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This paper is concerned with processes of international enquiry. It focuses upon the relationship between a research problem and access to conduct research in a country. It uses data from an ethnographic study of primary education in a Northern Indian District. Conceptually drawing upon the insider-outsider debate within the sociology of knowledge, the paper raises issues about the relationship between the research problem, accessing knowledge and being an outsider to a research setting. It considers problems facing a particular form of outsider - a foreigner. The paper maintains that when researchers who are outsiders embark on designing research in non-western international educational settings, then questions considering the relationship between the research problem, access strategies and the culture of the research setting are vital. Grappling with such questions allows for the development and promotion of new forms of partnership, alongside a deeper understanding of culture and context, when developing comparative and international research policy agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the Cuban education system, which is well known for its focus on inclusion and equality of opportunity, but also for its focus on political and ideological conformity. The economic crisis in Cuba has led to an educational crisis as well, both in terms of teacher shortages and a decrease in quality and in political/ideological commitment. In 2001 a comprehensive transformation of the education system in Cuba was introduced. This transformation followed in the wake of 'the battle of ideas', a campaign introduced to mobilize the youth for the defence of the revolution. The article critically examines the ideas and ideology behind the transformation policy and discusses the problem of ideological exclusion, despite the inclusiveness of the system (free education). Education in Cuba has not received a cent from the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund since the revolution, but is still reputed to have one of the best school systems (if not the best) in the developing world. The article discusses this claim (what is meant by best?) and examines the lessons to be learnt from the Cuban educational experience. Its uniqueness in a global perspective - what the author defines as cultural capital more or less universally distributed - represents an alternative educational route that ought to be studied carefully by other countries in both the south and north. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How are we to educate young people of, and for, these times in a way which takes into account the existential and moral dilemmas of our age? We argue that the current education system fails to address the full implications of historical change in relation to ethics and equity. In what follows, we offer some ways of describing and theorising contemporary life in an age of uncertainty. We offer it as a knowledge base from which teachers, principals and policy makers might draw in creating new morally and ethically sound policy discourses. We follow with some new frameworks for helping students to deal with the altered context of moral and political life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]