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The articles featured in this Special Issue of Compare are revised or reworked versions of papers presented to the 7th Oxford International Conference on Education and Development in 2003, ‘The state of education: quantity, quality and outcomes’. Every two years, the annual BAICE Conference is nested within the larger Oxford Conference framework so, reflecting this relationship, this is the second set of articles to be published in Compare from this event. This particular collection stems largely from a section of the conference on the theme of ‘Culture, context and the quality of education’, and, more specifically, from an integral Southern and Eastern African Symposium that focussed upon the evaluation of policies, programmes and classrooms. The pertinence of these issues is well reflected in the promotional literature produced in advance of the Oxford Conference itself:At a time when the qualitative challenge to quantitative measures of performance is increasingly respected, it is appropriate to re-examine the ways in which education systems and their achievements are assessed and evaluated. (UKFIET 2003, p.?2)In the September 2004 issue of Compare, the BAICE 2003 Presidential Address (Vulliamy, 2004) and Louisy (2004) drew attention to the global importance of comparative research that is more effectively grounded in the diversity of local cultures and contexts. To cite Louisy, who writes from a distinctive Caribbean vantage point as Governor General of Saint Lucia:While the Caribbean's capacity for facing the dilemmas of difference is thought to give it some comparative advantage, one of the key challenges for its educational policy-makers is how to provide a quality education that is sensitive to the ‘local’ context while remaining responsive to the demands of the ‘global’ market (Louisy, 2004, p.?285).This Special Issue of Compare builds on such thinking and explores the impact of context and culture upon educational change and evaluation in East and Southern Africa. Together, the articles explore global and national policies ‘from the bottom up’ and demonstrate how ‘context matters’ (Crossley with Jarvis, 2001) more than is often realized in policy circles. The collective analysis has theoretical and methodological implications for comparative and international research in education; as well as for relationships between programme evaluations, cross-national studies and educational policy and practice.Interest in comparative and international research in education has increased dramatically over the last decade, spurred on by changing geo-political relations, the intensification of globalization, the information and communications revolution and paradigmatic advances across the social sciences. Moreover, the audience for such work has widened as increasing numbers of policy-makers, planners and practitioners have come to see improved educational performance, across all sectors, as a foundation for enhanced competitiveness in the global knowledge economy (Castells, 1996; Crossley & Watson, 2003). International interest in large-scale, cross-national studies of educational achievement has also contributed to a widened readership for comparative research – and to some critical engagement with the methodologies employed (Goldstein, 2004; Vulliamy, 2004). Here, it is argued that such critical and disciplined reflection is increasingly important, if the potential offered by this resurgence of interest in comparative and international research is to be fully realized – not only in terms of advances in scholarship, but also with regard to improved policy and practice.Much can be learned from systematic and disciplined comparative research but, as comparativists have long pointed out, the complexities involved in productively learning from elsewhere highlight the very real dangers of the uncritical international transfer of educational policies and practices (see for example Sadler, 1900; Phillips & Ochs, 2003). Nevertheless, hard-pressed decision-makers worldwide can still be seen to fall prey to these pitfalls (Noah, 1986), as they engage with the powerful forces of globalization, and seek external guidance for a competitive edge in policy change. International agencies can also play a part in such processes, especially if they seek to share what is often called ‘best practice’ in the light of their own interpretations of comparative experience. In this scenario, comparative education is sorely in need of approaches that return the gaze and ‘provincialize Europe’ (and North America) (Chakrabarty, 2001).In examining the impact of context and culture on policy and practice, each of the articles in this issue addresses the complexities of both the relationship between global and local, variously understood, as well as different modalities of evaluation and what can be learnt from them when considered in comparative perspective. They do so within the specific context of East and Southern Africa, a region of considerable diversity as well as similarity. Articles focus on Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa.This region has experienced dramatic and repeated waves of social and educational change in recent times. Such change is rooted in common histories of colonialism, differences in the conditions under which, when and how these nations achieved independence and recent political and economic developments. But educational change in