The work of Alexander (2000) in the realm of Comparative Education seems to provide a strong indicator to the structure and form of research appropriate in the given context. To a significant degree, Comparative Education research has been motivated by globalisation and human capital theory (Becker), raising questions about relative economic performance and national showing in league tables of educational performance.
The transplanting of ideas and methods across international borders eg. in 1990, UK government placed an emphasis on basic literacy and numeracy skills to be taught through interactive whole-class teaching models used in Germany, Switzerland and Japan. Unfortunately, this kind of method transfer is not always appropriate nor successful because adoption has not considered the full range of context related variables associated with the development of a national education system. It is this framework that Alexander develops and employs as a means of assessing different education systems within his five cultures study. What is Comparative Education? Broadfoot divides it into the following categories:
1. Studies which provide detailed empirical documentation of educational phenomena in a particular (typically national) setting
2. Same as above but which are contextualised in terms of broader international debates, theoretical frameworks and empirical accounts of the issues
3. Studies which are designed as explicitly comparative based on a coherent rationale for their selection in order to illuminate constraints and contexts
4. Studies in which the contexts being compared are themselves theorised as part of wider social sciences debates e.g the relationships of system and action, power and control, culture and the creation of meaning.
5. Studies which use comparative research to inform theory
This definition would suggest that items 1, 3 and 5 are probably the most appropriate to the research objectives. It should also be noted that the research is a comparison of different educational approaches in a single developing country (as opposed to an international comparison)i.e how are different pedagogies received within a single culture. Noah identitied an associated methodological structure stating that the work is primarily descriptive relying on mixed methods with explicitly formulated social science paradigms in mind.
In contrast to the theoretical basis underpinning Comparative Education, Noah has identified five types (upward moving hierarchy) of policy-directed international education comparisons, listed as follows;
1. System-level factual information and databases.
2. System-level indocators of input, process and output
3. International league tables of education performance
4. Effectiveness studies
5. Value for money studies.
Whilst noting the drawbacks associated with distinct theoretical and policy driven approaches, Alexander suggests his programme represents a pragmatic synthesis and an appropriate basis/method for the five cultures study. The five cultures resrearch related to the following concerns:
1. the relationship between education policy and practice
2. the balance of historical change and continuity in the evolution of public education
3. the context of professional and political power
4. the values, purposes and content of primary schooling
5. the nature of teaching and its conceptual and ethical basis
6. the question of what kind of teaching are most worthwhile and what classroom practices have the greatest leverage on childrens learning.
Whilst points 1, 2 and 3 will provide an important contextual panorama within the Literature Review, the methodology will be focused on points 4, 5 and 6.
Whilst the method of comparison employed by Alexander could provide significant corner stones to the Ghanaian research, the five cultures study itself only includes a single developing nation (India) from which to draw comparisons with tradition education associated with Africa. Potential similarities will be documented at a later date.
In the introduction to formal education, Alexander asked the following questions as a means of characterising individual systems:
1. What is the essential character of the national primary education system?
2. What was its origin and how did it develop?
Indicators of the character of Ghanaian Education
a) General
In Ghana as in most of Africa, the formal education system (the government structure for planning and delivering education to children. The structure is administratively mediated and policy referenced and derives its legitimacy from legislation and is paid for by public funds) is free and compulsory, though in Ghana the shortfall in enrolment and retention remains a challenge. The span of compulsory education is x years (from until ). Primary education takes place in either designated or mixed schools (lower and senior high). Alexander has also identified Infrastructure as a useful comparative indicator of investment in education.
b) Goals, Cirriculum and Assessment
Whilst allowing for the occasional rhetorical nature of government missions and the fundamental lack of resources, the principal objectives of education in Africa represent a compromise/synthesis of national goals and those related to foreign programmes i.e EFA, MDG etc.
