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Education systems are facing challenges in relation to attracting and retaining excellent teachers. Strengthening teacher professionalism by deriving insights from other sectors is a promising approach in confronting these issues. This paper maps the position of teaching in the changing landscape of professions using a cross-sectoral approach to identify areas for practitioners, researchers and policymakers to improve teaching status and practice, with repercussions on the public's respect for the work of teachers. Existing literature, alongside OECD findings, suggest that a focus on career progression and specialisation, autonomy, and status, are promising areas for implementing cross sectoral insights. Simultaneously, teaching is well placed to explore the potential of collaboration, continuing professional learning and engagement with research, thus playing a role in renewing professionalism itself. This paper calls for increased discussion about teacher professionalism at the local level, with teachers themselves at the forefront of innovation supported by researchers and policymakers.

This paper examines different institutional characteristics of Thai private higher education in historical-organizational perspective. The analysis applies different conceptual categories of private emergence--Catholic, elite, demand-absorbing--drawn from international literature starting with Levy (1986) to the Thai case. The societal context of Thai private higher education is rooted fundamentally in the hands of both religious foundations and the business sector. Thai diversification partly conforms to international schema but also shows varying emphases. Catholic must be expanded to religious-oriented and elite reformulated as semi-elite. Although demand-absorbing institutions are the majority in the Thai private sector--as also seen elsewhere--the demand-absorbing subsector shows great internal variations. For all the three conceptual categories, missions may be assessed accordingly. Finally, the paper discusses a growing hybrid trend within the Thai private sector. (Contains 1 table and 17 endnotes.)

The current study focuses on the stigmatization and psychosocial experiences of community college transfer students within the university setting. Two hundred and sixty-three students nearing the completion of their studies at UC Berkeley responded to a series of open-ended questions about their academic, social, and psychological experiences at the university. Results indicate that nearly one-fifth of the respondents concealed the fact that they were transfer students at least once in the past and approximately one-fourth reported experiences of transfer-related rejection. Furthermore, those who reported experiences of rejection were more likely to conceal that they had transferred into the university than those who did not experience such rejection. Despite these reported experiences of concealment and rejection, the overall group of surveyed transfer students in this study proved to be academically successful. The theoretical and practical implications of this research are discussed. Three appendixes present additional tables and figures and participant responses.(Contains 4 notes, 1 figure, and 4 tables.)

India demonstrates many features characteristic of private higher education in much of the world. Among these features are proportional size, with roughly 30 percent of total enrollment, and fast growth. Also rather typical is finance, which comes almost exclusively from non-government sources, principally tuition, while public higher education is mostly though decreasingly funded by government. Related to rapid growth and finance is the private sector's preponderance of commercial over academically strong institutions, bringing criticisms about quality and even fraud, including as many legally nonprofit institutions appear to be for-profit in reality. There are also religious and semi-elite private institutions but the clear majority of private enrollments lie in the non-elite and demand-absorbing sub-sector. Unsurprisingly, then, the extent and form of regulation is vigorously debated. All this is common internationally. On the other hand, though less powerfully, Indian private higher education also stands out for a number of relatively unusual configurations. Some are functions of the country's huge size. Its private sector nearly rivals that of the United States as the world's largest in absolute enrollment. Yet India's overall higher education system remains notably small in cohort enrollment--which suggests large latitude for further growth in the system overall and for the private share in particular. Another set of relatively unusual configurations relates to the political system. The world's greatest private growth is occurring in developing countries, most of which are non-democratic or problematically democratic. India is remarkably democratic. Indeed it is remarkably decentralized in its democracy, with a large role for individual states, Congress, and even the courts, and with vigorous debate among political parties. Debate over private higher education is particularly intense as deeply held socialist and state-oriented beliefs clash with the overall political-economic trend of privatization. (Contains 27 notes.) [This working paper is revised from "Commonality and Distinctiveness: Indian Private Higher Education in International Perspective," in eds. Asha Gupta, Daniel C. Levy, K.B. Powar, Private Higher Education: Global Trends and Indian Perspectives.]

