Research Projects
This page contains descriptions of a sample of the research projects in which I have been involved.
2023-2024 |
Tri-level analysis of the action-oriented data-based decision-making strategy of the Hawaii Department of EducationResearch team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (University of Hawaii) & Siobhan Ng (University of Hawaii)
Funder: Hawaii Department of Education Description: Through this project, we will are evaluating the action-oriented data-based decision-making strategy of the Hawaii Department of Education. This strategy has sought to promote the use of data in decision-making at and across each level of the HIDOE--that is, at the state, complex area, and school levels. The evaluation will trace the implementation of the strategy, will seek to understand how data (particularly related to student achievement) is being used by key stakeholders, and will identify promising practices related to data use at the level of complex areas and schools. This evaluation is carried out within the context of the HIDOE partnership with the Hawaiʻi Education Research Network. |
2023 |
Comparative analysis of country plans to achieve Education for Sustainable DevelopmentResearch team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (University of Hawaii) & Dewi Setiani (Independent researcher)
Funder: UNESCO Description: Identify key country strategies related, e.g., to education policy, curriculum, teacher training, etc. intended to help achieve global targets related to Education for Sustainable Development. Based on interviews, survey, and document review of plans for ~55 countries. |
2023 |
Systematic review of literature on privatization trends in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2013-2023Research team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (University of Hawaii), Mauro Moschetti (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Xenia Gavalda (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Núria Torras Negredo (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Lorraine Kouao (University of Hawaii), and Carl Moog (University of Hawaii)
Funder: Education International Description: Document and explain recent trends in—and resistance to—privatization of education in Latin America and the Caribbean during 2013-2023. |
2022-2023 |
Systematic review of literature on education policy and the State in Latin America
Research team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (University of Hawaii), Mauro Moschetti (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Claudia Díaz-Ríos, Vanessa Ghersi Cordano (University of Hawaii), Patricia Grillet (University of Hawaii), Tulika Mehra (Soka University), and Naomi Caywood (University of Hawaii)
Description: Although it is common for scholars to speak of “the State,” this project hypothesizes that it is uncommon for scholars to be clear about what it meant by this term. This project thus seeks to (a) characterize the extent to which literature on education policy in Latin America engages with State theory and, where it does so, (b) depict the various approaches to State theory that are most common, in addition to offering (c) reflections on the strengthens and weaknesses of the different approaches. |
2022-2023 |
COVID-19, privatization and non-state actors in Paraguay and ColombiaResearch team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (University of Hawaii), Mauro Moschetti (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Edgar Quilabert-Argudo (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Alejandro Caravaca (Autonomous University of Barcelona), and Patricia Grillet (University of Hawaii)
Funder: Education International Description: Carry out two case studies—one in Paraguay and one in Colombia. The focus of each is to understand how and why privatization of education has advanced in each country in recent years. Attention is given to the nature and conditions of each education system, as well to recent contextual pressures such as COVID-19. |
2022-2025 |
Crisis Management for Disaster Risk Reduction in Education Systems: Learning from the Elaboration and Integration of Technology-Focused Strategies in El Salvador, Honduras, and ColombiaResearch team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (University of Hawaii), Manfred Steger (University of Hawaii), Mauro Moschetti (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Nancy Kendall (University of Wisconsin, Madison), David DeMatthews (University of Texas, Austin), Maria Teresa Cruz (Universidad Centroamericana), Irene Flores (Universidad Centroamericana), Ricardo Morales-Ulloa (Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, Francisco Morazán), Germán Moncada (Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, Francisco Morazán), Leticia Paz (Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, Francisco Morazán), Jorge Baxter (Universidad de los Andes), Maria Jose Bermeo Valencia (Universidad de los Andes), and Patricia Grillet (University of Hawaii)
