20th century has probably been the growth in its use to measure the achievement outcomes of national systems of education, either considered uniquely (in national assessments) or in the context of the performance of other education systems (in international comparative studies of achievement). While examinations and national and international assessments can broadly be grouped together as ‘modes of assessment’, there are, nevertheless, a number of significant differences between them including purposes, focus and uses. The World Bank (2001c), for example, has identified differences of purpose and focus. Examinations provide information on individuals whereas national assessments usually provide information on entire education systems. The purpose of providing information on individuals is to facilitate selection processes whereas the purpose of system-wide data is to monitor general education levels as well as making a general assessment about the ‘health’ of the system as a whole. Kellaghan and Greaney (2003, pp.10–12) have pointed out in the African context that examinations are not good tools for enhancing the quality of an education system, but indeed may do the opposite. Powdyel (2005, p.47), on the other hand, has argued that in Bhutan examinations have served this systemlevel function. Yet both are agreed that the specific role of national assessments is that they can be directed at system-level issues thus enabling policy makers to address concerns about the education system as a whole. While examinations are pervasive across Asia, national assessments, in the sense mentioned above, are not (Kellaghan and Greaney 2001, p.91). Thailand has included national assessments focused on the quality of individual schools as part of its education reforms (World Bank 2006b, p.66), as has Hong Kong with its Basic Competency Assessment (Curriculum Development Council 2001a, p.81). Under the influence of the World Bank, Vietnam, Cambodia and Bhutan have also embarked on the development of national assessments as tools for monitoring the quality of their education systems (Griffin and Thanh 2006; World Bank 2007a; Powdyel 2005). In addition, a number of Asian countries has taken very deliberate decisions to participate in international large-scale assessments such as the PISA, and the various international assessments conducted by the IEA in areas such as mathematics, science, reading, civic education and information and communications technology. The outcomes of these international


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studies have provided some interesting and keenly debated results. They have also raised important issues about the nature and purpose of student assessment. In terms of results, it is the dominance of students from East Asian countries that is a hallmark of these assessments. The outcomes of the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) consistently ranked students from Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan and Korea as the top performers. In Grade 4 mathematics, students from Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan were the top four performers out of 25 countries (Mullis et al. 2004, p.31). In science, it was the same four countries, although with a different order: Singapore, Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong. Yet such results were not Asia-wide: students from the Philippines ranked 23 out of 25 in both mathematics and science (Martin et al. 2004, p.37). In Grade 8 mathematics students from five Asian counties were ranked in the top five (Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan) with Malaysia at 10, Indonesia at 34 and the Philippines at 41 (Mullis et al. 2004, p.38). In science, students from Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong and Japan were ranked 1 to 4 and 6 respectively. Malaysia was ranked 20, Indonesia 36 and Philippines 42 (Martin et al. 2004, p.41). The TIMSS assessment is curriculum related, but there is also evidence from the more skills-related PISA assessments that Asian students also do very well. In mathematical literacy for example, Hong Kong’s fifteen-year-olds outperformed all students from both OECD and non-OECD countries. Korean, Japanese and Macau students also did very well, coming within the top ten countries. Yet, as with TIMSS, students from countries such as Thailand and Indonesia were ranked towards the bottom of the participating countries (OECD 2004a, p.94). The results for problem-solving were much the same. Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Macau ranked 1, 2, 4 and 6 respectively. Again Thailand and Indonesia ranked towards the bottom (OECD 2004b, p.42). For science literacy, the story is similar with some variation in the positions taken by the East Asian countries, but the same gap between East and Southeast Asian countries (OECD 2004a, p.294). These results from both TIMSS and PISA raise a number of issues. With international studies such as these, there seems little reason for the participating countries to run national assessments of their own. In an important sense, large-scale internal assessments can take the place of national assessments, pointing as they do to strengths and weaknesses in the performance of students. The international context adds to the weight of such assessments because governments can get some sense of where their education systems stand vis-à-vis their international economic competitors. Whether this is a valid educational reason for such assessments is another question, but it is certainly a reason that has some currency with governments in the region. Of course, the news is not good for all such governments, so that in countries like the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia, these results give cause for some soul-searching. The results presented above are very basic and there are much more sophisticated analyses that seek to explain the pattern of results (for example, Chui and Ho 2006). In East Asian countries, however, these results coincide with the widespread education reforms that have been the focus of much of this book. On the one hand, radical change is being proposed to the school curriculum and in

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some jurisdictions (e.g. Taiwan and Hong Kong) the examination system. Yet the results of international assessments seem to suggest that current arrangements for curriculum and assessment are capable of producing outstanding comparative results. Yet the status quo in many East Asian classrooms has been highlighted by Leung (2001, p.35) as ‘content oriented ... examination driven ... teaching is very traditional and old fashioned’. It is this tension between tradition and results that characterize much of the debate about the performance of East Asian students in international assessments and in some instances draws into question the rationale for current educational reforms. There has been a considerable amount of literature attempting to account for the way the traditional curriculum, teaching and assessment methods that characterize East Asian classrooms lead to superior student performance. Biggs (1996) and Marton et al. (1996) argued that part of the explanation related to learning styles. What many Western observers thought was rote learning these scholars identified as memorization that led to deep understanding. Ironically, an assessment strategy such as an examination had the potential to reward memorization so that there was a clear link between assessment and learning. Leung (2001) has pointed to both the conception of teachers in East Asian societies and the focus on their scholarly as distinct from pedagogical role. He has argued that culturally teachers in East Asia are more concerned with the class as a whole than with individuals so that the care of a large group of students is not overly problematic. When this is coupled with the deep subject matter knowledge of teachers then the context is one in which knowledgeable teachers take on the responsibility to ensure that their students are equally knowledgeable. The high regard in which teachers are held facilitates this process and creates a learning context that values knowledge acquisition. For Leung, these are deeply cultural issues reflective of what are now popularly called ‘Confucian heritage cultures’. Thus the explanation advanced for the dominance of East Asian students in international assessments is largely a cultural one. It is an argument that deserves further consideration and it will be dealt with in the final section of this chapter.

The ‘Asian learner’ and assessment: how compelling is the culturalist argument? The very concept of the ‘Asian learner’ appears to be problematic as highlighted recently by Morrison (2006). Yet it is an even more problematic construct once geographic and cultural boundaries constrain the reference to ‘East Asian learners’ or ‘Chinese learners’. Nevertheless, scholars have consistently drawn links between learning, assessment and cultural characteristics: East Asian entrance exams are seen by East Asians as measures not only of achievement and intelligence, but also of character and determination, and the drive to succeed. One symbolic message they send is: learning is a long journey of ordeal. Without pain, one can hardly attain it, and there is no shortcut. (Zeng 1999, p.v)


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If the characteristics described above are meant to be aspects of East Asian culture, do they alone account for the difference in performance between students in East Asia (Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong) and Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines)? Do students in East Asia always work harder, possess better memorization strategies and have more dedicated teachers and parents who constantly exhort them to do even better? Are classroom teaching and learning contexts in East Asia such that they always facilitate better learning outcomes for students than can be achieved in Southeast Asia? Perhaps most importantly as far as this chapter is concerned, do East Asian examination cultures provide the motivation for the kind of learning that is said to take place both inside and outside East Asian classrooms in a way that similar assessment processes in Southeast Asian classrooms do not? If the answer is positive to all these questions, is it necessarily the specific attribution of cultural characteristics to East Asian learners that accounts for the outcomes? This, of course, is an empirical question, yet there are a number of points that can be made to guide further consideration of it. How important are economic conditions in the respective countries as determinants of learning compared with cultural characteristics? Is it coincidence that the countries from which top performing students come are also classified with the highest human development indices and education indices (see Chapter 2)? Might not investment in education that creates a greater pool of talent from which to draw be at least as important as specific cultural characteristics? The results of the PISA 2003 mathematics assessment lend some support to an economic explanation since 28 per cent of the variance in students’ scores could be accounted for by countries’ gross domestic product (OECD 2004a, p.100). Given such investment decisions by nations, it may be that the overwhelming drive and support for education in East Asia is basically instrumental – increasing economic competitiveness at the macro level and improving educational life chances at the micro level. The economic argument at least needs to be given more consideration in debates on learning and assessment than is currently the case. Wee (2004, p.2), for example, has argued that there is often a complementarity between the instrumental and the cultural so that while the driving force might be instrumental, it can also be directed towards certain ‘objects of desire that are cultural’. She does not refer specifically to education, but if her argument is applied to the present case, then the ‘objects of desire’ would be the kind of societal values that are said to characterize Confucian heritage cultures: hard work, willingness to do well for the sake of the family, subjugating personal values for collective values and regarding learning as a necessary burden rather than a joyous experience. From Wee’s (2004) argument, these cultural considerations are not the core driving forces – they are ‘desiderata’ that can be pursued because of the instrumental agenda that provides some overt reward for the effort that is taken. Examinations, therefore, become the site on which these ‘cultural desiderata’ are played out, yet the overwhelming motive is instrumental not cultural. In a fundamental way, success in the examinations provides the pathway to improved life chances. It is the benefits of meritocracy not cultural characteristics

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that determine success. Of course, such an explanation does not explain the differences in student performance within Asia, but it does start to disentangle the different elements that can affect student performance. Morrison (2006) has highlighted the essentialist argument behind notions of ‘the Asian learner’ and ‘Confucian heritage cultures’. While he does not go into detail, his point is that postmodernist critiques have rejected conceptualizations that assume there are single underlying constructs that can account for a complex human behaviour such as learning. It is a philosophical rather than an empirical critique that locates motivation, capacity and opportunity with individuals rather than in the operation of powerful social and cultural forces. Where such ‘forces’ are used as explanations, they are usually viewed by postmodernists as hegemonic devices that attempt to oversimplify, stereotype and misrepresent the struggles of individuals for personal freedom and liberation. While we might not accept all the assumptions of such a critique, it does require some imagination to believe that all Chinese learners are influenced by the same set of cultural characteristics in exactly the same way. In this sense, the postmodernist critique is a useful brake that warns against stereotyping and underestimating the potential of individuals to exert some agency in the unique learning contexts in which they find themselves. The philosophical issue raised by postmodernism can also be treated in an empirical way. The significance of within-country between-school differences in the various international assessment exercises, and even public examinations, provides some indication of the uniformity of achievement within cultural contexts. If the culturalist argument is correct, there should be few between-school differences within broadly similar cultural communities. Yet on the mathematics space and shape scale in the 2003 PISA assessment only 10 per cent of the variance could be accounted for by between-country differences, with the remainder attributed to within-country differences either between schools or within schools (OECD 2004a, p.60). In overall mathematics achievement, between-school differences in Japan and Hong Kong were one-and-a-half times greater than the OECD average, suggesting that not only is there a range of ability across schools but such ability tends to be concentrated in some schools and not others (OECD 2004a, p.163). If the culturalist argument were authentic, ability would not play the significant role that it appears to in these two Confucian heritage cultures. Nevertheless, the issue is a complex one and the analysis provided here is preliminary, only suggesting that there are other factors apart from cultural characteristics that might account for student achievement. Finally, there is the issue of the relationship between teaching, learning and assessment and the extent to which cultural determinants alone account for student performance. This is a complex issue because the argument of scholars such as Leung (2001) is that all three of these educational processes in East Asia are culturally determined, or at least culturally situated. Kember and Gow (1991) worked with a Hong Kong sample of students and found that teaching practices encouraging reproductive learning may be a better explanation of student achievement than the existence of innate cultural characteristics. Such learning, of course was seen to be related to examinations so it was more prevalent in the


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later rather than earlier grades. Volet et al. (1994) found in a sample of Australian and Southeast Asian university students, approaches to study were influenced more by students’ perceptions of course requirements than by any personal or cultural characteristics and that there were no significant differences between Australian and Asian students. These studies establish in a very preliminary way that factors other than culture need to be explored in order to account for student performance (or lack of it) in specific national and cultural contexts.

Conclusion Western assessment literature suggests the possibility of broad changes in assessment practices focused on student learning and encapsulated in the slogan ‘assessment for learning’. Yet such an approach to assessment is not characteristic of much of Asia, with notable exceptions in Hong Kong and Thailand. Examinations remain a key assessment strategy across countries and these have often been linked to what in the West are seen as conservative teaching and learning processes. Yet in recent times, international assessments of student achievement have shown that students from East Asian countries tend to outperform not only their peers in the West but also in other parts of Asia. Research has suggested that what is often mistaken for rote learning is often memorization for the purpose of deep understanding and what appears to be teacher-dominated teaching is in reality a collectivist cultural phenomenon that involves deep caring for the whole class. These characteristics are often seen to be cultural in nature reflecting the values of Confucian heritage cultures. Yet evidence has been presented here to suggest that this culturalist argument at the very least needs to be questioned. It has the potential to result in stereotyping of East Asian students and at the same time misrepresenting the values of students in Southeast Asia who do not do as well as their East Asian peers. The level of investment in a country’s education, the extent of streaming within school systems and instrumentalist approaches to education focusing on its meritocratic functions may provide alternative explanations to an oversimplified culturalist explanation of why some Asian students do better than others.

Part II

Strategies for change in Asia’s schools

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Curriculum reform School-based curriculum development as a strategy for Asia’s schools

Introduction Curriculum reform has become an educational development priority for most Asian societies. Such reform is shaped by ‘economic concerns, social cohesion, human resources development (HRD) for sustainable development in emerging knowledge society, impacts of ICT (information and communication technology), preservation of cultural traditions, and impacts of globalization’ (Zhou 2006, p.9). One of the common challenges facing those seeking to reform curricula in Asia, however, is a tradition of centralized curriculum decision-making. In the West, school-based curriculum development (SBCD) emerged as a reaction to centralized curriculum policy-making and planning. The emergence of SBCD was intended to ‘foster greater teacher involvement and commitment; encourage curriculum adaptation to local conditions; and thereby to increase the likelihood of use and effectiveness of the new curricula’ (Cornbleth 1990, p.174). Can SBCD also be used in Asia to facilitate local curriculum relevant to the needs of young people? This chapter will initially review various definitions of curriculum used in both Asia and the West to demonstrate the cultural differences related even to basic definitions. It will then provide an overview of curriculum reform in selected Asian societies. Second, SBCD will be reviewed as a process designed to bring about curriculum change. The scope for SBCD in Asian societies will also be addressed. Third, case studies of SBCD from a selection of Asian societies will be presented to demonstrate what can be achieved in practice. Finally, the prospects for SBCD in Asian schools will be discussed.

Definitions of curriculum: Western scholarship and Asian practice Lee and Wong (1996) have identified five different approaches to understanding the school curriculum: curriculum as subjects, courses and programmes of study, for example, the ‘geography curriculum’ or ‘the junior secondary curriculum’ (Lee and Wong 1996, p.2); curriculum as a plan, for example, ‘a plan for learning’ (Wiles and Bondi 1989, p.131); curriculum as objectives, for example, ‘a set of performance objectives’ (Marsh 1997, p.4), and curriculum as experiences

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both inside and outside the classroom (Ornstein and Hunkins 1993, p.9). Other orientations to the curriculum include those that focus on individual and social constructions (Schubert 1986), reconceptualist approaches (Pinar et al. 1995, p.416), and critical approaches (Cornbleth 1990, p.13). It needs to be kept in mind that these definitions have been derived from Western academic discourse and they do not necessarily reflect actual curriculum practice, which is likely to be more eclectic, drawing on different curriculum traditions. Against this background, Baker and Begg (2003, p.543) have commented that in most Asian societies: The word curriculum is used to describe the national or regional document or the ‘official’ curriculum, but the word has other meanings and the official curriculum needs to be seen in relationship to other forms of curriculum ... This is usually interpreted at school level to suit local conditions and then interpreted even further as teachers plan their lessons. Different Asian societies have tended to use curriculum documents as key policy tools to indicate directions in the form of objectives, goals, standards or expected outcomes. Yet there is no single approach that can characterize an ‘Asian’ orientation to curriculum. In Singapore, for example (Ministry of Education (Singapore) 2004b), the school curriculum highlights ‘curriculum as objectives’ in the form of desired outcomes of education with intermediate outcomes of education at each stage of schooling. To give two examples, pupils should ‘have a lively curiosity about things’, ‘be enterprising and innovative’ and ‘have an entrepreneurial and creative spirit’ at the end of primary school, secondary school and junior college respectively. Pupils should also ‘be able to build friendships with others’, ‘be able to work in teams and value every contribution’ and ‘understand what it takes to inspire and motivate others’ at the end of primary school, secondary school and junior college respectively. On the other hand, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT 1998) in Japan stipulates national curriculum standards, which are generalized and more flexible so that the authority of local governments and schools is strengthened, enabling them to introduce creative innovation. In Korea, the direction of curriculum is based on the ideal profile of a well-educated person, defined as follows: a person who seeks to develop his/her own individuality on the basis of wellrounded and wholesome development; a person who demonstrates creative ability on the basis of a solid grounding in basic knowledge and skills; a person who explores career paths on the basis of broad intellectual knowledge and skills in diverse academic disciplines; a person who creates new values on the basis of an understanding of the national culture; and a person who contributes to the development of the community where he/she lives on the basis of democratic citizenship. (Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (Korea) 2001a, p.4)

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While it is not possible to identify a single approach to the school curriculum in different societies, what characterizes all the societies referred to above, and most others in Asia, is a highly centralized approach to the determination of the school curriculum. Curriculum formulation and priorities will differ from society to society, but their endorsement by central authorities will not. This is true irrespective of the political system so it applies as much to liberal democratic Japan as it does to China where the Communist Party is the dominant political body. If SBCD is to be a force for change in Asian schools, then some accommodation will need to be made with the processes of centralized curriculum decision-making. It may be that the press of reform will be such that these accommodations will become possible. The nature of the reforms being undertaken will be reviewed in the next section.

Overview of curriculum reform in selected Asian societies As pointed out in Part I, the economic impetus for education reform has dominated many societies in Asia. Yet the response to an economic impetus in curriculum terms can be varied. Integrated curriculum or curriculum integration was undertaken in some Asian societies. For example, in Cambodia, there are integration of social studies, science and aesthetic education; in China there are moral education and life, moral education and society, history and society, integrated arts and integrated practices; in the Republic of Korea there are disciplined life, intelligent life and pleasant life; in Thailand learning content is classified into eight subject groups; and in Japan there is ‘life environment studies’ (UNESCO 2003, pp.42–43). This is a varied reform agenda that seeks to meet local needs and priorities. The variety in national curriculum reform agendas is further demonstrated in Table 8.1. A number of trends can be identified from Table 8.1: reduction in the number of periods taught per week/year; cross-curricular approaches; emphasizing relevance of the curriculum to the modern world; emphasizing foreign language teaching; increased flexibility of the system; increased focus on competencies and skills for individual development, and integrating the four pillars of the Delors Report (learning to be, learning to know, learning to do, and learning to live together) (UNESCO 2003). Gregorio (2006, p.32) further remarked that there were curriculum trends detectable in some Asian countries (e.g. China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines): curriculum policy changes towards decentralization and empowerment of local communities; curriculum design and implementation towards localization for ensuring local relevance of content and contributing to decentralization of education, governance and management; curriculum structure and organization towards shared decision-making and involvement of low-level management in the educational system; and continuous curriculum evaluation for facilitating programme improvement and ensuring standards of quality and effectiveness of educational policies. These trends are perhaps not surprising, yet perhaps the most significant commonality is the extent to which these reforms rely on teachers for their success and the capacity to implement complex changes at the school level. It is in this

Table 8.1 Brief comparison of curriculum reform in selected Asian societies Society

Examples of curriculum reform

China

National strategy such as ‘revitalizing the country through science and education’; emphasis on integration between modern society, technological development and the learners’ lives; English language gradually introduced as a core subject in primary (grade) three from 2001; ‘Learning to live together’ is taught through several interdisciplinary subjects

Vietnam

An increase in the interdisciplinary coordination; integrated subjects such as natural science, social science and humanities and arts in the lower secondary curriculum

Indonesia

Educational institutes/teachers allowed to prepare institute curriculum consistent with particular needs of the communities/localities concerned; variation of learning time and diverse teaching–learning techniques are permitted

Malaysia

Bilingual schooling system offered in selected areas; national curriculum emphasizing different levels of learning outcomes, with appropriate teaching–learning approaches, strategies and instructional materials for different students with varying needs and capabilities; introduction of science-process skills, critical and creative thinking skills and patriotism

Mongolia

The school curriculum consisting of ‘prescribed core content’ (87%) and the ‘school-based curriculum’ (13%); ‘Health education’, ‘Street law’, ‘Ecology’, ‘Economics’ were introduced to an ‘open-window’ or prescribed and altering content; foreign languages taught from the fifth grade

Japan

Reduction of teaching hours and content in each subject because of implementation of five-day school week and introduction of ‘periods for integrated study’

Republic of Korea

‘Differentiated curriculum’ applied to five subjects (mathematics, English, the Korean language, science and social studies) for students between the first grade and the tenth grade

Cambodia Increasing the number of school hours (to six hours per day) to reach the 5,000 hour international standard; competencies in human rights education, tolerance, peace, hygiene, health, food, environment, tourism, economy, business, computers, AIDS and civic education were integrated into subject areas Lao PDR

New curriculum focusing on a limited number of integrated basic subjects emphasizing problem-solving, learning to learn and creative skills, highlighting the role of schools in society and the preservation of the environment; foreign languages taught to the children from grade 3 upwards; five pillars of education (moral, intellectual, labour, physical and aesthetic development) reflecting four pillars of learning and emphasizing ‘learning to know and learning to do’

Source: based on UNESCO (2003)

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context that SBCD could play an important role in furthering the curriculum reform agenda. The next section will focus on the nature of SBCD before assessing its feasibility in recent Asian contexts.

Definitions and characteristics of SBCD SBCD has been an important concept in the field of curriculum studies. In its Western contexts, it is often seen as a specific example of and a response to decentralization. Skilbeck (1984, p.2) regarded SBCD as ‘the planning, design, implementation and evaluation of a programme of students’ learning by the educational institution of which those students are members’. In this interpretation of SBCD, the following aspects are emphasized (Marsh 1997, p.147): ● ● ● ●

shared decision-making between teachers and students SBCD being internal and organic to the institution involvement of a network of relationships with various groups having a definite pattern of values, norms, procedures and roles.

In an attempt to contextualise SBCD in Chinese contexts, Lee (2003, p.113) undertook a review of school-based curriculum development and sought to address three questions: what is the meaning of ‘school-based?’; what is the focus of SBCD, on improving the current curriculum or developing a new curriculum?; what are the emphases of SBCD, on planning, decision-making, reform or other aspects? The following paragraphs will address each of these questions. During the 1970s and 1980s, the term ‘school-based curriculum development’ was understood in academic circles as a slogan, as a method or technique and has many variations such as ‘“school-focussed” rather than “school-based” and concerned with “curriculum decision-making” rather than “curriculum development”’ (Marsh et al. 1990, p.45). There are many similar terms associated with SBCD, such as ‘school-focused curriculum decision-making’, ‘school-centred curriculum reform’, school curriculum improvement’ and ‘whole-school curriculum development’. Occasionally, the terms ‘school improvement’ and ‘self-managing schools’ are used to replace SBCD (Gau 1998, p.69). Oberg relates the concept of ‘curriculum decisions’ to judgment about the ends or means of education or socialization, usually taken in an institutional (schooling) context, and usually focused on programmes (rather than on personnel, budget, etc.). The judgment is the result of some conscious deliberation and represents an intention to act either in a particular manner or so as to effect a desired outcome. (1991, p.303, emphasis added) On the other hand, the concept ‘reform’, as Fullan (1991, p.279) suggests, usually ‘concerns more comprehensive and fundamental curriculum change. Reforms

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involve restructuring of the school system, wholesale revision of the curriculum, and the like’ (emphasis added). Curriculum improvement refers to ‘building wise practice upon sound theory’ (Tanner and Tanner 1995, p.63). Following this rationale, curriculum improvement is seen as an inquiry in which teachers may become curriculum researchers and consumers of research. With regard to ‘whole-school curriculum development’, Nias et al. (1992, p.157) have defined it as ‘a dynamic, even restless, process in which beliefs and values are translated into action, but in which a common commitment to learning also means that both principles and practices are continuously reviewed and reinterpreted’. SBCD can encompass this full range of meanings – from changing conceptions of the curriculum, to curriculum change and the development of curriculum where there is a significant role for school-level decision-making (Skilbeck 1984, p.204). How adaptable are these concepts for schools in Asia? In some Asian societies such as Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore, there are signs of reducing curricular load and introducing integrated related subject areas. At the same time, however, there are traditions and conventions regarding the allocation of curriculum time to school subjects. Often examination cultures (described in Chapter 7) dictate priorities that can overtake the possibilities for local decision-making. In general, it is extremely difficult to put aside these traditions and conventions. This is evident as new demands are made upon finite curriculum time. These demands include such important contemporary issues as information technologies, health education, vocational education, careers guidance and environmental education. In some societies such as Lao PDR and Vietnam, there is a trend for decentralization with flexibility for local or regional inputs and adaptation of national core curricula (Zhou 2006, p.14), but these spaces are not available in all Asian societies, and there can be significant differences within societies. In some, for example, there are schools outside the national education system where the school curriculum can be remarkably constrained and directive. For example, Madrassa1 education can be found in Central Asia, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan. It has the following main characteristics: ●

●

The great majority of Indonesian Madrassas are privately owned and operated and they are less expensive than public secondary schools. They provide access to basic education in rural and urban low-income communities. In addition, Pesantrens operate as independent Islamic self-governing schools and they often have a customized curriculum that consists mainly of Islamic teachings based on the interpretation of the headmaster (Kyai) or the school of thought to which the school is attached. There are different types of Madrassas in Bangladesh, namely Dakhil (primary), Alim (middle to high), Fazil (higher secondary) and Kamil (college and postgraduate). In addition, there are two types of Madrassa systems in Bangladesh: Quomi (teaching only the Islamic subject) and Aliya (teaching secular and religious subjects and functioning under the auspices of the national government).

Curriculum reform ●

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There are three types of religious institutions in Pakistan: Koranic schools (where only the Koran is taught), mosque primary schools (where both Koranic and secular subjects are taught) and Madrassa (where only Islamic learning takes place). (Anzar 2003, pp.10–14)

These particular cultural constructions do not go unquestioned as the following comment indicates (Anzar 2003, p.21): What types of religious ideologies and beliefs are being promoted by Islamic curriculum in various Madrassas? Are they compatible with the prevailing political, religious, human rights and women’s right realities that surround the Muslim world today? How through Islamic education systems in combination with scientific interventions, Muslim nations can advance in the 21st century? Could the Madrassas be brought back to the point where they lead the debate on Ijtihad – independent reasoning and pave the way for advancement in Muslim societies? Yet the real issue that they raise is that the school curriculum, whether it is a national curriculum designed by governments or a private curriculum overseen by religious authorities, is not always open to local adaptations as is often the case in many Western contexts. Some of the constraints may be structural – nationally determined curriculum – and some may be ideological – religious curriculum or politically inspired curriculum. In these cases schools will not be permitted to engage in curriculum change. Yet there is a further constraint that is related to teacher quality. Gopinathan and Ho (2003, p.739) have pointed out that ‘countries like Sri Lanka, Maldives and Nepal have to rely on unqualified teachers’. In other societies, teachers are often in short supply, poorly qualified and are not expected to engage in curriculum reflection and revision. Even in a society like Hong Kong, it has only been since 1997 that the government has set the goal of ‘an all-graduate, all-trained’ teaching profession. Thus SBCD, as it is understood in the West, has a number of real constraints in many Asian contexts. Nevertheless it remains a possibility for the future and this will be explored in the following section.

Spaces for SBCD in selected Asian societies In recent years, as educational systems across the region have experienced waves of educational reforms, including curriculum reforms, SBCD, or acknowledgements of the importance of local decision-making, has gained some attention. There are, however, differences in orientations and characteristics across societies as the following examples will show. In Hong Kong, a key reform document, Learning to Learn: Life-long Learning and Whole-person Development, considered SBCD as one of the actions

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to be carried out through the management and promotion of effective learning, teaching and assessment. SBCD is seen as having the following salient features: ●

●

●

●

SBCD is used to rectify the misconception that the curriculum is ‘given’ and delivered mainly through the coverage of a prescribed syllabus and text. SBCD is an outcome of a balance between guidance from the Curriculum Development Council (CDC) and the autonomy of the school and teachers. It is desirable for SBCD to build on the strengths of schools and the needs of students. Schools need to fulfil certain CDC requirements such as learning time, learning targets, and essential contents. SBCD needs to help students achieve the learning targets (knowledge, generic skills, values and attitudes). But the school can enjoy autonomy in areas such as varying choice of subjects, organization of contents, adaptation of learning resources, flexible use of time and development of learning, teaching and assessment strategies. SBCD needs to address the professional development of teachers and principals and may explore collaboration with other partners. (Curriculum Development Council 2001b, pp.69–73)

These features show that Hong Kong schools do not have a free hand in devising their own curricula. Constantly they need to engage in negotiating between general system requirements and the needs of students (Kennedy 2005). In a recent document on basic education curriculum reform in mainland China, it is stipulated that there are three levels or components of school curriculum: the national curriculum, the local curriculum and the school curriculum. The first component accounts for 70 to 80 per cent of total class hours while the last two 20 to 30 per cent: When the school implements both the national and the regional curriculum at the same time, it should develop or select curriculum appropriate to the school by paying attention to the actual situations of local social and economic development, and taking into account the school’s tradition and advantages, students’ interests and needs. (Ministry of Education (PRC) 2001; Zhong et al. 2001, p.11) In Taiwan, curriculum experimentation is characterized by school-based curriculum, open education, and curriculum integration (Hwang and Chang 2003). Hwang and Chang (2003, p.602) remarked that ‘the curriculum autonomy of schools has now become a priority in curriculum reform and its implementation mainly emphasizes school-based curriculum development (SBCD) that can be termed grassroots reform’. SBCD in Taiwan encompasses the following interpretations: ●

Schools may refer to the official syllabus and develop their own curriculum or instructional resources.