One of the salient concerns in contemporary higher education internationally is access, which is rapidly expanding. Another salient trend is the rapid expansion of private higher education. These two salient tendencies have not been treated in scholarship as heavily intertwined. Much of the reason is that many people associate "private" with "elite," in part because of the U.S. reality of leading private universities clearly associated with elite functioning. In much of the rest of the world, suspicion of privates runs deep and there is little disposition to couple the negative connotations of private with the positive connotations of access. Yet as enrolment has been rising rapidly and keeps increasing, there are strong limitations on what can be accommodated through public higher education. Practically, either access is spurned, widely considered politically, socially, and even economically untenable or there must be explosive growth of private higher education. This is largely a matter of demand for higher education greatly outdistancing at least the public supply of higher education. Thus, much of the link between access and private higher education concerns "demand-absorbing" institutions, which is not to overlook more specialized avenues of access to other types of private institutions. At any rate private higher education has grown powerfully in recent decades and seems destined to grow further. India is a marked case of still very low cohort enrolment in higher education but with great demand and rapid private growth. (Contains 10 endnotes.) [This working paper is slightly revised from a presentation at the PROPHE Panel on Access and Private Higher Education at the 52nd CIES Annual Conference, March 20, 2008.]

A study investigated the impact of training on women's micro-enterprise development in four programs in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Sudan. Research design was a series of case studies of projects and programs providing training in technical or business skills. Impact of training was measured against these four indicators: income, access to and control of resources, status, and quality of life. The study examined the training process to find out in what specific ways training helped women to improve and expand their micro-enterprises. The sample in each country consisted of two groups: women about to undergo training (focus of the study) and women who had already received training; 74 women participated. The study showed poor women needed training to develop skills and self-confidence to allow them to operate and survive in the informal sector; access to credit is important but not sufficient for the poorest women; the impact of training and increased income varied in strength but could be negative as well as positive; well-designed and well-delivered training could lead to increased income that could lead to improved self-esteem and status in the household and community; effectively delivered training developed enhanced survival strategies in women; training provided to groups in a participatory model was an empowering and liberating experience for women; and training in generic business skills was more effective than training in technical skills. (Appendixes include 61 references.) (YLB)

Data from the 1811 and 1851 census in England and Wales as well as other data from those countries in 1891 and 1921 were analyzed to investigate individuals' timing and extent of departure from the parental home. The authors found the following: (1) there was a gradual increase in the ages at which children left the parental home; (2) the pace of departure became more rapid over the entire period studied for males, although for females, the pace was increased in the twentieth century; (3) there was a decline in non-familial residence; and (4) there was a rise, especially in the twentieth century, in post-marriage co-residence with parents. The trends were attributed to a general decline in farm employment and domestic service (where employees had traditionally been given room and board) and the subsequent rise in urbanization and industrialization. The period from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century increasingly witnessed a divergence between the experience of leaving the parental home and entry into the labor market. The author suggested further research on the changing patterns of the timing of entry into the workplace. (Contains 17 tables and 73 references.) (AJ)

Operation Manong (OM) is a program of the University of Hawaii at Manoa that assists students who are considered to be underrepresented at the university to gain entrance and to graduate from the Manoa campus. Papers in this series are training materials for OM and are also a link between the university and the larger community. The analysis of the social stratification system of Hawaii begun in a previous paper is extended using data provided by the 1980 Census. Three objective indices of socioeconomic status (occupational distribution, educational achievement, and income) are used to determine the relative social statuses of ethnic groups in Hawaii. The ethnic groups can be ranked in an overall socioeconomic stratification order. Chinese Americans occupy the upper levels, with Whites also enjoying high social status. Japanese Americans and Korean Americans hold an intermediate position, as do Blacks. At the lower end of the social stratification scale are Filipinos, Native Hawaiians, and Samoan Americans. Given the rigidity of this stratification, subordinate ethnic groups have viewed political processes as a more likely means of mobility than economic opportunities. Social status advancement through access to political power is a lengthy and arduous process, which is made more difficult by the lack of economic resources. The resistance to change in Hawaii is detrimental to more than one-third of the population. Three tables present population data, and there is an eight-item list of references. (SLD)

Research on memory functions and their applications is a vast field that has unfolded for decades; some important studies are sixty years old. However, the research has remained a well-kept secret of cognitive psychologists. Education faculties rarely teach memory specifics, so people working in education typically do not know about the above distinction. This document attempts to publicize essential research on the relationship between memory functions and skills development and to illustrate its educational and policy implications. Understanding memory functions is also important because the distinction between explicit and implicit memory seems to be responsible for significant and systematic memory biases that affect how people think about education. This document therefore also presents the problems and solution attempts made by donor agencies as well as research on cognitive biases of people. It then proceeds to illustrate essential memory functions that have applicability in education. The review includes "non-cognitive" skills, personality variables, complex skills, and gender and status issues. It also briefly covers the problems of lower-income vocational institutions and links them to cognitive research. It concludes with policy implications and prospects for future research. Examples of learning-related assumptions reported in various documents are appended. A bibliography is also included.