Funder: Dubai Cares Description: What: This three-year project seeks produce comparative lessons and actionable resources related to how decentralized education systems can achieve disaster risk reduction through technologically-focused crisis management strategies. These resources will be developed by learning from the experiences of El Salvador, Honduras, and Colombia—each of which, first, represents a different-yet-common form of educational decentralization and, second, has made distance learning technologies the centerpiece of their educational response to the COVID-19 crisis. Why: Independently, the themes at the heart of this research—i.e., crisis management, disaster risk reduction, educational decentralization, and technology incorporation—have received substantive attention. However, both academic and practitioner-oriented literature fail to make connections across them. Given that most, if not all, education systems around the world depend on some level of decentralization (whether administrative, financial, etc.), it is essential, first, that scholars and key stakeholders understand how decentralized education systems are responding to the current crisis and, second, that lessons be learned that can inform how these systems can prepare for future crises—both natural and man-made. How: This project builds on previous research conducted by team members in each of the three study countries related to educational decentralization and administration. In so doing, it draws on approaches grounded in policy sociology, systems thinking, and technology integration to reveal how crisis management responses have been formulated and enacted at and across each level of the education system—and with what consequences for families, schools, and communities. |
2021 |
Singapore’s educational export strategies |
Research team: Hang Le (University of Maryland) and D. Brent Edwards Jr. (University of Hawaii)
Funder: Ministry of Education, Japan Description: Since the 1990s, Singapore has firmly established its reputation in the global education policy space as one of the best education systems in the world. However, existing policy transfer literature on Singapore has been mainly interested in Singapore as a decontextualised, ahistorical case, rather than as a unique player in the global education policy sphere. Analysis of how Singapore’s educational policies and lessons have been exported to other countries tends to focus on the mediating roles of international assessments and global policy actors like the OECD or McKinsey consultants. What has been much less clear is Singapore’s own proactive branding and education export strategies. Guided by the Cultural Political Economy framework, this research project drew attention to how an enabling global education policy context with an insatiable appetite for fast policy lessons aligned with Singapore’s own initiatives to cultivate and export its brand of educational success. |
2020 |
Comparative analysis of education reform in Central America |
Research team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (University of Hawaii)
Funder: Universidad Centroamericana Description: Comparative analysis of four case studies of education reform in Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua) during 1990-2010. Each case study focused on a policy that was intended to improve education quality. The case studies were carried out by a network of researchers from Central America in the context of a larger project that sought to understand the dynamics of policymaking in the region. As with the larger project, the comparative analysis was guided by a framework rooted in international political economy. This approach was employed in order to highlight the fact that the definition of education quality is flexible and tends to respond to the characteristics of the dominant paradigm of development at a given point in time. |
2019-2020 |
The influence of the World Bank on policy formation and policy implementation: A systematic review of the literature |
Research team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (University of Hawaii), Alejandro Caravaca (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Annie Rappeport (University of Maryland), and Vanessa Sperduti (Western University)
Funder: UNESCO Description: While much literature has been produced about the World Bank, there has not been a systematic discussion of what is known about how the World Bank influences policy formation and policy implementation—and how it uses that influence to advance its agenda related to private education. This research project clarified, based on a systematic review of 77 publications, what is known about the World Bank in these areas. The project, first, highlighted 11 kinds of pathways through which the World Bank influences policymaking. Namely, these pathways are: Loans, conditionalities, pilot projects, technical assistance, loan-related reports and studies, research, general publications, certification, coordination of foreign aid, international events, and national actor recruitment and socialization. Second, the project offered a discussion of those themes that emerged organically for why the implementation of World Bank-supported policies often faces serious obstacles in practice. Third, the project focused specifically on the issue of private education. Here, the kinds of private education that have been advanced over time by the World Bank are clarified. Finally, the project suggested areas where the literature on the World Bank can be improved. For example, in only about half of all retained studies do authors clearly discuss their theoretical orientation (54% of studies) or their methodological strategies (44%) for understanding the work of the World Bank. |
2019 |
Decentralization of education in El Salvador: Four decades of experiences and challenges |
Research team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (University of Hawaii) and Mauricio Erazo (Universidad Centroamericana)
Funder: USAID Description: The purpose of this project was to characterize and evaluate the different types of decentralization that have been implemented in the Salvadoran education system since the 1980s. The objectives were: (a) to offer a vision of how decentralization should have worked, (b) to explain the ways in which decentralization has worked (and has not worked) in practice, and (c) to share lessons that can inform future efforts related to decentralization. Four types of decentralization were analyzed: (i) regionalization and nuclearization, (ii) community-based management, (iii) departmentalization, and (iv) integrated systems (school clusters). |