●

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Schools should organize a curriculum development committee, make use of an action research approach to develop school-based curricula and seek approval from the official educational agency for its implementation. Administrators should give the greatest possible support and acceptance to stimulate the creativity of curriculum design and use flexible curriculum implementation strategies in accordance with different key learning areas, uniqueness of different regions and variation in school culture and classroom environment. (Ministry of Education (Taiwan) 2000, p.4 and p.24)

In Malaysia, Nor Putch (2002, pp.36–39) has reported that the Curriculum Development Centre within the Ministry of Education adopts a cyclical curriculum development cycle starting with a needs analysis, followed by research and planning, design and development, piloting/limited implementation, dissemination and implementation, supervision and evaluation and back to the identification of needs. At the school level, school heads and teachers are involved in setting school objectives and translating curriculum specifications into classroom practices. Schools tended to adopt a mutual adaptation perspective of curriculum implementation of the syllabus at the central level and adaptation of curriculum plans to school needs, adaptation of methods and approaches of learning to the local environment, and adaptation of materials to students’ needs. A variety of teaching methodologies and approaches to learning as well as teaching materials are used. School-based assessment and on-going evaluation are undertaken and pupils’ learning progress reported to parents. In Thailand, the Basic Education Curriculum of 2001 stipulated that ‘each educational institution shall formulate its own curriculum which includes all learning and other experiences planned for learner development. These shall be based on the “core Basic Education Curriculum Standard” which is essential in school curriculum management’ (Arunsri and Somwung 2002, p.66). In the Philippines, the Central Office Bureau of Elementary and Secondary Education, Curriculum Development Divisions decided the development of the basic level curriculum including the learning competencies for different subject areas. Curriculum guidelines are issued at the national level but their implementation is left to the discretion of schools, which determine the resources to be used, teaching and assessment strategies and other processes. Schools are permitted ‘to innovate and enrich or adapt as long as they have met the basic requirements of the curriculum’ (Marinas and Ditapat n.d. p.114). Adoption of indigenous learning materials, enrichment of the national curriculum by including locally relevant subjects and employment of activities that enhance lifelong and life-wide competencies are also encouraged. In Korea, the new curriculum (the seventh national curriculum) has been implemented since 2000. One of the main characteristics has been the cultivation of creativity. Another feature has been the introduction of a ‘differentiated or streamed curriculum’. This includes ‘level-oriented’ mathematics and English curricula where students are grouped on the basis of their abilities together with two

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forms of ‘supplementary’ Korean, social studies and science curricula for students needing additional assistance or enrichment (He 2002). Superintendents at both metropolitan and provincial levels are advised to adopt the basic guidelines of the curriculum framework in the organization and implementation of the school curriculum. Local schools then prepare their own curriculum plans to suit the students’ needs in accordance with the national curriculum and the Metropolitan and Provincial Educational Authorities (MPEA) guidelines (UNESCO 2003). In the foregoing discussions, students’ voices in school-based curriculum development tend to be ignored. Schubert (1990, p.224) echoed the same view in Western contexts when he claimed that: students are the most neglected potential participants in curriculum development. By their interactions in the classroom and by the way they receive and respond to curriculum and teaching, they are curriculum developers. Because they profoundly influence curriculum already, they deserve to be involved in the process. Nonetheless, in many Asian communities teacher–student relations tend to be strongly hierarchical as compared with those in the West (Biggs and Watkins 1996). In Muslim societies, and especially in the Koranic schools, the mullah is seen as an authority figure, backed by religious authority. These contexts deter students’ participation in curriculum decision-making.

SBCD in Asian schools: the practice of local curriculum development Given that there can be opportunities for SBCD or local curriculum decisionmaking in some Asian jurisdictions, what does it look like? What follows is a series of case studies or vignettes of curriculum practice in selected Asian societies.

Taiwan and the integrated curriculum (translated from Lin and Zhang 2002, pp.57–69) A primary school in Taiwan took more than four years designing and implementing school-based curriculum integration. Through the schoolbased curriculum development (SBCD) experience, certain theories were confirmed and new discoveries were made. The view of curriculum integration was reconceptualized and the development of an effective mechanism of curriculum development was explored. Initially, an exploratory activity on ‘visiting the tree frog’s home’ was organized. It was found that students were stimulated and teachers noted that students were deeply interested in the topic of the tree frog far more than the textbook knowledge. A few teachers decided to use ‘the frog’ as

Curriculum reform the theme for curriculum integration. Some teachers discovered issues they did not understand and so they invited experts to come to school to teach them. Their experiences revealed that integration and depth were two important curriculum issues in school-based curriculum development. Visits and outdoor teaching were seen as an extension rather than a replacement of school-based curriculum. In-depth inquiry in an authentic setting helped students reconstruct knowledge, internalize their experiences and cultivate their learning skills and habits. In addition, these skills could be transferred to other topics and key learning areas. The development of curriculum integration dynamically and closely interacted with teacher development in school. In the first year of SBCD, every teacher was encouraged to design one activity (not necessarily related to curriculum integration) that she/he was familiar with and share with other teachers the rationale behind the design. This helped teachers clarify their own beliefs and values behind the instructional design. The curriculum dialogue initiated by these activities amongst teachers of different subjects helped establish a platform for initiating curriculum change including the project on curriculum integration.

Hong Kong and the integrated curriculum (translated from Cheung and Wong Tai Sin Government Primary School 2002, pp.151–188) In 2000, a report that followed a Quality Assurance Inspection (QAI) of a local school suggested that more improvements could be made to enhance classroom interactions and provide teaching and learning activities to help cultivate students’ high-order thinking skills. After discussion, curriculum integration was selected as one of the main concerns in the academic year of 2000–2001. With the support of the Centre for University and School Partnership, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a professional training workshop was provided to teachers on concepts and models of curriculum integration. In the workshop activities, teachers also experienced learning and sharing with each other. Finally, Primary Two classes were chosen for piloting the curriculum innovation. Four preparation meetings were arranged between university colleagues and teachers. The theme of ‘Community and You’ was decided upon because the students had some previous understanding of oneself, the family and the school. The design of the curriculum was partly based on the Accelerated Schools Project, which emphasized five components of powerful learning activities: authentic, interactive, learner-centred, inclusive and continuous.

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Based on Brooks and Brooks’ (1993) conception of constructivist teaching strategies, the curriculum innovation encouraged the students to become active learners, social learners and creative learners. The curriculum integration aimed to achieve a number of objectives, such as knowing the names of some features and buildings in the community and knowing some of the people serving them in the community (e.g. police officers and social workers); applying mathematical concepts in their daily lives and using English in shopping in the mall; and taking care of the social facilities and caring for people in need in the community. The curriculum integration project, which lasted for more than one week, had three components: (1) teaching before the outdoor integrated learning activities – teaching of foundation knowledge of the community and generic skills through English, mathematics, Chinese, general studies, art/civic education; (2) outdoor integrated learning activities involving visits to Wong Tai Sin Temple, park, library, post office, community centre, McDonald’s, talks by a social worker and a police officer, design of a card, quiz and completion of a learning log; and (3) a learning log which helped students observe with focus, collect data, record, organize, express and reflect on the learning process. Parents were invited to act as the group assistants and pedagogical partners. In the review, curriculum integration was seen to improve teacher collaboration. Students’ motivation in learning was improved and they were given opportunities to apply what they had learnt in real settings. Parental involvement and support were appreciated. A teacher, however, remarked that the process involved a large input of manpower and resources and she had reservations about whole-school implementation of curriculum integration.

These two case studies reveal variations across dimensions of school-based curriculum development (SBCD) in primary (elementary) schools. It should be emphasized that in the places concerned there was curriculum space for shortterm minor curriculum experimentation. In Taiwan, the type of curriculum development activities involved the creation of new modules. Teachers of different subjects were involved and the time commitment could be considered as part of a medium-term to long-term plan. In Hong Kong, teachers of different subjects were involved in SBCD and parents also helped as the group assistants in outdoor activities. Compared with the Taiwan example, the scale of operation was smaller in Hong Kong, which only involved the Primary Two classes and lasted for a very short period of time. It is not known if the experiments were repeated or transferred to other parts of the school curriculum in these schools. In both cases, external experts were involved in supporting teachers to design the school-based curriculum experiments. It is also noticeable that school-based curriculum design in two schools was based on some ‘Western’ educational theories and principles.

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Korea: developing and implementing an integrated curriculum based on multiple intelligences theory in a primary school (Kim and Ryoo 1999) The first and second graders of a primary school affiliated with a university in Seoul were selected to develop and implement an integrated curriculum based on multiple intelligences (MI) theory over a three-year period. Three parties were involved including the university’s research team, the elementary school and Howard Gardner and Mara Krechevsky from Harvard Project Zero. The project started with a series of workshops for training the teachers. Then followed the curriculum development process as described below: ●

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‘Seasons’ was chosen as a topic with four sub-topics (‘Spring’, ‘Summer’, ‘Autumn’ and ‘Winter’) in 1997 and after curriculum implementation, it was found that the topic’s generative power was too limited. A new topic for the integrated curriculum, ‘Us’, was chosen in 1998 with sub-topics (‘Change’, ‘Nature’, ‘Travel’ and ‘Reflective Thoughts’). Each sub-topic was broken down into further units. For example, the sub-topic ‘Change’ was broken down to ‘Change of Time’, ‘The Concept of Change’, ‘Changes in Spring’, ‘Changes of the Seasons’, ‘Changes of the Syllables’, and ‘Changes of Numbers’. In 1998, this new topic structure was used as the basis for the conduct of appropriate teaching–learning activities based on MI theory. New assessment methods including self-assessment, peer assessment and assessment by parents were explored. Five studies using research methods such as content analysis, participant observation, videotaping and in-depth interviewing were cited to highlight MI theory’s various intelligences.

Thailand: local-based curriculum development in Watsamankit Elementary School (Kajornsin et al. 2004) A participatory action research study was used to develop a local curriculum for fifth graders at Watsamankit Elementary School in Ratchaburi province in Thailand. The theme was ‘A Systematic Approach to Integrated Agriculture’ and it was undertaken through collaboration with school and community members. The process of curriculum development started with a workshop for brainstorming involving school administrators, teachers, the district supervisor and community members in order to

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understand local wisdom. Finally, an agricultural curriculum was chosen as a focus for curriculum development. The local curriculum, with an emphasis on student-centred learning, comprised an integrated learning approach, authentic assessment and rubric assessment. A meeting with parents and community leaders was arranged to explain the rationale of the curriculum and solicit their support in its implementation. Besides research instruments, such as achievement tests, evaluation forms for students’ desirable behaviours, students’ desirable skills and a worksheet evaluation form for teachers were prepared. The local curriculum was then piloted and community members and representatives of local organizations acted as visiting lecturers, demonstrators and interviewees and provided some teaching materials. Focus group discussions were conducted to collect feedback and a workshop was set up for teachers to revise the local curriculum and lesson plans. The revised local curriculum was then implemented and evaluation was carried out of the impact of the local curriculum on students’ knowledge, desirable behaviours, desirable skills as well as school and community members’ opinions of the local curriculum.

Singapore: curriculum development in the Chinese high school In the case of a non-government Chinese high school (CHS) in Singapore, the school started to undergo restructuring in 1999 by establishing consortia with the grouping of teachers and students in ‘mini-schools’ or ‘schools-within-a-school’ (Vidovich and O’Donoghue 2003). The setting up of consortia at the lower secondary level aimed to promote interdisciplinary linkages and collaboration in teaching and learning, each of which had varying emphases. One highlighted practical, hands-on learning including industrial attachments; another emphasized the use of travel and conferences to promote global awareness; one consortium for gifted students required students to undertake interdisciplinary problem-solving projects. In addition, the school set up ten learning and research centres, which supplemented the core curriculum and reflected global trends, entitled ‘Business and finance’, ‘Chinese language’, ‘English language’, ‘Environmental science’, ‘Information technology’, ‘Mathematics’, ‘People development’, ‘Photonics’ and ‘Biological sciences’. These centres were supported by private companies and provided revenue for running courses in other schools. In the case of the CHS, it is interesting to highlight the following features (Vidovich and O’Donoghue 2003):


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The curriculum development process appeared to be a combination of bottom-up and top-down processes within the school, having the middle managers and teachers as ‘initiators’ and school managers as ‘gatekeepers’. The emphasis on affective education in one consortium aims to address the ‘perceived weaknesses in the former standardized, topdown, content-dominated approach’ (p.362). The teachers perceived that they were taking a ‘professional risk’ and the school became an ‘experimental laboratory’ in Singapore. Parents had a little influence on the school-level curriculum change. Sometimes they might have reservations about the school’s innovative approaches and their potential effects on their children’s academic achievements and their school’s position in the league tables’.

These three examples, alongside the Hong Kong and Taiwan examples, show how schools can use SBCD to design integrated curricula. The Korean example showed an integrated curriculum based on multiple intelligences theory. New assessment methods were also developed. The process of curriculum development involved teacher training through workshops, pilot study and review, evaluation of implementation and student learning outcomes. More importantly, the university partners remarked, ‘teachers became “teachers as researchers” through planning, executing, and assessing the classes ... teachers worked as curriculum experts’ (Kim and Ryoo 1999, pp.16–17). The Thai example illustrated the development of a local curriculum that incorporated Thai local wisdom as well as an integrated learning approach and alternative assessments. The process of curriculum development adopted participatory action research, involving components such as workshops, meeting with stakeholders (e.g. community leaders, parents, district supervisors), focus group discussion of the results of implementation and evaluation of the impacts of the locally developed curriculum. The Singapore example showed the development of a school-based, internationally and interdisciplinary-oriented curriculum in a non-government school in Singapore. Here, with respect to the development of the affective curriculum in one consortium, the consortium formed a committee to seek the views of teachers, students and parents on the new affective curriculum. In addition, an external consultant was employed to contribute to the curriculum design and to the professional development of teachers. The emergence of the new affective curriculum was based on activities such as team-building games, expeditions, discussions and problem-solving. Teachers’ feedback was sought on the implementation of the curriculum (Vidovich and O’Donoghue 2003, p.362). All examples highlight the importance of teamwork, possibly with the involvement of parents, community members or external consultants. Just as in the West, SBCD works when there is good external support.

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Prospects for SBCD in Asia’s schools Given that there are spaces for SBCD within the constraints of centrally determined curricula in many Asian societies and given that there are examples of successful attempts at SBCD, what might be the prospects for the future? These prospects can be discussed in terms of practical issues, directional issues and theoretical issues. From a practical perspective, as mentioned previously, teachers are the key to any attempt to put SBCD into practice and the problems of teacher capacity has already been identified. Nonetheless, Hwang and Chang with specific reference to the Taiwan context, have commented that even when teachers are well trained, they may not be used to developing school-based curricula. For many teachers, and parents, it is an issue for some concern for it can lead to misunderstandings: Yet the advance to the SBCD, regardless of its advantage, also brings about some misunderstandings and panic among teachers and parents. Some of them misconceive that the SBCD means teachers have to construct by themselves all teaching materials (e.g. textbooks) and even have to develop their schools’ courses totally different from another school. (Hwang and Chang 2003, p.602) Community responses to reform in Taiwan have been referred to earlier. Suffice it to say here that if SBCD is to be a tool for reform, then its parameters need to be well understood by both teachers and the school community. What is more, if teachers are to participate effectively in SBCD, then they need to be equipped with skills, knowledge and understandings to help them fulfil this role. A different perspective on teachers’ participation in SBCD comes from considering the way teachers need to work together. In implementing SBCD, it may be assumed that a consensus has been reached at a whole-school level and a collaborative culture is in place to support its operation. As Nias et al. remark on whole school curriculum development: In ‘whole schools’ curriculum development necessarily involves some degree of consensus, and normally therefore also of compromise over values and aspirations. Of course, if the compromise is voluntarily espoused, the resulting sense of collective aspiration strengthens and enriches staff members by giving them a sense of common purpose. (1992, p.154) In practice, there may be difficulties in achieving consensus and under certain circumstances, ‘while the intent of the policy may have appeared to give schools “freedom” on curriculum matters, some teachers perceived that their “individual” freedom on curriculum was being eroded’ (Prideaux 1993, p.173). In the case of the school-based curriculum project scheme (SBCPS) in the 1990s in Hong Kong, it was found in the kindergartens and primary schools that the initiation was mainly originated by the school principals and school inspectors, whereas in

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the secondary and special schools, subject panel heads and senior teachers were mainly involved. Case studies of three schools revealed that different organizational cultures influenced the implementation of SBCPS. In one school, the collaborative teacher culture and teacher participation in decision-making as well as high supportiveness and low directiveness from the principal provided favourable and sustaining conditions for SBCD, which produced materials based on the local context and reflected students’ learning environments. In another school where the culture tended to be rational and the operation tended to be top-down and centralized, the SBCPS was a one-off activity and supported only by individual teachers (Lo 1999). Thus it is not only technical skills that need to be developed for successful SBCD, it is values and attitudes as well, but especially values related to collaborative decision-making. This could be a particular challenge in hierarchical schools structures such as many of those found across Asia. Apart from the practical issue of teacher capacity, Zhang and Zhong (2003, p.268) have raised an issue that is more directional in nature: In China, the traditional study of education and instruction that served mainstream ideology has come to an end ... To elaborate on what it means to know and be educated for the Chinese must be based on reflections of our own traditions and international conversation, nor can it be done without cultural, political, global, and spiritual understanding of curriculum. While this comment was made in relation to the Chinese context, its sentiment is generally applicable across the region. Seeking an authentic local understanding of what SBCD is and what it can do and achieve in unique cultural contexts is an important undertaking for the future. An initial attempt has been made in this direction in Thailand. Sintoovongse used a project to propose an SBCD model with the following seven steps: 1

2 3 4 5 6 7

establishing the awareness of people involved through all means of communication and training to make them comprehend correctly and meaningfully in the same direction of SBCD having them study the situation’s problems and context so as to have baseline data for SBCD establishing the core team from those key personnel to lead and work collaboratively with all teachers encouraging and giving full support for teachers to construct learning plans and units to make students’ learning occur effectively providing the teachers with all available learning resources for curriculum implementation monitoring and following-up the curriculum work periodically with acceptable criteria, and assessing their progress against the acceptable criteria for the success of SBCD. (Sintoovongse 2004, p.5)

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To a certain extent, this model of SBCD reflects a combination of the technical–scientific and nontechnical–nonscientific approaches as well as prescriptive and descriptive theorizing. On one hand, the guidelines for developing the curriculum partly follow Tyler’s (1949) rationale, but, on the other hand, it emphasizes communication and collaboration among participants involved in an initial phase of curriculum planning. More such models, grounded in local realities and reflecting local needs, will be necessary if SBCD is to take a hold in Asia’s schools. A final issue is concerned with theoretical issues related to SBCD, issues that are related to the very nature of curriculum in postmodern times. It is within this context that some Asian scholars (Chen 2001; Ou 2000; Lee 2002; Xu 2003) have highlighted three approaches to SBCD.

Reconceptualizing concepts of SBCD With the advent of information technology and the re-emergence of curriculum integration, how ‘worthwhile’ curriculum knowledge can be integrated and how information, knowledge and network can be connected into an organic whole for students’ active pursuit of knowledge could be further explored. Increasing attention to postmodern and critical theories provides new insights to SBCD. The call for transnational curriculum inquiries also alerts us as educational scholars and practitioners to rethink and ensure ‘curriculum work within a global knowledge economy does not merely assimilate national (local) curriculum discourses-practices into an imperial (global) archive’ (Gough 2004).

Restructuring the context for SBCD Schools should become open and become learning organizations as well as knowledge creation and management organizations. They may see in SBCD opportunities for reallocation of power and authority within the hierarchies in school through teacher participation and shared decision-making in curriculum matters. On the other hand, the government is asked to provide incentives to grass-roots movements in SBCD and to empower practitioners as autonomous professionals.

Reculturing the roles of stakeholders in SBCD There is a call for student participation, teacher empowerment and university–school–government partnerships in SBCD. Students are encouraged to become curriculum designers; teachers to become action researchers and curriculum designers. Universities and governments are encouraged to collaborate with schools in developing school-based curricula and renewing the workplace and change capacities in school for SBCD. All three approaches promote the values of grass-roots curriculum reforms, participatory decision-making, construction and reconstruction of knowledge and student-centred views (adapted from Xu 2003, pp.54–56). These theoretical

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concerns construct SBCD in very different ways from more technical prescriptions and it is of some interest to note that such concerns have been highlighted by Asian curriculum theorists. For example, Kim (2005) endorsed the theme of ‘curriculum as post-colonial text’ as a feature of Korean curriculum studies. He called for more authentic Korean content in the curriculum and an endorsement of broader epistemologies such as Taoism and Buddhism to create new curriculum languages for Korean educational practices. The extent to which such issues will impact on the work of schools and teachers will be an important issue to watch in the future but it shows that issues of indigenous knowledge are already to the fore in current curriculum theorizing in some parts of Asia.

Conclusion It is clear that there are constraints to SBCD in Asian schools but it is equally clear that there both curriculum theorists and teachers are seeking to engage with the broader issues of curriculum change and reform. Teachers in Asia’s schools are more used to the role of curriculum implementer rather than curriculum designer, and this will be a significant technical issue to overcome. What is more, teachers are used to prescriptive centralized syllabi supported by approved textbooks so the change in role from implementer to designer is not simply technical, but cultural and professional as well. Perhaps the most significant challenge for SBCD in Asian schools will be the development of culturally relevant adaptations of the idea itself to suit local contexts. It has been clear throughout this chapter, especially from the examples that have been used, that SBCD remains a Western construct being put to use in Asian schools in that small curriculum space that has been freed from national mandate. It is very much an alternative mode of curriculum and is very much at odds with the requirements of the mainstream curriculum and examinations. Localizing SBCD will be a priority if it is to play a role in Asia’s curriculum transformation and if it is to be valued as a means to ensure young people have access to relevant and meaningful educational experiences as they negotiate complex and uncertain times in one of the most dynamic regions of the world.

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Teaching and learning Interaction between East and West

Gopinathan and Ho (2003) have highlighted the impact of national culture on instructional practices, classroom management and teachers in educational systems. They also point to the interaction of cultures between East and West in the context of teaching and learning: it is often asked whether it is worthwhile for a country to try borrowing educational practices from another country. At the same time, given the internationalization of information, there has been much borrowing of ideas by countries in the Asia-Pacific region from the centres of learning in the West. (Gopinathan and Ho 2003, p.733) This chapter begins with a consideration of learning and teaching from Chinese and East Asian perspectives with particular reference to the impact of culture. Second, selected Asian examples of pedagogy, teaching methods and classroom environments will be discussed. Third, examples of open and distance education, as well as information and communication technology (ICT) in education for Asian schools will be examined. Finally, brief remarks on the future development of pedagogy will serve as a conclusion.

Learning and teaching: cultural and Chinese/ East Asian perspectives There is considerable interest in making cross-cultural comparisons of student achievements and much attention has been focused on the superior performance in science and mathematics of students in Confucian heritage cultures such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and mainland China, compared with those in Western countries (for more detail, see Chapter 7). There are two major kinds of research that have emerged from this work. One is related to sociocultural aspects (e.g. parental, family and societal influences) and another related to cultural–cognitive aspects (e.g. students’ information-processing when learning) (Dimmock 2000a, p.124). Stevenson and Lee (1996) conducted an extensive study comparing Chinese and American children and some of their findings were related to time devoted to study (Chinese students spending more time on study and less time on

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socializing), motivation to perform well (Chinese students having high aspirations though they might not be able to realize their goals), as well as an emphasis on effort rather than ability by Chinese children and parents’ role (Chinese parents being more restrictive, authoritarian and disciplinarian). There have been some very broad generalizations about Eastern and Western cultures, which have to be considered and handled with prudence. Concomitant with culture and pressure of examinations and centralized education systems in some Asian countries, there is a tendency towards a teacher-dominated, groupbased, highly structured pedagogical culture. A more general cultural perspective has been offered by Hofstede (1986) in a study on cultural differences in face to face teaching and learning. He offered a model with four dimensions: power distance, individualism and collectivism, masculinity and femininity, and uncertainty avoidance. Bauer et al. (2000) used Hofstede’s model to compare web-based learning in Australia (as a proxy for Anglo-Saxon countries) and selected Asian countries/regions (Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Hong Kong). They found that on each dimension there were important differences between Asian and European cultural perspectives. Some scholars have added a fifth dimension, known as ‘long-term versus short-term orientation’, to Hofstede’s original schema (Dimmock 2000b). It was found that China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Korea tended to display a more long-term orientation than their Western counterparts in the USA. and Britain, which implies ‘thrift, perseverance and willingness to make short-term sacrifices for long-term gains’ (p.203). To some extent, this long-term orientation is in line with those key principles of Confucian teaching such as societal stability relying on unequal, hierarchical relationships, the importance of harmony and face, the virtues of perseverance and thrift. From a different perspective Biggs developed the student approaches to learning (SAL) position in which qualitative differences in learning outcomes were linked to approaches known as surface, deep and achieving (Biggs 1987, 1993). It was found from an analysis of studies from eight Western and eight nonWestern countries that: self-esteem is more highly correlated with deep and achieving rather than surface approaches, especially for Western and non-Western school and university samples [;] internal locus of control is more highly correlated with deep and achieving rather than surface approaches to learning; indeed, the negative correlation with the surface approach may be higher at school level in both non-Western and Western samples, particular the latter [and] academic achievement is more highly correlated with deep and achieving rather than surface approaches to learning; the average correlations appeared to be somewhat higher at school level for Western samples. (Watkins 2000, p.164) With regard to Chinese learners, there is the ‘paradox’ that most Chinese learners are seen as rote learners and, according to the literature, Chinese learners

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should perform badly academically, but international comparisons of educational progress show contradictory results. More interestingly, Chinese learners are not reported to be rote learners when responding to learning strategy questionnaires. In resolution of this paradox, it was noted that (Watkins 2000, pp.165–167): ●

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Most Chinese learners made great use of memorization but were using this to develop their understanding. Chinese (Hong Kong) students, unlike their Western counterparts, used repetition for two purposes, one for creating a ‘deep impression’ and thence with memorization and another for deepening or developing understanding by discovering new meaning. Many Chinese students, teachers and parents tended to view intelligence as something not fixed but something that could be improved upon by hard work and they tend to attribute academic success to effort rather than to both effort and ability. Bi-polar extrinsic and intrinsic motivation might not be easily applied to the Chinese context of Confucian heritage culture where there may be mixed motivations including personal ambition, ‘family face’, peer support, material reward, and possibly even personal interest (Watkins and Biggs 1996, p.273). While achievement motivation is viewed as highly individualistic and egoenhancing in Western societies, achievement motivation is seen to be social and a matter of ‘family face’ for all children in East Asian societies irrespective of the parents’ educational level. In East Asian societies such as Japan and China where collectivist group rather than individual good is emphasized, high levels of support and lack of teasing for weaker students are prevalent in classrooms (Jin and Cortazzi 1998). In Hong Kong, students prefer a more collaborative learning environment, which is seen to be conducive to deeper learning strategies (Chan and Watkins 1994).

A recent study of Australian and Hong Kong Chinese teacher efficacy found that while teachers in these two places revealed two distinct basic dimensions of teacher efficacy, namely personal teaching efficacy and beliefs about external influences, the Australian teachers seemed to emphasize personal instruction, discipline and guidance efficacy more than their Chinese counterparts. Nonetheless, no difference was found in their beliefs about external determinants. These results suggest that ‘Chinese teachers exhibited an integrated personal teaching efficacy pertaining to the areas of discipline, instruction and guidance ... Chinese teachers have the parent-like responsibility of guiding students’ everyday behaviour’ (Ho and Hau 2004, p.320). A study by Hue (2005, pp.38–42) revealed that Hong Kong teachers were still influenced by some traditional beliefs such as the Ren-Yi-Li system and practices in which teacher–students interactions still reflect hierarchical relations and teachers maintain authority over pupil behaviour especially when pupils do not display conformity, obedience or submissiveness. The conception of a ‘good’ teacher varies with culture. A teacher in the Chinese context is perceived to be a model of knowledge and morality (Lee


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1996; Watkins 2000). A good teacher is also considered to be one who is able to establish a friendly and warm relationship with his/her students beyond the classroom. In the case of Pakistan, teachers serving as Muslim models are obliged to disseminate fundamental principles and teachings of Islam embodied in the Holy Qur’an and Sunnah. There is an agreement among Muslim educators that character-building, seen as preparing students for a life of purity and sincerity, should be emphasized over knowledge accumulation (Riaz 2006). As regards the role of the teacher in Chinese classrooms, Gao (1998), in a study of secondary school physics teachers in the Guangdong Province of China, developed a model of five basic conceptions of teaching, namely ‘knowledge delivery’, ‘examination preparation’, ‘ability development’, ‘attitude promotion’ and ‘conduct guidance’. The conceptions of ‘knowledge delivery’ and ‘examination preparation’ resemble the transmission orientation while the conceptions of ‘ability development’, ‘attitude promotion’ and ‘conduct guidance’ are similar to the ‘cultivating’ orientation which involves the enhancement of student understanding and affective outcomes (Watkins 2000, pp.168–169). In addition, the Chinese teacher conducts group work in a Chinese style: in the form of sequential talk rather than simultaneous pupil talk as practised by many Western teachers. This is often exemplified by the following examples: one pupil asking the other a question; one pupil commenting on the answer given by the other student to the teacher’s question or two pupils coming to the front of the class to engage in a dialogue and the rest of class listening and making comments. Moreover, Chinese students tend to ask questions based on knowledge or ‘talking of the known’ after they have learnt independently of the teacher rather than ‘talking to know’ earlier in the learning process (Watkins 2000, p.169). In countries such as China and India, there are large urban and rural areas in which there are differences in the quality of school facilities and teachers. In a study of five rural schools in Yunnan, southwest China, teachers mainly used factual or close-ended questions, which required students to give replies or to read from the text (Xiao 2006, pp.122–123). Xiao (2006, p.124) commented: All five schools teach in this rigid fashion. In fact, the teachers use this strategy to determine whether the students are following the teacher. Students who do not follow the teacher are caught very quickly and their unsatisfactory learning behaviour is criticized and corrected immediately. There is very little opportunity for the students to express their own understanding or to comment about the author. Discussions that require student initiative and critical thinking do not exist. In the case of mathematics teaching in Japan, Whitburn (1995) analysed the factors involved in producing the differences between the education systems of Japan and England. These factors were grouped into four categories, namely cultural factors, organizational factors, pedagogical factors and process factors. Some of the features are highlighted as follows.

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Cultural factors 1

2

3

Japanese society encourages the view of equality of ability that all children have the potential to attain high standards. So an inability to learn mathematics is attributed to a lack of effort rather than a lack of ability or poor teaching. Uniformity of educational experiences for all Japanese children and emphasis on equality and homogeneity among schools are highlighted, The cultivation of moral values among the children is essential for fostering group identity and students’ ability to cooperate with others. From an early age, an atmosphere of cooperation instead of confrontation is promoted and children are encouraged to shoulder the responsibility for classroom discipline and classroom order. By the age of six, children are expected to be ‘ready to sit quietly and be taught, and, more importantly, to learn’ (p.351). Some children go to the private evening juku in addition to attendance at the ‘normal’ school. The juku on the one hand provides support and guidance to the weaker and slower students to catch up with the rest of the class and on the other hand provides extra practice for others to get ahead.

Organizational factors 1 2

The schools in Japan are designed and arranged so that many lessons could be conducted in the ‘home room’ with the minimum of interruption. School space is utilized efficiently.

Pedagogical factors 1

2

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4

Because of the existence of a centralized and standardized curriculum, teaching methods for mixed-ability mathematics classes highlight a whole class progressing together at the same rate instead of further widening the disparities in attainment as in England. It is usual for pupils to mark their homework because there seems to be an underlying belief that there is nothing wrong or embarrassing about making errors. Introduction of a new topic progresses at a relatively slow pace and is supported by being worked step-by-step, sometimes repetitive examples. It is quite common for the more able pupils to help their less able peers so that the whole mixed-ability class is kept at more or less the same level of work. ‘Teachers’ Guides’, which provide clear explanation, exposition and worked examples, play an important role in teachers’ instruction.