What difference does education make for young adults' engagement in politics and social issues? This study is part of the OECD's Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) project on "Measuring the Social Outcomes of Learning" (SOL). It discusses relevant international research, with special attention to studies in the Nordic countries, and analyses survey responses by more than 11 000 Norwegian youths aged 13 to 19. "Engagement" is defined as youth's declared interest in politics and social issues and by their participation in various forms of political activity. Educational performance and especially educational aspirations matter for this type of engagement. Socialisation in family environments with regard to civic related issues, however, matters even more for taking interest in such types of civic engagement. It also seems that young people experience educational benefits from growing up in families who care about the civic domain. Separately, the findings suggest that young people who are politically active do not easily conform to the status quo. Rather, they confront the authority structures of their schools more often than other young people do. The paper concludes with suggestions for policy and research. (Contains 13 footnotes, 7 figures and 4 tables.)

Rural areas of the developing world are the last frontier of the information technology revolution. Telephone and internet penetration there remains a small fraction of what it is in the developed world. Limited means of electronic communication with the outside world are just one source of isolation of rural communities and economies from the forces of national and global integration, albeit an important one. Without roads and electricity, the benefits of extending ICT access would be greatly diminished. Conversely, where these other elements of infrastructure are in place, those benefits can be multiplied. The costs of ICT provision to rural areas tend to be higher than to more densely populated urban areas, and the ability to pay of potential subscribers lower. In recent years, a number of interesting experiments has been initiated to extend low-cost telephone and, in some cases, internet access to low-income rural communities. This paper reviews some of these, with a particular emphasis on whether they are likely to prove financially sustainable. Surveys of rural households' willingness to pay for telephone service point to its potential commercial viability. Franchise models of shared-access provision would appear to have the most favourable economics. Through standardisation and demand aggregation, they offer the prospect of reaping economies of scale in hardware and software procurement as well as in provision of technical support, and enhanced bargaining power in negotiating interconnection fees and leased line prices. Such models provide opportunities to small entrepreneurs, at the same time creating incentives to both cost containment and rigorous financial management. If innovation is not to be stymied, however, the franchise model needs to allow for flexible local variation in implementation. While rural economies may be less complex technologically than the highly urbanised economies of the developed world, the value of timely information can be just as high -- if not higher -- in relative terms. Besides the strictly economic benefits, there can be important social benefits of maintaining long-distance contact with family members working abroad or in the city. The experience of Bangladeshi women who make up the majority of village phone operators for the Grameen network suggests that social status can be enhanced by virtue of control over a valuable resource -- information access. Governments need to consider the difficult tradeoffs among competing uses of scarce tax revenues and borrowed funds. Fortunately, in the case of telecoms and the internet, there is not the same need for substantial public investment that there is in rural roads and electricity. An adequate regulatory framework and well-designed contractual bidding process for supplying less profitable segments of the market should go a long way towards attracting private investment, including in underserved areas. In the end, this is likely to be the most direct path towards the ultimate goal of "universal service". (A bibliography is included. Transmission Option and Energy Solution information is annexed. Contains 3 footnotes, 6 boxes and 4 tables.)

Research indicates racism is a persistent and pervasive presence in the United States. Wealth gaps between White, Asian, Black and Latinx families are wide and expanding (Parker, Horowitz, & Mahl, 2016). Since wealth for the middle class is often maintained in real estate, the long and continuing legacy of discrimination in housing markets has significantly disadvantaged communities of color (Rothstein, 2017). Research has demonstrated that racism continues to influence the housing market by way of discrimination in home appraisals and subprime lending practices (Korver-Glenn, 2018). Studies have also thoroughly demonstrated bias in hiring practices -- resumés with stereotypically Black or Latinx names earn significantly fewer interviews than resumés with stereotypically White names (Pager, Bonikowski, & Western, 2009). Leveling the racial playing field necessitates a reduction of racial prejudice and supporting policies like reparations and affirmative action, the latter policies having received scant support in public opinion polls and elections primarily due to White skepticism (Conroy & Bacon Jr., 2020). Schools have long existed as a means of maintaining democracy in the United States and, given the centrality of race relations to the success of democracy, this paper suggests that schools can be called upon to address racism as well. As such, this paper looks to our rapidly diversifying nation and asks: "What would it take to move closer to meaningfully addressing the legacy of racism in the United States, and what role might schools play in this process?"