2019 |
Educational privatization in the Dominican Republic |
Research team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (University of Hawaii), Mauro Moschetti (Autonomous University of Barcelona), and Alejandro Caravaca (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
Funder: Education International Description: This project drew on the literature on network governance and new philanthropy to characterize and explain the increased involvement of non-State actors in education policymaking in the Dominican Republic. The study revealed, first, how network governance has intensified since 2010 through hybrid public-private spaces of agenda setting, second, how these hybrid spaces gave way to the emergence of new philanthropy, which engages directly with the State as part of its efforts to influence policymaking, and, third, that new philanthropy is had evolved to include, as well, the generation of profits, both within and beyond the Dominican Republic, through the creation of an affiliated profit-seeking consulting entity. The project concluded by arguing that future studies should bring the concepts of network governance and new philanthropy into conversation with theoretical approaches that emphasize the underlying political-economic structures within which non-State actors operate. |
2019 |
Assessing the Sustainable Development Goals: A review of research on SDG 4.7 (Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship Education) |
Research team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (University of Hawaii), Mina Chiba (Waseda University), Manca Sustarsic (University of Hawaii), Mark McCormick (University of Hawaii), and Melissa Goo (University of Hawaii)
Funder: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Description: This project is was a systematic review of literature (56 studies) related to Sustainable Development Goal 4.7. The goal of the project was to contribute to the discussion around strategies for working towards and monitoring SDG4.7 at the institutional level. Within this overarching focus, the review of the literature was designed to identify studies that have looked at both student learning and teacher education related to SDG4.7. This twin focus stemmed from the recognition that achieving the SDGs would be particularly difficult if policymakers are not attentive to both sides of the learning equation—that is, first, to the ways that teachers learn to teach about issues related to SDG4.7 and, then, the ways that students acquire this knowledge and are assessed. The five findings of this project correspond to the five areas of emphasis embedded in the language of SDG4.7, namely, education for (a) sustainable development, (b) human rights, (c) gender equality, (d) promoting of a culture of peace and non-violence, and (e) appreciation of cultural diversity. In accordance with the purpose of this review, the synthesis for each area of emphasis digs into the details of the educational interventions, monitoring and evaluation strategies, and results that are documented in the publications analyzed. Thus, this review can be useful for informing educational or pedagogical approaches related to SDG4.7, as well as for designing monitoring and evaluation tools for the SDGs. |
2018 |
The privatization of education in Honduras, 1990-2018 |
Research team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (University of Hawaii), Mauro Moschetti (Autonomous University of Barcelona), and Alejandro Caravaca (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
Funder: Education International Description: This project sought to answer the following question: In what ways, for what reasons, and with what effects have domestic and international private actors and privatization trends influenced education policy and the education sector in Honduras? Answering this question necessitated that we, first, grasped the context of the education sector in Honduras and, second, that we then identified and described the processes and practices through which a range of private (i.e. non-State) actors have exercised and extended their influence in recent years (with an emphasis on the post-coup period since 2009). In addition, this project explicitly placed contemporary sector dynamics into historical perspective. It did so by viewing both the historical foundations and contemporary functioning of the education sector in relation to literature on State theory. Ultimately, this project showed that, in the context of globalization, it is not possible to understand either the privatization of policymaking or the privatization of educational provision without first understanding the forces which shaped the foundation of the modern State and the associated practices which have been engrained and which shape the behavior of the State apparatus in relation to its responsibilities (such as the provision of education). |
2017-2018 |
Mobility theory and private tutoring in Cambodia: The role, nature, and extent of supplemental classes in student success |
Research team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (University of Hawaii), Hang Le (University of Maryland), and Manca Sustarsic (University of Hawaii)
