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How we understand education quality is inextricably linked with perspectives on social justice. Questions of inclusion, relevance and democracy in education are increasingly contested, most especially in the global South. Improving the quality of education – particularly for the most disadvantaged – has become a topic of fundamental concern for education policy makers, practitioners and the international development community. The reality experienced by many learners continues to be one of inadequately prepared and poorly motivated teachers, struggling to deliver a rapidly changing curriculum without sufficient support and often using outmoded teaching methods in overcrowded or dilapidated classrooms. Education Quality and Social Justice in the Global South includes contributions from leading scholars in the field of education and development. The text draws upon state of the art evidence from the five-year EdQual research programme, which focuses upon raising achievement in low income countries, and demonstrates how systems of high quality universal education can be sustained. By exploring recent research initiatives to improve education quality, the importance of supporting local policy makers, educators and parents as agents of change – and students as active inquirers – is highlighted, and the challenge of taking successful initiatives to scale is explained. The book is divided into three main parts: Framing education quality Planning and policies for quality Implementing quality in schools. Education Quality and Social Justice in the Global South argues that implementing a high quality of education using theories of social justice can inform the understanding of inclusion, relevance and democracy in education. The book should be essential reading for both students and researchers within the fields of international and comparative education, along with educational policy, poverty and development studies.

This article investigates cross-national patterns of public and private higher education institution (HEI) foundings from 1960 to 2006. It argues that in addition to national demographic and economic factors, patterns of HEI foundings also reflect world-level models about how nations should structure their higher education systems. Findings document a rapid, recent rise in new private HEIs and point to supranational normative, mimetic, and coercive pressures that have encouraged nations to expand private higher education, including international development aid trends in peer nations, and linkages to intergovernmental organizations. I argue that while the public-sector HEI has been a long-standing and globally legitimated model for national development, private higher education has historically been associated with some world regions but not others. However, over the past two decades, supranational actors and ideas helped legitimate the private HEI as an acceptable model, spreading it even in regions that previously eschewed private higher education.

This article focuses on three countries with distinct policies toward motherhood and work: Germany, Sweden and the United States. We analyze the length of mothers' time out of paid work after childbirth and the short-term career consequences for mothers. In the United States, we identify a career punishment even for short timeout periods; long time-out periods increase the risk of a downward move and reduce the chances of an upward move. In Germany, long time-out periods destabilize the career and, the longer the leave, the greater the risk of either an upward or downward move. In Sweden, we find a negative effect of time out on upward moves. Hence, even in \"woman-friendly\" Sweden, women's career prospects are better if they return to paid work sooner rather than later.

Increasing rates of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and younger age at diagnosis pose a challenge to preschool intervention systems. In Sweden, most young autistic children receive intervention service in community-based preschool programs, but no tool is yet available to assess the quality of the preschool learning environment. This study adapted the Autism Program Environment Rating Scale Preschool/Elementary to Swedish community context (APERS-P-SE). Following translation and a multistep modification process, independent experts rated the content validity of the adaptation. Findings indicate high cross-cultural validity of the adapted APERS-P-SE. The cultural adaption process of the APERS-P-SE highlights similarities and differences between the American and Swedish preschool systems and their impact on early ASD intervention.

Increased emphasis on academics has led to play becoming a controversial and topical issue in the field of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). Although play has been extensively researched we still lack consensus on what play is and how play is actually implemented and used in ECEC classrooms. The present cross-cultural study aims at understanding how play is conceptualized and provided across eight different countries. The study investigates whether and how conceptualizations of play affect uses of play; whereas it also examines similarities and differences in conceptualizations and uses across countries. Results have revealed the existence of both universal and non-universal characteristics of play. Despite the existence of universal characteristics, however, variations in the extent to which they were mentioned across countries have been revealed. Differences were identified in terms of how early childhood educators act on their ideas about children’s play within early childhood programs. Various patterns of correlations between definitions and uses have been revealed. Some countries seem to be characterized by an ‘ethos of play,’ both in terms of how play is conceptualized and used, whereas others seem to struggle between offering a more child-initiated, play-based curriculum versus a more teacher-led approaches to instruction.

The use of asset indices in welfare analysis and poverty targeting is increasing, especially in cases in which data on expenditures are unavailable or hard to collect. We compare alternative approaches to welfare measurement. Our analysis shows that inferences about inequalities in education, health care use, fertility, and child mortality, as well as labor market outcomes, are quite robust to the economic status measure used. Different measures—most significantly per capita expenditures versus the class of asset indices—do not, however, yield identical household rankings. Two factors stand out in predicting the degree of congruence in rankings. First is the extent to which expenditures can be explained by observed household and community characteristics. Rankings are most similar in settings with small transitory shocks to expenditure or with little random measurement error in expenditure. Second is the extent to which expenditures are dominated by individually consumed goods, such as food. Asset indices are typically derived from indicators of goods that are effectively public at the household level, while expenditures are often dominated by food, an almost exclusively private good. In settings in which individually consumed goods are the main component of expenditures, asset indices and per capita consumption yield the least similar results.