This paper serves as a prologue to three case studies exemplifying instances in which the status of a student in the classroom was socially constructed by the teacher and the attitudes of other students. In each case the student was considered as a "problem" in the classroom. It is noted that teachers appear to include in their judgements of children not only such attributes of student status as academic ability socially constructed, but also such attributes as social class, race, gender, and family normality. The main aim of this research was to discover how different teachers in the primary grades learn to observe and make practical sense of what happens in their classroom from day to day. The first case study focuses on interaction between a teacher and a second grade student, and of the subsequent shaping of that student's social and personal identities in the class. The second study is of a boy who became a social pariah in the course of his second grade experience. In the final study, the process is traced of a teacher making a decision to identify a student as in need of special education. Brief analytic discussions accompany each case study. (JD)

Hospitality patterns of the Bororo Indians are illustrated in two examples: the etiquette due to a visiting chief from another Bororo village, and the etiquette due any common visitor from another Bororo village. Formal hospitality differs greatly from the usual etiquette. At a visiting chief's arrival, he enters as the last of his group and waits in a central location until the village chief arrives to have an oral duel with him, which establishes their wisdom and rights; the last to speak is the winner. In this duel the importance of names, titles, ornaments, and other social codes of ownership symbolic of survival is expressed. A common visitor goes to the central plaza and shouts out all his personal names and waits to be invited into the meetingplace of the men's council for a long and detailed interview, focusing on his family's names, in order to be placed properly for eating and sleeping in a home of his name-category ("mother,""father,""godmother,""godfather"). Name categories also determine seating. Every person a Bororo may call by a kinship term is inserted into a system of food, shelter, and gift reciprocity. The origin of the kinship ties is in the tradition that a Bororo is not just a descendant of an ancestor but a representative of a mythological hero associated with the name-category. In naming a child the Bororo attempt not to "lose names." A hierarchy of social prestige is expressed in kin terms. However, naming practices do not reflect any formal kinship system--kinship is a secondary effect of naming practices. (MSE)

African Wolof society is divided into a number of ranked status groups or castes, the largest of which is the high-ranking noble caste. Wolof conceive of two styles of speaking, the restrained or noble-like and the elaborated or "griot"-like, and the two styles are connected by the presence or absence of "kerse," honor and self-control. The linguistic phenomena relevant to social rank are found in all aspects of speech performance: paralinguistic phenomena (such as intonation), phonology, syntax, and lexicon. Intonational features provide the most striking differences in style. Phonological differences seem to be related to differences in speech tempo. The griot style uses syntactic devices that lengthen the total utterance but add little or nothing to its meaning, while the noble style uses shorter, blander forms and intentional errors as a sign of high rank. The variants can also signal high and low rank within a caste. The use of intentional error can create confusion between a high-ranking individual and a linguistically incompetent foreigner. The linguistic system as a whole may have shifted in the direction of the high-status variant, and the reduction in surface elaboration is consistent with high-rank restraint and nonfluency, possibly arising from the general population's desire to appear more high-ranking. Thus the cultural valuation of speech can influence both the form and the direction of language change. (MSE)

In this study of 99 countries, representing 2.3 billion women (92 percent of the world's female population), 20 indicators measure women's well-being in the following sectors: (1) health; (2) marriage and children; (3) education; (4) employment; and (5) social equality. Original data for each of the 20 indicators were converted mathematically to 5 point scales, giving a maximum total score of 100 points per country. Countries are ranked for each of the five sectors. General conclusions are provided about the quality of life for women worldwide for each of the five sectors. General findings include the following: (1) women in all countries aspire to have equal opportunities with men in the areas of employment, health care, and social status; (2) in no country surveyed have women achieved overall equality; (3) in over half these countries conditions for women were ranked as poor, very poor, or extremely poor; and (4) North American and Northern European countries ranked highest, while Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia ranked lowest. (BJV)