Process factors Teachers usually have high expectations of pupils and help to foster a positive attitude to learning, such as to work hard and to persevere, among the pupils. Pressure derived from examinations tends to promote group solidarity and


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mutual support, which to some extent helps to foster pupils’ development of both mathematical skills and confidence. One of the features of teaching in Japan is its holistic character, which encompasses the ‘cognitive as well as social, moral, and expressive dimensions of students’ experiences’ (Shimahara 2002, p.16). Another theme in the Japanese culture of teaching is ethnopedagogy, which is in particular more saliently expressed and shared among elementary school teachers than their middle school counterparts who teach specialized academic subjects. Ethnopedagogy highlights the central importance of empathy, ‘attachment’, trustful relations and ‘touching of the hearts’ (pp.21–22). The image of a Japanese person is identified not only in ‘a network of interpersonal relations, but also moral commitment to others, reciprocity of relational commitment, and extension of trust’ (p.24). As regards the Japanese emphasis on learning, gambaru (persistence) is often the explanation for educational achievement. In addition, the educational process emphasizes seishin (individual spirit and character development), shudan ishiki (group consciousness, exclusive group solidarity, commitment, belongingness), which is often accompanied by sempai-kohai relations (junior to senior obligations and privileges), or dantai ishiki (organizational consciousness) (Singleton 1989). While the Confucian heritage cultures exert strong influence in some Asian countries, there are variations in cultural influences in other countries in Asia. India, one of the oldest civilizations in the world, has a well-established tradition known as the Gurukula system, which highlights the total respect of the learner to the ‘guru’ as the guide, leader, creator and disseminator of knowledge (Rajput and Walia 2001, p.204; Walia 2004, p.93). Based on an analysis of mental and expressive models of mathematics and social studies instruction by eight teachers in India, the implicit cultural models of mathematics and social studies teachers have been shown to have the following themes or features (Clarke 2001):

Acceptance of regulation Teachers tend to accept the content of the syllabus and rely on the textbook as a basis for their instruction. They may write down ‘notes’ as detailed lesson plans and keep up with other teachers in terms of pacing of teaching. The syllabus is seen as a ‘regulator’ and teachers and students are expected to follow it closely.

Textbooks as perfect and imperfect containers of the syllabus The textbook is often the ‘de facto curriculum’ (p.141). The textbook may be perceived differently in different subjects. For example, the textbook is seen by mathematics teachers as a fairly perfect container of the syllabus, i.e. ‘the syllabus as fairly accurately represented in the textbook’ (p.141). However, social studies teachers see the textbook as containing ‘illogical, incorrect, and contradictory’ messages as an imperfect container of the syllabus (p.142). It is also interesting to note that while social studies teachers find the textbook unsatisfactory, they are unwilling to develop their own textbooks or restructure the syllabus.

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Knowledge as static, unequivocal, inspirational and divorced from reality Teachers tend to believe that knowledge is right or wrong and very often teachers’ question and answer patterns are ‘either a negation, affirmation, or clarification’ (p.146). School knowledge related to the public domain rather than personal examples is preferred.

Instruction as duty Probably influenced by India as a duty-based society, teachers see their roles or duties as to teach their students and to define students’ tasks or duties as to learn. It is noteworthy that ‘motivation is not a significant dimension in teachers’ thinking with reference either to their own instruction or to student learning’ (p.145).

Hierarchy as a necessary organizational feature Teachers are seen as having both structural and qualitative hierarchies. The former pertains to establishing authority in the organization of the classroom and the latter refers to being more knowledgeable than the student (p.152).

Quality control as a mode of student control Teachers act as quality controllers and they view the intention of teacher–student interaction as to ‘evaluate student receptivity to what the teacher says’ (p.155) rather than to explore students’ misconceptions or disagreements in learning.

Dissonance of pedagogy in government school classrooms Government teachers tend to be less regulatory of their students than their counterparts. They merely emphasize repetition and students are not expected to solve problems correctly in mathematics or to write coherently in social studies (p.157). Chhokar and Chandrasekharan (2006, p.299) agreed that students were expected to memorize the content of the textbook, which was often divorced from reality. They also pinpointed the high student dropout rate (about 35 per cent as the official figure) in Indian primary education. In India, the ‘minimum levels of learning’ (MML), aiming at achieving a comparable standard of education across the country, was operationalized in 1991. MML was conceptualized as having three aspects (Azim Premji Foundation 2004, p.6): 1

2

competency: learning outcomes laid down in the form of a set of identified competencies to be acquired for all children and in three curricular areas (mathematics, language and environmental studies) mastery: a mastery level to be attained when a child acquires 80 per cent of the specified competencies and 80 per cent of the children achieved this at the specified level

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equity: curriculum and teaching–learning materials designed in a manner that all children irrespective of their socio-economic backgrounds should be able to achieve up to this defined level.

In sum, in Asian countries, like Japan, South Korea and Singapore, the model of teaching is still efficient content- and teacher-dominant but they need to change their educational systems to meet globalization challenges. In another group of Asian countries, like Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, Myanmar and Indonesia where there are problems of urban–rural and gender inequalities, high attrition, incomplete and often inadequate learning, there is a need to improve teacher numbers and quality (Gopinathan 2006). From a cultural perspective, not only should we take note of culture (culturally Western and culturally Eastern/Chinese) as a major variable, but also we should notice the more culturally diverse classrooms within and across Asian countries that have resulted from migration.

Pedagogy, teaching methods and classroom environments In case studies of science and mathematics teaching in six high schools in the Philippines, the following characteristics of teaching methods were found (Berg et al. 1998): ● ●

●

●

Most classes observed were orderly and well under teacher control. According to the STOS (Science Teacher Observation Schedule) (Galton and Eggleston 1979), recall category was dominant for teacher interaction with students. Much of the time was spent on introducing new subject matter. Typical lessons consisted of the following parts: a) checking attendance; b) a five-minute review of the previous lesson or activity; c) twenty to thirty minutes of note-taking; d) twenty to thirty minutes of ‘discussion’ of the notes; and e) a short quiz with peer correction afterwards. When students did reporting, they tended to use memorized sentences from the book or read from the book assigned rather than formulating their own answers. There was no clear difference in the teaching of slow and fast learners.

In the case of mathematics teaching in Japan, a typical mathematics lesson usually had the following features (Whitburn 1995): a) arrival of the teacher followed by formal exchange of greetings and bowing; b) selected pupils writing solutions to homework problems on the board, which would be carefully considered, amended or corrected by the teacher; c) pupils marking their homework so that they could see where and why mistakes are made. Furthermore, classroom observations in Japan revealed that students engaged in problem-solving activities first, followed by teacher explanation and then students’ reflections on their own work (Whitman et al. 1997; House 2005). It is also notable that a controversial but quite popular approach to studying mathematics known as the Kumon method occupies a special niche in Japanese education. The Kumon method in mathematics emphasizes ‘guided’, ‘reception’,

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or ‘expository’ learning based on a behaviourist approach and it is characterized by the following major steps: diagnostic test of newly enrolled child; presentation of Kumon box that contains packets of small-sized and sequenced worksheets to be completed daily; attendance of child in a Kumon classroom; correction of one’s own mistakes until a perfect score is obtained; charting a child’s progress in a detailed record book and assignment of more difficult work or repetition of previous pages (Ukai 1994). However, it has been criticized as having excessive repetition, emphasizing computation and lacking the development of critical thinking skills. With regard to classroom environments, a comparative study of science classroom learning environments found that junior high school students (aged about 13 to 15) in Australia consistently viewed their classroom environment (in terms of ‘What is happening in this class’ (WIHIC)) more positively than their counterparts in Taiwan. The WIHIC consists of seven scales namely student cohesiveness, teacher support, involvement, investigation, task orientation, cooperation and equity (Fraser et al. 1996). There was also a significant difference for the scales of involvement, investigation, task orientation, cooperation and equity. Nonetheless, students in Taiwan revealed a significantly more positive attitude towards science than their counterparts in Australia (Aldridge and Fraser 2000). Qualitative studies in Taiwan showed the following: ●

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●

In Taiwan, the curriculum tended to be examination-oriented and highly competitive, driving teachers to focus on developing students’ academic ability. Teachers tended to adopt teacher-centred methods, such as rote learning, to cover the content in the textbooks in a given time frame. It is notable that ‘when we asked students and teachers for their opinion about such rote sessions, they generally agreed that this was an effective method of preparing students for examinations’ (Aldridge and Fraser 2000, p.122). Students in Taiwan appeared to be more disciplined and respectful of their teachers than their counterparts in Australia. This may be related to the influence of the Confucian ethic of filial piety in Taiwan, which might have ‘a greater likelihood of a larger power distance’ and ‘greater emphasis by parents on strictness and discipline and less emphasis on the child’s expression of opinions, independence, self-mastery and creativity’ (p.124). In Taiwan, a good teacher was perceived as having good content knowledge of the subject, while in Australia, a good teacher was considered as having good interpersonal relationships between students and teachers (Koul and Fisher 2005, p.202).

Another study using the WIHIC in Brunei revealed that teachers from different cultural backgrounds created different types of classroom environments (Khine and Fisher 2001). In addition, a study in Jammu, India showed that the Kashmiri group of students perceived their classroom more positively than those from other cultural groups such as Hindi, Dogri and Punjabi on some scales of student cohesiveness, task orientation, cooperation and equity. The differences in students’


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perceptions of their learning environment might be attributed to the high literacy rate of the Kashmiri community which places a high value on education, while students from the Dogri families, many of whom have established local businesses, tend to ‘acquire just enough skills to run it’ (Koul and Fisher 2005, p.208). In Hong Kong, a classroom environment study revealed that students prefer classroom environments in which teachers are patient, earnest and well prepared, provide information related to examinations, help them to revise and prepare for tests and reward them when they achieve. Students, however, do not prefer classroom environments emphasizing order and discipline, which to some extent reflect students’ preparedness to conform to uniform requirements and an influence of an examination-oriented culture calling for students’ quest for ‘excellence’ and ‘perseverance’ (Lee et al. 2003b, p.341; Lee and Dimmock 1998). In a study of five cultures, Alexander (2000, pp.416–417) found that the highest levels of distraction occurred in American and Indian classrooms. While American children misbehaved or took part in casual conversations during the lesson, the Indian pupils engaged in very few of these kinds of interactions. Indian students stopped working, sat passively holding their pens and watched the blackboard if they did not understand the task and follow the lesson. In contrast, the American counterparts may distract other students. Apart from possible variations in classroom environments in some Asian countries, there have been some debates about class size reduction and classroom processes especially for school children from urban areas in Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore who tend to study in large classes. According to the analysis by Blatchford and Catchpole (2003), there are some cultural and contextual differences in both their teaching practices and views on education: ●

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Teachers from China preferred teaching small classes to large classes (defined as a class with more than 50 pupils) but they did not consider a small class as a necessary condition for academic achievement (p.743). In addition, Chinese students may not find learning in large classes uncomfortable because there may be benefits of competition and opportunities for making friends (Xu 2001; Blatchford and Catchpole 2003, p.751). Moreover, in primary schools in China, a teacher may teach only one subject, whereas in the United States and the United Kingdom, a teacher may teach most if not all subjects. In Singapore, there has been an advocacy of cooperative learning since the mid-1980s. Partly because of pressures of examination results in core subjects such as English and mathematics for their children and partly because of the tight curriculum schedule and class size, teachers tend to adopt cooperative learning to varying extents in different subjects. It is noticeable that group work tends to be prevalent in science practical classes and certain English lessons, while individual pupil work tends to be dominant in mathematics lessons. Teachers in Singapore ‘do not believe in the benefits of children working with their peers; expressing the notion that learning is a passive process and a cognitive activity taking place in the head and not through talk’ (Ng et al. 1997, p.126; Blatchford and Catchpole 2003,

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Strategies for change in Asia’s schools p.751). In general, whole-class teaching followed by individual work seems to be the result of a teacher’s adaptation of the teaching method to the curriculum requirements and the class size (pp.745, 748). In Taiwan, it is proposed that whole-class teaching methods are possible partly because of students’ high levels of motivation and attention and partly because of the expectation of all children in class reaching the given standard (p.745). Thus there may be less attention paid to mixed-ability differentiated teaching methods.

While whole-class teaching seems to be dominant in selected Asian countries where students are expected to be obedient and attentive, there are now concerns over the effectiveness of one-way traditional classroom processes. In Korea, there was a phenomenon known as ‘school collapse’, which referred to a reduced level of students’ interest in and attention to lessons as well as a lack of students’ involvement in classroom activities (Kim 2003). There are several factors contributing to the classroom breakdown or school crisis, including: ● ● ●

the educational system not allowing students to choose subject areas teachers’ low level of preparedness for lessons the lack of meaningful teacher–student interactions because of teachers’ traditional unidirectional instructional process.

It has been suggested that teachers’ other non-teaching duties should be reduced so as to give some incentives for them to improve their teaching quality. In addition, teachers should be encouraged to change their instructional methods to accept students’ individual differences and to increase meaningful interactions with students. Moreover, students could be provided with options to select classroom activities and assignments. On the other hand, the popularity of private supplementary tutoring or mass tutorial schools in East Asian societies (e.g. China, Macao, Taiwan, Japan and Korea) perpetuate examination-oriented knowledge and teacher-centred pedagogy may work against the curriculum reform missions (Kwok 2004a). This may lead to the situation where ‘school education may not be effective, as students’ fruitful learning outcomes may, to a considerable extent, result from private tutoring. Consequently, the distinction between formal and informal learning has been blurred after the emergence of mass tutorial schools’ (p.72).

Open and distance education and information and communication technology (ICT) in education for Asian schools: beyond East and West According to UNESCO (1998), the Asia-Pacific region was ‘at the forefront of ICT’ but ‘most countries in the Asia-Pacific region do not have ICT success stories to tell’ (Birch and Maclean 2001, pp.349–350). As regards innovative


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application of ICT for learning in the Asia-Pacific region, there are some interesting examples such as (Birch and Maclean 2001, pp.354–358): ●

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All the schools in the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) as part of the Vision 2020 of Malaysia are to be connected to the internet and Smart Schools are promoted as a central platform. The implementation of the China Education and Research Network (CERNET) Project aimed at establishing a national network centre, several regional network centres linking up universities, middle schools and primary schools In Lahore and some parts of Pakistan, the EDUNET provides on-line access to English resources and facilitates students and teachers to communicate with their peers elsewhere in the world. In Indonesia, a project known as Open Junior High School is seen as a ‘potential programme for universal basic nine-year education in Indonesia’ (p.356). The project involves educational technologies ranging from printed modules supported by audio cassette, radio, sound slide, and video programmes. In the villages, students learn individually five days a week in the learning centres under the supervision of tutors (primary school teachers). They then go to a conventional Junior High School where they engage in face-to-face interactions with subject matter teachers and watch sound slide and video programmes. Despite Japan’s having a deliberate policy of not introducing computers into primary or secondary schools, the ‘100 Schools Project’ and ‘Child Network Plan’ were launched in 1994 to provide internet access for selected schools. In Thailand, the National Education Bill of 1998 included a chapter on educational media and technology with a clear and formal intention of incorporating ICT into education.

One of the best-known examples of using ICT in education is the Malaysian Smart School initiative, implemented in 1999, encompassing not only teaching and learning processes but also school governance (Ya’acob et al. 2005). In the case of science and technology teaching, it was remarked that teaching tended to be examination-oriented and to be dominated by low cognitive-level questioning and group practical activities (Syed Zin 2003). The Smart School initiative adopted a multi-modal approach with a combination of network-based and course materials as well as provision of software facilitating students’ active engagement with the content and their analytical and creative thinking. From a pedagogical perspective, Ya’acob et al. (2005, p.20) remarked that: teachers need to re-orientate themselves as ‘sage on the stage’ to ‘guide on the side’. Teachers will identify goals, define direction for their students, pilot their progress towards these goals and then step back to allow the students to learn at their own pace. They will give psychological support and encouragement. They will periodically step in to check progress, applaud strengths and efforts, identify weaknesses, and decide what kind of practice their students will need.

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Nonetheless, their study of teachers’ and students’ perceptions of teaching and learning English in the Smart way from four Smart School flagship projects revealed that most teachers and students were ready to teach and learn in the Smart way and opportunities were given to students to nurture their creative thinking culture and collaborative learning. Nonetheless, ‘online learning’ through the web did not take place; rather computers were used as tools for learning and teaching. In addition, more emphasis on critical thinking was called for in teaching practices. There are also some other successful examples in Asian schools of individualized learning (customizable learning paths and scaffolding templates), pedagogical changes towards more meaning-making and knowledge construction and away from practice and repetition, and an emphasis of interdisciplinary teaching and learning (Hedberg and Lim 2004, p.201). Nonetheless, it is notable that there is a three-level categorization by UNESCO for ICT teaching and learning initiatives. These range from advanced countries such as South Korea and Singapore, which integrate ICTs into the education system to countries such as China, Thailand, Japan, Malaysia, India and the Philippines, which have national ICT policies and master plans, apply and test various strategies but do not fully integrate ICTs within education to beginning countries such as Myanmar, Laos PDR, Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangladesh, which have either national policies but not enough resources for implementation of their policies and work plans, or have no policies but run pilot ICT projects (Hedberg and Lim 2004). While the application of ICTs in education is seen as a promising agenda for educational change and development in Asian countries, it faces great challenges and threats as described by Birch and Maclean (2001, p.363): In gross statistical terms, schooling, especially primary school education, is the domain of teachers with little or no pre-service education and little prospect of significant in-service training, armed with the textbook, if one is available. ICT is a threat in such a situation: it is a threat to the curriculum; it is a threat to the teacher; it is a threat to classroom management; and it is a threat to school management. Nonetheless, ICTs represent a crucial force for cross-cultural links between people in different societies and possible transitions between old and new learning, As commented by Richards (2004, p.340): The disciplined methods and cultural values associated with so-called rote learning, hierarchical organization and formal order in much Asian education are, of course, a significant factor in Asian students performing well internationally in comparative testing for mathematics and science. On the other hand, Asian education systems increasingly make extensive use of progressive theories of learning (especially in terms of generic skills such as problem solving, collaboration and communication) as a focus for learning relevant to the new knowledge society and global economy of the future.


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Some scholars contend that in Eastern countries, ‘ICT-based learning technologies integrated with new learning approaches (i.e. learner-centred, problem-based, selfdirected learning stressing higher-order thinking skills) embed a new pedagogical culture often imported from Western countries, together with its rooted epistemological and ontological beliefs and social values’ (Zhang 2004, pp.3–4). An introduction of Western-oriented ICT-based learning technologies into the East triggers the dual interaction processes of ‘assimilation’ and ‘accommodation’. One example in China is group-based distance learning projects in which learners participate in classes at local learning centres, involving lectures delivered traditionally through television and more recently through VCD/DVD. Satellite-based digital broadcasting, videoconferencing systems as well as internet-based video/audio streams operate in synchronization with PowerPoint slides. This is consistent with other observations in Malaysia and Hong Kong that students prefer teacherdirected lectures (face-to-face delivery or delivered through videoconferencing systems) or teachers tend to incorporate ICT tools to support their demonstrations and exposition in classroom respectively (Ziguras 2001; Law et al. 1999). To facilitate cultural change in both education and society, Richards (2004, p.348) proposes a framework for cross-cultural inquiry, dialogue and partnerships through ICT integration with the following characteristics: ●

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The transformative relations between discipline and innovation corresponds to learning conceived as a related dialogical interplay between individual performance and social knowledge. There is an emphasis on the relations or links between: practice and theory, doing and thinking, informal and formal learning as well as bottom-up and top-down imperatives in education. A dialogical sharing of knowledge provides a basis for discussing the challenge of integrating IT in education across different cultural contexts.

From an implementation perspective of using ICT to transform education, there is a need to consider the following aspects for future improvement (Zhang 2004): 1 2

3

hardware and infrastructure: improving student/computer ratio, providing access and allowing the public to benefit from ICT software and services: developing educational software (e.g. computerassisted instruction (CAI), general application and framework software and computer-assisted test (CAT) system) and providing a network of CDROM-based and web-based learning resources banks and services to wider communities human-ware: providing preservice and inservice professional development for teachers, administrators and information technology coordinators and using ICT to support curriculum reforms.

In schools, more consideration needs to be given to school culture, school leadership, implementation strategies (e.g. team-building and technical support),

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government and community support and school ICT infrastructure (Centre for Information Technology in Education of the University of Hong Kong (CITE) 2003; Ngan and Lee 2002; Ngan et al. 2003).

Conclusion Under the drive of curriculum reforms in Asia, there is a call for changes in paradigms of teaching or pedagogical approaches. In the case of Hong Kong, while it is confirmed that classroom practice is still teacher-centred (Lee et al. 2002; Lee et al. 2003a), change in the pedagogical system should be undertaken with prudence. Some Western scholars such as Marton (2000, p.288) argue that: the pedagogy in Hong Kong is surely an offspring of Chinese pedagogy, the oldest and maybe the most efficient pedagogy (in its more advanced forms) of which we know. Developing this pedagogy further seems to be a much better idea than doing away with it. Tweed and Lehman (2002) have developed a Confucian–Socratic framework to examine the impact of culture on academic learnng. The Confucian approach is known for ‘effortful learning’, ‘behavioural reform’, ‘pragmatic learning’, ‘acquisition of essential learning’, ‘respectful learning’, while the Socratic approach is characterized by a ‘tendency to question’, ‘tendency to evaluate’, ‘esteem for self-generated knowledge’, ‘focus on error to evoke doubt’ and: ‘search for knowledge, not true belief’ (pp.90–92). They draw upon Perkins’ (1992) suggestion of combining thoughtful acquisition (Confucian) and inquiry (Socratic) and comment that ‘an inflexible Confucian approach to learning clearly could have some disadvantages, but with respect to some Western contexts, we also have concerns about teaching based on a caricature of the Socratic orientation’ (p.97). In a similar vein, Gardner (2000) stated that the optimal system of learning would be enhanced by a balance between Chinese and Western approaches which emphasize basic skills and creativity respectively. The future direction of improving pedagogy in China and perhaps other parts of Asia seems to be better moving towards a culturally relevant pedagogy or an ‘assimilation’ of Western pedagogical concepts within the strong basis of their traditional (Eastern) practices at an initial stage. As Gopinathan (2006, p.267) asserts, ‘pedagogic practice is still rooted in distinctive cultures and each country will have to invest in research to find out what works in their context(s)’. With future changes in curriculum as process-oriented and the availability of technology and wide application of ICT in education coupled with teacher and school development across Asian countries, there is much room for rethinking pedagogy and varied instructional design beyond the cultural boundaries.

10 Leadership for school development

Introduction There has been substantial research into school leadership in Western industrialized countries. Comparatively, far less has been published about the status and models of school leadership in the societies and cultures of the developing world. Walker and Dimmock (2000, p.9) remarked that: While considerable research has been devoted to learning and teaching in areas such as basic education in Asia, cross-cultural learning, international management, and Asian psychology, little attention has been paid to understanding school administration and leadership from East and Southeast Asian perspectives. In the field of leadership, some scholars have classified leadership attributions into ‘etic’ and ‘emic’ categories (Alavi and McCormick 2004; Dastmalchian et al. 2001). The former relates to universal psychological attributes or processes, such as being ‘supportive,’ while the latter refers to those leadership attributes or processes that are culturally specific, for example, being ‘faithful’ (i.e. ‘believing in religion, acting consistent with religious doctrine and morale’) in Islamic countries (p.408). Despite the rapid political and economic changes in Asian countries, fundamental cultural norms are still resistant to global change forces (Hallinger 2004). Cheng and Wong (1996), in an analysis of school effectiveness in East Asia, highlight three dichotomies in explaining differences between Chinese and Western attitudes towards learning and schooling: individual versus community; ability versus effort, and holistic versus idealistic. One of the possible reasons for the lack of research into leadership and management in schools in developing countries, as Simkins et al. (2003, p.276) remark, is that research has been focused on top-down, system-wide change rather than change at the level of the individual school ... Also, there is often a presumption that within the highly bureaucratized education systems of many developing countries the role of head teachers (principals), let alone that of others with managerial roles in schools, is relatively insignificant.

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With a gradual shift from the ‘policy-mechanic’ paradigm focusing on key resource inputs to a ‘classroom-culturalist’ model (Fuller and Clarke 1994) highlighting change processes managed at school level, there is an increasing attention to the critical role of the head teacher’s leadership in school improvement. In the Western literature, there are prevalent discussions about the relationships between distributed or shared leadership (e.g. Harris 2004), teacher leadership (e.g. Muijs and Harris 2003) and school improvement as well as the relationship of transformational leadership and school improvement (e.g. Leithwood et al. 1999) but to what degree are these concepts relevant and feasible in the Asian context? With the gradual implementation of decentralization and school-based management policies in some Asian countries, there is a need for school-level leadership to involve not only the principal but all teachers as well as to conceptualize the school as a learning organization. In this chapter, cultural issues relating to hierarchy and societal values will be discussed to show how differing conceptions of leadership in Asian societies will interact with new imperatives for school leadership.

Status and changing roles of leadership With the impact of culture and the influence of decentralization in some Asian countries, principals may, on one hand, display some unique characteristics of leadership and, on the other hand, need to take up different roles. In Pakistan where there have been many decentralized policy measures in the last few years, an earlier study by Simkins and his colleagues (1998) showed that the contexts of government and non-government school heads differed quite significantly. Government heads, for example, tended to work in a governance regime dominated by relatively bureaucratic rules and flat school structures. They had little power over the management of staffing and finance whereas non-government school heads tended to be subject to the influences of trustees and system managers, had considerable power over the management of staffing and finance, and worked in a structure with salary-differentiated hierarchies of deputy heads and department heads. In a more recent study of three head teachers in Karachi, Simkins et al. (2003) identified the key variables that might contribute to a sense of personal efficacy for these heads: the expectations generated by the national or community culture; the powers and accountabilities generated by the school system in which they work; and their own individual personalities and histories. They also highlighted the importance of context as a major determinant and remarked that ‘all three heads, however, have found themselves constrained in their possibilities of action – especially the personal style that they can adopt – by broader cultural pressures, especially conceptions of leadership as requiring strengths, assertiveness, and the imposition of hierarchical authority’ (p.287). In the context of Thailand, as in some other Asian countries, Hallinger (2004) draws on Hofstede’s (1991) and Dimmock and Walker’s (2000) work on Asian principals as members of a high power distance culture, which meant that ‘large differences in power between staff levels tended to be accepted as natural’

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(p.67). They also observed that principals tended to have an even a stronger managerial orientation compared with their counterparts in America who tended to highlight equality. This implied that principals and teachers tended to accept orders from their superiors. A Thai principal, as Hallinger (2004, p.68) remarked, was ‘traditionally viewed as the sole decision maker. Principals naturally expect their orders to be followed with relatively little discussion, few questions from staff, and no overt dissent’ (p.68, emphasis as original). Hallinger (2004) pointed out, with specific reference to Thailand, that there are limitations to the use of position power (superior status) and specific leadership capacities are called for when it comes to supporting educational change. Such advice could be applicable not only to Thailand but also other parts of Asia. Through a comparative case study of three schools in Thailand two years after the completion of the Basic and Occupational Education and Training (BOET) project in 1999, Hallinger and Kantamara (2002) noted the following management styles and strategies for change: ●

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All three school directors adopted participatory management styles. They took specific steps including: building widespread support for the vision of change; reducing the ‘status gap’ between themselves and the stakeholders; and gathering information that embraced a variety of perspectives from stakeholders prior to and during the adoption of school changes (p.129). All school directors attempted to create an atmosphere of harmonious group orientation (a sense of family) and teamwork (p.131). In addition, organizational rituals such as study visits, fairs and celebrations provided occasions for fun and a further impetus for change through enhanced morale and pride (p.133). All directors encouraged voluntary participation in the change effort first by more active and knowledgeable teachers and, over time, initially sceptical teachers joined the project activities as well. Gradually, public recognition of the school’s success will exert positive pressure for change with increasing collaboration between schools and their communities (pp.131–132). These schools used action research to foster staff learning and to promote programme accountability (pp.133–134).

In Singapore, where the education system is quite highly centralized, a study of four principals showed that the work lives of principals, shaped by their national culture, were characterized by paradoxes. Such paradoxes are illustrated by how principals operate individualistically in a collectivist paradigm, value compliance and conformity and yet break the mould, and seek stability in a destabilized environment. These features of principalship, described as ‘Singaporeanness’ (Stott and Low 2000, pp.97–98), had the following characteristics: ●

There are still some power distances between the inspectors (or now ‘cluster superintendents’) and principals and between principals and teachers; this may perpetuate autocratic or consultative approaches to decision-making.

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Strategies for change in Asia’s schools While the role of principals in setting the vision for their schools followed by compliance of the staff is expected, there is evidence of principals’ attempts to build up a unity of purpose among teachers. School leadership is characterized more by ‘masculine’ traits such as assertiveness and competitiveness than by ‘feminine’ attributes of caring and compassion. Principals tended to maintain stability and reduce anxiety in a changing environment by making decisions themselves or with a selected group of individuals or sometimes by evading the critical issues. Principals tended to emphasize their leadership having passion coupled with optimism in the face of difficulties.

Sharp and Gopinathan (2002) instead understood Singapore as an evolving mix between ‘traditional’ and ‘modernizing’ cultures. Through their study of two exceptional principals of high-achieving government secondary schools in the Improving Schools Project around the mid- to late-1990s, they asserted that these two principals took advantage of decentralization and adopted the following major strategies for school improvement: ●

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School management and improvement were ‘aligned and adapted to the needs of the pupils’ (p.164). One school provided structure and support through devising a range of school-based programmes, operating an open-gate policy and providing study tables (p.165) while another school focused on four priorities: discipline, care of pupils, public image and improved facilities (p.168).

Echoing the mixed cultures, they remarked, ‘whilst both espoused such traditional values as filial piety and hard work, they turned to Western organizational literature for such ideas as consultative management and group work’ (p.170). In the case of Hong Kong, Cheng (2000a) discussed a series of studies on principal leadership. Four distinct clusters in terms of principal leadership and organizational climate were identified in an earlier study in the 1990s: headless style (poor performance in management and leadership); control style (very high managerial control and feelings of hindrance and disengagement); commitment style (high in perceived effectiveness, principal trust, consideration, initiating structure, relationships, teachers’ esprit and intimacy but low in principal aloofness and teacher disengagement); and disengagement style (high teacher disengagement but low esprit and intimacy). The results revealed that there were diverse styles of principal leadership even though principals worked within the same social system. Cheng (2000a, p.74) argued that principals’ leadership’s styles ‘mainly depend on principals’ personal factors and school-site level factors’. Based on profiles of leadership in Yukl’s taxonomy, Cheng grouped secondary schools in one of his studies in the 1990s into two groups using teachers’ and principals’ composite satisfaction scores. It was found that secondary school principals’ leadership strengths in Hong Kong lie in operational aspects of school


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management while their weaknesses were related to ‘goal setting, inspiration, culture building and school image building – all of which reflect a lack of cultural, strategic and environmental leaderships’ (p.79). Findings from other studies of secondary school leadership reported by Cheng (2000a) were highlighted as follows: ●

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In a study of instructional leadership functions of 60 secondary schools, principals scored consistently highly in ‘Maintaining high visibility, enforcing academic standards, and providing incentives for learning’, which are related to the dimension of promoting a positive school learning climate (p.80). By contrast, principals had relatively low scores in ‘Providing incentives for teachers and encouraging decision participation’, which to some extent reflected that decision-making power tended to be concentrated in senior management. As regards five leadership functions, principals tended to be strong in ‘educational leadership’ and ‘structural leadership’, moderate in ‘human relationship’ but comparatively weak in ‘political leadership’ and ‘cultural leadership’ (p.82).