all has been shaped since 1990 by, amongst other things, a changing balance of regional forces, a growing convergence in international recipes for educational change and national receptivity to such ideas and prescriptions. Educational and social changes are influenced by powerful external and internal players and imperatives as well as the links particular countries have with one another. The political economy of the region is deeply influenced by the nature of and relationships between polities within it. This is a context in which ideas circulate continuously between global, continental, regional, national and local contexts and actors. In these processes, global education reform scripts take hold, are given local meaning and their translation into practice regularly assessed. What all of this has meant in practice for national and local contexts is the focus of the articles collected here.The region also shares with the rest of the continent what Achille Mbembe has called ‘an appearance in discourse’ ‘through a negative interpretation’ as well as ‘less and less’ fieldwork (Mbembe, 2001, pp. 1, 7). One consequence of this blindness, Mbembe writes, is that African politics and economics ‘have been condemned in social theory only as the sign of a lack’ (p.?8). In their own modest way, each of the articles in this edition attempts to address this ‘blindness’, and the manner in which existing approaches actually (dis)enable reflection on local African worlds, and ‘time as lived.’ (p.?8) They highlight complexity, difference and the historicity of contemporary educational policy and practice.The articles in this collection evaluate both educational reform processes as well as the modes of assessment undertaken to evaluate change in practice. In each case, the writer is simultaneously a participant in as well as researcher of the process being assessed. As such, they illustrate the character of much educational research currently conducted in African contexts, which is mainly donor-supported, and often takes the form of evaluation of donor or new national projects. In each case, participation in the processes being analysed provides unique insight into the interface between global, national and local policies and practices and the researchers bring their critical analytical faculties to bear on the interpretation of events and processes. But in each case, too, the form of evaluation is found wanting as a means of understanding local social contexts and educational realities and is supplemented with more detailed theoretical and empirical research that cannot be conducted within the narrow frames of programme or project evaluation. To a large extent, the articles exemplify the broader constraints on educational research in East and Southern Africa. But they also make creative use of the possibilities afforded them within these contexts to raise questions about what constitutes the basis of much educational research in East and Southern African today. As such, as a collection, they suggest the need for more sustained, intellectually-driven research across the region.Higgins and Rwanyange were involved as education advisors for a donor agency involved in the implementation of Education for All. But the article also rests heavily on research that Higgins conducted for her EdD. Ken Harley conducted the evaluations he critiques for donor agencies, and complements these with a deeper analysis of the project contexts. Angeline Barrett presents original research from her PhD which also involved participating in a development project aimed at teachers. Vijay Reddy is the TIMSS Coordinator for South Africa, but finds the frame restrictive for evaluating progress towards broader educational goals and social realities than those specified. Linda Chisholm headed the review and revision processes that she situates within a broader social and analytical context. In each case, the authors acknowledge and probe difficult issues with which they have to grapple in coming to terms with the limitations and possibilities of evaluative work.The articles traverse terrains as diverse as the implementation of Education for All in Uganda; donor-supported teacher development project evaluations in Uganda, Kenya and South Africa; teacher identity in Tanzania; the uses of cross-national achievement studies for national purposes, and national and regional dynamics in curriculum-making. Each presents a distinctive critique from the local perspective of the assumptions underlying the initiatives and different types of evaluation conducted in the region.Higgins and Rwanyange argue for a more self-critical approach amongst donor agencies and ‘the need for a more negotiated agreement on global initiatives’. While acknowledging that much has been achieved in terms of educational reform, their analysis suggests that shortcomings in policy implementation are directly linked to the lack of a sense of ownership of new policies, no matter how well-intentioned, amongst local school communities and teachers. In many ways, this well-informed and timely reflection illustrates how too great a preoccupation with external timescales and agendas, quantitative targets and pressure for accountability can serve to undermine new development modalities that aim to emphasize partnership principles and processes.Harley, by contrast, in a complementary article, is concerned that ‘the linear logic and disregard for unintended consequences’ of the logical framework