Designed to show that highly participatory, engaging, entertaining, and locally understandable communication forms can be used not only to liberate but also to domesticate, this paper presents case studies of several nonformal education projects in Botswana that attempted to follow the approach of Paulo Freire by using popular theatre to encourage participation, raise issues, foster discussion, and promote collective action. Topics include "Laedza Batanani," the first experiment using theater for nonformal education in Botswana; popular theatre and resettlement education; popular theater and Freirian literacy work; and participatory research, puppetry, and appropriate technology. A systematic analysis of the issues involved clarifies earlier writing on the subject which failed to portray some of the key contradictions in this work and tended to mystify the popular base of this activity. Focus is on the pseudo-participatory nature of the program; the involvement of the villagers as actors, audience, and discussion members without allowing popular control over the process; and the direction of change. The dual potential of popular theatre is clarified--i.e., its capacity for authentic popular expression and raising critical class consciousness, and/or for disseminating dominant class ideas and inducing acceptance of the status quo. Fourteen references are listed. (LMM)

Public buildings and the settings in which people work and live significantly influence acceptance of social inequalities, social roles, and definitions of individual competence, merit, and power. Spaces do not convey meanings as if they were simple codes, but rather objectify whatever shared meanings a group of people need to reinforce in one another to rationalize both privileges and disadvantages. It is as if beliefs that are undemonstrable or doubtful have to be objectified in an entity that then confronts people as reality. Each kind of public space evokes a number of different meanings, integrative or divisive, but their concurrence typically reinforces established inequalities. (Author)

An ethnographic sketch of a small, Midwestern, middle-class American community emphasizes the shared value system, the derived code of conduct and an analysis of the three levels of social interaction and their respective functions. Data were gathered over a two-year period of field work, including ten months of intensive observation of the town, a quiet, semi-rural, racially unmixed community of about 1200, with a strong Christian orientation. The community's values have given rise to a moral order that implies a basically Christian code of conduct consisting of four major principles of prescribed behavior: Fairness, Control, Doing Good Deeds, and Doing One's Best. These principles are inviolate and the high degree of social conformity in itself controls and maintains the moral order. The code is not, however, synonymous with the community's actual behavior which exists on three levels: the non-emotional, overt personal interaction level where appearances are everything, the illusion of strong social cohesion is fostered, and conflict is minimized; the covert level, e.g., gossip, where transgressions are aired; and the intimate level, where a person can "be himself". The town is described geographically, politcally, economically, and philosphically in terms of its values. (SB)

Researchers have been interested in studying the correlates and reciprocity of peer acceptance across various cultures. Tenth grade students in a Saudi Arabian suburban high school completed social desirability scales to examine the relationship between the acceptance of class members by individual students and the acceptance of individual students by class members. Results showed that on the whole, relationships between individual students and the rest of the class were not universally reciprocal. This finding might have occurred because of lack of opportunities for student interaction in and outside school. Reciprocity of peer desirability which developed as a result of social interaction was not of the same type among students who expressed identical feelings towards one another. The results suggest that Saudi students, while skilled at initiating relationships, may have difficulty maintaining them. (JAC)

The role of female educators in the Brazilian Amazon community of Itaituba (population in 1970: 12,690) has fallen short of that envisioned by the policymakers and social scientists in the early 1970s, as indicated by research conducted in 1976-77. Based on the "human capital" theory, better-trained local teachers were to train the local labor force, thereby improving productivity. Itaituba experienced rapid growth during the 1970s due to the construction of two federal highways. A new middle class emerged, of which female educators were an important segment. More students were reached and they stayed in school longer. After graduating, however, they left the community in search of more education and better jobs. By 1977 it was clear that the contribution of female educators to the economic development of the region was negligible, although they were able to promote community life, national integration, and patriotic nationalism in ways consistent with gender and class expectations and restraints (social class inequality that often benefits middle- and upper-class women outweighed gender inequality). At present, cheap unskilled labor is in more demand than skilled, productive--and more expensive--labor. Thus, the effort to develop human capital remains an ideal rather than a reality in frontier communities like Itaituba. Thirty-two references are appended. (JMM)