Despite the variations in leadership styles, the dominant pattern of leadership strengths and weaknesses was shaped to some extent by social and contextual factors in the 1990s including a heavy examination system (still in place today), the lack of a clear accountability system (clearer now because of school self-evaluation and other mechanisms) and the lack of structured principalship training (more structured and systematic nowadays). Yet it is noteworthy that principals needed more training to become transformational and strategic leaders in the changing educational environment in this new century (p.83). In another study of Hong Kong primary school teachers’ perceptions of principals’ transformational leadership based on Leithwood’s (1994) questionnaire, it was found that among the eight leadership dimensions, the dimension of ‘Holding high performance expectations’ had the highest mean scores (4.19 on a six-point scale) whilst all other dimensions, namely ‘Modelling behaviour’ (3.77), ‘Developing a widely shared vision for the school’ (3.73), ‘Building consensus about school goals and priorities’ (3.68), ‘Strengthening school culture’ (3.67), ‘Providing intellectual stimulation’ (3.65), ‘Providing individualized support’ (3.64) and ‘Building collaborative structures’ (3.60) had mean scores higher than 3.5 (Yu 2002). In general, the results implied that principals tended to have high expectations for professional growth and students’ performance and could set good examples for staff to follow but they needed to strengthen distributive leadership and the building of collaborative structures for enhancing teachers’ decision-making. In a recent comparative Korean study, Su et al. (2000) studied school administrators in Korea, the USA and China, and identified the following major patterns (Kim and Kim 2005, p.298 and p.306):

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Strategies for change in Asia’s schools School administrators in both South Korea (usually in their fifties) and China are significantly older than those in the USA. This may partly reflect ‘male dominance in power positions, a[ nd]a system of preferential access to jobs based on age/seniority’ (p.306). School administrators in South Korea chose their careers mainly because they would like to provide leadership, to help children or young people. and to contribute to society. This reflects to some extent school administrators’ intrinsic motivations in their pursuit of principalship as well as probably the respect and symbolic power of a moral guide that is associated with being a school leader in Korean society. Compared with findings in the USA and China, school administrators in the three countries (South Korea, USA and China) viewed reasons such as ‘to help students’, ‘to contribute to society’, ‘to have an impact on school reform’ and ‘to work with teachers in school improvement’ as important reasons for becoming school administrators. School administrators in South Korea tended to display lifelong commitments in their careers (working as a principal until their retirement) while their USA and China counterparts may want to leave their careers if a better alternative were to be offered.

In Japan, school administrators are gradually shifting to the role of ‘school managers’ and much emphasis is placed on curriculum management, staff development, external relations and financial control (Centre for Educational Research and Innovation 2001, p.34 and p.116). A study comparing outstanding Japanese and American secondary school principals revealed the following patterns and cultural characteristics (Willis and Bartell 1990): ●

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The role of Japanese principals tended to be symbolic and ritualistic and they were expected to deliver an inspirational speech at school ceremonies (p.121). Similar to what was found in the study on Korean principals, the Japanese principals tended to display continued service commitment to education both before and after retirement while American principals tended to focus more on personal career goals (p.115). Japanese principals were often respected as principal/head teachers according to their teaching abilities. They were actively visible to the teachers and community members. They tended to put more emphasis on instructional leadership. For American principals, they tended to display strong visibility to, and exert high expectations for, students (pp.120–121). Amongst qualities of educational leadership, American principals ranked ‘understanding of the instructional process’, ‘relations with teachers’ and ‘relations with students’ as most important, while Japanese principals ranked ‘moral character’, ‘relations with teachers’ and ‘warmth and consideration’ as most important (p.119).

In the vast country of China, Bush and Qiang (2000) refer to four significant aspects of culture in the educational system: the traditional, socialist, enterprise


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and patriarchal. In a similar vein, Ribbins and Zhang (2004) argued that there are five forms of societal culture, which may influence school leadership: Confucianism, the Cultural Revolution, the economic culture, Communist education and patriarchal culture. A study of 40 head teachers in Chuxiong, Yunnan, China revealed that their lives and careers were influenced by five societal–cultural forms as shown in Table 10.1.

Recent issues/developments in school leadership Leadership for curriculum, teaching and learning Through case studies of secondary schools in Hong Kong, it has been found that principals and vice principals assumed relatively low levels of direct involvement in curriculum leadership and higher levels of indirect involvement. On the other hand, senior teachers (heads of departments) and teachers assumed direct curriculum leadership and management (Lee and Dimmock 1999). Another qualitative study of preservice primary teachers’ perceptions about principals revealed that if the principal did not offer support for teachers to experiment with innovations, they might become frustrated and perhaps unwilling to adopt new teaching ideas. Some preservice teachers even held negative attitudes towards the principal’s style of instructional supervision, which was perceived as ‘patrolling the school rather than conducting classroom observation’ (Lee et al. 2000, p.58). These results raise questions about whether there is still a lack of principal’s leadership for curriculum, teaching and learning in Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia. In a study comparing outstanding Japanese and American secondary school principals’ instructional leadership (Willis and Bartell 1990), it was found that Japanese principals tended to place more emphasis on recruiting outstanding Table 10.1 Possible influences of societal–cultural forms on the formation of school leaders from Chuxiong, rural China (Ribbins and Zhang 2004) Societal–cultural forms Confucianism

Possible influences (examples)

Respect for authority; worshipping traditions; collectivist rather than individual values; need for self-cultivation, searching for ethical and moral perfection through ‘learning’; emphasising modesty, friendly cooperation and harmonious interpersonal relationships Cultural Revolution Persecution in the family and beyond; closure of universities and suspension of normal schooling; an opportunity for some (employment and promotion) Communist education Honest and outspoken character; formalism New economic culture Increase in corruption; increase in salary; money is getting more important Patriarchal culture Complacency and sometimes hostility towards gender equality of headship

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teachers, evaluating performance of teachers, articulating school goals to the public and articulating school goals to the staff. Their American counterparts tended to highlight responsibilities such as evaluating the performance of teachers, providing a supportive climate for teachers, articulating school goals to the staff, and providing an orderly atmosphere for learning. This shows that while principals in both countries pay attention to evaluating performance of teachers and articulating school goals to the staff, the Japanese principals’ emphasis on recruiting or hiring of teachers is partly related to the intense competition for teaching posts because of attractive salaries and stable employment. Appointment and promotion of competent and effective teachers are crucial to the development of quality teaching and learning in schools. Dimmock and Walker (2000) observe that in Chinese cultures holistic considerations of relationships or connections as well as merit are taken into account in personnel decisions (p.311). It seems that principals in China and Japan pay more attention to recruitment or appointment of teachers. More studies are needed to ascertain whether Asian principals follow this trend and play a less dominant role in direct curriculum leadership.

Leadership training and development With the promotion of school-based management in some Asian societies, such as Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, it is important for principals and school board members to receive leadership and management training. Following the implementation of the Ministry of Education’s 2004 Strategic Action Plan in Thailand, there has been an increasing emphasis on leadership skills and style of school directors, especially their ‘ability to build teams for learning and development around them’ (Office of the Basic Education Commission, Ministry of Education, Thailand 2005, p.2). The Dream School Programme was established with the advice and expert support of the National College of School Leadership in the UK and experts from the National Institute of Education in Singapore with an aim of helping schools with exemplary practices in teaching and learning reform to be sources of support and networking for schools in its district. Under this programme, a Thai School Leadership Development Framework (SLDF) emerged and has been piloted with six levels of leadership development (starting from the initial entry point): leadership for middle leaders, preparation for directorship, entry to directorship, practising director, fast-track directors, and consultant leaders. In addition, there are six areas of school leadership development including ‘shaping the future’, ‘leading learning and teaching’, ‘developing self and working with others’, ‘managing the organization’, ‘securing accountability’ and ‘working with the community’ within which the following skills and competencies for school leaders have been emphasized: ● ● ●

communication skills interpersonal skills developing team work/working with others

Leadership for school development ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

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supporting staff and pupils organizational and management skills decision-making and problem-solving skills finding and using evidence developing learning leading and managing change taking responsibility/evaluation.

Other than leadership training, a ladder of promotion or professional recognition is provided in some Asian societies. In Malaysia, the Ministry of Education established the posts of senior and super principal in 1996 (Hasbullah 2004). These super principals are placed on a higher salary grade and they are evaluated not only on job appraisals for the past three years but also other professional contributions such as academic writing, presentations in seminars as well as coaching and mentoring activities. They are also expected to display school achievements pertaining to curriculum and co-curriculum (Malaysia 2006). It is hoped that this super principal scheme could provide advice to beginning principals and facilitate professional communication among principals. In addition to the establishment of posts and frameworks of development, innovative leadership training programmes were conducted in different parts of Asia’s developing countries. In Central Lombok, Indonesia, a two-day, live-in leadership workshop with a focus on shared leadership was organized for fifteen participants from three impoverished rural school communities sharing a strong Islamic culture. The workshop was designed to model the Pembelajaran Aktif Kreatif Efektif dan Menyenangkan (PAKEM) programme highlighting an interactive and participative approach that was translated as Active Creative Effective and Joyful Learning (Atwell 2006, p.7). After the workshop, the participants needed to engage in formulating a school-based project in each of the three schools in the following six months and keep a semi-structured journal on a weekly basis. One of the lessons learned from this project is that future leadership training programmes need to pay attention to the local context and culture in which religion plays an important part in participants’ lives. Some studies have focused on the areas or features of inservice leadership development programmes for principals. Huber (2004, p.677) found that various leadership development programmes may have a combination of the following foci: function orientation (echoing the demands of the government); task orientation (responding to different tasks of school leadership); competence orientation (enhancing the competences of individual participants); school development orientation (enhancing the development of individual schools); cognitions orientation (changing or developing the mental concepts of participants); and value orientation (emphasizing values). A study of Australian and Japanese principals’ perceived most important areas or topics for inservice training revealed similar views that they need training in the following areas: information technology and management, ethics, morals, and values for educational leaders, and contemporary public issues in educational administration.

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Both the Australian and Japanese principals considered an induction programme and practicum in educational administration respectively to be high priorities, although the terminology is slightly different (Gamage and Ueyama 2004). It is notable that both groups ranked organization and administration of multicultural programmes as a least important topic, which is different from the recent changes in discourse of ‘leadership for diversity’ within a multicultural democracy in Britain (Osler 2006). As regards the key features of school leadership learning programmes, Walker and Dimmock (2006, p.139) identified the following features both in Hong Kong and internationally: mechanisms/content to maximize contextual and cultural sensitivity; linkage to leadership reality and school life and outcomes; opportunities for reflection; intense involvement of experienced practitioners as mentors and/or coaches; multiple learning pathways; intentional design; formal and informal grouping and networking; meaningful evaluation; and participant control. It appears that while there may be some common features of leadership training between Asian societies and other parts of the world, the development of leadership training activities and programmes needs to take into account the local culture and societal contexts.

Moral leadership Moral leadership has received considerable attention in the literature of school leadership (e.g. Sergiovanni 1992). Wong (1998) draws on early Confucian thought on moral leadership and addresses the impact of culture on issues of school management in East Asia, particularly China. He highlights the following characteristics of moral leadership in the traditional Chinese perspective: ●

● ●

emphasis on ethical humanism: ‘keeping spiritual beings at a distance and at the same time giving full attention to human activities’ (pp.119–120) emphasis on learning: placing value on efforts moral aspects of learning: learning to be conscientious (chung) and altruistic (shu) (p.121).

From the Chinese perspective, educational leadership is a practical endeavour and ‘moral art in action’ (Wong 2001a, p.316). This implies that when school administrators are honest and faithful to the cause of educating the children, they win the respect of teachers and students. In India, a country with strong religious–cultural traditions that stress universality, non-aggressiveness and humanism, Sapre and Ranade (2001) comment that there is ‘a near absence of exceptional value-based leadership, not only in the field of education but also practically all walks of life’ (p.367). Drawing on examples of Vivekananda, Tagore and Gandhi who were leaders because there were followers looking up to them as their leaders, Sapre and Ranade (2001) point to the traditional Indian view of leadership that reflects the highest code of moral values involving no personal agendas of power or wealth. They further suggest


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that professional development programmes for school administrators should emphasize personal vision and help them understand the importance of integrating thoughts, speech and action in their personal lives and serving as role models. In Muslim societies, such as Afghanistan, Indonesia and Pakistan, all teachers and leaders are expected to ‘possess certain religious knowledge to fulfil their roles as guides to knowledge and conduct, in keeping with the Quranic teachings’ (Shah 2006, pp.372–373). Educational leadership from an Islamic perspective, with the notion of high respect for the teacher/leader, covers three aspects (p.370): ● ● ●

teaching with knowledge and understanding – educator guiding with wisdom and values – prophet/leader caring with responsibility and commitment – parent’.

The role model of leaders is also highlighted as Muslim students and community would ‘expect the leaders to live up to a value model to command that respect and relationship which, in Islam, forms the basis of teaching and leading’ (p.378). It is clear that different cultures in China, India and some Muslim societies have profoundly influenced the views and values orientations of leadership. In addition, the classical or holy works, the principles of religion (e.g. Islam) and/or the deeds of great leaders in these societies provide sources of great inspiration for emulating leadership roles.

Women as leaders and women teachers’ empowerment In many countries, the teaching profession predominately comprises women. Nonetheless, women are grossly under-represented in management positions. In addition, the gap between men and women is relatively large in both China and South Korea, compared with those found in the USA (Kim and Kim 2005). In the case of Japan, figures for 1999 revealed that over 85 per cent of principals in elementary schools and over 96 per cent in secondary schools were male, reflecting gender inequality in school leadership positions (Centre for Educational Research and Innovation 2001, p.116). The gap would be especially noticeable in Muslim countries, especially in places where the fundamentalist position asserts that women cannot engage in professional work. There have been debates about whether there are specific masculine and feminine styles of leadership. For example, it is noticeable that even when women assume a leadership position, they may often be perceived as having stereotypic ‘caring, nurturing roles’ as teachers. In addition, there have been discussions on whether women may adopt a transformational, collaborative and empowering style of leadership and men may be associated with more directive and authoritative leadership (Cubillo and Brown 2003). In Singapore, there is a high level of participation by females as principals and vice principals in school management. This phenomenon supports the claim by Chew et al. (2003) that while Confucianism continues to influence many

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Chinese communities, educational leadership need not be paternalistic and predominantly male in Singapore. A study involving interviews with eleven female Singaporean principals revealed the following results (Morriss et al. 1999): ●

●

●

Similar to responses of English head teachers in another study (Coleman 1996), the Singaporean principals and their English counterparts both supported adherence to the attributes of the feminine paradigm namely being caring, intuitive and aware of individual differences as well as choosing adjectives of the masculine paradigm to describe their own practice: evaluative, disciplined and objective. Singaporean principals tended to emphasize an evolving, participatory management style and wished to ‘develop a consultative, collaborative work environment and to foster an open, supportive atmosphere responsive to the needs of students and staff’ (p.201). This favoured style of management is quite similar to that identified amongst the English female head teachers. As regards the values that the principals would like to instil in their schools and students, Singaporean principals tended to emphasize values associated with moral responsibility (e.g. integrity, trust, honesty, respect and concern for others) and work ethics (e.g. commitment, discipline, diligence, perseverance and continual improvement). While the English head teachers shared a similar group of values such as honesty and integrity, they emphasized the values associated with equality of opportunity for all, staff and students alike (Coleman 1996).

Apart from female leadership as an emerging discourse in school leadership research (e.g. Reynolds 2002), empowerment of women is also an issue that deserves attention. The gender empowerment measure (GEM) created by the UNDP is a composite index based on seats in parliament held by women, numbers of female legislators, senior officials and managers, female professional and technical workers and the ratio of estimated female to male earnings. Khan (2006, p.117) classified various Asian countries into low GEM (Bangladesh, India and Pakistan) and medium GEM (Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand). It is notable that Singapore has a relatively high level of gender empowerment but there is not a clear relationship between high GEM and development. For example, in Japan and Korea, the levels of gender empowerment are comparable to those in countries with medium levels of human development such as the Philippines, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The issue of gender equity remains complex and socially constructed and it is an important one yet to be resolved by many Asian societies. Gender equity issues are certainly reflected in aspects of education. The role of teachers is restricted by a patriarchal culture in some developing countries, as Stacki (2002, pp.2–3) remarked: teachers often form a silent majority; they are excluded not only from policymaking, governance and management, but also from day-to-day instructional


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strategies and decision-making ... Women teachers in particular are even less able to participate in decision-making and have even less voice in creating the institutional structures and policies that affect their lives – in and out of school – and the success of their students. In Pakistan, for example, a story told by Shagufta, a female elementary science teacher in an urban poor school in Lahore, revealed that female teachers were generally not allowed or encouraged to take children on field trips because of existing social values and norms and school administrators tended to avoid taking ‘any chance of alienating local leaders, parents, and politicians because parents may stop sending their daughters to school’ (Upadhyay et al. 2005, p.739). Shagufta maintained that while teachers should be leaders in transforming education, school principals have to be leaders as they have ‘the power to demand change in teaching strategies and practices’ (p.741). In the case of India, teachers receive low pay and enjoy little decision-making power on administrative matters or substantive issues related to curriculum and instruction. Against this background, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) embarked on a teacher empowerment programme based on feminist principles (Stacki 2002; Stacki and Monkman 2003), which aimed at facilitating women teachers to become positive role models for students (especially girls) and critical decision-makers. In this programme, male teachers’ gender awareness and sensitivity are enhanced so as to accept and respect women as equals. It seems that there is an urgent need for some Asian societies to address gender inequality in school leadership positions and provide opportunities for teacher empowerment and promotion prospects for female teachers under the patriarchal culture which exists especially in some developing countries.

Towards schools as learning organizations In recent years, models of school improvement have been introduced in some Asian countries such as Singapore. Schools in Singapore, for example, are asked to conduct self-appraisal using the new school excellence model (SEM) (Ng 2003). The SEM has nine quality criteria: leadership, strategic planning, staff management, resources, student-focused processes, administrative and operational results, staff results, partnership and society results, and key performance results. School leaders, in the context of SEM, may need to consider fundamental questions related to culture and processes, for example, before engaging in the pursuit of school excellence: ●

●

Culture: Is the culture conducive to bring about success in the new education paradigm?Is there open-ness for learning to take place? Processes: Are the education processes streamlined to bring about learning in the most direct way? (Ng 2003, p.33)

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The introduction of SEM implies that in a school the principal, vice principal and heads of department should adopt systems of thinking and work as a team with a common purpose. More importantly, a greater participatory management style is demanded than before because leaders need to ‘find the best strategy, explain and convince the people, urge the people forward, manage transition, stay focused and get results’ (p.35). In Taiwan where there have been academic discourses on ‘school-based management’, ‘teacher empowerment’ and ‘organizational learning’ since the late 1990s, Lam et al. (2003) constructed a two-by-two typology to assess organizational learning (OL) processes and outcomes of 88 elementary and secondary schools. The findings revealed an overall bipolar pattern. Close to half of the schools remained in Condition 1 (low OL processes and low OL outcomes), in which principals have most authority and maintain a top-down approach to management, and another sizeable number of schools belonged to Condition 4 (high OL processes and high OL outcomes), in which divergent groups engage in collective learning within the school. This reflects the situation that while a significant proportion of Taiwanese sampled schools remained stagnant in terms of organizational learning, some sampled schools made achievements in becoming ‘learning organizations’ (p.267). The study also uncovered six factors which seemed to differentiate these two groups: perceived policy clarity, resource adequacy (internal factors); flexible school structure, supportive group norms, capable transformational leaders (internal school conditions); and relatively simpler and smaller organizations of the schools (contextual variables). The interview findings from this study indicated that principals of schools in Condition 1, for example, tended to adopt either a ‘cautious attitude of delaying any action’ or a ‘more parental attitude of trying to shield their staff from over-committing themselves in works with which they were unfamiliar’ (p.268). By contrast, principals leading schools in Condition 4 facilitated organizational learning by forming networks with outside groups (e.g. staff from other schools), community and parent associations. Concepts related to organizational learning and school as a learning organization have attracted attention in some Asian countries. The learning organization (LO) model, proposed by Senge (1990), originally targeted business organizations and it was later extended to educational organizations and school contexts. Based on a cross-cultural analysis of the LO model using Hofstede’s (2001) conceptions of individualism and collectivism, Alavi and McCormick (2004) made the following propositions: ●

●

●

Systems thinking in a school’s administrative teams is likely to be more effective in cultures with high societal collectivism. Systems thinking in a school’s administrative teams consisting of members from different groups is likely to be more effective in cultures with low ingroup collectivism in which ‘individuals express pride, loyalty and cohesiveness in their organizations’ (House et al. 2002, p.5). Reflection in a school’s communication processes is likely to be less effective in in-group collectivistic cultures than in individualistic cultures.

Leadership for school development ●

●

●

●

●

●

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Reflection in a school’s communication processes is likely to be more effective in cultures with low power distance. Inquiry in a school’s communication processes is likely to be more effective in cultures with low power distance. Improving teachers’ and principals’ personal mastery is likely to be more effective in cultures with low power distance. Systems thinking in a school’s administrative teams is likely to be more effective in cultures with lower power distance. Developing shared school visions is likely to be more effective in cultures with high future orientation. Developing shared school visions is likely to be more effective in cultures with societal collectivism, which ‘organizational and societal institutional practices encourage and reward collective distribution of resources and collective action’ (House et al. 2002, p.5).

It seems that a school embedded in a society or culture with low levels of societal collectivism and future orientations and high levels of power distance and ingroup collectivism may find it more difficult to become an effective learning organization. Nonetheless, more empirical studies are needed to ascertain the validity of these propositions. In contrast with the theoretical analysis of a learning organization, Pang and Cheung (2004) adopted Senge’s (1990) ‘five disciplines’ and developed a framework of a learning organization with ‘Personal Mastery’, ‘Mental Models’ and ‘Shared Vision’ at the teacher level, ‘Team Learning’ at the group/school level and ‘Systems Thinking’ at the school level for empirical study. They developed a questionnaire with five subscales that represented Senge’s five disciplines in studying the learning capacity of 25 primary schools. Some of the main findings are: ●

●

●

In all the schools under study, teachers’ Personal Mastery had higher scores than the other four disciplines but all schools tended to have the lowest scores in Mental Models. This implies that teachers tend to emphasize their possession of a wide range of knowledge and try all possible methods of facilitating the learning of their students (p.277). On the other hand, more attention needs to be given to promote among teachers open-mindedness, mutual support, trust and risk-taking endeavours (p.278). The effect of ‘Systems Thinking on Learning Capacity’ ranked highest among the five disciplines followed by ‘Team Learning and Shared Vision’ ranking second. This concurs with Senge’s observation that ‘Systems Thinking is the key discipline for a successful learning’ (p.290). Whole-day schools had a greater learning capacity than bi-sessional schools in terms of both general learning capacity and all subscales except ‘Shared Vision’. This may be related to the greater flexibility and capability for whole-day schools in allocating a time and place for teachers to engage in organizational learning (p.288).

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Another study by Pang (2006) on learning capacity found that greater learning capacities existed in the primary schools than in the secondary schools. It is also interesting to note that while a strong harmonious staff culture in some Hong Kong schools may be conducive to smooth management, the emphasis on harmonious staff relationships may hinder the generation of new ideas among teachers and exert a strong norm for teachers to follow the status quo (Lee et al. 2001, p.51; MacBeath 2002).

Conclusion In many Asian societies, where both collectivism and power distance tend to be high, transformational and distributive leadership are problematic both now and for the future. Under the impact of national/local culture, principals may adopt a mixed approach in blending the traditional moral values (such as hard work and valuing conformity) and the ‘Western’ approach (e.g. building vision and participatory decision-making) in leading changes. There are also increasing signs that school principals are starting to use more ‘democratic’ strategies in leading changes and transforming schools into ‘modern’ organizations. The journey, nonetheless, would be challenging as Hallinger and Kantamara (2002, p.137) remarked succinctly: ‘even as policy makers embrace foreign educational policy reforms, change engenders more suspicion than enthusiasm at the point of implementation. Successful implementation will require sophisticated leadership, especially where the underlying assumptions are foreign to prevailing norms of local culture’. Transfer of ‘Western’ ideas and models into practices in Asian settings needs careful planning and research as Fidler (2003, p.16) alerts us: When comparisons are made between the practice in schools in two different countries all the previous in-built assumptions influence what is going on. Unless there are systematic attempts to discover these norms of practice within which actions are acceptable there can be little real understanding of the extent to which the practice could be transferred to another location. Dialogue between the Western and Eastern perspectives might create tensions but at the same time facilitate creative solutions for each of the two worlds. Leadership development programmes, that are initiated in Western countries and launched in Asian contexts, need to be culture-sensitive and context-specific. Respecting the culture and values of oneself and others, equality of treatment of school personnel and cooperation could be some of the important principles for cultivating school leadership in changing Asian societies with diverse cultures and values (Huber 2004; Mohammad 2005). Another area worthy of further exploration is the use of information and communication technology for school management and leadership. This refers to the use of ICT for networking schools in which resources, experiences as well as problems and solutions are shared. This, however, necessitates the resource commitment and support of the government as well as the commitment of the teachers and principals (Mohammad 2005).

11 Teacher development Issues and challenges

In a recent report Teachers and Educational Quality: Monitoring Global Needs for 2015 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2006b), the figures showed that there will be a great diversity of teacher supply and demand by 2015. In South and West Asia, there will be an acute teacher shortage. India, Iran and Sri Lanka, while having no need to expand their teaching stocks, need to combat teacher attrition. In contrast, many countries in East Asia and the Pacific, with the exception of Cambodia and Lao PDR, will face the reduction of their teaching forces because of a steady decline in the primary-school-age population. In Thailand, the intake of new teachers, mainly at the primary level, is very small and some teachers have been deployed to the lower secondary sector (Office of Commercial Services (Queensland University of Technology) 2002). In China and many other countries, however, there is still the need to recruit more teachers because of retirements in the teaching force. In terms of the minimum qualification (known as the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) level) required to enter the teaching profession in selected Asian countries, 45 per cent of the primary teachers in Lao PDR had lower secondary education (ISCED 2) while Nepal had only 16 per cent of teachers fulfilling the minimum requirement of an upper secondary education (ISCED 3). In Myanmar, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, 65 per cent, 94 per cent and 100 per cent of the primary teachers respectively meet the requirements of a post-secondary non-tertiary degree programme (ISCED 4). In Macao (China) and the Philippines, 90 per cent and 100 per cent of teachers had attained a tertiary level qualification (ISCED 5) respectively (UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2006b). These figures suggest that in some developing societies in Asia, there is a great need to upgrade the minimum qualification and competencies of teachers entering the profession. In some remote areas of Thailand and Indonesia, there has been a shortage of teachers and it is not uncommon to have multigrade teachers teaching more than one grade in primary schools (Sadiman 2004). In some other countries with higher standards and higher proportions of qualification, there are calls for upgrading teacher quality through inservice teacher education and professional development. In the context of educational reform, some countries such as Thailand need to develop ‘an inservice training program(me) to help these teachers to adopt student-centred learning and other new practices’; and

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consider ‘innovative approaches to delivering that programme’ (Office of Commercial Services (Queensland University of Technology) 2002, p.22). In some Asian countries such as Singapore, the needs of teacher development may be different from those in less developed areas. A survey in the mid-1990s revealed that a substantial proportion (more than 60 per cent) of teacher respondents were coping only ‘fairly’ in the organization of appropriate and varied classroom activities to cater for the needs of different ability groups and the management of audio-visual equipment. On the other hand, 12.7 per cent of the respondents regarded the general behaviour of the pupils as disruptive or uncooperative, suggesting that coping with disciplinary problems might be another issue of concern for teacher development (Tay-Koay 1999). Alongside the evolving experience of teacher recruitment and training, the professional development of teachers as a field of study has developed an important agenda focusing on many policy changes and research studies undertaken since the mid-1980s. Teacher development studies provide insights for improving teacher education curricula, educational management, and teaching and learning in schools and colleges. In this chapter the term ‘teacher development’ is used as broadly synonymous with ‘professional development (of teachers)’ or ‘teachers’ professional development’, embracing ‘career development’ and ‘staff development’. Glatthorn (1995) differentiates ‘teacher development’ from ‘career development’ and ‘staff development’. He considers career development as the growth occurring in ‘several clearly demarcated and sequential stages’ and staff development as ‘only one of the systematic interventions that can be used for teacher development’ (p.41). In this chapter, interpretations of teacher development as a concept will first be explored. Then issues and challenges and examples from Asian societies will be discussed, drawing on research findings and experiences from lesson observation, lesson study, inservice teacher training, overseas professional development and self-directed learning, as well as examples of action research and case-based pedagogy and narrative inquiry.

Interpretations of teacher development In the 1990s, there was much debate in academic circles about school improvement and interpretations of teacher development, both of which were concerned with ‘opportunities to teach’ and ‘opportunities to learn’. There are also various interpretations of teacher development paradigms or approaches. Some scholars have identified three approaches to teacher development: teacher development as knowledge and skill development; teacher development as self-understanding; and teacher development as ecological change (Hargreaves and Fullan 1992, pp.1–2). For others, there is a spectrum ranging from the technical, apprenticeship paradigm (e.g. Joyce 1987), focusing on learning to teach as a technical activity, to an inquiry paradigm (e.g. Stones 1992), which sees learning to teach as an individualistic and developmental process, and on to the ecological paradigm (e.g. Kagan 1992), which views learning to teach as individual

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development as well as ‘practical interactions between the individual teacher and the various personal and professional environments that he or she participates’ (Tay-Koay 1999, p.17). For some scholars, the term teacher development relates to four types of growth, namely growth in knowledge, growth in skill, growth in judgement and growth in a teacher’s contributions to a professional community (Glatthorn 1995; Little 1992). The first three types of growth pertain to classroom-based teachers’ professional growth while the fourth type of growth refers to teachers’ cooperative efforts to generate new knowledge of practice and their mutual support of each other’s professional growth (McLaughlin and Talbert 2001, p.75). Leithwood (1992) suggests various levels of teachers’ professional development, the highest level of which points to exercising teacher leadership and participating in decision-making. For underlying processes of teacher growth, Lieberman and Miller (1999, p.66) proposed developing a professional community, combining inside knowledge and outside knowledge, and creating an ethic of collaboration. To address teacher development, we need to adopt a holistic view of understanding incorporating not only the knowledge and skills of teachers but also what the nature of a teacher is, how a teachers thinks, feels and makes pedagogical decisions as well as the contexts which may affect a teacher’s work and life. Lieberman (1996) and later Lieberman and Miller (1999) identify three settings in which teacher learning takes place: direct teaching (e.g. through courses, workshops, conferences); learning in school (e.g. through peer coaching, action research, mentoring, peer reviews of practice, team teaching, working on tasks together); and learning out of school (e.g. through school–university partnerships and reform networks). In addition, Sparks and Loucks-Horsley (1990) identified five models of staff development: individually guided learning (e.g. through formal courses and collegial networks); observation/assessment (e.g. through peer coaching and visiting other classrooms); involvement in a development or improvement process (e.g. through writing grant proposals and Professional Development School Collaborations); training (e.g. through workshops); and inquiry (e.g. through portfolios, action research and case studies of practices), and their respective examples of sometimes overlapping formats were further described in Collinson and Ono (2001, pp.232–233). In a nutshell, they see the paradigm of professional development shifting towards more sustained interaction, a public, shared process, active teacher participation, internal expertise plus research, a continuous process towards school improvement, an emphasis on both the ‘how to’ and the ‘why’ of teaching, school-related issues of practice and incorporation and evaluation of research (p.234). These concepts are significant in the context of Asian schooling, especially in those countries where there are adequate physical resources and infrastructure to provide teacher training but there are increasing concerns about the quality of delivery.

