Local Meanings, Global Schooling: Anthropology and World Culture Theory [Paperback]

Is there one global culture of schooling, or many national and local cultures? Do educational reforms take school systems on diverging or parallel paths? These case studies from five continents use ethnography and history to challenge the sweeping claims of sociology's world culture theory (neo-institutionalism). They demonstrate how national ministries of education and local schools re-invent every reform. Yet the cases also show that teachers and local reformers operate 'within and against' global models. Anthropologists need to recognize the global presence in local schooling as well as local transformation of global models. This is a collection that scholars in the field of the anthropology of education will not want to be without.Introduction: A world Culture of Schooling?; K.M.Anderson-Levitt PART I: MINISTRIES AND SCHOOLS TRANSFORM 'Thai Wisdom' and GloCalization: Negotiating the Global and the Local in Thailand's National Education Reform; S.Jungk & B.Kajornsin Transformations in South African Education: Policies and Practices from Ministry to Classroom D.Brook Napier & J.D.Napier Teaching by the Book in Guinea; K.M.Anderson-Levitt & B.Bayero Diallo PART II: TEACHERS, STUDENTS AND PARENTS RESPOND The Capacity for Local Control: Developing Alternative Approaches to Instruction in the United States; T.Hatch Resistance to the Communicative Method of Language Instruction Within a Progressive Chinese University; H.Ouyang World-Cultural and Anthropological Interpretations of 'Choice Programming' in Tanzanian Education; A.Stambach The Politics of Identity and the Marketization of Schools: How Local Meanings Mediate Global Struggles; L.Rosen PART III: OUTSIDE OR BEYOND A GLOBAL CULTURE World Culture or Transnational Project? Competing Educational Projects in Brazil; L.Bartlett Europeanization and Education in France: Supranational Policies and Regional Identities; D.Reed-Danahay Transforming the Culture of Scientific Education in Israel; K.Segal-Levit Colc)