1st Edition
Learning and Teaching Around the World Comparative and International Studies in Primary Education
Learning and Teaching Around the World is a wide-ranging introduction to diverse experiences, practices and developments in global primary education. It explores different contexts for children’s learning, and methods and purposes of primary education, in settings across Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas and Australasia, and addresses wider issues such as the rise of refugee learners and large multi-grade classes.
With an explicit focus on comparative and international studies and improving the knowledge, understanding and practice of effective pedagogies for children’s learning, this book reflects on key issues such as:
- Standards for learner-centred education
- Patterns of inclusion and exclusion
- Defining ‘teacher professionalism’
- The impact of global education agendas
- Language policy for schooling and assessment
Learning and Teaching Around the World is an essential text for those wishing to develop a critical understanding of the experiences of primary teachers and children around the world. Aimed at both undergraduate and postgraduate education studies students, the scope of this book will support all students in developing knowledge of primary education and of the diverse needs of learners in an era of global movement of children and families.
Introduction: ‘Close up’ and ‘wide angle’ lenses on primary education
Kimberly Safford
Section 1 Pedagogy and provision
1 Primary education: why and how to compare?
Kimberly Safford
2 Refugee children’s experiences of education in countries of first asylum
Sarah Dryden-Peterson
3 Multigrade pedagogies: Africa’s response to Education for All
Charles Kivunja and Margaret Sims
4 Thinking about a community of provision
Jonathan Rix
5 Shadow education and its implications for social justice
Mark Bray and Ora Kwo
Section 2 Languages and learning
6 Primary school medium of instruction policies in Ghana and India
Elizabeth J. Erling and Lina Adinolfi
7 English language as an inclusion tool: the case of Syrian refugees in UK primary schools
Juliete Thondhlana and Roda Madziva
8 Unpacking teachers’ language ideologies in schools in Alsace, France
Andrea S. Young
9 Negotiating worlds: a young Mayan child developing literacy at home and at school in Mexico
Patricia Azuara and Iliana Reyes
10 What languages do you speak? A reflexive account of research with multilingual pupils
Geri Smyth
Section 3 Inclusion and exclusion
11 Indigenous ways with literacies in an Australian primary school
Kathy A. Mills, John Davis-Warra, Marlene Sewell and Mikayla Anderson
12 Young British Muslims explore their experiences of primary school and ‘othering’
Alison Davies
13 Is this the right school for my gender nonconforming child?
Graciela Slesaransky, Lisa Ruzzi, Connie DiMedio and Jeanne Stanley
14 The challenges of realising inclusive education in South Africa
Dana Donohue and Juan Bornman
15 The contradictions within universal education: why ‘education for all’ is still exclusionary
John Parry and Jonathan Rix
Section 4 Teacher education and development
16 Defining ‘teacher professionalism’ from different perspectives
Nihan Demirkasımoğlu
17 Developing inclusive learning environments in rural classrooms in India
Freda Wolfenden
18 Early childhood pre-service teachers engage in collegial dialogue
Kym M. Simoncini, Michelle Lasen and Sharn Rocco
19 Teacher education in Sub-Saharan Africa and in one school in Kenya: macro challenges and micro changes
Kris Stutchbury, Joan Dickie and Patricia Wambugu
20 Learning Assistants in Sierra Leone: community support for future teachers
Martin Crisp and Kimberly Safford
Section 5 Local, national and global intersections
21 Is the grass always greener? The effect of the PISA results on education debates in Sweden and Germany
Johanna Ringarp and Martin Rothland
22 Creativy and education in the European Union and the United Kingdom
Dominic Wyse and Anusca Ferrari
23 New teachers and corporal punishment in Ghanaian primary schools
Alison Buckler
24 The Gambia: the intersection of the global and the local in a small developing country
Michele Schweisfurth
25 Globalising education and the shaping of global childhoods
Nicola Ansell
Biography
Kimberly Safford is a Senior Lecturer in Primary Education at The Open University, UK. She contributes to the university’s International Teacher Education and Development programmes in India and Africa, authoring Open Educational Resources collaboratively with academics and practitioners. She also writes OU courses and OER for UK teachers, classroom support staff, and for the wide range of education staff in the Third and Cultural Sectors.
Liz Chamberlain is a Senior Lecturer in Primary Education at The Open University, UK. She is a member of the International Teacher, Education and Development team and contributes to in-country fieldwork in Uganda and Zimbabwe. Liz authors the module Comparative and International Studies in Primary Education and is co-author of an Early Reading Badged Online Course for teachers in Africa and a MOOC, making teacher education relevant for 21st century Africa.