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Professional development for first-year and inservice teachers Different societies have slightly different emphases on teacher professional development. In the US where the system is decentralized and varies from state to state, emphasis is placed on standards and policies. American beginning teachers, as Collinson and Ono (2001, p.227) remark, ‘begin their career in a professionally isolated, sink-or-swim environment with little or no formal assistance’. Nonetheless, more attention is now given to the mentoring of beginning teachers. By contrast, Japan, where the system is centralized, highlights the imperative of selection and retention of teachers as well as nurturing first-year teachers’ habits and practices through an extensive professional development programme. Japanese beginning teachers are appointed for a one-year period and mentor teachers are formally assigned for advising and supervising their teaching practices. Typically, they are supported by a school-wide team and they are required to attend a compulsory one-year induction programme consisting of 60 days of in-school, mentor-based training, as well as 30 days of out-of-school training, usually at a prefectural education centre (p.227). In most prefectures, teachers spend extra time in their sixth, tenth, and twentieth years attending training sessions outside their school to interact with their peers at the same career stage who teach the same subject. Like the first-year teachers, they need to prepare lesson plans (Fraser-Abder and Chen 2002). Throughout the professional career of a teacher, he/she could have the possibility of going abroad for training or visits to other school systems as well as pursuing an advanced degree with financial support subject to the approval of the prefectural/local board of education. As remarked by Howe (2006, p.293), ‘Japan’s teacher acculturation ... successfully integrates time to think and reflect, a shared culture of the craft of teaching and an apprenticeship model of teacher development’. In China, schools have a long history of providing their own teachers with continuous teacher development. Formats in Guangzhou, in the southern part of China, for example, range from induction, teaching research, classroom observation and other activities such as talks, workshops and seminars conducted in schools. Induction is an intensive, ongoing activity usually extending over a few years through which mentors work with protégés in preparing lesson plans, preparing teaching materials and observing each other’s lessons. Teaching research (jiaoyan) is common in Chinese schools. Some of these teaching research activities may involve serious pedagogical research supported by universities while others only entail sharing among peers, the collaborative preparation of lessons, classroom observation and participation in seminars, talks and workshops (Ng and Chow 1999, p.34).

Lesson observation in China and Hong Kong Lesson observation has been a popular mode of learning to teach for both preservice and inservice teachers in many Asian countries including China and Hong

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Kong. Nonetheless, there is a dearth of empirical studies on lesson observation in Asian countries. Using Law’s (2001) study of lesson observation in Guangzhou and Hong Kong as an example, it can be seen that there are many types and functions as well as approaches to lesson observation. As shown in Table 11.1, demonstration lessons and supervised lessons are arranged for teacher training purposes and can be regarded as craft-based.

Table 11.1 Types, functions and approaches to lesson observation in Guangzhou and Hong Kong (adapted from Law 2001, p.254 and p.263) Lesson type

Function

Guangzhou Hong Kong Approaches

Demonstration lesson Lesson conducted by (Shifanke) experienced teacher or training novice teachers Supervised lesson Lesson supervised by (Zhidaoke) expert teacher for training backbone teachers Experimental lesson Lesson for teaching (Shiyanke) research Reception lesson (Jiedaike)

Public lesson (Gongkaike) Exchange lesson (Jiaoliuke)

Walk-in lesson (Tuimenke) Appraisal lesson (Pingheke) Competition for novice teachers (Qingnian jiaoshi dabiping) Selection of expert teachers (Youxiu jiaoshi pingxuan)

Lesson conducted annually for visitors from other schools for exchange Lesson for dissemination of effective teaching methods Peer teachers attend each other’s lessons for exchange and experimentation Inspection by education officers or seniors without prior notice Lesson conducted for appraisal Lesson conducted for confirming young teachers’ performance with classification of Grades 1–3 Lesson for selecting expert teachers

Yes

No

Craft

Yes

No

Craft

Yes

No

Yes

No

Authority and reflectivity Authority

Yes

No

Authority

Yes

Yes

Reflectivity

Yes

Yes

Authority

Yes

Yes

Authority

Yes

No

Authority

Yes

No

Authority

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Experimental lessons, reception lessons and public lessons are primarily driven by policies of education reform in China. Walk-in lessons and appraisal lessons are driven by policies of accountability in both China and Hong Kong while competition for novice teachers and selection of expert teachers are driven by policies of selecting senior or expert teachers in China. All these lessons could be regarded as authority-based. Exchange lessons and experimental lessons aim at solving inschool problems and they share some features of an action research type of work, which can be regarded as reflectivity oriented (Ovens 1999).

Different forms of lesson study in Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia and learning studies in Hong Kong On-going school-based training is common in Japanese schools where the main type is collaborative research on the teaching/learning process known as jugyokenkyu (jugyo meaning lesson and kenkyu meaning study or research). Teachers, grouped in grades and in smaller groups, engage in studying a learning unit, researching available learning materials, developing lesson plans and then analysing, assessing and reflecting on the lessons. The lesson study process in Japan usually contains the following steps as described in detail by Fernandez and Yoshida (2004, pp.7–9): (a) collaborative planning of the study lesson; (b) seeing the study lesson in action; (c) discussing the study lesson; (d) revising the lesson (optional); (e) teaching the new version of the lesson (optional); and (f) sharing reflections about the new version of the lesson. Lewis (2000, pp.4–6) remarked that research lessons have five characteristics; namely, lessons observed by other teachers; lessons being planned for a long time, usually collaboratively; lessons being designed to bring to life in a lesson a particular goal or vision of education; lessons being recorded; and lessons being discussed. While there are many venues for conducting lesson study, such as within-school lesson study, public lesson study, lesson study as part of national conferences and teachers’ circles (Lewis 2000), the most popular one is konaikenshu, meaning ‘in-service education within the school’, or ‘in-house workshops’ or ‘in-house study workshops’ (Fernandez and Yoshida 2004, p.9). Konaikenshu-based lesson study has the following unique features (pp.10, 13–15): ●

●

It involves the whole staff in working on a school-wide goal, in connection with the mission of their school, that teachers had agreed on. According to a survey in the 1990s, the majority of schools tend to focus on goals in a particular academic subject area such as Japanese language, mathematics, social sciences or daily living. Other goals may be related to development of children’s broader dispositions such as fostering children’s autonomy, fostering children’s expressive abilities, cultivating a group that listens, talks, understands, and helps each other; discovering and developing children’s individuality, kindling children’s desire to learn; and fostering children’s understanding and tolerance for each other’s differences.

Teacher development ●

●

●

●

●

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It is typical for a school to maintain the same konaikenshu goal but with different perspectives for a number of years so that sustained and significant progress can be made in attaining this goal. The school usually establishes a konaikenshu promotional committee with a few teachers committed to planning and organizing lesson study and organized subgroups of teachers with the responsibility for planning study lessons. An outside adviser might be involved in helping them with the lesson study. Some schools might invite teachers and other educators from neighbouring schools to observe and comment on a series of study lessons as well as to present to them the konaikenshu work in their schools through presentation meetings. Many schools produce at the end of each year a summary of their lesson studies or research bulletins with teachers’ reflections and insights on their lessons. Much of the work described above, except teaching the study lessons, is conducted after school.

It is notable that Japanese elementary school teachers do not have as much free time as their counterparts in the US and very often teachers have to meet in the evenings or at weekends when they take part in non-school-based study groups (Watanabe 2002). Fernandez and Yoshida (2004, pp.210–221) further remark on the following strategies that enhance lesson study across Japan: ● ●

●

●

the outside adviser acting to create links across lesson study groups research bulletins serving as a vehicle for sharing lesson study insights and strategies lesson study groups, including regional study groups and teacher clubs, connecting through the members they share a system of regular teacher rotations allowing lesson study groups to learn from each other.

Based on about 75 interviews with Japanese elementary classroom teachers and administrators and 40 observations of research lessons at more than 30 schools in different regions of Japan in the mid-1990s, Lewis (2000, pp.13–21) suggested that there were eight ways in which lesson study could make an impact: (a) fostering individual professional development; (b) learning to ‘see’ children; (c) facilitating the spread of new content and approaches; (d) connecting individual teachers’ practices to the school goals and broader goals; (e) competing views of teaching ‘bumping against’ each other; (f) creating demand for improvement; (g) shaping national policy (when ideas from research lessons become part of the national curriculum and research lessons provide feedback to policy through outside commentators); and (h) honouring the central role of teachers. Moreover, it is imperative to note that there are important supporting conditions for lesson

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study including: a shared, frugal curriculum; established collaboration; a belief that teaching can be improved through collective effort; practising self-critical reflection within Japanese schools; stability of educational policy; instructional improvement time focused on instruction; and focusing on the whole child (Lewis 2002). In a similar vein, Watanabe (2002, pp.38–39) proposed the following ways to emulate research lessons: developing a culture, not merely a professional development activity; developing the habit of writing an instruction plan for others; developing a unit perspective; anticipating students’ thinking; learning to observe well; and giving teachers a central role. Lesson study in Japan has attracted attention, spreading to other countries such as the United States and Australia during the 1990s (e.g. Stigler and Hiebert 1999; Lim et al. 2005). The School of Education Studies of the Science University Malaysia initiated a Lesson Study Research Project in 2004 based on the Japanese model as described by Fernandez and Yoshida (2004). It involved two secondary schools (with fourteen mathematics teachers) in a district of Northern Malaysia and collaboration with the New South Wales project participants. At an early stage of the project, all the mathematics teachers, the heads of department and the deputy principal in both schools took part in a lesson study workshop with a video demonstration. While the Malaysian experiences yielded some positive feedback such as enhancing teachers’ mathematics content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge, receiving advice for improvement and promoting a collaborative culture, there were several constraints encountered including (Lim et al. 2005): 1 2

time constraints: teachers having heavy workloads or other activities teachers’ attitudes and commitment: depending to some extent on the leadership and support from the school.

It is then suggested that in the future development of the lesson study programme, the programme should be monitored by a senior teacher and supported by the school administrator. In addition, school mathematics teachers should be divided into smaller groups (three to four teachers) according to the grade level (e.g. junior secondary) to allow greater flexibility of time. Since 1998, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Government of Indonesia have worked together on a project entitled ‘JICA Technical Cooperation Project for Development of Science and Mathematics Teaching for Primary and Secondary Education in Indonesia’ (Saito et al. 2006a). In 2001, this project, previously known as the ‘Indonesian Mathematics and Science Teacher Education Project’ (IMSTEP) and involving three recipient institutes on the island of Java, introduced lesson study, conducted jointly by both school teachers and university faculty members as part of inservice teacher training. The collaborative lesson study cycle, with an emphasis on a constructivist approach to learning as well as activities, experiments, group activities, presentations and discourses, has three main stages: a planning session, the open lesson, and a reflection session. The results of introducing lesson study revealed

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that teachers ‘appreciated the impact of introducing small group activities on the promotion and activation of students’ interest and participation in learning’ and ‘there was an increase in student participation during the lessons’ (Saito et al. 2006a, pp.176–177). Nonetheless, there were two main challenges, one related to the limited interests of both university faculty members and targeted teachers in the learning processes of students and another pertaining to insufficient development of collegiality in project schools due to the lack of whole-school involvement in lesson study. Teachers tended to highlight the steps in teaching models from the teachers’ perspective rather than inquiring about the reasons behind students’ mistakes and misconceptions. This raises the issue of the importance of making lesson study a school-wide approach to teacher development. Lewis et al. (2006, pp.6–10) argued that lesson study had the following implications for education research and policy: (a) recognizing ‘local proof’ as a legitimate route to educational improvement – innovation is built or rebuilt locally and local adaptation, ownership, improvement and spread are possible; (b) recognizing the trade-offs of ‘local’ and ‘general’ proof (possibly having strong causal inferences and innovation can be used across various sites); (c) asking whether it is reasonable and ethical to conduct summative research; (d) defining lesson study productively through strengthening teachers’ knowledge, teachers’ commitment and community, and learning resources; (e) encouraging refinement; and (f) learning across boundaries (e.g. from other countries and practitioner-initiated innovations). These remarks are highly relevant for the Asian schooling because as more experiences from lesson studies are consolidated across different settings within and across Asian countries, important universal principles that travel across nations could be confirmed while local principles could be identified and adapted. In the case of Hong Kong, Lo et al. (2005a) started a three-year project on learning studies using Marton and Booth’s (1997) variation theory as the theoretical underpinnings and they built upon the Japanese tradition of ‘learning studies’. The Learning Study Project employs an action research methodology and involves the collaborative efforts of teachers, researchers and academics in engaging in enquiry into and seeking improvement in teaching and learning. The project is guided by three types of variation: variation in students’ understanding of the things to be taught; variation in teachers’ ways of dealing with particular objects of learning; and using variation as a guiding principle of pedagogical design. The main steps of a learning study cycle are (Lo et al. 2005b, pp.33–34): (a) choosing and defining the object of learning; (b) ascertaining students’ prior understanding of the object of learning and their possible learning difficulties (critical aspects) before the teaching begins; (c) planning and implementing the research lesson in a number of cycles using variation as a guiding principle of pedagogical design; (d) evaluating the lessons; and (e) reporting and disseminating the results. Based on detailed analysis in two schools, it was found that the Learning Study Project enhanced teachers’ understanding of students as well as their subject knowledge; it increased teachers’ sensitivity in bringing about the intended

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learning outcomes by supporting teachers’ collaboration and lesson observation in using variation theory; it developed teachers’ capability in using diagnostic assessment to find out the learning difficulties or needs of the students; and it provided teachers with an alternative view of how students learn and the causes behind differences in students’ learning outcomes (p.73). The above examples suggest that the lesson study approach in Japan and its related variants may have great potential for enhancing teacher development. While various forms of lesson study have not been implemented at a full scale or have not adopted a whole-school approach (involving different subject teachers at the same time) outside Japan, it may be desirable to pay attention to issues of implementation such as having key persons’ support, securing principal leadership and facilitation as well as cultivating colleagues’ interest in lesson study at the school level (Saito et al. 2006b).

Inservice training of teachers in developing countries and deprived areas It has been argued by some scholars (e.g. Vulliamy 1998, p.12) that innovations incorporating progressive teaching styles in the West are ‘unrealistic and their introduction is likely to lead to confusion and demoralization for teachers, unless there is a massive inservice training programme to support them’. Guthrie (1990) challenged whether such ‘progressive’ innovations are desirable and argued that: in developing countries, where both the prior level of educational attainment of teachers and their degree of teacher training are low, the quality of teaching is better enhanced by making improvements in formalistic teaching, such as better textbooks, than by attempting to convert teachers from such teaching to the progressive approaches (Vulliamy 1998, p.13) This raises questions about both the desirability and feasibility of teacher training for ‘progressive’ teaching in developing countries. In Cambodia, where health, education and poverty levels are among the lowest in Asia, a teacher teaching in primary schools needs to have a minimum of upper secondary school level (Grade 12) for most areas and lower secondary school level (Grade 9) for highland areas (Sokhom 2004). Teachers have extremely low salaries; sometimes teachers will ask for informal fees from parents or work at a second job merely to support themselves (Knight and MacLeod 2004). Teacher development in these contexts needs to go along with the provision of incentives, the lack of which would otherwise adversely affect teachers’ commitment to teaching and involvement in their own professional development. In some Asian societies, such as India where preservice teacher education programmes are provided for teachers to become acquainted with the general pedagogical and philosophical issues related to education, teachers need support and advice especially when they are placed in less developed or needy areas to

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teach deprived groups of students. In the case of the Ashram schools, special schools aimed at the education of the tribal children with a low SES background in the state of Maharashtra in India, an inservice training programme for mathematics teachers was provided to help handle difficulties such as poor initial preparation of students, students’ underdeveloped learning skills and indifferent attitudes towards mathematics (Agarkar and Pradhan 1998). The training course lasted for five days and covered content aspects and pedagogic aspects. The former included conceptual clarification, concept mapping, problem-solving and content enrichment. The latter entailed pupil participation, the constructivist approach to teaching, remedial teaching and cooperative group learning. There were some follow-up activities such as school visits, mid-term seminars and a teachers’ bulletin. The outcomes in terms of changes of classroom interaction and scholastic attainment (reduced failure rates) were positive and it was argued by the researchers that these experiences might be extrapolated to other less developed areas. In Pakistan, where government primary schools were characterized by a ‘large number of uneducated, under-trained, underpaid and, most important of all, undervalued government primary school teachers’ (Rizvi and Elliott 2005, p.35), a recent study of primary school teachers’ perceptions of their professionalism in Karachi revealed the following two important dimensions of teaching efficacy that they believe are important for enhancing teacher professionalism: belief that all aspects of work and change can be achieved; and belief in executing responsibilities for achievement (p.46). Two dimensions of teacher practice were identified for enhancing teacher professionalism: executing responsibilities with commitment; and applying professional knowledge for student learning. Teachers identified another two dimensions of teacher collaboration for enhancing teacher professionalism: collaborating for planning and teaching; and collective administrative work. Last, three dimensions of teacher leadership were found to be important for enhancing teacher professionalism: school leadership (delegated authority), centralized leadership and classroom leadership. These results showed that teachers perceived themselves as professionals, which is ‘in contrast with the ways teachers in the government primary schools are generally described as having a detached and non-committal attitude and rely on teacher talk methods to fill students’ minds with different facts.’ (p.48). It seems that an ecological approach instead of a ‘deficit’ approach to teacher development, as well as more opportunities for teacher collaboration and teacher leadership in using various methods for enhancing student learning, would be conducive to teachers’ professionalism. Inequalities not only exist among societies in Asia but also between rural and urban areas. The gender inequality and poor socio-economic conditions have led to disparities in access to information and communication technology. As regards the use of computers, some teachers may have computer anxiety in terms of the fear of handling the hardware (hardware anxiety), the uncertainty of one’s capability to use the computer (task anxiety), and the apprehension of being embarrassed in front of others (social anxiety). Against a background of rural

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schools in Sarawak, Malaysia, where many schools had either no electricity supply or interrupted electricity supply as well as fewer telephone lines per 100 people compared with their counterparts in urban areas, a survey was conducted in the 1990s to determine the levels of computer anxiety of rural secondary school teachers (Hong and Koh 1998). The results revealed that while significant differences in levels of computer anxiety were identified for computer ownership, number of computer courses attended and years of computer experience, generally teachers had a low level of computer anxiety. These results suggest that there existed no attitudinal barriers for enhancing computer literacy in rural teachers. In the 1980s, the Permantapan Kerja Guru (PKG) system or approach to inservice teacher professional development was launched in Indonesia, involving science, mathematics, English and Bahasa Indonesia. The PKG approach to science teacher professional development, known as the ‘in–on’ system, was characterized as follows (Thair and Treagust 2003): ●

●

●

●

The system was followed over a 16-week period, divided into two residential inservice cycles of two weeks each, and two onservice (teachers returning to their schools) cycles of six weeks each. The PKG promoted student-centred teaching approaches and a key feature is using a set of science curricula materials (including worksheets) designed by the project. During the first two weeks’ inservice component, teachers were engaged in key activities such as analysing the content of each topic to be taught, trialling of laboratory activities, revision of student worksheets for experiments as well as trialling and revision of diagnostic tests. The onservice component involved teachers in their respective schools using worksheets and tests trialled or developed during the inservice cycle. PKG instructors visited teachers to observe lessons and sometimes to conduct demonstration lessons. Weekly meetings were arranged for participants and PKG instructors to discuss any problems encountered. The second two weeks’ residential inservice component provided an occasion for teachers to evaluate their onservice experience and prepare for the next cycle. At the end of this component, teachers returned to their schools again, completing one cycle of PKG induction.

Some evaluation studies in the 1990s, however, revealed that ‘while the PKG project had established an impressive group of teacher trainers, widespread and sustainable improvements in classroom methodologies were not so apparent’ (p.207). Thair and Treagust (2003) reconceptualized science teacher professional development in developing countries and suggested the following: ●

●

More attention needed to be given to social interaction processes between teachers, head teachers, principals and education department personnel. A broad sectoral and holistic approach might be desirable in which local, decentralized curriculum decision-making was allowed for schools and teachers to meet the needs of local contexts. A ‘cascade’ model could facilitate this

Teacher development

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●

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approach by transferring information from PKG instructors or master teachers to regional and district staff, then to the school level PKG activities, which involved a larger teacher population than before. There was a need to integrate teacher professional development with career development. Teacher professional development needed to include elements of collegiality and collaboration, experimentation and risk-taking, sustained support and feedback and an extended time for assimilation of knowledge. Teachers should be seen as the agents rather than the focus of change.

The above studies related to teachers’ professional development indicate that teachers’ motivation, capabilities and beliefs should be respected and understood in providing professional development programmes. The local context, the school culture and the classroom situations, which are important in shaping teachers’ instructional decisions, should also be taken into account in designing and implementing these programmes.

Experiences of overseas professional development Obviously, teachers’ beliefs, which are not easily changed, influence decisions about curriculum and instructional tasks. Nonetheless, experiences and reflection on action through systematic professional development programmes could lead to changes in teachers’ beliefs, which may then lead to changes in teaching practices. In recent years, some Asian societies, such as China and Japan, have organized overseas professional development programmes for their teachers. Jiangsu Province of China, for example, initiated a teacher training project in which 1000 selected teacher–practitioners per year were sent abroad to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, the UK and the USA for professional development (Hudson and Yeh 2006). In Japan, the government sponsored an overseas inservice education and training (INSET) programme for Japanese junior and senior high school teachers of English (Lamie 1998). This part focuses on two examples of overseas professional development programmes for science teachers in Korea. As early as the 1980s, the Republic of Korea launched a five-year plan with the support of the World Bank to upgrade and improve science education. About 200 high school science teachers and supervisors participated in overseas professional development programmes in the USA and UK. In the mid-1990s, the Iowa Chautauqua Program (ICP) of the University of Iowa was designed to focus teachers’ professional development on science, technology and society (STS) and constructivist learning. The Iowa Chautauqua (IC) Summer Workshop for Korean teachers, modelled after the ICP, was a four-week programme with follow-up efforts and had the following features (Shin et al. 2003, pp.506–507): 1

the Korean teachers exchange their teaching expertise with exemplary Iowa science teachers

152 2 3 4

Strategies for change in Asia’s schools Korean teachers were given the opportunities to complete science projects with local scientists teachers developed science teaching modules for use in their own classroom; and they practised constructivist teaching with other teachers in micro-teaching situations.

A study focusing on feedback and follow-up interaction with teacher participants in IC Summer Workshops during 1997 and 2000 showed that ‘the combination of summer workshop and collaborative efforts following the workshop were effective in improving teacher practices with regard to facilitating the learning process and use of pedagogy focusing on student understanding’ (p.511) and there was a significant enhancement in overall creativity scores for the total ten groups of students resulting from the implementation of constructivist approaches by teacher participants (p.513). Nonetheless, there are difficulties in implementing constructivist approaches such as students preferring to gain information directly and the pressure to cover all topics of the national Korean curriculum. In another professional development programme designed by the University of Georgia (UGA), which helped Korean science teachers develop strategies to foster students’ creativity in science, the components included: lectures on creativity (23.5 per cent of the total allocated time), lectures on creativity-centred science education (19.6 per cent), school visits and classroom observation (15.7 per cent), experiences in American culture and heritage (34.6 per cent), social events (4.0 per cent) and evaluation (2.6 per cent). Questionnaire surveys of 35 teacher participants and interviews of four teachers at the beginning and the end of the programme revealed that the following three programme elements seemed to promote the perceptual changes of teachers (Park et al. 2006): observing actual science classrooms where creativity-centred science teaching was implemented; engaging in various hands-on activities that were designed to foster creativity; and having opportunities for reflection and discussion with colleagues. It is suggested that to make such an overseas programme more effective, there are four main strategies: ●

●

● ●

conducting pre-assessments of teacher participants’ needs and prior knowledge in designing a professional development programme providing teacher participants with contextualized learning experiences, such as having the opportunity of developing lesson plans or instructional materials, getting feedback from other expert teachers and discussing actual classroom implementation having support for reflection, and arranging more local visits, science institution visits and field experiences.

The above two examples revealed the values of overseas professional development for science teachers. To make professional development programmes more effective, attention needs to be paid to gauging teachers’ needs before the programme

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commences and evaluating their changes at various points throughout the programme. In addition, it is desirable to establish and ensure follow-up practices when teacher participants return to their schools. The impact of these programmes on teachers’ pedagogical practices and student achievements could be measured (Hudson and Yeh 2006).

Implications of self-directed learning for teacher development Other than attending local and overseas professional development programmes, self-directed learning is an important issue and provides significant implications for teacher development. In the past, the concept of self-directed learning was quite commonly used in the adult and workplace education literature but there are diverse interpretations of self-directed learning, which may involve the following principles (Wong and Gerber 2001, p.76): ●

●

●

●

ethical and ‘metaphysical’ principles: self-directed learning is more autonomous, critical, reflective, mature or distinctively adult, than directed instruction (e.g. Brookfield 1986) psychological principles: self-directed learning is more likely to be attuned to individual learning needs, styles and interests, and is likely to be more focused and motivated instrumental principles: self-directed learning is flexible and efficient (e.g. Piskurich 1993) pragmatic principles: self-directed discovery aided by high technology as the most viable learning mode (e.g. Perelman 1992).

In a phenomenographic study of conceptions of self-directed learning of social studies teachers in Singapore, it was found that 21 participants displayed seven qualitatively different conceptions of learning in their work and associated approaches. They were ‘learning through mistakes, trial-and-error, and personal experience’, ‘learning through problem-solving’, ‘learning through published resources such as teachers’ guides and other references’, ‘learning through the information from the Internet and other multimedia sources’, ‘learning through the process of collecting data for social studies projects’, ‘learning through interaction and teamwork’, ‘learning through attending workshops and fieldtrips related to social studies’ (Wong and Gerber 2001, p.79). These conceptions could further be understood as two pathways for social studies teachers’ self-directed learning: one learning ‘largely by themselves in their work with varying levels of support from information technology’ and another learning ‘through interaction with colleagues in different types of experiences and in collective or team-based situations’ (p.84). These results suggest that in future, with further advancement and popularization of information technology, teacher development through information and communication technology could be the most commonly used strategy, especially in the light of school cultures (heavy

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workload, low incentives, lack of resources, etc.). In recent years, a programme known as the EmpowerICT, which combines professional development and collaborative curriculum development with features such as on-line and face-to-face teacher training modules, support manuals, outcomes-based assessment and an on-line portal, was launched as a pilot in Thailand and the Philippines with the local ministries of education (Vrasidas et al. 2004). On the other hand, collaborative action research could serve as another pathway for teacher development.

Factors affecting action research as an approach to teacher development ‘Action research’ has gained attention in teacher education curricula and has gradually been incorporated into inservice teacher education programmes, taught Master degree courses, school-based projects and practicums in a number of Asian societies including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Pakistan (e.g. Halai 2004) and Brunei Darussalam. Li and others (1999) have analysed the barriers and factors constraining action research in the context of Hong Kong before this new century, some of which might be to some extent applicable to other settings with a Confucian heritage culture in Asia as follows. At the school system level, there are influences originating in the standardization of teaching and the competitive system of schooling. The former is characterized by a ‘production ideology’ and control as well as supervision and monitoring of teaching while the latter is exemplified by an examination-driven curriculum, standardized/centralized curriculum, pressure of uniformity in teaching approaches and extensive use of textbooks. For the standardization of teaching, the prevalence of a ‘production ideology’ characterized by centralized control and a narrow conception of teaching and teachers’ duties restrict teachers’ development of reflective practice. For the competitive system of schooling, the demands for good public examination results tend to encourage rote learning for achieving academic excellence. Curriculum innovation and creative teaching and learning are difficult especially at the senior secondary levels. At the professional level, factors such as isolation, deskilling and dichotomy of theory and practice act as deterrents to launching action research. With respect to isolation, teachers are used to teaching alone and there are few opportunities to share their experiences and engage in peer collaboration. Subject-based ideology and departmentalism further obstruct teachers’ mutual support and collaboration across different subjects. Excessive workloads, coupled with a behaviouristic, reductionist view of teaching, tend to restrain teachers from active inquiry into their practice and cause them to rely on repetitive, examination-oriented approaches to teaching, which result in the deskilling of teachers. For the dichotomy of theory and practice, knowledge generated from teachers’ classroom-based and practical inquiries may be seen as not generalizable and not meeting the requirements of positivistic methodologies. In addition, there still exists an entrenched belief that researchers and theorists do the scholarly research and teachers are subjects of this academic research from which ‘knowledge’ is generated (Elliott 1991).

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Hui and Li (2005) developed an instrument to measure the attitudes of curriculum leaders towards action research in Hong Kong. Four factors were identified through exploratory factor analysis: a communal sense of the significance of research as a means for professional development; teachers’ perceived ability for doing research; a pedagogical sense of the significance of research as a means of providing solutions for teaching and learning deficiencies; and teachers’ feelings toward the research course. These findings imply that professional development courses on action research should address the pedagogical needs of teachers and ‘a small-scale but significant action research project that leads to improvements in student learning and classroom teaching would be valuable by any standard’ (p.131). In addition, cultivation of a positive school environment that nurtures teachers’ commitment to school and promotion of successful experiences for teachers’ positive self-evaluation may be conducive to enhance curriculum leaders’ positive attitudes towards action research. From another initiative in the development of local curriculum through action research involving three private schools in Chiang Mai Province, Thailand, it was found that the following factors were conducive to teacher action research (Sahasewiyon 2004, p.502): teachers’ willingness to take up action research due to its perceived benefits to themselves, students, parents and community members; administrators’ positive attitude to local curriculum development, action research and innovation; proper time management for teachers’ meetings and planning tasks; a knowledgeable facilitator familiar with action research procedures and able to guide teachers to think reflectively on the process of curriculum development; stimulants such as administrators’ acceptance and admiration, financial rewards, promotion, plaques and certificates. In addition, school administrative systems and policies, which were not supportive of action research and curriculum development, should be temporarily lifted.

Promoting action research in schools in Malaysia and Singapore While there are many constraints for promoting action research in schools, some Asian countries such as Malaysia and Singapore have made efforts to equip teachers with knowledge and skills in conducting action research. As early as 1993, action research had been identified as one of the focused areas under the Programs for Innovation, Excellence and Research (PIER) by the Ministry of Education, Malaysia. With funding support at the school level, teachers have been encouraged to conduct action research for improving their teaching practices (Lee 1999). There has been promotion of teacher action research or action learning in some societies in Asia such as Singapore. There are cases where university lecturers act as consultants on teachers’ action research with several schools. Chew (2006), for example, edited a volume that displayed a school-wide action research programme at Compassvale Secondary School in Singapore in 2005. All departments of the school took part in action research projects ranging from

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transmitting languages, teaching the humanities, pedagogy in science, mathematics and craft and technology, to issues related to students’ welfare such as hygiene and recycling campaigns. The action research approach adopted in this school was described as follows (Chew 2006, p.xxii): we advised the research teams on a moderated approach that tried to balance, wherever possible, a generalisable, scientific enquiry complete with quantitative data collection, presentation and analysis, with more anecdotal, particularistic capturing of the uniqueness of the stories, both at the hypothesis framing stage where imaginative insights and empathy were called for, and at every stage where filling in the gaps to explain the data was needed in order to achieve an empathetic and imaginative grasp of true-to-life situations. In another example, training workshops on action research as a form of professional upgrading were organized on a large scale in the North Zone clusters of schools in Singapore in 2005. After the workshops, teachers were encouraged to conduct their own action research projects and more than 70 such projects were presented and published as Celebrating Learning Through Action Research (Soh 2006). Overall, the impact of this endeavour had been positive as the participants impressed the writer as a group of effective implementers who are able to get things done fast (sometimes faster than expected). They are also enthusiastic learners who are keen to acquire new concepts and skills related to their teaching and professional interests. (Soh 2006, p.17) Nonetheless, Soh (2006) has identified the following list of concerns as well as conceptual and methodological needs of teachers, based on the observations of the workshop instructor: ●

●

●

●

●

Participants tend to state their research interests or problem statements in very broad rather in specific terms. Participants may need additional or new instruments for assessing learning outcomes other than making use of daily exercises. Participants tend popularly to use the single-group-pre-and-post-test (SGPPT) design rather than re-assigning students into project (treatment) and control groups. Some participants had a hazy conceptual understanding of statistical tests for data analysis. Some participants may be uncertain of the duration of projects.

