LowResMBR

Malta Business Review
EDUCATION
The Global Search For Education:
Impact of Globalization on the North and South Divide
By C. M. Rubin
“The pressures in systems in the
North is to compete to ensure more
and more learners are succeeding in
acquiring higher order learning skills as
articulated in cross-national tests like
PISA, PIRLS and TIMSS"
The North-South or Rich-Poor Divide is the
socio-economic and political division that
exists between the wealthy developed
countries, known collectively as “the North,”
and the poorer developing countries, known
collectively as “the South.”
Brahm Fleisch is Professor of Education Policy
and Head of the Division of Educational
Leadership, Policy and Skills, The University
of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, who
believes that globalization is an opportunity to
learn from each other by exploring innovative
learning approaches bridging the North-South
divide. Fleisch’s work is featured in the new
book, Future Directions of Educational Change
(edited by Helen Janc Malone, Santiago Rincón-
Gallardo, and Kristin Kew; Routledge, 2018),
which brings together timely discussions on
social justice, professional capital, and systems
change from some of the leading global
scholars in the field of education.
“At least 250 million young people are failing to
learn the basics, including a large proportion
attending school.” — Brahm Fleisch
MBR: Brahm, please explain the inequality
that exists today between the Global South
and the Global North education systems?
How has globalization impacted this
situation?
BF: There are substantial differences in
the kinds of challenges currently faced by
education systems in the Global North and
South. The pressures in systems in the North
is to compete to ensure more and more
learners are succeeding in acquiring higher
order learning skills as articulated in crossnational
tests like PISA, PIRLS and TIMSS. At
the level of instructional reform, these systems
are finding ways to ensure that teachers are
engaged in ‘ambitious teaching’. In contrast,
low and lower middle income countries in the
Global South, having only recently achieved
universal school access, are confronted with
the problem that many children are in school
but not learning to read, write, and become
numerate. This is most clearly illustrated in
the recent UNESCO global monitoring report
that revealed that at least 250 million young
people are failing to learn the basics, including
a large proportion attending school.
The knowledge base in the
field of educational change
has largely been built on case
studies of ‘successful’ districts,
provinces or countries
MBR: What do you see as the key strategies/
drivers required to bring about positive
system change?
BF: The emerging evidence from the Global
South, as reflected in the experimental
research from India, Kenya, and South Africa,
is that combined and structured intervention
programs need to focus on early grade
learning, particularly in areas of literacy in
local languages and second language. These
initiatives are geared to change entrenched
instructional practices and thereby impact
positively on learning outcomes. In some cases,
at large-scale and otherwise, system-wide,
these interventions impact core elements
of instruction — they enhance teachers’
instructional knowledge and skills, upgrade the
educational materials available to learners and
change the typical learning tasks children do in
the classrooms.
“The emerging evidence from the Global South,
as reflected in the experimental research from
India, Kenya, and South Africa is that combined
and structured intervention programs need to
focus on early grade learning, particularly in
areas of literacy in local languages and second
language.” — Brahm Fleisch
MBR: What case studies would you point to
as examples of positive change?
BF: The chapter describes three sites in the
Global South that point to positive change.
This includes the work currently spearheaded
by Pratham, a large Indian not-for-profit
organisation, focused on high-quality, lowcost
and replicable interventions; the Kenyan
experience in the Primary Mathematics and
Reading Initiative (PRIMR) and national rollout
in Tusome in over 22,000 schools; and the
Gauteng Primary Language and Mathematics
Initiatives (GPLMS) and the Early Grade Reading
Study (EGRS) in South Africa. Although each
system context is making a unique contribution
to the field of educational change (for example,
the use of basic assessment instruments and
principle of ‘teaching at the right level’ in India),
they share in common a commitment to the
use of rigorous research methods including
experimental studies.
MBR: What are your recommendations for
the stakeholders involved?
BF: Within the field of educational change, the
focus has been on developed school systems
in North America and Europe, with growing
interest in ‘high performing’ systems in east
and South East Asia. The knowledge base in
the field of educational change has largely
been built on case studies of ‘successful’
districts, provinces or countries. The chapter
highlights the emergence of a new knowledge
base from the Global South as represented in
the experimental research on system-wide
improvement of early grade learning. Unlike
the methodological orientation in the field in
the Global North, the research from the South
is increasingly building on the accumulation
of findings on robust models using large-scale
randomised trials. This experimental research
tradition is pointing key stakeholders —
international donors/funders, policy makers
and system-managers, to what works in
resource-constrained contexts with limited
professional capital. MBR
All rights reserved - Copyright 2018
MBR
EDITOR’S
Note
Courtesy of CMRubinWorld
Profs Brahm Fleisch is currently a professor at
the Wits School of Education and head of the
Educational Leadership and Policy Studies center
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