Compares attempts and outcomes in Fiji junior secondary schools and in Kiribati community high schools to provide alternative schooling of either vocational or local/practical orientation. Focuses on nature of educational decision-making process and influence of public pressures on planners and politicians. Identifies new and influential factors…

Reviews historical context and recent research on vocational education in 15 Commonwealth Caribbean countries and the United States. Identifies supportive American vocational legislation. Derives synthesis based on juxtaposition of vocational education in both regions and draws inferences regarding the larger question of vocationalization. (NEC)

Examines recent developments relating to agricultural education and Work Experience Programmes in Secondary Schools in Jamaica; questions whether such "radical rethinking" is needed in their educational policies/priorities; challenges whether the view that the whole future of developing countries like Jamaica is heavily dependent on…

Examines the potential of the World Bank scheme, outlined in its 1980 Education Sector Policy Paper, for helping Bangladesh achieve universal basic education. Considers such issues as formal vs. nonformal schooling, costs, and teacher training. Part of a theme issue on the World Bank Paper and Third World educational development. (SJL)

Past "elitist" development efforts modeled on Western academic education have failed to meet manpower needs but resist change due to popular preference for "modern" occupations. A new development strategy providing universal basic education and improved general living standards is needed. (Part of a theme issue on Third World educational…

Examines eight factors in Hausa Moslem society, expecially views on women's role and marriage, which tend to cause parents to limit their daughters' schooling. (SJL)

Discusses author's observations of poverty-related problems within rural Sri Lankan schools. Juxtaposes literature on Third World education problems at national, district, school, and individual levels. Concludes high educational expectations in developing world are tightly constrained by poverty, negative attitudes, and weaknesses of systems.…

Discusses how quantitative expansion of education in developing countries has not been accompanied by sufficient emphasis on educational quality. Considers relationships between education and national development, impact of growth on quality, importance of historical experience, influence of selection and allocation systems, and experience with…

It has been assumed that colonial schooling systems were always poor quality reproductions of the educational system in the colonizing (metropolitan) power. This paper compares the structures and curricula of colonial and metropolitan schools, finding not a reproduction, but a hierarchy, with the metropolitan school on top. (SJL)

Analyzes institutional responses to homelessness among children and youth in the United States and Brazil as a means of understanding the workings of the neoliberal state, both in developing and developed nations. Highlights a major contradiction of neoliberalism--its promotion of symbolic political and social inclusion, while simultaneously…

Critically reviews and assesses the (largely North American) literature on effective schools. Examines the transnational impact of this literature and its limitations in developing nations. Outlines differences between the school effectiveness paradigm and the educational quality paradigm in assumptions about good educational practice. Proposes…

In sub-Saharan Africa, aggregate data show that female literacy is associated with higher agricultural productivity and is more strongly correlated than GNP with mortality and immunization rates of young children. A case study of Gambia confirms these relationships, with high female illiteracy apparently impeding both human and economic…

Misjudging the ease of educational-policy implementation is a common planning mistake. A "backward mapping" model, in which policy is informed by specific needs at the lowest level of implementation, was applied to primary school change in India and generated insights about social context, teacher attitudes, training needs, and…

Survey of 48 multisectoral women-in-development (WID) units in governmental bureaucracies of developing nations indicates that most have educational activities but tend to focus on nonformal education for adult women (literacy, health, vocational education). Their limited contestation of the ideological function of schooling makes these WID units…

Argues that globalization is standardizing the way that higher education responds to the pressures of the international division of labor, but because Western countries have more knowledge workers, they will point the way for the development of higher education in developing nations. Discusses implications for undergraduate and postgraduate…