In addition to school-based projects, since 2000 Singapore has established the Teachers Network, which includes ‘learning circles’ in which teachers are encouraged to engage in an action research cycle of initial reflection, planning, action, observation, critical reflection and documentation (Salleh 2006).

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Nonetheless, the promotion of action research also encountered problems such as top-down instead of bottom-up initiatives, time shortage, quality and sustainability of action research projects negatively affected by inadequacy of time. More importantly, it suffers from structural constraints, which echo Li and others’ (1999) comments on Hong Kong’s action research. These structural constraints are a ‘culture of taking directive and initiative from the top’ and a ‘culture of productive efficiency’ (Salleh 2006, p.517 and p.518) and the unintended consequences are reinforcing the ideology of survivalist pragmatism and teachers becoming knowledge users rather than knowledge creators.

Using case-based pedagogy for collaborative inquiry: the Philippines’ experience Other than action research, there are other examples of approaches to teacher development in selected Asian countries. Six elementary student teachers at West Visayas State University on the island of Panay in Iloilo City, the Philippines, their respective critic (cooperating) teachers, a research team composed of four Filipino and two US science teacher educators were involved in a collaborative, case-based pedagogy and narrative inquiry, which examined critical issues and tensions of science teaching and learning. In that context, there were interactions of three languages, namely the local Ilonggo dialect, the national language of Filipino (predominantly Tagalog) and English. The findings and experiences generated from this study revealed that there were tensions at the intersection of representing science ideas in classrooms, authority of knowledge (who determines what and how science ideas come to be valued and accepted in classroom science learning), and professional practice, at the intersection of not shared language, explicit moral codes, and indigenization, and at the intersection of identity and dilemmas in science teaching (Arellano et al. 2001). These teachers’ stories reflect the modernization and the complexity of today’s world, as the collaborative researchers and practitioners remark: the nature of our work problematized the production of a grand narrative which might neatly allow us to compare and contrast science teacher education as Filipino versus First-World practices. Instead, our efforts to understand each other in light of our multiple identities as international colleagues, science learners and teachers, mothers, traditionalists, feminists, and so forth created a dynamic that continually challenged our assumptions about each other. (Arellano et al. 2001, p.526)

Conclusion While this chapter has focused mainly on issues of teacher development in selected Asian cases, these issues should also be understood in a broader Asian context where there is a general concern about the declining status of teachers.

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Teachers are experiencing increasing stress because of their heavy workloads, worsening disciplinary problems, the need to respond to the demands for changing curricula and so on (Kennedy 1998). Teacher development in the Asian region is a challenging issue because, from a cultural perspective, a teacher is often seen as a respected and wise person – a ‘guru’. There exists, however, a tension in development because there is a call for an improvement in school and teacher quality and if teachers cannot meet these demands, the society may bestow less prestige on the teaching profession. Teachers, on the other hand, maintain that there should be more support from the government and ‘every support from society is required in order that the prestige of “guru” is restored to the teacher’ (Lakin 1996, p.207; Kennedy 1998, p.32). Recruiting enough teachers with credentials exceeding the minimum qualification remains a struggling issue for some developing countries such as Cambodia where teacher development needs to be integrated with career development and the provision of incentives. As will be discussed in Chapter 12, teachers in many Asian countries such as India may resist evaluation of their performance in any manner (Walia 2004, p.105). This may restrain the education or school system in providing feedback for teachers to improve or reflect on their own teaching practices. At the other end of the spectrum, there are increasing examples of teacher development programmes or activities such as lesson study, lesson observation, action research and case-based pedagogy. Nonetheless, more time, resources, support and training need to be provided for teachers. Teachers’ professional development programmes need to have follow-up efforts focusing on teachers’ pedagogical change and enhancing students’ understanding, which become part of the larger systemic efforts involving innovative curriculum development and support structures (Park et al. 2006). These teacher development endeavours also need to be connected to other aspects of school change such as gaining the support of these new ideas (constructivist approach to learning) from parents, communities and school administrators (Shin et al. 2003).

12 Evaluation for educational improvement

The World Education Forum held in April 2000 at Dakar, Senegal, set six goals (often known as the Dakar objectives) to be accomplished by each participating state by the year 2015 through their national plans for Education for All (EFA). These six Dakar objectives are: to expand early childhood care and education (ECCE); to provide free and compulsory primary education for all; to promote learning and life skills for young people and adults; to increase adult literacy by 50 per cent; to achieve gender parity by 2005, gender equality by 2015; and to improve the quality of education (UNESCO 2006). While different countries attached varying weightings to these objectives in their national educational policies and plans, Bitoun et al. (2005, pp.2–5) pointed out that the objectives of universal access and educational quality stood out. As regards educational quality, it could be achieved by using three main approaches with the following selected examples (p.5): teacher development through better training, better salaries and career prospects, better standards and working conditions; curriculum reform through making curriculum more performance-oriented and competency-based, providing training enhancing the country’s competitiveness at an international level and articulating the educational and production systems to provide training that enhances social relevance of education; and educational management reform through improving monitoring, assessment and evaluation strategies; enhancing the capacity of educational managers; and reinforcing governance. In an era of accountability, school evaluation and review have become increasingly important in many countries. While many countries continue to resort to external inspection and review as their main means of supervision, some countries have started to encourage school self-review or a combination of school selfreview/evaluation and external inspection. According to the proceedings of a seminar by the Asian Network of Training and Research Institutions in Educational Planning (ANTRIEP) (De Grauwe and Naidoo 2004b, p.22), school evaluation is part of the decision-making process in education; it involves judgments about the performance of schools through systematically collecting and analyzing information and relating this to explicit objectives, criteria and values. Ideally, school evaluation involves an (internal and external) assessment that covers all aspects of a school and their impact upon student learning ...

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Strategies for change in Asia’s schools From this perspective, school evaluation is not an end in itself, but the first step in the process of school improvement and quality enhancement.

In that seminar, three main evaluation tools were discussed, namely external review or inspection, examinations and school self-evaluation or internal evaluation. Around the world, including Asian societies, there is a continuum of internal and external school review. Gurr et al. (2004), for example, pointed out that England, Hong Kong and Victoria in Australia in the past revealed a continuum of internal/external review: England largely emphasized external review; Victoria based its work largely on internal review; and Hong Kong followed more closely the English system. Recently, there has been a tendency for increasing reliance on internal review and using differentiated reviews based on performance, highlighting internal review for high-performing schools and external review for low-performing schools. This is in contrast with the USA where there is an emphasis on high-stakes testing, sometimes referred to as ‘results-based accountability’ (Anderson 2005). In Asian societies where there is a centralized system, such as Papua New Guinea, Japan and Korea, the government undertakes a school review or a school audit of an inspectorial nature. In addition, teacher appraisal and teacher self-evaluation become an issue because, on the one hand, it could serve the accountability purpose and, on the other, it could provide useful information for improving learning and teaching as well as the quality of the school as a whole. MacBeath (2003, p.768) succinctly remarked that: Policy-makers in both Western and Eastern countries have drawn heavily, and not always judiciously, on school effectiveness research. In countries with little tradition of research into whole school effects (Malaysia, for example) American studies have been referred to for guidance while countries with a significant repertoire of studies (Hong Kong, for example) have also tended to seek inspiration from North American, Australian, British and Dutch research ... in the minds of policy people, the onus of accountability moves from whole school to individual teachers. This chapter will be divided into two main sections. In the first section, the above evaluation tools – namely external school review, examinations and school selfevaluation or internal evaluation – in selected Asian societies will first be examined. In the second section, the issue of teacher appraisal and self-evaluation will be discussed.

External school review or evaluation Some societies in Asia, such as Thailand, have set up quality assurance systems consisting of both internal and external quality assurance. The national report of Thailand submitted to the 46th Session of the International Conference on Education (Ministry of Education (Thailand) 2001, pp.18–19) stated that:

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All educational institutions will be required to draft their own plans and must submit their annual report to local educational authorities. Local educational authorities will assess educational institutions in their jurisdiction once every three years. As for the external quality assessment, all educational institutions will be assessed by an Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment once every five years. In this section, we shall focus on school inspection, sometimes referred to as external school review or external evaluation as they are practised in different societies. In the Republic of Korea, each provincial and metropolitan office of education is responsible for establishing an external evaluation committee comprising educational administrators, school principals and vice principals, school teachers, university professors, researchers and parental representatives. They prepare their own evaluation areas, criteria and methods (De Grauwe and Naidoo 2004a). It is notable that while the content of school evaluation focuses on learning and teaching, curriculum, student needs, and community consciousness, there are variations in the criteria used and in the schedule or frequency (annually or once every two years). In Japan, external monitoring of schools comprises a school review in the form of regular school visits by an ex-teacher working for the education board and external monitoring undertaken by higher education institutions. Parents may be involved in external monitoring at lower educational levels (Mok et al. 2003, p.948). Malaysia has a school inspectorate in which assessment supervision in the areas of the teaching/learning process, use of learning materials, and school management are conducted by school inspectors (Ministry of Education (Malaysia) 2001). In Bangladesh, the external supervisors (inspectors) also act as educational advisers and work with teachers in the classroom. While the basic intention is to have both control and support and there is a belief that casual observations of teaching will not help enhance quality improvement, there could still be a potential tension between disciplinary and developmental roles (Govinda and Tapan 1999; Macnab 2004, p.59). In addition to the variations in internal and external reviews, there may be variations within countries in the impact of quality assurance systems on the public and private school systems. Taiwan and Hong Kong, for example, use inspections to ensure that private schools meet requirements in areas such as standardized curriculum plans, qualified staff, adequate buildings and satisfaction of fire regulations, etc. (Mok et al. 2003, p.949). The role of external supervision in school improvement has aroused some inevitable tensions. Macnab (2004, p.60) has identified the following: ● ●

public accountability versus school development quality control versus quality assurance

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Strategies for change in Asia’s schools dependency culture for promoting conformity and uniformity of practice versus initiative and self-confidence for encouraging diversity and individuality audit versus consultancy.

How to handle these tensions arising from external supervision depends partly on teacher professionalism as well as teachers’ ability and schools’ capacity for self-evaluating their performance. There is also a need for communication among various stakeholders and ‘convergence of understanding and belief among these interests, both as to what a particular school can achieve and as to how it should best approach its educational task’ (Macnab 2004, p.61).

Examinations and tests Examinations and tests often form another important tool or component of evaluation with an aim of improving academic standards and quality. Many assessment systems tend to have a mix of the following components: national assessment for selection; international assessment such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) or the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for comparison with the academic achievements of students in other countries; and classroom assessment of students’ learning. Details regarding these different forms of assessment can be found in Chapter 7. According to a paper commissioned for the Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report 2006, Bitoun et al. (2005) pointed out that a number of Asian countries intended to create data collection systems for monitoring the implementation of plans or improving methods of management. For example, Mongolia is in the process of developing a data collection system; Myanmar has undertaken the development of an education data analysis system; Indonesia is making progress in the development of an education management system; and Pakistan is assisted by the Academy of Educational Planning and Management (AEPAM) to use the National Educational Assessment System to assess learning achievements at primary and secondary levels. In Bangladesh, the student performance of basic skills is reported against four levels of proficiency. The levels of reading, for example, are defined as ‘nonreader’, ‘rudimentary’, ‘beginning’ and ‘minimally competent’, each of which is illustrated with the kinds of texts students are able to read. Malaysia, instead, has established minimum acceptable achievement levels on its Primary School Achievement Test (Year 6) and has monitored the percentage of students reaching minimum acceptable achievement levels over time (Masters 2003, pp.802–803). Some states in India, for example, have introduced large-scale external testing at the primary stage that has involved the comparison of schools (De Grauwe and Naidoo 2004b, p.18). In Pakistan, Grade 4 (students aged nine to ten) was chosen for national assessment to complement the provincial and area assessments, which were conducted at Grade 3 and Grade 5. Several issues deserve attention such as national assessment


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of ‘competencies only on the curriculum content common across all provinces and areas’, ‘sampling frames in terms of rural or urban, government or private, gender breakdowns, and the national-provincial curriculum mix in assessment instruments’, interpretation of findings taking into account backgrounds of schools and their communities and the language of the tests (Masters 2003, p.804). Before the late 1990s in Korea, most schools adopted a norm-referenced evaluation. Class instruction was designed mainly to help students achieve high scores at the expense of fulfilling such desirable objectives of education as creative thinking. To address this concern, the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (MOEHRD) introduced Diverse Student Evaluation Methods to school education that encompass the diversification of the criteria for evaluating students (Suh 2000). Performance-based assessment has been launched in nationwide elementary and secondary schools since 1999. The objectives for using performance-based assessment are to raise students’ higher-order thinking ability, such as self-directed learning ability, effective communication ability, and cooperative problem-solving ability and to provide teachers with meaningful assessment results that help improve instruction. The performance-based assessment employs various methods ranging from paper and pencil multiple-choice tests, essay writing, experiment activity, observation evaluation to portfolio evaluation and students’ school life record in a portfolio format (Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (Korea) 2001b, pp.6–7). According to the Korean document Quality Education for All Young People: Challenges, Trends and Priorities (Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (Korea) 2004), an evaluation system was developed to assess student achievement in the basic scholastic abilities of third graders in reading, writing and problem-solving on a national level (3 per cent of the applicable students). Testing was also conducted in 2004 in Grades 6, 9 and 10 in Korean, mathematics, social studies, science and English. Data from the national basic scholastic studies were used to identify students lacking these abilities (Department of Education and Training in Western Australia 2006). External examinations operated by international testing agencies such as the University of Cambridge Local Examination Syndicate have played to some extent an important role in standardization in some Asian countries such as Malaysia. In Singapore, after students complete a pre-university programme, they have to sit for the Singapore–Cambridge General Certificate of Education Advanced (GCE A) Level Examinations. Also, especially in elite schools, preparing students for university entry examination, success rates are absolutely central to school evaluation.

Internal school evaluation To complement external inspection, self-evaluation by schools, where schools play a more active and autonomous role in the processes of improvement than occurs in external inspection, is growing in popularity. It must be emphasized, however, that many low-income Asian countries have not introduced internal

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school evaluation mechanisms or policies because of manpower and resources constraints. Singapore and Hong Kong are perhaps two of the exceptions, having made substantial efforts in launching school self-evaluation. As the National College for School Leadership (2006, pp.38–39) remarked: In Hong Kong and Singapore, self-evaluation is also a matter of government policy, and integral to self-managing schools, curriculum reform and continuing professional development. Both of these Asia-Pacific countries have looked outward to their Australian neighbours, as well as to the UK and the United States and Canada in order to learn what to do and what not to do in matching internal and external evaluation. Like the practice of external inspection, internal school self-evaluation takes different forms. At one end of a spectrum, it may involve all members of staff and members from the school community engaging in evaluation and, at the other end, evaluation could be simply a project undertaken by the principal with a little input from a few senior staff. Nepal is one of the countries in Asia where all schools are expected to ‘prepare their own development plan, which, through its School Management Committee (SMCs), entails the school undertaking selfevaluation’ (De Grauwe and Naidoo 2004b, p.27). While the evaluation of a school should principally involve the joint efforts of parents, village social workers and teachers, some of the SMCs are not yet functioning or are under the control of a local elite or the principal. In Japan, a scholar remarked that past school management evaluation as a part of the Plan–Do–See cycle had been criticized for the ‘lack of objectivity and the lack of feedback to school management planning’ (Hayo 2006, p.2). Recently, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s (MEXT’s) (2005) White Paper has stated: School evaluation and the provision of information play an important role in providing information necessary for school participation. Starting in FY2002, the Standard for Elementary School Establishment and other regulations have stipulated that schools must attempt to implement self-evaluation concerning their educational activities and the status of other aspects of school management, and disclose the results. It is also stipulated that schools must actively provide school information to parents and guardians. In Tokyo, the criteria for primary and secondary school evaluation were presented in two forms. Form A focused on evaluation items related to curriculum planning and curriculum implementation and contained eleven major items such as the school’s instructional objectives, analysis of achievement of objectives, teaching in various subjects, moral teaching, teaching in special activities, teaching through integrated learning time, distinct/unique teaching activities, guidance on life and counselling, lesson days and hours in a whole academic year, school operation and guidance on health and safety. Form B pertained to


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supporting conditions for curriculum planning and implementation and consisted of six major items: management and organization; research and study; information; facilities and equipment; budget and accounting; and be an open school (e.g. inter-school interaction, school-community communication) (Yang 2005, pp.345–348). Schools could then refer to these two forms and design their own evaluation items and forms. In Mie Prefecture, a school self-evaluation model was introduced with four stages, namely planning, doing, checking and reforming. Information on teacher evaluation is, however, a contentious issue, as Wong (2003, p.247) suggests: The prefecture seems to have granted a fair amount of power to the principals so that they take the leadership in designing and implementing the multistage process. On the other hand, the teachers unions prefer an alternative instrument, which gives more power to parents and teachers in determining what kind of information to gather. Naidoo (2004) has conducted a review of school evaluation mechanisms in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal, the Philippines and Malaysia and has highlighted a number of issues: ●

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While there is a general trend of decentralization, the operation of school evaluation mechanisms varies among these countries. Examinations and tests play an important role in student performance on a systemic or regional level except in Bangladesh where it mainly serves for assessing individual student performance. Countries such as Nepal, Malaysia and the Philippines have set up ‘competitions’ or national awards for schools displaying outstanding performance as a means of school evaluation. Most countries have a formal system of external school inspection, school review or school audit, except the Philippines. While the Philippines and Indonesia do not a have formal policy or mechanism for school self-evaluation, other countries vary in their implementation of school self-evaluation.

Examples of school self-evaluation projects Under government policy, the whole school staff in each Hong Kong school needs to undertake the exercise of grading fourteen aspects of school quality using a four-point scale and trying to reach consensus. These gradings are then presented to the external school review (ESR) team, which may upgrade or downgrade the ratings based on an on-site visit that includes interview sessions with school stakeholders (e.g. school management committee members, teachers, students), lesson and school observations and documentary review. It is notable that the introduction of school self-evaluation (SSE) from the Hong Kong experience was not very smooth especially in the early stage when individual school

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reports are publicized. It was remarked that (National College for School Leadership 2006, p.39): Implementing a system of review therefore had to be accompanied by support and guidance for schools on SSE. This did not prevent teachers experiencing a high degree of anxiety prior to review as it tended to be viewed as inspection and the purpose of self-evaluation seen as a prelude to inspection rather than being of value in its own right. Some tertiary institutions or organizations in Hong Kong have launched school improvement projects or activities that help schools to familiarize themselves with, and implement, self-evaluation. Pang (2004, p.5), for example, initiated projects adopting a bottom-up approach that aimed to help schools: develop their own models of school-based management in the spirit of the recommendations of the Education Commission Report No. 7 (Education Commission 1996); institutionalize a self-evaluation framework in daily practices for continuous improvement; and develop their own sets of school-based performance indicators for use in school self-evaluation. On the other hand, the Education and Manpower Bureau of the Hong Kong SAR government launched a partnership project known as the School Development through School Self-evaluation Project with 21 schools (McGlynn 2004). The project proposed three focuses or circles of evaluation: learning at the centre or first level; culture, which refers to the enabling conditions and ethos conducive to student learning, as the second level; and leadership as the third level. Under the auspices of the District Teachers’ Network, the Hong Kong Primary Educational Research Association and the Education and Manpower Bureau co-organized with the School of Educational Management of Beijing Normal University a Sharing and Action Research on School Self-evaluation in Primary School project, involving nine schools (Hong Kong Primary Educational Research Association 2003). The project aimed to promote a culture of school self-evaluation. Two rounds of workshops on using schools’ performance indicators, teachers’ and students’ self-evaluation, peer observation and action learning on teaching practices were arranged for project school participants. Nine project schools had varying themes or activities of self-evaluation such as: a ‘read and tell’ reading programme; follow-up of the Quality Assurance Inspection report; evaluation of learning in general studies, joint teacher–pupil reading; evaluation of learning performance in different subjects; ‘I am able to do it – I am a responsible child’; collaborative teaching; ‘New whole language writing’ in Primary Three; and collaborative lesson preparation and peer observation. While the project generated some positive results and experiences, there are pertinent issues for future improvement (Hong Kong Primary Educational Research Association 2003; Wu and Lee 2005): ●

Some schools did not have clear ideas about both setting criteria or indicators for evaluation and designing and using appropriate instruments for evaluation.

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Some schools had not established a mechanism, cycle or system of school self-evaluation. These schools tended to focus on specific programmes or areas rather than integrating these programmes or areas into whole-school development. Some schools had not described clearly how teaching staff were involved in the whole process of school self-evaluation.

In this project, the School of Educational Management of Beijing Normal University undertook a small-scale questionnaire survey on the status of 25 primary schools’ self-evaluations in Beijing (Hu and Xue 2003). Some of the results, based on valid responses, revealed that (pp.38–43): ●

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Four schools (about 21 per cent) organized one self-evaluation activity per term and eight schools (about 42 per cent) organized one self-evaluation activity annually. Two schools (about 10 per cent) organized such activity once every two years and four schools organized such activity on an irregular basis. With regard to the content of schools’ self-evaluation in these schools, over 70 per cent of the responses focused on the following aspects in a descending order of percentages: teaching (90.5 per cent); building up the teaching team (85.7 per cent); student academic achievements (81 per cent); moral education (81 per cent); research work (76.2%); and management system (71.4 per cent). As regards teaching evaluation, over 70 per cent of the responses focused on the following aspects in a descending order of percentages: teaching effect (100 per cent); student development (96 per cent); teaching methods (80 per cent); outcomes of teaching research (76 per cent); and teaching content (72 per cent). Teaching evaluation tended to involve commonly the following three modes: teachers’ self-assessment; involvement of leaders in evaluation; and holistic evaluation of teachers in subject groups. Fourteen schools (about 66 per cent) reported that they received little guidance from the educational bureau. Fifteen schools (about 60 per cent) reported that the school self-evaluation system was still not perfect and five schools (about 20 per cent) perceived that the school self-evaluation system had not been established.

Using a primary school in Beijing as an illustration, the school conducted only teachers’ and students’ self-evaluation. For teachers’ self-evaluation, the purpose was for self-understanding and self-improvement rather than being performancerelated. The focus of evaluation, which was conducted annually, was related to political thoughts, teaching performance, research, job achievements and teachers’ morality. The modes of evaluation included teacher self-evaluation, peer evaluation within a subject group, evaluation by a group leader and colleagues as well as by the school authority, parents and students. As regards students’ selfevaluation, a management-of-objectives approach was adopted and students were encouraged to set their own monthly targets, the achievement of which

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would be reviewed after one month. The evaluation encompassed students’ selfevaluation, parental evaluation, teacher evaluation and peer evaluation (Hu and Xue 2003, p.35). Recently, a pilot ‘value-added’ study under a China–UK academic link was conducted in Baoding City to measure the value-addedness or relative progress of educational outcomes of 9247 students from 17 (out of 105) urban and rural general senior secondary schools. The basis of comparison was Entrance Examination for Higher Education (EEHE) scores taken at eighteen years old at the end of senior high school in 2003 and Entrance Examination for Senior High School (EESHS) scores as a baseline when they were fifteen-year-olds at the end of junior high schools in 2000 (Peng et al. 2006). Significant differences were found between senior secondary schools and some schools were differentially effective in one academic subject rather than another. These results were communicated back to schools through confidential feedback sessions in two large-scale seminars on evaluating school quality and effectiveness using valueadded measures in 2004 and 2006 respectively and the overall responses were encouraging. As Peng and his colleagues (2006, p.148) remarked: some practitioners (including teachers, head teachers and exam board officers) expressed their anxiety about understanding the value-added concept and its implication for schools; how they can learn (or collaborate to carry out) the process of SSE, who should SSE be conducted for (schools, teachers, students or parents) and how can other relevant factors (such as finance input, human resources, pupil/teacher attitude, school ethos, etc.) be included in SSE alongside value-added analyses. In addition, issues of concern such as ‘how to balance value-added and raw indicators in terms of evaluating their own performance ..., how to facilitate and encourage schools (or other clients) to conduct SSE and how to provide schoolbased SSE, training programmes for schools and their staff’ were addressed by local government officers (Peng et al. 2006, p.148). Thus, the development of value-added school evaluation methods in the context of China and other developing countries in Asia needs to take care of issues related to training, resources support and school contexts, as well as teacher receptivity to change.

Quality assurance framework and approaches Quality assurance is essentially concerned with maintaining or improving standards. There are different ways to do this through various forms of control such as input control (what should be done), process control (whether it has been done), and output control (results). Accordingly, a quality assurance (QA) framework can be broadly categorized into an input model, an input–output model and an input–process–output model (Mok et al. 2003). Some countries such as Japan adopt an input QA model, which emphasizes ‘prior control over the education budget, teacher quality, curriculum and textbook, making sure


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that everything was uniform and highly satisfactory before the system began to function’ (Mok et al. 2003, p.946). Some countries make use of data from the three tools (external inspection, examinations and tests as well as internal school evaluation) to monitor, evaluate and reward schools. Malaysia, for example, has introduced a High Standard Quality Education (HSQE) policy in which examination data have been incorporated into assessment of schools through external inspection and school self-evaluation. Schools with outstanding performance in quality management would be recognized through the National Aspiring School Award and the Minister’s Quality Award. In some countries with educational decentralization, such as Thailand, the Ministry of Education in November 2005 announced ‘Education Reform: Next Step Forward’ and one of the directions was to strengthen the offices of educational service areas and educational institutions for academic excellence through the following measures for support and development: ●

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Educational institutions with high-level achievements in the external quality assessment conducted by the Offices for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment (ONESQA) will be administered as legal persons or transformed to enjoy the status of charter schools; they will serve as focal points for development of small schools; and Accelerating improvement of the quality of those with unfavourable external quality assessment, priority being given to quality assurance, while the quality of those with high achievements will be enhanced on a continuous basis. (Ministry of Education, Thailand 2005, pp.4–5)

Thailand’s schools basically have to fulfil certain requirements so as to maintain established standards: the National Educational Standards relating to students, institutional processes and staff for internal and external quality assessment; annual internal quality assurance including the assessment, planning and improvement of their performance; and school plans for monitoring their performance and improving quality in line with the Education Act and National Education Standards (Bloxham 2006, p.31). Singapore, which also displays a relatively decentralized or partnership system, has installed a system known as the school excellence model (SEM) with many general similarities to Victoria’s system in Australia. The SEM resembles that of an input–process–output QA system and involves a tripartite approach – ongoing school self-assessment, cluster superintendents facilitating the school improvement process, and Ministry of Education five-yearly validation (external evaluation). The SEM is driven by a set of seven core values: students first; teachers as the key; leading with purpose; systems support; working with partners; management by knowledge; and continuous improvement and innovation (Mok 2003). The SEM has two broad categories namely ‘enablers’ and ‘results’ and comprises nine quality criteria: leadership; strategic planning; staff management; resources; student-focused processes; administrative and organizational results; staff results; partnership and society results; and key performance results. There is

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also a linked system of awards ranging from first level Achievement Awards to the second level for the Best Practices Award for the ‘enablers’ category and the Sustained Achievement Award for the ‘results’ category respectively and then finally to School Excellence Awards for schools that demonstrate excellence in both educational processes and educational outcomes (Ministry of Education (Singapore) 2002; Macnab 2004). Mok (2003) highlighted competition between schools in Singapore and the SEM is exemplified by responding to ‘the urgency of globalization seriously by employing marketization and decentralization strategies’ (p.362). Nonetheless, Ng (2003, pp.36–37) commented on possible areas of concern in the implementation of SEM such as: the preparedness of school leadership; availability of established measures for some of the assessed criteria; need for a systemic and coherent approach in its scoring system; lacking a remedy system for improvement; integration of SEM with the everyday school business; adding to the workload of the school; overstretching the school by improving on both strengths and weaknesses; and importance of sustained excellence.

The issue of teacher appraisal, self-evaluation and student voices in Asian societies In Asia there is a great disparity between high-income (e.g. Japan and Singapore) and low-income societies (e.g. India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) and sometimes between urban and rural areas in some societies (e.g. India and China). In terms of teacher quality, the issue of teacher appraisal and self-evaluation might be somewhat irrelevant or impractical in some Asian societies (e.g. India) as Bennell (2004, p.10) commented: Teacher supervision is frequently very weak, especially in countries such as India, where head teachers lack formal administrative control over teachers in their schools. There are invariably no effective performance appraisal and inspections are infrequent, especially in more remote schools. In addition to the lack of teacher supervision or appraisal, low teacher pay in some Asian countries has led to the situation that teachers are given some autonomy to derive extra income from secondary employment, which may affect teacher’s overall performance. Teachers’ unacceptable behaviour, such as absenteeism, lateness, poor teaching, abusive behaviour towards pupils, is often tolerated and not effectively disciplined by the school management (Bennell 2004, p.10). Teacher absenteeism, which reflects suboptimal use of teachers, is estimated to be relatively high in India/Madhya Pradesh (15 per cent), Sri Lanka (about 11 per cent), Nepal (14 per cent) and Pakistan (16 per cent) based on surveys from various sources. It is notable that country-wide or nationwide detailed information on the extent and main causes of teacher absenteeism is unavailable in these countries (Göttelmann-Duret 2000). In 2003, the World Bank national absence surveys (WBNAS) for seven countries revealed that the national absence


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rates for primary school teachers in Bangladesh, India and Indonesia were 14.9 per cent, 24.6 per cent and 19.0 per cent respectively with great subnational variations. In India, teacher absenteeism of 40 per cent was found in Delhi but only 15 per cent in Gujarat (Bennell 2004, p.26). It was suggested that these subnational variations might reflect differences in policies and practices in such relatively decentralized state education systems. In addition, Walia (2004, p.105) commented on the Indian context of teacher evaluation: Teachers have generally resisted evaluation of their performance in any manner. The system has not been able to evolve and provide professional feedback to the teachers and thereby contribute to their professional growth ... In view of the numbers involved, teachers are often considered a liability on the state budget ... efforts in the recent past to accept the appointment of under-qualified and untrained local youths even in those areas where qualified and trained teachers are available indicate this particular aspect. Moreover, the provision of regular and competent teacher supervision and advice is often a challenge in low-income countries in Asia with three major obstacles (Göttelmann-Duret 2000, p.21): ‘the insufficient number and regularity of intervention of external supervisory and support staff; the lack of administrative power of local (zonal or cluster-level) support staff; the lack of authority and training in supervision characterizing headteachers’. In Hong Kong, teachers also do not welcome external inspection and appraisal. A study revealed that those educators who perceived that staff appraisal was more important tended to be more reluctant to welcome observers to visit their classrooms than were educators who perceived that staff development was more important (Lam 2001). MacBeath (2003, p.771) echoed that: Lee and his colleagues in Hong Kong (Lee et al. 2001), found teachers wary of appraisal and experiencing difficulty in keeping up with the pace of change. Teachers in their study were, like the counterparts elsewhere, wary of evaluation which fails to contextualise teachers’ work, which misreads the delicate balance of relationships, or which lacks insights into the chemistry and physics of the classroom. On the other hand, another study showed that primary school teachers’ receptivity to peer observation was positively associated with school cultural elements such as collegiality, professional values, mutual empowerment and transformational leadership (Ngan and Lee 2000; Lee et al. 2003a). In Japan, teachers with an unsatisfactory teaching standard need to receive retraining. On the other hand, many boards of education adopted recognition schemes for teachers of excellence, which ranged from presenting a testimonial only, presenting a testimonial together with salary benefit, to presenting a testimonial together with benefits other than salary (Hayo 2006).