Existing research generally confirms a countercyclical education enrollment, whereby youths seek shelter in the educational system to avoid hardships in the labor market: the “discouraged worker” thesis. Alternatively, the “encouraged worker” thesis predicts that economic downturns steer individuals away from education because of higher opportunity costs. This study provides a formal test of these opposing theories using data from the United States compared with similar sources from the United Kingdom, Germany, and Sweden. I investigate whether macroeconomic stimuli—including recessions and youth unemployment fluctuations—matter for enrollment decisions. Analyses rely on 10 years of detailed individual-level panel data, consisting of birth cohorts across several decades. Across data sources, results show enrollment persistence in secondary education is stronger in response to economic downturns. These patterns differ sharply for tertiary-enrolled students and those who recently left higher education. Surprisingly, U.S. youths display an increased hazard of school leaving and a decreased hazard of educational reenrollment in response to adverse conditions. In contrast, European youths tend to make enrollment decisions supportive of discouraged-worker mechanisms or insensitivity to adverse conditions. The U.S.-specific encouraged-worker mechanism might be explained by the relative importance of market forces in one’s early career and the high costs of university attendance, which induces risk aversion with regard to educational investment. The discussion addresses the consequences for educational inequality.

Pedagogical documentation is practised in early childhood centres all over the world as a means to gauge the learning and development of children. From the point of view of teachers, however, documentation must compete with numerous other tasks. This paper explores the strategies teachers employ in order to integrate documentation into their working day. It takes a comparative approach, analysing documentation strategies in two countries. Accordingly, qualitative interviews were conducted with 24 teachers from early childhood centres in Germany and New Zealand, in which they were asked about their documentation practices. The results show that the teachers have developed strategies primarily in order to gain time for documentation and to structure it in such a way that they can deal with the extra burdens it creates. The results highlight the profound influence of organisational framework conditions on the content of work in early childhood centres.

For the first time, researchers, policymakers and practitioners across the world will have access to a comprehensive mapping of research evidence and policy strategies about education and poverty in affluent countries. Although there is widespread agreement that poverty and poor educational outcomes are related, there are competing explanations as to why that should be the case. This is a major problem for practitioners, policy makers and researchers who are looking for pointers to action, or straightforward ways of understanding an issue that troubles education systems across the world. This unique book brings scholarship and analysis from some of the most influential researchers and writers on education and poverty within one text. The authors provide a synthesising framework that will help researchers and policy makers to examine future educational policy in a holistic and comprehensive fashion. Carlo Raffo is a Reader in Education at the University of Manchester. Alan Dyson is Professor of Education in the University of Manchester. Helen Gunter is Professor of Educational Policy, Leadership and Management in the School of Education at the University of Manchester. Dave Hall is a Senior Lecturer in Education at the School of Education, University of Manchester. Lisa Jones is a Research Assistant at the University of Manchester and is currently studying for her Ph.D. Afroditi Kalambouka is a Research Associate at the University of Manchester. Education and Poverty in Affluent Countries is...a brilliant and ground-breaking study of great potential value for politicians, policy-makers, researchers and community activists. It inaugurates a new paradigm for facing problems in the field and it encourages all those working in the field to be sustained by 'complex hope' for the possibility of change.\"-- Journal of Educational Policy \"What the authors achieve in this volume is no small feat given the magnitude of the topic they address and the valuable organising synthesis given to their discussion in education and poverty.\"-- British Journal of Educational Studies \"How to sort through the competing commitments and explanations, how to judge the success of policies and practices, and how we maintain a consistently critical ethical and political stance—all of this needs to be taken very seriously. Education and Poverty in Affluent Countries provides a platform from which we can go further in dealing more reflectively with such issues\"— Education Review Section 1: Education and Poverty: A Mapping Framework 1. Education and Poverty in Affluent Countries: An Introduction to the Book and the Mapping Framework Carlo Raffo, Alan Dyson, Helen Gunter, Dave Hall, Lisa Jones and Afroditi Kalambouka 2. The Mapping Framework, Research Literature and Policy Implications within a Functionalist Perspective Carlo Raffo, Alan Dyson, Helen Gunter, Dave Hall, Lisa Jones and Afroditi Kalambouka 3. The Mapping Framework, Research Literature and Policy Implications within a Socially Critical Perspective Carlo Raffo, Alan Dyson, Helen Gunter, Dave Hall, Lisa Jones and Afroditi Kalambouka Section 2: International Studies on Education and Poverty 4. Neoliberal Urban Education Policy: Chicago, A Paradigmatic Case of the Production of Inequality, and Racial Exclusion Pauline Lipman 5. Inclusive School Leadership Strategies in Disadvantaged Schools Based on Student and Community Voice: Implications for Australian Educational Policy John Smyth 6. Effectiveness and Disadvantage in Education: Can a Focus on Effectiveness Aid Equity in Education? Daniel Muijs 7. High Hopes in a Changing World: Social Disadvantage, Educational Expectations, and Occupational Attainment in Three British Cohort Studies Ingrid Schoon 8. Area-Based Initiatives in English Education: What Place for Place and Space? Ruth Lupton 9. A Critical Pedagogy of Global Place: Regeneration in and as Action Pat Thomson 10. Leaving School and Moving On: Poverty, Urban Youth and Learning Identities Meg Maguire 11. The Challenges of Poverty and Urban Education in Canada: Lessons from Two School Boards Jane Gaskell and Ben Levin Section 3: An Examination of Educational Policy 12. Policy and the Policy Process Helen Gunter, Carlo Raffo, Dave Hall Alan Dyson, Lisa Jones and Afroditi Kalambouka 13. Poverty and Educational Policy Initiatives: A Review Carlo Raffo, Alan Dyson, Helen Gunter, Dave Hall, Lisa Jones and Afroditi Kalambouka 14. What is to be Done? Implications for Policy Makers Alan Dyson, Helen Gunter, Dave Hall, Carlo Raffo, Lisa Jones and Afroditi Kalambouka