used by donors for evaluating projects means that actual outcomes and processes can be obscured. This article makes a constructive contribution to work on project evaluation and to the critique of the use of logical frameworks in development planning. Logframe rationality can mask a priori assumptions, unintended outcomes and the political processes involved. Since many funded studies of educational change in sub-Saharan Africa are evaluative in nature, Harley also makes a strong case for such work to be made more widely available and open to greater scrutiny by the research community. Thus it can contribute to broader scholarship in a cumulative way, while informing policy and practice elsewhere. In developing this critique, Harley draws inspiration from Kenyan experience where logframe-driven evaluations have been successfully combined with more qualitative open-ended, in-depth, and context-sensitive case study research. Both Higgins and Rwanyange and Harley's contributions suggest that policy and evaluation provide an inadequate appreciation of local needs and contexts.In tune with Harley's critique, Barrett argues that the evaluation of educational change can benefit greatly from the insights to be gained from context sensitive case studies. Barrett's article is based on recent and detailed doctoral fieldwork carried out in selected schools in the Shinyanga and Coast Regions of Tanzania. This is, however, a more explicitly comparative study, and one that makes a contribution to the literature by comparing theoretically informed insights relating to teacher identity formation in England and Tanzania. This generates an analysis that adds to theoretical work on teacher identity at the same time as it challenges the uncritical international transfer of theoretical constructs (in addition to policy and practice). Barrett's conclusions explore the potential benefits of evaluation studies that are carried out in poor and remote field contexts, and suggests that bridging theoretical analyses with more policy oriented evaluation studies has much to offer the field of comparative and international education.The theme of insufficient sensitivity of existing tools such as the log frame for assessing local educational change is taken up by Vijay Reddy who provides a critical assessment of the extent to which cross-national studies such as TIMSS (the Third International Mathematics and Science Study – recently renamed the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) are able to inform policy and practice at the national level. Recognizing the potential of such studies, despite their limitations, Reddy argues for improvements that would enable better and more helpful use of the information they provide. Reddy asserts that the use by TIMSS of the curriculum as the major organizing concept may obscure other important national priorities, such as poverty reduction and the provision of basic infrastructure. Furthermore, such studies can create pressures towards the harmonization of curricula. Careful to acknowledge the strengths and limitations of such studies, the article nonetheless shows that, in the South African context, cross-national achievement studies tend to reinforce a negative image of performance. If TIMSS is to achieve more, the dialogue between local and global players would need to be much more systematic and comprehensive.Rather than examining the benefits (or otherwise) of a curriculum review and revision process, Chisholm's article explores how the politics of the process gives internationally borrowed ideas (outcomes-based education) their particular meaning and shape in the local context. The South African context is one of nation-building in relation to the post-apartheid state that simultaneously pursues a market-led growth path and a discourse of rights, development and social justice. Chisholm situates this development within the regional context of policy and curriculum borrowing and shows how ideas are not only adopted and adapted at local level in relation to local contextual issues, but are then also pushed back up to the regional level where they may play a different role. She thus develops the theme of intra-regional policy borrowing by local social actors, constantly in contact and interaction with global and regional players. The ambiguities of these processes tend to obscure how power is played out through and around policy review. Her particular contribution explores the dominant social influences in the review and revision of South Africa's Curriculum 2005 at the dawn of the 21st century.Chisholm helpfully compares the roles played by the African National Congress government, teacher unions and university-based intellectuals in shaping the curriculum. Chisholm's finding that universities were as important as teacher unions and the bureaucracy in the process demonstrates strong links between research in education and policy-making in practice. In this case, national actors were able to critically adapt internationally borrowed ideas.Collectively the authors, all of whom are both researchers and practitioners, recognise the need for, and benefits of, sensitivity to context and culture and a critical awareness of the dilemmas of international transfer. Engaging in comparative and international research can heighten such awareness and better equip national policy-makers to deal with multiple interests and policy agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]