Comparative Education Bulletin - Faculty of Education - The ...

Goals (MDGs) and UNESCO’s Education For All (EFA) initiatives.
China’s recent enhancement of its relationships with African states, in
what is portrayed as a “South-South” cooperation and development
endeavour, has led to renewed research interest in China-Africa
relations. In his paper, Bjorn Nordtveit examines the recent debates
on China’s development aid to Africa, using education as a case
study, from different perspectives: first, that direct aid from China to
Africa might be seen as building local capacity; second, that China’
s development path could be used as a reference by some African
countries which would seek to imitate or learn from China; and
third, that China’s development aid to Africa could be understood as
a means to gain access to resources (most particularly to oil) and to
markets. Nordtveit looks at the modalities of China’s intervention in
Africa, considering whether China has proposed a counter model to
the Western-inspired development vision for Africa – the “Washington
Consensus” – and to the “Santiago Consensus”. He considers whether
there really is a distinctive Chinese model for development, the socalled
“Beijing Consensus”.
Wu Siu-Wai and Lai Pak-Sang pick up on the thread of globalization
that has run through most of these papers and present “comparative
perspectives of student teachers in Hong Kong and Zhuhai on
globalization and education”. Their qualitative study examines how
future teachers in Hong Kong and Zhuhai perceive the consequences
of globalization in their respective local contexts. Through informal
and non-structured interviews, they set out the commonalities and
differences in the perspectives of student teachers in the two sites on
the effects of globalization on individual learning, on education, on the
local society and on the national culture of student teachers.
Anson Chau Chun Kwok follows with his examination of “the
development and challenges of school-based management (SBM)
in Hong Kong”. The development of SBM reflects a worldwide
trend in the reform of school governance. However, it faced strong
resistance when introduced in Hong Kong. Chau’s paper investigates
the development of SBM in Hong Kong within the framework of
Hong Kong’s unique governance structure of aided schools. Chau
also highlights why SBM is a controversial reform measure and
assesses its future challenges to the school governance structure in
Hong Kong. While perhaps not explicitly comparative, his paper both
contextualizes the introduction of SBM in Hong Kong within the global
literature and policy shifts in this domain, and invites comparison
with the introduction of SBM in other educational jurisdictions. He
suggests that SBM reform stems from the value placed in democratic
participation and in accountability, but concludes that its effects on the
politics within and outside the school should not be underestimated.
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