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The OECD found that ‘in Korea, evaluation on teacher performance failed to provide systemic influence on their career development and that the country lacked a tool to differentiate between teachers according to their performance ability’. The Korean Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (MOEHRD) conducted in 2005/2006 a pilot teacher evaluation, which included the following features: focus on classroom teaching and use of evaluation results for self-development and improved class instruction; support for teachers for capacity building and expertise enhancement; different personnel (teachers, principals and vice principals) engaged in multifaceted evaluation; and surveys for parents and students on their degrees of educational satisfaction (Department of Education and Training in Western Australia 2006). Students’ perspectives on schooling are often neglected in school improvement agendas (e.g. Rudduck and Flutter 2004; Lee et al. 2006). In the Learning School Project, students from schools in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Scotland, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Germany and South Africa were involved in evaluating the quality of learning and teaching and reporting back their findings to teachers and students (MacBeath et al. 2003). MacBeath (2003, p.778) further pinpointed the importance of listening to student voices: What this means is that for teacher self-evaluation to be maximally effective teachers need to work with their students over time to embed a language of self-evaluation integrally into the very process of learning and teaching. That in turn rests on a genuine desire to listen to students’ and to believe that they are the most valuable source we have on their learning and our teaching.

Conclusion The trend of decentralization of education administration is becoming more prevalent in Asian countries. Nonetheless, many Asian countries that have not practised school evaluation might equate it with teacher appraisal or student assessment (De Grauwe and Naidoo 2004a). In cases where school self-evaluation was conducted, it was found that attention needed to be paid to school leadership, school culture, availability of school support, strategic planning and measurement of school achievements. Also, much could be learned from the West about the development of school self-evaluation practices. Examinations remain an important tool for evaluation in many Asian countries but still much more could be done for the analysis and feedback of examination results to schools and teachers. With regard to the expansion of self-evaluation in many countries around the world, there are persistent issues which need to be considered, including (selected from De Grauwe and Naidoo 2004b, p.33): ●

Will the transfer of the concept of school evaluation from the developed countries, within a context of a demand for greater public accountability, to developing countries and to under-resourced schools, not have adverse effects?

Evaluation for educational improvement ●

●

●

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How does self-evaluation affect the need for the education authorities to achieve a balance between ‘managing’ and ‘supporting’ schools? Just how far could external management and intervention in these processes go? In many countries, the institutional culture stresses more obedience than initiative taking. In such a context, will school self-evaluation be done because it is officially required or is it truly embraced by the school and the community? What is the impact of self-evaluation on teachers’ workload in the face of multiple school improvement initiatives that teachers have to deal with?

13 Conclusion Schools for an ‘education century’ in a divided Asia

We have shown throughout this book that in some parts of Asia, but particularly in East Asia, schools are being reconstructed to meet the needs of knowledge economies fuelled by the demands of an increasingly competitive international economic environment. In this part of the world the link between education and the economy is not questioned. At the same time, as economic development moves many societies in one direction, there is an equally concerted attempt to retain what has been valued in the past. Geography, however, does not tell the whole story. In development terms, Singapore is a part of this East Asian transformation and countries like Malaysia and Thailand have set policy directions that seek to emulate what is happening in the East. There is also evidence in India that the demands of the knowledge economy are also influencing thinking about schools and how they need to be regeared to contribute more productively to a highly skilled workforce that can meet economic needs (Kalam 2007). Yet economic development is uneven across the region, so that in many other parts of Asia the knowledge economy is not of direct interest. Dollar (2007), for example, refers to the ‘Rest of Developing Asia’ to describe the great bulk of countries that are not on the same economic trajectories as China and India. This economic divide has significant implications for education and throughout the book we have tried to draw these out. In an important sense our project focusing on schools in Asia has supported Dollar’s (2007) contention that there are ‘multipolarities’ in Asia rather than a single undifferentiated Asia. The twenty-first century might well be ‘Asia’s education century’, as we suggested in Chapter 1, but it will play out in different ways for different countries. We have selected below a range of examples from Asia’s developing economies to demonstrate this point. Malaysia has enhanced her literacy rates from 85.0 per cent in 1990 to 93.7 per cent in 1998 and 94.0 per cent in 2002 respectively. In addition, the average class size, average school size, teacher/student ratio and number of schools have improved (Ministry of Education (Malaysia) 2004). In parallel with developing youth’s human capital, the National Service Programmes in Malaysia made efforts in promoting values such as patriotism, tolerance, discipline, responsibility and unity among youths (Ministry of Education (Malaysia) 2004, p.30). In Nepal, the government has paid a lot of attention to improving input and

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processes in the last two decades but national achievement levels of Grade 3 and Grade 5 remain low. Also, a significant proportion of school-age children drop out of their schooling before completing their secondary education. The Ministry of Education and Sports (Nepal) (2004, p.20) proposed that two of the future directions should develop a realistic planning with involvement of main stakeholders and make sure that there are people capable of carrying it out like school improvement plan (SIP) and District Education Plan (DEP) through their practices in all of the district of the Kingdom [and consider] devolving the authority to the local level for institutionalizing the decentralized management practices. China has also made substantial achievements in increasing the universalization of nine-year compulsory education (91 per cent by the end of 2003) and closing the gender differences in the primary schools’ net enrolment rate of children of school age (98.69 per cent for boys and 98.61 per cent for girls in 2003). Yet China has to increase girls’ opportunities of access to education especially in remote and backward areas, improve rural education and strengthen the universalization of information and technology education among the primary and secondary schools particularly in the less developed western regions (Chinese National Commission for UNESCO 2004; Lee and Wang 2005). In regard to Indonesia, while significant progress has been made in expanding enrolment in basic education, still a lot of effort needs to be paid to enhance the educational access, retention and achievement of girls. Amongst various education reform measures, the use of ICT to improve school administration and education management has been emphasized since 2000, the development of broad-based education with life skills as well as the development of quality schools with selfevaluation mechanisms for continuous improvement has also been promoted (Ministry of National Education (Indonesia) 2004). Sri Lanka has also made significant improvement in gender equality of access to general education. Nonetheless, the country needs to develop students’ general competencies and emphasize at the same time ‘inculcation of values and the concept of learning to live together ... in the context of the prevailing violence in society’ (Ministry of Education (Sri Lanka) 2004). This brief review highlights the key point we wish to make: it is more realistic to think in terms of ‘multiple Asias’. We want now to conclude our work by examining the similarities and differences between ‘Asias’ and the ways in which they are constructed. We believe this can provide a better window onto a part of the world that is bound to influence us all as the century progresses. We will focus on six key areas for discussion: ● ● ● ●

commitment to education in the region diversity – both across the region and within countries globalization has differential effects in the region tradition remains a significant influence in the region

176 ● ●

Strategies for change in Asia’s schools Western technologies in the region: a role for indigenous knowledge? the educational divide in the region.

Commitment to education across the region International agencies such as the UNESCO, the ADB, the OECD and the World Bank often measure ‘commitment’ to education in economic terms. We showed how this kind of data can be applied across countries in a number of different chapters and it can be instructive. Yet we need to know much more than simply the allocation of public funds to education. We need to know how those funds are used: what kinds of schools are built, how accessible are they, what kinds of teachers are employed, what kind of curriculum is taught and what kinds of assessments dominate students’ lives? These qualitative issues have been referred to throughout the book and they will continue to dominate educational planning and provision in the region. Public funding is a necessary but not sufficient indicator of commitment to education. Samar (2002) has raised the question of whether public resources alone are enough to achieve significant education outcomes such as the Millennium Development Goals. He has pointed to such disparities as high investment countries with low enrolment rates and low investment countries with high enrolment rates. Yet from the point of view of this book, his advice to examine more closely ‘household expenditure on primary education’ (p.19) in addition to public expenditures resonates with our work. In countries where families pay for private tutoring that supplements public education, the private resourcing factor may well play a decisive role. We have highlighted the importance of supplementary education in the form of private tutorial schools in some parts of the region. At the same time it raises the question of equity since only families that are well off will be able to afford this additional form of support for their children. Private resourcing of education, therefore, operates differentially within societies and it seems important to explore the issue further in the future. The same argument can be applied across societies although it becomes more complex at the macro level. First, there needs to be government commitment to generate significant economic growth – without such growth governments cannot provide adequate basic education and individuals will not have access to the resources needed to support supplementary forms of education. That is to say there is a ‘virtuous circle’ involving macroeconomic growth generating both high levels of per capita income and high levels of expenditure on public education. When all of these things work together, as they do in many East Asian societies, educational outcomes appear to be enhanced. Yet when all individuals do not benefit equally from this ‘virtuous circle’, as is the current situation in China, where macroeconomic growth appears to benefit some of the population but by no means all, there is the risk of social dislocation and the breakdown of social cohesion. From another perspective, where the economy remains firmly entrenched in a single sector such as the case of agriculture in Bhutan, the possibilities for improving macroeconomic growth remain constrained. Schools and

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schooling in the region can only be understood if this broad picture of relationships is well understood. The above discussion has focused on economic factors, but in different parts of the book we have also raised questions about the impact of cultural factors on educational provision in the region. For example, do those societies where there is a tradition of Confucian values have stronger personal commitments to education than in other societies? Do these personal commitments have externalities for governments and individuals? A good deal of the literature we reviewed suggested this might be the case, especially at the personal level. In reality, it is a very difficult issue to pursue, except in a speculative sense, and we are aware of how issues such as ‘Asian values’ have been contorted in both political and cultural senses (Kennedy 2004). Yet we do believe that more attention needs to be paid to how individual students and their families are influenced by cultural issues and how these in turn affect their attitudes to education. At the same time, we think attention also needs to be paid to teachers in different cultural contexts and how their attitudes both to students and their profession influence not only themselves but students as well. Our work has scarcely begun to tap what we believe are significant dimensions of school life in Asian schools.

Diversity in the region: how many ‘Asias’ are there? We have focused throughout the book on the diversities that characterize Asia in an attempt to show the impossibility of generalizing about its schools or highlighting schools in just some parts of the region. Yet the disparities across the region are such that we have raised the issue of whether it is any more realistic to think in terms of different ‘Asias’. For example, the differences between schools in Pakistan and Japan or between those in Nepal and Hong Kong are such that the use of the term ‘Asian schools’ to describe them all does not have any real meaning. Whether it is gender participation, literacy rates, children out of school, teacher qualifications or the extent of enrolments in primary and secondary education, the role, function and efficiency of schools differ markedly between countries in different parts of Asia. These differences can often be highlighted using traditional indicators such as the UNDP’s composite education index (EI). We showed in Chapter 2 how countries in Asia do spread out markedly on the basis of the EI with East Asian societies tending to cluster at the top. The most marked differences are between these countries which have the highest EIs and those at the bottom – Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. These disparities alone might justify the idea of different ‘Asias’. Yet we think the idea of different ‘Asias’ is more complex than these simple cross-country comparisons suggest. Sadiman (2004), for example, has pointed to within-country differences that create severe disparities for different individuals. He highlighted the urban–rural divide in Indonesia and Malaysia, disparities relating to gender, ethnicity and disability in Vietnam, the total lack of primary schools in about 4000 villages in Laos, between 25–40 per cent of people living below the poverty line in the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia,

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Myanmar and Laos. These disparities are not equally matched in East Asian societies but nevertheless not all children in these societies obtain the same benefits from education. There is poverty in Hong Kong, Korea, Japan and China and it is not difficult to identify those areas where poverty is rife. People living in poverty, no matter where, are not likely to benefit from education in the same way as people who experience social and economic well-being. For example, in Chapter 7 we showed how the results achieved by students from East Asian societies in large-scale international assessments were moderated somewhat by the level of within-country variance. Not all students from East Asia perform equally as well and this can be attributed as much to differences in socio-economic wellbeing as well as differences in the quality of learning experienced by different students. These within-country differences are as likely to create disparities for individuals as between-country differences. Different ‘Asias’ exist both within and between countries. A final comment on diversity in Asian schooling needs to take into consideration the cultural and sociocultural constructions of schooling across the region. Students in Islamabad might receive part of their education in a madrasah; in Seoul students might attend an after-school hagwon; in Thailand, many students will have attended a Buddhist Sunday school; in Hong Kong some students will have received their education in an elite private school modelled on the English grammar school. The point to note here is that while public education systems in all countries of the region provide the great bulk of school education for students, on the fringes of these systems are private institutions that contribute unique and varied elements to basic education. This means that the student experience, both within and across societies, is likely to be varied rather than uniform, drawing on different values, different sources and different day-to-day realities. Haqqani (2002), for example, has provided considerable insight into madrasah life in Karachi and set it within an historical context. It is clear from his account that young people experiencing this kind of religious education are exposed not just to new knowledge but new values and a total world view. Diversity comes in many forms across Asia and an appreciation of these diversities and the way they can impact on the education of young people in Asia is an important prerequisite for understanding the potential impact of schooling across the region.

Globalization and the region Globalization’s impact on the region’s schools can best be seen in those countries that have linked their education systems to the needs of the ‘knowledge economy’. As economies in the region have developed there appears to be a strong belief on the part of policy makers in the region that highly skilled workforces are needed to ensure that national economies can cope with the constant press of international competitiveness. We explored in Chapter 3 the underlying economic theory that gave support to this kind of policy thinking. A central tenet of such thinking is the belief that education can play a central role in economic development by producing a workforce that is creative, innovative and entrepreneurial. Thus there is a strong

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link between education and globalized economies but the point we want to highlight is that the link is not the same for all countries in the region. Scholte (1997), for example, has pointed out that ‘we live in a globalizing rather than a completely globalized condition. Global spaces of the kind formed through telecommunications, transworld finance, and the like interrelate with territorial spaces, where locality, distance and borders still matter very much’. This is an apt description of the diversity that characterizes Asia – the coastal cities of China, the city-state of Singapore, the multimedia corridor outside of Kuala Lumpur might all be called ‘globalized spaces’ symbolizing the intention of governments to be significant players in the globalized economy. Yet there are many other spaces in the region that do not have participation in the global economy as a key objective. We have often referred to countries such as Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan and areas within countries, such as the western provinces of China, that have other more local economic priorities. If education is linked to the needs of globalized economies in some parts of the region, what role does it play in those parts of the region not so directly influenced by the global economy? Most international agencies concerned with development issues highlight the role of education in poverty reduction and the removal of inequalities. Chaudhuri and Ravallion (2006) have pointed to policies in India and China designed to extend education in poorer areas and remove taxes that act as disincentives for the poor to send their children to schools. There are social considerations behind these decisions in the sense that it is hoped social cohesion is more likely when inequalities are reduced. Yet there is also a basic economic rationale for focusing on education since ‘those with relatively little schooling ... are less well positioned to take advantage of the new opportunities unleashed by market-oriented reforms’ (Chaudhuri and Ravallion 2006, p.18). Providing young people with relevant knowledge and skills will assist their integration into the economic life of the regions where they live and help them to become productive members of society. Inequalities both within and between countries cannot be eradicated by education alone, but school education can play a very important role in providing pathways out of poverty and therefore reducing inequalities. In the developing countries of Asia, this remains a fundamental rationale for supporting and enhancing educational participation. It is built on principles of both equity and economic development and is a reflection of the need to balance both if there are not to be gross distortions in the benefits that societies provide for their citizens. The previous discussion provided a lens on the region highlighting the role of education in different economic contexts. Examples were deliberately used from single countries – China and India – to demonstrate that globalization has differential effects in relation to education, even in the same country. Chaudhuri and Ravallion (2006, p.3) conceptualize this situation as one in which there are both ‘good and bad inequalities’. According to their framework, ‘good inequalities’ are those that result from market-oriented reforms, while ‘bad inequalities’ are ‘those that prevent individuals from connecting to markets and limit investment and accumulation of human capital and physical capital’. The task of governments in

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this context is to ensure that the ‘bad inequalities’ are addressed through macroeconomic policies that redistribute the benefits that have come through globalized economies. In practical terms this means that resources need to be made available for new school building programmes, new textbooks, the employment of qualified teachers and the lessening of the tax burden on families in those regions where local economic growth could not support these essential education initiatives. This view of globalisation is by no means uncontested and as Culpeper (2005, p.3) has pointed out, ‘no amount of internal redistribution in the world’s poorest countries begin to meet the needs of the vast majority’. Chaudhuri and Ravallion’s (2006) redistributive thesis at best only applies to those societies where economic growth has meant that accumulated resources are available for redistribution. Yet even in these contexts, redistribution needs to take place not just between, say, rural and urban regions, but within urban regions as well. For example, market-oriented policies are likely to create spaces for private schools that provide a choice for parents looking for a superior education for their children. The only people who can access such schools are those with sufficient surplus income. People living in poverty in urban areas are not likely to be able to enjoy this privilege. Thus disparities in access to schools exist within urban areas as well as between urban and rural areas and these need as much attention as the urban–rural divide. Culpeper’s (2005, p.13) view that ‘the strongest area of consensus is that greater equality in assets, particularly land and education, can lead to better growth performance, and conversely’ seems to be the crucial point in the debate about globalization and education. In a globalized world it is schools, whether they are in developed, developing or poor countries, which have the potential to reduce poverty and inequality. At the same time, they can also increase aggregate social and political skills and understandings necessary to negotiate an increasingly complex and uncertain environment. These are important roles for schools of the future in Asia and they will demand the attention of policymakers throughout the region.

Tradition and values relating to education We have referred throughout the book to the role of tradition in different Asian societies. We believe tradition is of a different nature in Asia from that in Western countries. There is some evidence for this view from the extensive debates that took place on ‘Asian values’ towards the end of last century (Kennedy 2004; Lincicome 2005). Promoted by political leaders such as Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia’s Mahathir, but also picked up by the Chinese leadership in its resistance to accepting a broad-based human rights agenda, the argument was that values such as perseverance, hard work, respect for authority and the centrality of the family were at the heart of many Asian countries’ economic success. The argument was dealt a severe blow with the Asian financial crisis in 1997 but it is an example of the way distinctive ‘Asian values’ have been constructed to highlight the distinctiveness of Asian thought and traditions in a modernizing world.

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While we recognize that the ‘Asian values’ debate was largely a political construction, we believe that it is not unrealistic to talk about ‘Asian values’ in relation to schools. The respect with which teachers continue to be held, the belief in schools as adjuncts of meritocracy, commitments to transmission modes of teaching and the belief in perseverance and hard work rather than innate ability all add up to strong cultural predilections for the status quo rather than radical change. It is in this context that reform initiatives across parts of the region struggle for acceptance. Yet we do not want to argue that these values are universal because we have also pointed to cultural differences that characterize different parts of Asia. We do want to make the point, however, that values play an important role in mediating educational reforms in the region and will continue to do so in the future. Another perspective on values and education in the region comes from considering participation in schooling, with particular reference to issues such as gender, rurality and socio-economic well-being. It has been estimated that worldwide there are 115 million primary-age children out of school representing some 18 per cent of the total primary-school-age population (UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2005b, pp.17–18). In South Asia the figure is 26 per cent of the population whereas in East Asia and the Pacific it is 5.7 per cent. Gender disparities are country specific. In Laos, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, India and Nepal there are more girls out of school. In the Philippines and Mongolia there are more boys out of school (UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2005b, p.20). Children from rural areas are more likely to be out of school than children from urban areas and children from poor families are more likely to be out of school than children from well-off families. Child labour is an issue in India and it also seems that parents’ educational backgrounds affect parental aspirations for their children’s education. The main point to note is that schooling is not a universal value in the region and the grind of daily living often seems to dictate other priorities – thus the importance of poverty eradication programmes in both urban and rural areas. As long as people have to focus on basic survival issues, education for both boys and girls will remain an ideal available only to those who can afford it. This is an important lesson for the future if there is to be greater equity within the region.

Western technologies and education: is there a role for indigenous knowledge? We have shown in different ways that throughout the region there is a strong tendency to adopt Western-oriented solutions when it comes to educational reform. This is the case with the growing trend to monitor educational outcomes, the use of school-based curriculum development, the adoption of ICTs for schools, the reliance on teachers and school leadership for the success of reform initiatives, school effectiveness concepts, school evaluation and auditing, etc. In one sense this is a natural development since there is a vast literature on educational reform emanating from the West and a never-ending stream of consultants eager to sell their expertise to the new educational giants in Asia eager to advance their reform agendas.

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Despite the press of Western ideas and solutions for the reform of Asian schools, there have also been some attempts to examine more closely how the unique contexts of Asia interact with these Western technologies. Cheng and Wong (1996) examined school effectiveness concepts operating in East Asia and traced their origins to Asian cultural constructs thus giving them greater relevance and applicability. Dimmock (2000a) designed a cross-cultural framework for considering issues related to the design of learner-oriented schools with a particular view of Confucian heritage cultures. Cheng (2000b) developed a cultural framework for examining issues of school effectiveness in different cultural contexts. Leung et al. (2006) have brought together a remarkable range of research that has focused on the historical and cultural contexts in Asia influencing mathematics teaching and learning. Lee et al. (2004) showed how citizenship education was constructed in the unique political and cultural contexts that make up the Asia-Pacific region. Hue (2005) looked specifically at classrooms in Hong Kong to identify ways in which classroom management practices were influenced by Chinese cultural characteristics. Yet this impressive range of research does not represent a coherent research agenda. We believe that for the future such an agenda needs to be identified if education practices and reform strategies are to become authentic and if they are to make an impact in Asia’s classrooms.

The educational divide in Asia: what can be done? Asia’s educational divide is multifaceted. It is gendered, it is geographic, it is poverty based and it can be ethnically based. In some areas the divide is also intergenerational since commitment to schooling can be strongly influenced by parents’ own educational experience. The divide is in no way lessened by the region’s dominant economies, Japan and Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore, the so-called ‘Asian tigers’. The emerging economic strength of China and India also does little to reduce the divide. Indeed it might be argued that the more successful the globalized economies of the region become, the greater will be the educational divide since resource disparities will increase as local economies find it more and more difficult to participate in a competitive international environment. The key issue for the future is to create educational opportunities for young people irrespective of their social backgrounds, family circumstances or geographic locations. In this sense we believe that the educational divide is greater than the so-called ‘digital divide’ – this latter is a symptom of much greater social and economic disparities. Solving access to the internet will not solve access to resources in general and it will not resolve access to education. In the most advanced economies, education is not delivered via the internet and it is not likely to be so in the future. The future of schooling is not linked to the internet. It is linked to high-quality teachers using innovative curriculum and teaching strategies in well-resourced schools. These are the opportunities that need to be created for young people in Asia who currently do not benefit from schools. Such opportunities may well include access to the internet but this will not be

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the major consideration since the internet as a tool still needs to be integrated into a broad-based education mediated by skilled professional teachers. Guaranteeing high-quality educational opportunities for all young people in the region requires that governments adopt two key policy priorities: social policies that value social justice and fairness and economic policies that generate sufficient resources to address key issues of inequity in educational provision. The ‘virtuous circle’ referred to earlier in this chapter is a fundamental prerequisite for securing these policy priorities. While these two priorities can best be pursued at the national level, international aid agencies also need to support them. What is more, economic objectives cannot be pursued as an end in themselves, since they have social purposes and it is these purposes in the end that will secure the future for individuals and for society as a whole. In social terms, wellsupported schools can assist in the battle against poverty, prepare students for uncertain futures, help to combat the breeding grounds for global terrorism and produce citizens who can be both supportive of core values and critical of inequities and unfair social practices. This is a challenging future for policy makers across the region. We believe that local, national and international resources should be devoted to such a future since it could go a long way towards ending the educational divide and creating fair and just societies that will contribute towards global survival. We do not think that schools can solve all the problems related to global survival; but we do think that they can be part of the solution as they continue to negotiate the uncertainties and turbulence that have so far characterized the twenty-first century.

Notes

1 Introduction 1 These calculations have been based on data provided in the World Bank database. 6 Creating citizens for globalized states 1 The framework that has been used in this chapter was derived from Kennedy, K. in press b, ‘Globalized economies, liberalized curriculum reform and national citizenship education: What does the future hold?’ in D. Grossman, W.O. Lee and K. Kennedy (eds), Citizenship Curriculum in Asia and the Pacific, Comparative Education Research Centre, Hong Kong. 7 Examination and assessment cultures 1 The IEA Civic Education Study was an exception with Hong Kong being the only Asian society represented. 2 CHC cultures broadly include Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore (although in the latter there are also representatives of other cultures). 8 Curriculum reform 1 ‘Madrassa’ is usually used for more organized institutions in Islamic education with classrooms and teachers for different levels. The Koranic school or maktab, which can function in the mosque, under a tree, in the house of the Koran teacher or under an open sky, is a place for Muslim children to learn and recite the Koran only. In addition, a madrassa is a place for more in-depth religious education while a Koranic school is usually a place for a lower level of religious education (the recitation and pronunciation of the Koran) (Anzar 2003, pp.1–2).

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Index

Abe, Shinzo 68, 69 Academy of Educational Planning and Management (AEPAM) 162 Accelerated Schools Project 99 action research 140, 141, 154–8 adult: education 14, 16, 17, 43; illiteracy 40; literacy 13, 159 Afghanistan 10, 59, 133 Agarkar, S.C. 149 Ahmad, A. 54 Ahmad, I. 69, 70 Alavi, S.B. 123, 136 Aldridge, J.M. 116 Alexander, R. 117 Amante, Maragtas S.V. 28 Anderson, J.A. 160 Anzar, U. 95 APPEAL programme 40 Arellano, E.L. 157 Armenia 10, 11 Arnold, R. 34 Arunsri, A. 97 Ashram schools 149 Asia 1–7, 9–23, 28–30, 46–8, 50–4, 56, 76–81, 84–5, 89–91, 104–7, 122–6, 128–132, 148–150, 154–6, 174–182 Asian Development Bank (ADB) 10, 14, 23, 28, 29, 38, 60, 176 Asian Network of Training and Research Institutions in Educational Planning (ANTRIEP) 159 Asian South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education 16, 17 Asian: contexts 33, 48, 51, 53, 67, 93, 95, 124, 138, 157; countries 1, 13–14, 20–3, 25, 29–30, 33, 42, 53, 55, 57, 73, 115, 118, 122–4, 134–6, 139, 142, 143, 157, 162, 163, 172;

cultures 76; education 1, 2, 4, 6, 47, 120; financial crisis 22, 23, 33, 180; governments 21, 48; leaders 53, 61; learner 82, 84; nations 21, 57; schooling 141, 147, 178; schools 6, 31, 51, 57, 89, 91, 98, 107, 108, 118, 120, 177, 182; societies 6, 9, 49, 73, 74, 79, 89–92, 94–5, 98, 104, 124, 130–2, 134–5, 138, 140, 148, 160, 170; students 16, 73, 81, 85, 120; values 48, 61, 177, 180, 181 Asia-Pacific 53; countries 16, 164; region 21, 23, 24, 40, 73, 77, 108, 118, 119, 182 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) 32, 38, 60 assessment 6, 13, 27, 30, 34, 35, 56, 61, 63, 64, 70, 73, 74, 77–85, 96, 103, 159, 162, 169; cultures 72, 73, 75, 77, 78, 79, 81, 83, 85; for learning 77, 85; models 78; of learning 77; reform 72, 78, 79 Assessment Reform Group 77 Assessment Saloon 79 Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) 60 Atwell, A. 131 Aubert, J. 42, 44 Australia 2, 12, 59, 63, 64, 109, 116, 146, 151, 160, 169 Azerbaijan 10, 11 Azim Premji Foundation 114 Bagnall, R. 33 Bahasa Indonesia 150 Bajunid, I.A. 54 Baker, R. 90 Bali 59

218

Index

Bangladesh 3, 10, 12, 17–18, 74, 94, 120, 134, 161–2, 165, 171, 177 Bartell, C.A. 128, 129 Basic and Occupational Education and Training (BOET) 125 Basic Competency Assessment 58, 80 Basic Education Curriculum of 2001 97 basic: education 16, 19, 23, 24, 26, 40, 41, 123, 175, 176, 178; skills 41, 122, 162 Bauer, C. 109 Begg, A. 90 Behrman, J. 22 Beijing 32, 66, 67, 167 Beijing Normal University 167 Bennell, P. 170, 171 Berg, E. van den 115 Berry, R. 78, 79 Bhutan 3, 5, 10, 12, 17–19, 25, 52, 80, 176, 179 Biggs, J.B. 73, 82, 98, 109 Birch, I. 118–120 Bitoun, C. 159, 162 Blatchford, P. 117 Bloxham, T. 169 Bondi, J. 89 Booth, S. 147 Bray, M. 74, 76 Britain 109, 132 Brooks, J.G. 100 Brunei Darussalam 12, 18, 116, 154 Buddhism 107 Burma 115 Bush, T. 128 Cambodia 3, 10, 12, 17–19, 80, 91–2, 120, 139, 148, 158 Canada 151, 164 Carless, D. 78 case-based pedagogy 140, 157, 158 Catchpole, G. 117 Central Asia 49–52, 94 Central Lombok 131 Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) 128, 133 Centre for Information Technology in Education of the University of Hong Kong (CITE) 122 Centre for University and School Partnership 99 Chan, Anson 65 Chan, K.S.J. 51 Chan, V. 66 Chan, Y.Y.G. 110

Chandrasekharan, S. 114 Chang, C.F. 51, Chang, C.Y. 96, 104 Chaudhuri, S. 179, 180 Chen, P.C. 106 Chen, S.L. 142 Cheng, K.M. 123, 182 Cheng, Y.C. 126, 127, 182 Cheung, M. 137 Cheung, Y.S. 99 Chew, J. 133 Chew, L. 155, 156 Chhokar, K.B. 114 Chiang Mai Province 155 Chief Executive 66 Chief Secretary for Administration 65 China 3, 5, 14–19, 24, 42–5, 52, 54–6, 58–60, 65–8, 78–9, 91, 96, 108, 120–2, 127–130, 132–3, 142, 144, 174–6, 178–9 Chinese 67, 100, 105, 108, 122, 123; adult education 43; characteristics 44; children 109; classrooms 111; communities 134; contexts 93, 105, 110; cultural characteristics 182; cultures 130; government 42, 66; high school (CHS) 102; identity 67; leadership 180; learners 82, 84, 109, 110; parents 109; pedagogy 122; people 66; perspective 132; schools 142; sovereignty 50, 64, 67; students 108, 109, 111; teachers 110, 111; values 65 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 43, 54 Chinese National Commission for UNESCO 175 Chinese University of Hong Kong 99 Chow, P.Y. 142 Chui, M.M. 81 Chung, J.S. 45 Chuxiong 129 citizens 27, 39, 41, 43, 45, 53, 54, 56, 57, 59–67, 69–71, 74, 179, 183 citizenship 57, 60, 69; education 6, 53–5, 57, 58, 60–5, 68–71, 182 Citizenship Assessment Project 64 civic education 27, 53, 57, 65, 67–70, 80, 92 civics 53, 54, 69, 72 Clarke, P. 113, 124 classroom 30, 51, 62–3, 78, 90, 98, 111, 114–17, 121, 141, 152, 157, 161, 171, 182; environments 6, 30,