Description: Along with the dramatic expansion of private tutoring around the world, a significant body of literature has been produced to understand this phenomenon. While many studies consider the issue of geographic location, the spatial dimension tends not to be a central focus of private tutoring studies. In contrast, this project applied mobility theory to research from Cambodia (student and parent interviews from urban, rural, and remote communities), where private tutoring is essential to student success. It did so in order to place private tutoring provision into a broader perspective that includes but moves beyond the economic dimensions of supply and demand and the sociological dimensions of economic, cultural, and social capital to include consideration of how private tutoring provision is constrained by a multidimensional spatial field of possibilities and how private tutoring participation is enabled by one’s position and abilities in relation to that field. The project argued for increased attention to ‘spatial capital’ in studies of private tutoring and education generally. |
2017 |
Low-fee private schools for early childhood care and education in the Zambia |
Research team: Taeko Okitsu (Otsuma Women’s University), D. Brent Edwards Jr. (University of Hawaii), and Peggy Mwanza (University of Zambia)
Description: This study investigated the emergence and supply-demand dynamics of a market for low-fee private schools (LFPS) at the level of early childhood care and education (ECCE) in a slum of Lusaka, Zambia. Based on data collection over 1.5 years, the study revealed that, despite a government policy to support ECCE, over 90% of ECCE centers are private; that school operators tend to be former teachers, businessmen/women, and religious leaders; and that LFPSs charge, on average, 2.5 times as much as government ECCE centers for tuition, not including additional indirect costs. The project further showed that teachers in LFPSs are caught in the middle, making less than the average income earned by others in the surrounding slum, and are unable to afford LFPS fees themselves. Importantly, the project highlighted that lower income quintiles spend a greater percentage of their income on ECCE, and that a majority of families in the study must make tradeoffs between ECCE, food, housing, and other basic expenditures in order to afford private ECCE, which is a necessity given the inadequate supply of government ECCE centers. In addition to addressing school strategies for keeping costs down, this study reported on parental decision-making when it comes to school selection. Finally, beyond a straight market analysis of LFPSs at the ECCE level in Zambia, this project analyzed how this market fits into the dialectical nature of local and global contexts. That is, it drew attention to the workings of the Zambian state and its precarious position in the global capitalist economy. |
2015-2016 |
Bibliographic ethnography of knowledge mobilization related to charter schools in Colombia (Colegios en Concesión) |
Research team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (Drexel University), Jeaná Morrison (Drexel University), and Stephanie Hall (University of Maryland)
Funder: Drexel University Description: The project addressed the production and global dissemination of ‘policy relevant knowledge’. It not only unpacked the methodological assumptions of a particular type of knowledge production—known as impact evaluations—but also analysed the issue of knowledge mobilisation within the political economy of the global education policy field. Having a critical understanding of impact evaluations is crucial because they are widely regarded as the most valid informational basis from which to make policy decisions. The importance of grasping the methodological limitations and political-economic dynamics that afflict knowledge production and mobilisation was demonstrated through the case of Colombia’s well-known charter school programme. By employing a strategy that has been labelled bibliographic ethnography, this project not only took a critical look at the knowledge base that had been produced on this programme but also mapped the way that evaluations of this charter school program, despite their limitations, had been cited and invoked in academic and organisational publications to project this program internationally. Lastly, this research offered a theoretically-informed discussion of how one should understand the trajectory of impact evaluations (and other knowledge products) as they cross multiple personal, organisational, political, and discursive contexts. |
2015-2016 |
New trends in the Philippines education system
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Research team: Antoni Verger (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Xavier Bonal (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Andreu Termes (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Lovie Moneva (University of the Philippines), D. Brent Edwards Jr. (Drexel University)
Funder: Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation & Drexel University Description: Within the context of Manila, this project focused on the vouchers (specifically the ESC or "Education Service Contracting" vouchers) that were offered by the Filipino Department of Education to students in grades 7-10 through the policy of "Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education". More specifically, the purpose was to understand the policy's implementation and the market (i.e., supply- and demand-side) dynamics that the voucher engendered in the education sector. |
2014-2016 |
The World Bank and private provision of education in Asia, Africa and the Middle East |
Research team: Karen Mundy (University of Toronto), D. Brent Edwards Jr. (Drexel University), Momina Afridi (University of Toronto), Carly Manion (University of Toronto), Robyn Read (University of Toronto), Francine Menashy (University of Massachusetts, Boston)
