BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR
INTERNATIONAL & COMPARATIVE EDUCATION
Theme & Sub-themes
Partnerships in education: collaboration, co-operation and co-optation
Partnerships and other forms of collaboration are viewed as essential to addressing global education challenges. Partnership is recognised as a stand-alone goal within the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Cross-national education programmes often require external management, accountancy and evaluation partners, and collaborations within and across the spheres of education research, policy and practice, and across disciplines, are increasingly the norm.
Still, at times, established systems clash with new, critical discourses. While local and international collaborations in education practice and research are encouraged, the locus of funding in higher-income countries, expectations for research outputs, the intensified international competition in Higher Education and problematic assumptions around where expertise and agency is located, among other things, can reproduce non-equitable partnerships. This can lead to skewed dynamics of financing and influence within the processes of production and application of knowledge. These issues are even more pertinent within the context of the Coronavirus pandemic which has highlighted global interconnectedness and challenged geopolitics of knowledge and expertise.
At 糖心传媒 2022, we aim to consider critically the changing relationships around how education is conceptualised, planned, implemented, provided, resisted, researched and communicated in various contexts. While recognising the potential value of collaboration, we intend to challenge the normative, aspirational pursuit of partnership. We are interested in how politics, power, priorities, culture and language are understood, recognised and navigated by different stakeholders in education initiatives at all levels of education systems, as well as the processes of learning, from anywhere in the world. We invite papers that reflect on past, present and future partnerships across a wide range of sub-themes to conceptualise joint ventures in comparative and international education more robustly.
Conference Sub-themes
Global-local (dis)connections in education partnerships
This sub-theme covers issues of policy diffusion and adoption/adaptation. This may include how global priorities and influences (including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development) play out in national and local contexts and how local cultures, interests, and agendas are incorporated 鈥� or not. Additionally, papers critical of global processes and case studies in which local actors reject, reconceptualise, or actively oppose global discourses and policies are welcome. This sub-theme also invites papers about the politics of educational partnerships between global and local actors, and examples of difficulties and potential resistance to partnerships at different levels of the system.
Theme Convenors
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Experiencing education partnerships
This sub-theme focuses on personal and collective experiences of teaching and learning across the education spectrum. From multi-academy charitable trusts in the UK, to the global 鈥楾each for All鈥� network, to the outsourcing of public schooling in Liberia, increasingly teaching and learning experiences result from the inputs of multiple stakeholders. The range of stakeholders and their inputs have become even more complex, diverse and important since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic which has marked an unprecedented turn to digital and blended/hybrid approaches to teaching and learning in all stages of education. However,as the number of parties who invest their time and resources in education increases, what is valued and measured in education appears to be contracting. While narrowly focused learning metrics demonstrate the scale of challenges and have helped to generate a powerful argument to focus the world鈥檚 attention on education, there is a risk that big data can distract us from the small stories that help us understand what is happening in classrooms and other learning spaces, and why. At worst, it can convince us that these are not worth engaging with. This sub-theme positively moves away from the notion of educators and learners as data-points and encourages research that explores and analyses education partnerships and practices as they are perceived, experienced, shaped and mediated by people on the ground as well as the contextual conditions 鈥� socio-cultural, economic, political聽 and so on 鈥� that are involved. This sub-theme especially welcomes contributions that are co-authored or co-conceptualised with educators/learners, and that adopt critical and/or creative conceptual and methodological lenses to better understand and communicate different educational experiences.
Theme Convenors
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Partnerships and Technology
This sub-theme welcomes papers which explore and critique the role of educational technology in supporting equitable and resilient partnerships in comparative and international education. What evidence exists of how technology shapes partnerships in education? What is the potential of digital and open education and how can organisations work together to ensure all people can access and benefit from educational technology? How do language and culture in education-technology partnerships influence how online educational resources are shaped and accessed? How might digital divides be equitably overcome in education? We particularly welcome papers which explore the tension in scaling education provision consistent with SDG4 and a growing global edtech encroachment on local educational autonomy and those that consider the role (and risks) of technology in facilitating equitable partnerships in a time of limited movement on global and local scales.
Theme Convenors
Partnerships and the financing of education
Finance is crucial for achieving global education goals. Financing education for development requires collaboration and partnership with various stakeholders who understand the context. But finance can be either a tool for fostering collaboration or a tool for control. It can cause power imbalances and provide opportunities for funders to exert undue influence and control over educational priorities.
This sub-theme focuses on the role of new and existing actors in supporting educational finance. It will explore funding models for education, especially in low and medium income contexts. In particular, this sub-theme raises questions such as: Can government provision alone lead to universal access and attainment in education? What are the priorities and perspectives of different actors (international organisations, foundations, private sector, etc.) in supporting education? How are these actors integrated within educational systems? At which levels do they operate? Which financial mechanisms are used? What challenges do they face? Are there complementarities in their approaches? Are new forms of partnerships emerging? Are there potential tensions?
This sub-theme also invites papers that address the financing gap in education, innovative financing approaches, and disparities/challenges in financing for the most marginalised.
Theme Convenors
Partnerships in conflict context
The field of education and conflict straddles two main themes: The provision of education in conflict or crisis situations and the role of education in fuelling conflict or building sustainable peace. Partnerships are often central to both. In this sub-theme we welcome papers that examine the complexities of both concerns, including聽papers that examine the complexities of initiating and implementing education in situations affected by violent conflict, displacement, and other types of emergencies and crises. Who steps in when an emergency occurs and why is action uneven across emergency contexts? Can partnerships help ensure rapid and high-quality responses in such situations? The sub-theme also invites papers that critically evaluate what constitutes an emergency, a conflict or a protracted crisis, and that examine issues for example of power, marginalization, and voice, or explore how initial partnership efforts can be made sustainable in the long term. Contributions are expected to engage with politics of education in conflict-affected and humanitarian settings that go beyond the narratives of access or enrolments to critique issues relating to how partnerships influence national identity, language of instruction, teaching of history as well as the intersections between inequalities, education and peace. In addition papers exploring theoretical frames for engaging in the topic that may extend understandings of peacebuilding and innovative research methods that specifically address violence, e.g. conflict sensitive research methods that are also co-constructed that place recognition, decolonising Education in Emergencies research and practice and representation at the centre.
Theme Convenors
Open theme
As always, 糖心传媒 welcomes contributions that cover comparative and international education, formal and non-formal learning at primary, secondary and tertiary level or adult/life-long education, across all global regions, and critiques around how these issues are researched. This strand is for papers that do not link to a named subtheme but have a clear resonance with the overarching focus of the conference.聽
Theme Convenors
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