Index 108, 115–17; observation 115, 129, 142, 152; practices 30, 51, 97, 122; teaching 83, 155, 172 classroom-based assessments 78, 79 classroom-culturalist model 124 Coffield, F. 33 collectivism 109, 136, 138 Collinson, V. 141, 142 communities 2, 22, 29, 36, 40–1, 52, 62–3, 68, 71, 75, 90, 99–103, 121, 123, 133, 155 community learning centres (CLCs) 40, 41 computer-assisted instruction (CAI) 121 computer-assisted test (CAT) 121 Confucian 9, 67, 76, 109, 122, 132; values 53, 61, 177 Confucian heritage cultures (CHCs) 73, 76, 82–5, 108, 113, 154, 182 Confucianism 67, 76, 129, 133 Confucian–Socratic framework 122 Connery, C. 2 constructivist approach 146, 149, 152, 158 Cornbleth, C. 89, 90 cram schools 74–7 Cuadra, E. 48 Cubillo, L. 133 Culpeper, R. 180 Cultural Revolution 54, 129 cultural: argument 73, 76; characteristics 82–5, 128; contexts 5, 73, 76, 84, 85, 177, 182; differences 89, 109, 181; factors 76, 111, 112, 177; issues 82, 124, 177; perspective 109, 115, 158 cultures 1, 5–7, 10, 16, 20, 54–6, 58, 62–4, 73–4, 82–5, 108–10, 113, 122–4, 126, 129, 131–5, 137–8, 166 curriculum 5, 23–4, 27–8, 35, 48, 49, 53–6, 58, 61, 63, 65, 68–70, 81–2, 89–100, 102–7, 129, 154, 163; change 57, 89, 94, 95, 107; development 26, 27, 93, 98, 101–3, 155; implementation 97, 105, 164; integration 91, 96, 98–100, 106; planning 106, 164, 165; reform 21, 26, 57, 62, 65, 72, 89, 91–3, 95–7, 99, 101, 103, 105, 107, 122, 159 Curriculum Development Centre 97 Curriculum Development Council 26–7, 65, 80, 96

219

Curriculum Development Divisions 97 Czech Republic 172 Dahlin, B. 36 Dahlman, C. 42, 44 Dakar objectives 159 Dalmia, R. 49 Dastmalchian, A. 123 De Grauwe, A. 159, 161, 162, 164, 172 Dean, B. 69 Delhi 171 Delors Report 91 democracy 16, 51, 59, 65, 68 Democratic People’s Republic of Korea 59 Deng, Xiaoping 42 Deolalikar, A. 15, 23 Dhanda, K. 15 Dimmock, C. 108, 109, 117, 123, 124, 129, 130, 132, 182 Ding, X. 42–4 distance education 25, 43, 108, 118 District Education Plan (DEP) 175 Ditapat, M.P. 97 Diverse Student Evaluation Methods 163 Djakarta 14 Dogri 116–17 Dollar, D. 1, 174 Dorji, L. 52 Dream School Programme 130 East Asia 4, 5, 10, 16, 19, 23, 31, 73, 81,82–4, 85, 108, 118, 123, 132, 139, 174, 176–8, 181, 182 Easton, P. 21 economic: construction 33, 34, 37, 45; contexts 9, 76, 179; culture 129; globalization 53, 61; growth 1, 15, 22, 29, 30, 34–6, 44, 47, 75, 176, 180; objectives 14, 33, 42, 183; system 35, 58 education 1, 9, 13, 14, 16–27, 29, 30, 34–7, 39–45, 51–3, 55, 69, 74, 90–3, 117–22, 130–2, 158–64, 169–72, 174–82; development 16, 19, 23; index 13, 14, 29, 83; levels 16, 22, 36, 37, 80; policy 20, 22, 23, 38; provision 5, 9, 16, 29; reforms 24, 47, 80, 81, 91, 144, 169; systems 5, 19, 30, 36, 37, 43, 45, 46, 49, 50, 57, 64, 72, 75, 78, 80, 81, 95, 111, 120

220

Index

Education Act and National Education Standards 169 Education Commission 26, 27, 166 Education for All (EFA) 40, 159, 162 education index (EI) 14, 177 Education Reconstruction Front 51 educational: divide 182, 183; improvement 147, 159, 161, 163, 165, 167, 169, 171, 173; institutions 78, 93, 97, 161, 169; leadership 132–4; outcomes 168, 170, 176, 181; planning 159, 162, 176; policies 6, 91, 146; processes 9, 74, 84, 113, 170; provision 13, 14, 17, 19, 177, 183; reform 4, 24, 25, 28, 29, 47, 48, 50–2, 56, 57, 82, 95, 139, 181; systems 24, 91, 95, 108, 115, 128 Edwards, R. 33 Elliott, B. 149 Elliott, J. 154 EmpowerICT 154 endogenous growth theory(EGT) 34 England 64, 72, 92, 102, 111, 112, 160 Entrance Examination for Higher Education (EEHE) 168 Entrance Examination for Senior High School (EESHS) 168 equality 112, 138, 180 equity 15, 16, 40, 115, 116, 176, 179, 181 European Union (EU) 5, 60 examination 6, 27, 30, 51, 58, 63, 72–85, 107, 109, 111, 112, 117, 160, 162, 163, 169, 172; cultures 6, 21, 63, 74, 94 external: evaluation 77, 161, 164, 169; inspection 6, 159, 163, 164, 169, 171; school review (ESR) 160, 161, 165 Fairbrother, G. 53, 54, 57, 58, 64, 65 Fan, L. 79 Fernandez, C. 144–6 Fidler, B. 138 Fisher, D.L. 116, 117 Flutter, J. 172 Fok, P.K. 78 Foondun, A. 75, 76 foreign languages 37, 92 formative assessment 49, 77, 79 Foucaudian concept 33 France 60

Fraser, B.J. 116 Fraser-Abder, P. 142 Fujita, H. 68 Fullan, M.G. 93, 140 Fundamental Law of Education, 1947 68 FY2002 164 Gamage, D.T. 132 Gandhi, Mahatma 132 Gao, L.B. 78, 79, 111 Gardner, Howard 101, 122 Gau, S.J. 93 gender 40, 177, 181; equality 40, 129, 159, 175; inequalities 115, 133, 149 gender empowerment measure (GEM) 134 General Zia-ul-Haq 70 generic skills 27, 30, 100, 120 Georgia 11 Gerber, R. 153 Germany 172 Glatthorn, A. 140, 141 Global Campaign for Education 16 global: citizenship 60, 62; economy 47, 60, 61, 120, 179; education 60, 61; workers 53, 61 globalization 1, 3, 47, 48, 55, 56, 59, 89, 170, 178–80 globalized: economies 9, 15, 48, 57, 62, 179, 180, 182; states 57, 59, 61, 63, 65, 67, 69, 71 Gopinathan, S. 26, 95, 108, 115, 122, 126 Gordon, B. 38, 39 Göttelmann-Duret, G. 170 Gough, N. 106 governments 15, 17, 19, 20, 22, 26, 40, 52, 63, 64, 67–70, 74, 75, 80, 81, 95, 106, 149, 179 Govinda, R. 161 Gow, L. 84 Greaney, V. 80 Gray, B. 72, 76 Gregorio, L.C. 91 Griffin, C.M. 33 Griffin, P. 80 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 17–18 Gross enrollment ratio 13 Grossman, D. 57 Gu, Y.G. 78–9 Guangdong 111 Guangzhou 142, 143 Gujarat 171

Index Gurr, D. 160 Gurukula system 113 Guthrie, G. 148 Hake, B. 33 Halai, A. 154 Hallegatte, S. 36 Hallinger, P. 123–5, 138 Han, M. 44 Han, S. 33, 37, 42, 45 Han, Y. 78 Haqqani, H. 178 Hargreaves, A. 140 Harrigan, K. 49 Harris, A. 124 Hartman, R. 74 Harvard Project Zero 101 Hasbullah, D.H.K.H. 131 Hau, K.T. 110 Hayo, M. 164, 171 Heckman, J. 29 Hedberg, J.G. 120 Henry, Patrick 53 Hiebert, J. 146 high: levels 16, 36, 133, 134, 137, 176; schools 102, 115, 168 higher education 15, 43, 168 Higher Standard Quality Education (HSQE) 169 Hill, P. 15 Hirosato, Y. 14 Hofstede, G. 109, 124, 136 Hok Yau Club 66 Holy Qur’an 111 Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination 74 Hong Kong SAR 3, 10, 12, 18, 50–2, 64, 65, 66, 67, 73–5, 78–85, 94–6, 99, 100, 108–10, 121, 122, 126, 127, 142–4, 154, 155, 160, 161, 164–6, 171, 172 Hong, K.S. 142, 150 House, J.D. 115 Howard, C. 42 Howe, E.R. 142 Hu, Jintao 66 Hu, Y.M. 167, 168 Huang, Y. 51 Huber, S.G. 131, 138 Hudson, P. 151, 153 Hui, S.K.F. 155 human capital 21–3, 25, 29, 35, 174, 179; development 22, 23, 34, 35; theory 6, 22, 34

221

human development index (HDI) 13, 14, 17, 18 Human Resources Development (HRD) 89, 90, 163, 172 human: development 12–14, 16, 134; resources 30, 44, 168 Hunkins, F. 90 Hwang, J.J. 96, 104 Ikeno, N. 68 Improving Schools Project 126 India 3, 10, 12, 15–19, 59, 74, 111, 113, 114, 116, 132–5, 148, 149, 170, 171, 174, 179, 181, 182 individualism 67, 109, 136 Indonesia 3, 10, 12, 15–18, 24, 59, 73, 75, 81, 83, 92, 94, 130, 131, 133, 134, 139, 146, 175, 177 Indonesian Mathematics and Science Teacher Education Project (IMSTEP) 146 inequalities 14, 149, 179, 180 information and communication technology (ICT) 24, 89, 108, 118–22, 138, 149, 153, 175, 181 information technology 27, 43, 94, 102, 106, 122, 131, 153 inservice education and training (INSET) 151 instruction 28, 105, 110, 112–14, 135, 146, 163 integrated curriculum 49, 56, 91, 98, 99, 101, 103 International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) 73, 80 International Conference on Education 160 International Crisis Group 49, 50, 70 International Labour Organization 38, 39, 42, 45 International Monetary Fund 3, 60 International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 139 Internet World Stats 10 Iowa Chautauqua Program (ICP) 151 Iran 15, 139 Iraq 60, 69 Islam 54, 69, 70, 111, 133 Islamabad 178 Islamic Republic 11 Japan 3, 15–18, 38, 39, 41, 42, 55, 56, 58–60, 68–70, 72–4, 81, 83, 84, 90,

222

Index

91, 92, 108, 109, 111–13, 115, 144–6, 168, 170–2 Japan International Cooperation Agency 146 Jemaah Islamiah 59 Jiang, Zemin 32, 42 Jiangsu Province 151 Johnson, D. 10 Joyce, B.R. 140 jurisdictions 19, 54, 78, 82, 161

Korean Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (MOEHRD) 172 Koul, R.B. 116–17 Krechevsky, Mara 101 Kuala Lumpur 179 Kumon 115, 116 Kuroda, Haruhiko 14 Kwok, P.L.Y. 73, 74–6, 118 Kyrgyzstan 10, 11, 12, 18, 181

Kaewdang, R. 78 Kagan, D.M. 140 Kagia, Ruth 37 Kajornsin, B. 101 Kalam, A. 174 Kantamara, P. 125, 138 Karachi 124, 149, 178 Kashmiri: community 117; group 116 Kazakhstan 10–12, 14, 18 Kellaghan, T. 80 Kember, D. 84 Kennedy, K. 14, 21, 27–30, 34, 35, 42, 48–50, 53, 57, 61, 65, 67, 96, 158, 177, 180 Khan, F. 134 Khine, M.S. 116 Kilpatrick, William Heard 49 Kim, E.P. 127, 133 Kim, M. 118, Kim, M.H. 101, 103 Kim, S. 127, 133 Kim, S.W. 75, 76 Kim, Y.C. 107 Kirk, D. 59 Klees, S. 21 Kliebard, H.M. 49 Knight, K. 148 knowledge 9, 13, 21, 22, 24, 25, 29, 32, 36, 37, 46, 64, 106, 107, 110, 111, 113, 114, 140, 141, 154, 155, 178, 179, 181; economy 1, 14, 23, 25–31, 33, 37, 42, 48, 49, 56, 67, 174, 178; societies 34, 89, 120; workers 30, 49, 56 knowledge-based economies 22, 25, 44 Koh, C.K. 150 Koizumi, Junichiro 69 kôminkan 39, 42 Koranic schools 98 Korea 3, 12, 18, 22, 58, 72–7, 81, 83, 90, 91, 94, 97, 108, 109, 118, 163, 172

Lakin, R. 158 Lam, L. 50 Lam, S.F. 171 Lam, Y.L.J. 136 Lamie, J.M. 151 Lao People’s Democratic Republic 3, 10, 12, 18, 51, 92, 94, 115, 120, 139, 177, 178, 181 Lashkar-e-Toiba 59 Law, A.S.Y. 143 Law, Fanny 51 Law, N. 121 Lawson, A. 74 learning 29–33, 35–8, 56–8, 62–4, 73, 75–7, 82–4, 91–5, 108, 109, 111–15, 119–23, 129, 130, 140–2, 145–7, 153, 154; organizations 30, 106, 124, 135–7; outcomes 29, 63, 83, 92, 109, 114, 118, 148; society 24, 42, 44 Learning School Project 172 Learning Study Project 147 Lee, J. 72, 73 Lee, J.C.K. 89, 93, 106, 117, 122, 129, 138, 171, 172, 175 Lee, J.H. 75, 76 Lee, K.K. 166 Lee, Kuan Yew 180 Lee, M.N.N. 155 Lee, S.Y. 108, Lee, W.O. 53, 54, 57,67, 110, 182 Legislative Council 65 Lehman, D.R. 122 Leithwood, K. 124, 127, 141 lesson 25, 41, 90, 112, 117, 118, 131, 142–5, 147, 165, 181; observation 140, 142, 143, 148, 158; plans 102, 113, 142; study 140, 144–8, 158 Lesson Study Research Project 146 Leung, F. 16, 82, 84, 182 Levin, H.M. 36 Lewin, K. 13, 19, 22

Index Lewis, C. 144–7 Li, A.K.C. 65, 66 Li, L. 51 Li, W.S. 154, 155, 157 liberal: democracies 56, 59, 60; economies 30, 54, 70 liberalization 51, 54, 56–8, 61 Lieberman, A. 141 lifelong learning 6, 24, 25, 26, 32–45, 95; policy 38, 41, 42, 45; society 33; systems 42, 43, 45, 46 lifelong: education system 43, 44; integrated education 38 Lim, C.P. 120 Lim, C.S. 79, 146 Lin, J.Y.F. 15, 21, 22 Lin, W.C. 98 Lincicome, M. 180 local: contexts 38, 45, 54, 55, 105, 107, 131, 151; cultures 70, 132, 138; curriculum 89, 96, 101–3, 155; values 1, 6, 47–9, 51–3, 55, 56, 59, 61, 62, 68 Loucks-Horsley, S. 141 Low, G.T. 125 Macao 11, 118, 139 Macau 81 MacBeath, J. 138, 160, 171, 172 Maclean, R. 118–20 MacLeod, K. 148 Macnab, D. 161, 162, 170 Madhya Pradesh 170 madrasas 70, 94, 95 maestro 31 Maharashtra 149 Malaysia 3, 10, 12, 15–18, 22, 24, 45, 54–6, 58, 59, 79, 81, 83, 91, 92, 120, 121, 130, 131, 146, 155, 160–3, 174 Maldives 10–12, 18, 95 Maré, D. 34 Marinas, B.O. 97 Marsh, C. 89, 93 Martin, M. 81 Marton, F. 82, 122, 147 Mauritius 76 McCormick, J. 123, 136 McGlynn, A. 166 McLaughlin, M.W. 141 Mekong 10 Metropolitan and Provincial Educational Authorities (MPEA) 98

223

Mie Prefecture 165 Millennium Development Goals 176 Miller, L. 141 Milner, A. 10 Mindanao, Philippine 59 Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development, Korea (MOEHRD) 90, 163, 172 Ministry of Education and Sports, Nepal 39, 40, 175 Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) 90, 164 Ministry of Education, Malaysia 97, 131, 155, 161, 174 Ministry of Education, PRC 42, 96 Ministry of Education, Singapore 26, 90, 169–70 Ministry of Education, Sri Lanka 175 Ministry of Education, Taiwan 52, 97 Ministry of Education, Thailand 130, 160, 169 Ministry of National Education, Indonesia 175 modernization 42, 43, 44, 52, 54, 75, 157 Mohamad, Mahathir 180 Mohammad, A. 138 Mok, K.H. 47, 169–70 Mok, M.M.C. 161, 168 Mongolia 10, 12, 18, 25, 27, 47, 92, 162, 181 Monkman, K. 135 Moore, R. 76 moral: citizens 55; education 54, 67, 91; leadership 132 Moreno, J. 48 Morrison, K. 73, 82, 84 Morriss, S.B. 134 Muijs, D. 124 Mullis, I. 81 multiple intelligences (MI)101 Mumbai 14, 59 Murphy, C. 66 Muslim 55, 69, 95, 98, 111, 133 Myanmar 3, 10, 12, 18, 19, 59, 60, 75, 120, 139, 162, 178 Naidoo, J.P. 159, 161, 162, 164, 165, 172 Narushima, N. 38, 41 Nasir, A.H. 45 National College for School Leadership 130, 164, 166

224

Index

National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party 43 National Day 66 National Education Act 78 National Education Centre 66 National Education Public Relations Centre 56 National Educational Assessment System 162 National Educational Standards 169 National Institute of Education, Singapore 130 National Service Programmes, Malaysia 174 National Taiwan University 52 national: assessments 63, 80, 81, 162; citizenship education 57, 62, 63, 70; culture 90, 108, 125; curriculum 92, 95–8, 145; education 33, 43, 44, 65, 94, 175; identity 55, 65, 66; lifelong learning systems 33; values 55, 61, 63, 69 nationalism 55, 62, 67, 69 neo-liberalism 33 Nepal 3, 10–13, 15, 17–19, 38–42, 45, 95, 115, 139, 164, 165, 170, 174, 175, 177, 179, 181 Netherlands 60 New South Wales 146 New York Times 68 New Zealand 12, 63, 151 Ng, H.M. 142 Ng, M. 117 Ng, P.T. 135, 170 Ngan, M.Y. 122, 171 Nguyen, P.M. 76 Nias, J. 94, 104 no loser principle 27 Nor Putch, S. 97 North American 160 North Atlantic Free Trade Association (NAFTA) 60 North Korea 59, 69 O’Donoghue, T. 102, 103 Oberg, A.A. 93 Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment 161, 169 Office of Commercial Services 78, 139, 140 Office of the Basic Education Commission 130 Office of the National Education

Commission 78 Ohmae, K. 3, 58 Onishi, N. 68 Ono, Y. 141, 142 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 1, 29, 60, 72, 77, 81, 83, 84, 172, 176 Ornstein, A.C. 90 Osler, A. 132 Ou, Y.S. 106 Ovens, P. 144 Pakistan 3, 10–12, 14, 15, 17–19, 58, 59, 64, 69, 70, 94, 111, 124, 133–5, 149, 154, 162, 170, 177; citizen 69; religious schools 70; society 70; textbooks 69 Pang, N.S.K. 137, 138, 166 Pant, A.P. 40 Papua New Guinea 17, 139, 160 Parmenter, L. 55, 56, 68 Patrinos, H.A. 36 patriotism 66, 68, 92, 174 pedagogy 6, 21, 30, 51, 61–3, 70, 108, 114, 115, 122, 152, 156 peer observation 166, 171 Pembelajaran Aktif Kreatif Efektif dan Menyenangkan (PAKEM) 131 Peng, W.J. 168 performance-based assessment 163 Perkins, D. 122 Permantapan Kerja Guru (PKG) 150–1 personal: efficacy 124; values 53, 67, 83 Peters, M. 33 Philippines 3, 10, 12, 15, 17, 18, 24, 27, 28, 29, 59, 73, 78, 79, 81, 83, 91, 97, 134, 157 Pinar, W.F. 90 policy: contexts 6, 32, 33, 35, 37, 39, 41, 43, 45; makers 31, 71, 138, 178, 183; priorities 33, 34, 38, 42, 43, 45, 183 political: systems 59, 60, 63, 65, 91; values 53, 61, 65, 70 post-compulsory education 36, 37 post-war reconstruction 68 poverty 14, 39, 40, 178–80, 182, 183 Powdyel, T. 80 Pradhan, H.C. 149 Prideaux, D. 104 Primary School Achievement Test 162 primary: education 13, 15, 40, 114, 176; school teachers 4, 119, 129, 139, 149, 171; schools 22, 39, 45,

Index 52, 90, 98, 101, 104, 137–9, 148, 149, 167, 175, 177 principal 123–7, 128–32, 133, 136, 138, 161, 165, 172; leadership 126 private: schools 155, 161, 178, 180; tutoring 74–7, 118, 176 Professional Development School Collaborations 141 professional: development 37, 121, 133, 139–42, 145, 148, 150–3, 154, 155, 158, 164; growth 127, 141, 171; values 50, 171 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 72, 80, 81, 83, 84, 162 Programs for Innovation, Excellence and Research (PIER) 155 progressivism 21, 30, 49 Project Work 78, 79 public: education 75, 176; examinations 73, 74, 77, 84 pupils 13, 66, 75, 90, 97, 110–13, 115, 117, 140, 170 Qiang, H. 128 Quality Assurance Inspection (QAI) 99, 166 quality: assurance 168, 169; enhancement 23, 25, 160; schools 175 Queensland University of Technology 78, 139, 140 Quek, K. 79 Quranic teachings 133 Rajput, J.S. 113 Ranade, M.D. 132 Rashid, N.B. 45 Ravallion, M. 179, 180 Ren-Yi-Li system 110 Republic of China 54, 58, 59 Republic of Korea 10, 12, 15, 18, 59, 91, 92, 151, 161 Reynolds, C. 134 Riaz, M. 111 Ribbins, P. 129 Richards, C. 120, 121 Ritchie, B.K. 22, 23 Rizvi, M. 149 Romer, P. 21, 30 Rudduck, J. 172 Rugg, Harold 49 Rukunegara 54

225

Russian Federation 11 Ryoo, W.Y. 101, 103 Sadiman, A.S. 139, 177 Sahasewiyon, K. 155 Saito, E. 146–8 Salleh, H. 156, 157 Samar, S. 176 Sapre, P.M. 132 Sarawak 150 Saudi Arabia 59 Scholte, J.A. 179 school 5–7, 12–17, 19–23, 25–31, 38–42, 50–2, 66, 84, 94, 96–107, 120–32, 134–8, 140–50, 152–6, 158–72, 174, 176–83; administrators 101, 128, 132, 133, 135, 146, 158; culture 121, 127, 151, 153, 172; curriculum 23, 27, 50, 51, 53, 56–8, 61, 65, 67, 81, 89, 91, 92, 94–6, 98, 100; development 6, 122, 123, 125, 127, 129, 131, 133, 135, 137, 166; education 45, 55, 118, 163, 178, 179; evaluation 159–61, 163, 164, 169, 181; improvement 93, 124, 126, 135, 140, 141, 160, 161; leaders 129, 130, 135; leadership 121, 123, 124, 129–32, 138, 149, 164, 166, 170, 172, 181; management 120, 132, 133, 138, 161, 164, 170; managers 128; principals 104, 135, 138, 161; selfevaluation 6, 127, 160, 164–6, 169, 172; self-review/evaluation 159; teachers 127, 146, 161 school excellence model (SEM) 135, 136, 169, 170 school improvement plan (SIP) 175 School Leadership Development Framework (SLDF) 130 School Management Committee 164 School Self-evaluation Project 165, 166, 168 school-based curriculum development (SBCD) 6, 89, 91, 93–6, 98–100, 103–7, 181; model 105; opportunities 106 school-based curriculum project scheme (SBCPS) 104, 105 school-based: curriculum 92, 96, 99; management 130, 136, 166; projects 131, 154, 156

226

Index

school-centred curriculum reform 93 schooling 6, 9, 16, 21, 25–31, 49–50, 57, 63, 77, 154, 177–9, 181–2 Schubert, W.H. 90, 98 Scotland 172 Sebatane, M. 79 Second World War 38, 41, 60, 69 Secondary Schools Placement Test 27 secondary: education 13–15, 19, 23, 27, 44, 97, 146, 175, 177; schools 13, 27, 54, 75, 90, 111, 126, 127, 129, 133, 136, 138, 146, 163, 168, 175 self-directed learning 121, 140, 153 self-managing schools 93, 164 Sellan, R. 78, 79 Sen, A. 16 Senegal 159 Senge, P. 136 Seoul 72, 101, 178 Sergiovanni, T.J. 132 Shah, S. 133 Shanghai 14 Sharp, L. 126 Shimahara, N.K. 113 Shin, M.K. 151, 158 Shiraishi, Y. 38, 39 Simkins, T. 123, 124 Singapore 5, 10, 18, 19, 22, 26, 27, 78, 79, 81, 90, 102, 103, 108, 109, 125, 126, 133–5, 155, 156, 163, 164, 169, 170; example 78, 103; students 73; Examinations 78, 79 Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board 78, 79 Singleton, J.N.D. 113 Sintoovongse, K. 105 Skilbeck, M. 93, 94 Smart School, Malaysia 24, 119, 120 Sneddon, David 49 Social: cohesion 44, 62, 89, 176; democracy 33; dislocation 19, 53, 61, 176; education 38, 41; justice 30, 62, 183; reconstructionism 49; studies 69, 91, 92, 98, 113, 114, 153, 163; values 28, 121, 135; workers 100, 164 societal values 63, 83, 124 societies 5, 16, 24, 29, 30, 42, 43, 52, 53, 62–4, 67, 68, 69, 91, 92, 94, 95, 112, 120, 121, 158, 160, 161, 174–80, 183 Socratic: approach 122; orientation 122

Soh, K.C. 156 Sokhom, H. 148 Solomon Islands 17 Somwung, P. 97 South Africa 172 South Asia 5, 10, 181 South Korea 59, 72, 115, 120, 133 Southeast Asia 10, 16, 19, 39, 48, 73, 83, 85 Southeast Asian 23, 73, 75, 76, 60, 81, 83, 85, 123 Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) 79 Soviet 50, 51 Spain 59 Sparks, D. 141 Sri Lanka 3, 10–12, 15, 17, 18, 139, 170, 175 Stacki, S. 134, 135 stakeholders 32, 103, 106, 162, 175 Standard for Elementary School Establishment 164 Steiner-Khamsi, G. 47 Stevenson, H.W. 108 Stigler, J.W. 146 Stiglitz, J.E. 15, 71 Stolpe, I. 47 Stones, E. 140 Stott, K. 125 student 26, 27, 62, 63, 72–8, 79, 81–5, 92, 93, 96–100, 102, 103, 105, 106, 111–21, 146–9, 152, 161–3, 165–9, 172, 175–8; achievements 84, 85, 108, 153, 163; assessment 79, 81, 172; performance 84, 85, 162 student-centred learning 30, 102, 139 Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) 59 Su, J. 127 Subject-based ideology 154 Suh, S. 163 Sultan of Brunei 32, 42 Sunnah 111 Sweden 172 Syed Zin, S. 119 Tagalog 157 Tagore, Rabindranath 132 Taipei 10, 75 Taiwan 22, 51, 52, 59, 73, 74, 77, 81–3, 96–8, 100, 103, 104, 108, 109, 116–18, 136, 154, 161, 182

Index Tajikistan 10–12, 18 Talbert, J.E. 141 Tan, J. 26 Tanner, D. 94 Tanner, L. 94 Taoism 107 Tapan, S. 161 Tay-Koay, S.L. 140, 141 teacher 3, 4, 5, 30, 31, 37, 50, 51, 62, 63, 77, 78, 82, 94, 95, 97–108, 110–22, 123, 124–6, 129, 130, 132–5, 138–58, 160–72, 180; appraisal 160, 170, 172; collaboration 100, 149; development 6, 99, 139–43, 145, 147–9, 151, 153–5, 157–9; empowerment 106, 135, 136; evaluation 165, 168, 171; leadership 124, 141, 149; participants 152; professionalism 149; quality 95, 158, 168, 170; supervision 170, 171; training 141, 148 teaching 6, 27, 37, 82, 96–100, 108, 109, 111–3, 115, 119–23, 129, 130, 140–9, 154–6, 160, 161, 164, 170–2; methods 70, 108, 112, 115, 118; models 115, 147; profession 31, 95, 133, 139, 158 technology achievement index (TAI) 13, 15 textbooks 51, 68, 69, 104, 107, 113, 114, 120, 148, 154, 168, 180 Thai School Leadership Development Framework 130 Thailand 10, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 22, 45, 58, 59, 77–81, 91, 101, 103, 124, 125, 130, 139, 154, 155, 160, 169 Thair, M. 150 Thanh, M.T. 80 Thinking Schools, Learning Nation 24, 26 Tilak, J. 15 Tokyo 75, 164 Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education 68 traditional values 52–7, 61, 126 Treagust, D.F. 150 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 81, 162 Tu, Wei Ming 67 Tung, Chee Hwa 66 Turkey 11 Turkmenistan 10–12, 18

227

Tweed, R.G. 122 Tyler, R.W. 106 Ueyama, T. 132 Ukai, N. 116 UNESCO Institute of Statistics 4, 12, 13, 18, 139, 181 United Kingdom 59 United Nation (UN) 11, 12, 59, 60 United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) 135 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 10–13, 15, 17, 18, 40, 134, 177 United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) 10–12 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 38, 40, 91, 92, 98, 118, 120, 159, 175, 176 United States 5, 59, 60, 63, 64, 69, 72, 109, 127, 133, 146, 151, 160, 164 universalization 15, 175 universities 35, 36, 43, 45, 74, 75, 99, 101, 106, 122, 129, 142, 151, 152, 163 University of Cambridge Local Examination Syndicate 163 Upadhyay, B. 135 Usher, R. 33 Uzbekistan 10–12, 18 Vanuatu 3 Victoria 160, 169 Vidovich, L. 102, 103 Vietnam 3, 10, 12, 16–19, 25, 27, 59, 80, 92, 94, 120, 177 Vivekananda, Swami 132 Volet, S. 85 Vrasidas, C. 154 Vulliamy, G. 148 Walia, K. 113, 158, 171 Walker, A. 123, 124, 130, 132 Wang, J.Y. 175 Watanabe, T. 145, 146 Watkins, D. 98, 109–11 Wee, V. 83 Weidman, J. 25 Western Australia 163, 172 Westernization 9 Whitburn, J. 111, 115 Whitman, N.C. 115

228

Index

Whole-Person Development 95 Wiles, J. 89 Willis, D.B. 128, 129 Wong Tai Sin Temple 100 Wong, H.W. 89 Wong, J.Y.Y. 153 Wong, K.C. 123, 132, 182 Wong, K.K. 165 Wong, S.Y. 68 Woodhall, M. 22 World Bank 5, 14, 15, 25, 36–8, 60, 74, 80, 151, 170, 176 World Bank national absence surveys (WBNAS) 170 World Education Forum 159 World Trade Organization 60 Wu, S.W. 166 Xiao, C. 43 Xiao, J. 111 Xie, G. 43 Xu, Y.Z. 106 Xue, H.P. 167, 168

Ya’acob, A. 119 Yan, H. 79 Yang, Li Wei 66 Yang, S.K. 51 Yang, S.W. 165 Yeh, A. 151, 153 Yeung, Yiu Chung 66 Yoshida, M. 144–6 Yu, H. 127 Yu, W.M. 78 Yukl, Gary A. 126 Yunnan 111, 129 Zeng, K. 76, 82 Zhang, H. 105 Zhang, J. 121, 129 Zhang, Y.C. 98 Zhao, X.P. 79 Zhong, M. 54 Zhong, Q. 96, 105 Zhou, N. 89, 94 Ziguras, C. 121

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