Funder: Privatisation in Education Research Initiative Description: This project was structured to produce six country case studies in India, Ethiopia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines and Indonesia. I was responsible for the last of these. The focus of this project was the World Bank’s policies and practices as they relate to private provision of K-12 education, with particular emphasis being placed on the role of the International Finance Corporation (the World Bank’s private sector arm) and its support for private education provision within its lending programs. For each case study, the team looked at the World Bank from the country level upwards, using a backward-mapping approach. Overall, each case study examined the World Bank’s formal policy framework for lending in each country, its policy dialogue and technical assistance activities, and its lending programs. Using policy-tracing methodologies, the team explored how the World Bank’s activities have influenced government policies and practices. |
2014-2015 |
UNESCO in the 2000s: EFA leadership, the Global Monitoring Report, and organizational legitimacy |
Research team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (Drexel University); Yuto Kitamura (The University of Tokyo), Taeko Okitsu (Waseda University), Romina da Costa (University of Maryland)
Funder: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Description: This study examined the internal reforms and external actions of UNESCO around Education for All (EFA) leadership and the development and production of the EFA Global Monitoring Report in the 2000s, a time during which UNESCO attempted to reestablish itself as the preeminent institution in the global governance of education. Data collection was based on archival work and on interviews with development professionals from a range of multilateral institutions. A primary theoretical contribution of this project is the analytic framework that it developed—rooted in scholarship on organizational legitimacy—in order to be able to assess changes to the social standing of international organizations in the global education policy field. |
2014-2015 |
Social justice leadership and community engagement in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico |
Research team: David DeMatthews (University of Texas, El Paso) and D. Brent Edwards Jr. (Drexel University)
Funder: Drexel University Description: Based on research in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, this project argued that the globally popular reform of school-based management (SBM) suffers from several shortcomings and is a partial, extractive, and technocratic means of engendering parental and community participation. This project demonstrated that it is necessary to move beyond SBM if community participation is to be more than a technocratic reform focused on education to contribute as well to community empowerment. More specifically, the project emphasized, first, the need to combine parental involvement with adult education, community organising, and social justice leadership (SJL). Second, the project argued that the last of these (i.e. SJL) is crucial to enabling the first three. Third, this project suggested that a combination of these four things—SJL, parental involvement, adult education, community organising—can contribute to the foundations of community empowerment. |
2011-2015 |
Staying in school: A longitudinal mixed methods study of transition, drop out, and retention – Primary to upper secondary school in Cambodia |
Research team: Yuto, Kitamura (The University of Tokyo), D. Brent Edwards Jr. (Drexel University); James Williams (The George Washington University), Sitha Chhinh (Royal University of Phnom Penh), and Thomas Zimmerman (Kassel University)
Funder: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Description: This was a four year (2011-2015), longitudinal, mixed methods study of student drop out during the transition from primary to secondary school in Cambodia. Through quantitative (multivariate regression) and qualitative (narrative) research methods, the research team examined the supply-side and demand-side factors that affected the transition of students from the primary level to lower and upper secondary school. |
2013-2014 |
Public-private partnerships in Colombian educational governance |
Research team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (The University of Tokyo)
Funder: Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam Description: This study investigated the evolution and operation of charter schools in Bogotá through the Concession Schools Program, in addition to assessing the program’s implementation through a realist evaluation of a sub-set of participating schools. |
2012-2013 |
The development of global education policy: A case study of the origins and evolution of El Salvador’s EDUCO program |
Research team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (University of Maryland)
Funder: Fulbright Research Grant, US Department of State Description: This research focused on the development of the Education with Community Participation (EDUCO) Program in El Salvador. EDUCO began in El Salvador in early 1991, near the end of the twelve-year civil war, and would go on to become a highly emulated education policy during the late 1990s and 2000s. The program was a form of community-level decentralization with its logic based in market dynamics. Advocates of the program emphasized that placing a council of local parents in charge of both school management and the hiring and firing of teachers would optimize the accountability, efficiency, and effectiveness of the education system by placing the “principal” (ie, parents) closer to the “agent” (ie, the teacher). For this research, the I relied on a mix of qualitative methods in order to trace the emergence and evolution of the program, demonstrating the dynamics among key actors from multiple levels (ie, global, national, local). The central thrust of this study explains, using frameworks from international political economy, how it is that this education program became embedded in the Salvadoran context and then not only spread to other countries but became a global exemplar for education reform. I conducted 82 interviews and relied on the archives of numerous relevant organizations, such as the World Bank, USAID, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Academy for Educational Development and various Salvadoran NGOs and governmental ministries. |
2012-2013 |
The contestation of neoliberal education reform by a progressive community in El Salvador |
Research team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (University of Maryland)
Funder: Center for Latin American Studies, University of Maryland, College Park Description: This research explored how progressive communities in El Salvador—traditionally linked with the revolutionary forces of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) during the 1980-1992 civil war—have contested the implementation of the neoliberal education management decentralization program known as EDUCO (“Education with Community Participation”). Despite the significant attention that the EDUCO program has received, previous research did not investigate how FMLN communities frequently resisted its adoption and struggled to mitigate its effects since the 1990s. Such communities saw EDUCO as an attempt to co-opt and partially privatize the (politically-charged and critical) “popular education” schools they developed during the 1980s, when rural communities were cut off from government services. |
2012 |
Education policymaking in the context of globalization: A three-case comparison from El Salvador |
Research team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (University of Maryland), Julián Antonio Victoria Libreros (Universidad Centroamericana), and Pauline Martin (Universidad Centroamericana)
Funder: Fulbright Description: This project analyzed how international trends and changing structural limitations intersect with political, institutional, and technical aspects of education policy. The purpose was to better understand how these issues variously combine to encourage or impede policy implementation. The research for this study focused on three cases of education policy from El Salvador during the period 1990–2005. These policies related to the Education with Community Participation (EDUCO) program, gender equality in education, and the teaching of values. Our findings show that it is not only actors, ideas, and constraints from the international realm that impact national-level political and institutional dynamics, but rather also that national-level political preferences and other local-level constraints can facilitate or impede the selection and implementation of a policy’s technical elements. Our case studies provide multiple examples of how these elements combine, and with various consequences for implementation. |
2012 |
Evaluation of the Civil Society Education Fund in Cambodia |
Research team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (University of Maryland)
Funder: Global Campaign for Education Description: For this project, I conducted a case study of the impact of the Civil Society Education Fund (CSEF) in Cambodia using a systems thinking approach. The CSEF is overseen at the international level by the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), a trans-national network of civil society organizations that advocate for access to and the quality of education in developing countries. For the evaluation, I researched effect of the CSEF on the core activities of the national coalition of education-related non-governmental organizations in Cambodia during the period 2009-2012. This country case study is one of seven coordinated by the Department of Sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona for the GCE. |
2011-2012 |
European bilateral aid agencies and the creation of the World Bank’s Education Strategy 2020: Unpacking a participatory process |
Co-researchers: Antoni Verger, Autonomous University of Barcelona; D. Brent Edwards Jr., Drexel University; Hulya Kosar-Altinyelken, University of Amsterdam
Funder: Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam Description: This research focused on the global process of consultation orchestrated by the World Bank during 2010, through which it gathered feedback from a range of national and international stakeholders. For this project, we examined on those factors that facilitated and constrained the ability of three European Bilateral Aid Agencies (from England, Germany, and the Netherlands) to influence that process. |
2011 |
Documenting and periodizing trends of education decentralization in the United States and developing countries: a systematic review of literature |
Research team: D. Brent Edwards Jr. (University of Maryland)
Funder: Rotary International Description: This project filled a gap in the writing on the decentralization of educational governance by periodizing and comparing trends that have fallen under this label in both the United States and developing countries in the post-WWII period (1945-present). The findings were based on a review of 127 decentralization-related studies from seven leading, peer-reviewed journals in comparative and international education, in addition to the Journal of Education Policy, Journal of Educational Administration, and Harvard Education Review. The analysis was further informed by works that address larger political and economic shifts. One key finding was that the application of community-level decentralization in developing countries has not been as widespread as global rhetoric during the 1990s and 2000s would imply. A second key finding was that there has been a relatively recent shift away from decentralization towards other forms of accountability-based reforms in both the United States and developing countries. |