According to Baah-Wiredu, MoE (2003), the Government of Ghana is committed to the cause of providing relevant education to all Ghanaians at all levels, to enable them acquire skills that will assist them to develop their potential, to be productive, to facilitate poverty reduction and to promote socio-economic growth and national development. The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MOEYS) in fulfillment of its mission provides facilities to ensure that all citizens, irrespective of age, gender, tribe and religion are functionally literate and self-reliant through the provision of basic education for all, opportunities for open education for all, education and training for skills development emphasizing science, technology and creativity as well as higher education for the development of middle and top-level manpower requirements. In line with this objective the Government is committed to the six Dakar goals of Education for All (EFA) and has developed a National Plan of Action to attain the Six Dakar goals by 2015.
According to this statement, Ghanaian education is most definitively directly towards seemingly bourgeois goals of individualism and improvements in human capital as they relate to potential economic benefits. In its current form, it would appear that a commitment to the EFA agenda of foreign donors has skewed the Ghanaian mission statement away from a traditional (pre and post colonial) African understanding of education. Alexander believes this basic misunderstanding or ignorance of indigenous values is at the root of failed education projects imposed from abroad. It would appear that fiscal constraints preclude a definition of education that reflects national identity and/or humanist notions such as democracy, human rights, equality, social cohesion etc. preferred by the more developed nations.
The next level of comparative analysis is the curriculum, providing a more accurate indication of national intentions and priorities than the goals themselves. In line with the set of rational EFA objectives, the curriculum priority in Ghana is literacy. This aim is further complicated by the choice of English (as a symbol of unity) as the national language and principal medium in the classroom as opposed to the local vernacular (in this case, Fanti). Although for most rural poor, the local vernacular is the pre-eminent social language, it is clear that literacy goals in Ghana are driven towards L2 acquisition with potential impact on the students overall ability to learn.
No understanding of national education is complete without reference to the structures of power and control that define the aims, nature and framework of the system. Archer (1979) defined the distribution of power in terms of centralisation and decentralisation, viewed historically (rather than administratively). In centralised systems, educational change is achieved mainly by political manipulation. Furthermore, they operate on a stop-go pattern in which long periods of stability and/or stagnation are interrupted by sudden (normally ideological) shifts in inertia.
Alternatively, educational change in the decentralised system is achieved though a combination of political manipulation, external transaction and internal initiation. The rate and direction of movement is then dependent of the degree to which the political system is accessible/permeable. Note that definitions related to (de)centralisation are not fixed. In all education systems, power is differentially distributed with respect to different kinds of decisions – goals, policy, resources, curriculum, assessment, quality assurance etc. According to Archer, the Decentralised system out of interaction between state, community and school, achieve change that is progressive, sustained and incremental (questioned by Alexander, pp261).
Alternatively, Green (1990) refers to Marxist theory and the notion of hegemony (the pre-eminence of the ideas and values of the dominant class) as a means of defining the development of the state education system. Accordingly, public education provided a broad and efficient form of social control and developed most rapidly in countries where the requirements of cohesion and manpower were established as national priorities. For Althusser the school is no less than an ideological state apparatus which serves to reproduce the power and ideology of the state and socialises children into the prevailing mores and economic structure. Bowles and Gintis go further suggesting that schooling in capitalist countries (though the hidden curriculum) reproduces the psychology of production through social relations based on subordination and domination. Apple and Friere argue for a struggle against education of this type, proposing a critical pedagogy which links teaching and learning to forms of self and social empowerment focused on the principle of liberty, equality and justice etc. Whilst having some validity Alexander (2000, pp258) indicates that these arguments portray students (and parents) as little more than passive receptacles of knowledge and values, ignoring the potential for resistance against these forms of indoctrination. He demands a more qualified account of the interplay of top-down transmission and bottom-up resistance with a recognition of pluralism in a tacitly homogeneous notion of national identity.
The final cornerstone of the analysis is Identity. Hobsbawm suggests that despite efforts to secure and maintain national unity, the rise of globalisation and indivualism in particular, have led to an erosion of historical memory and the definitive communal consciousness. Into the vacuum step the prophets of technology and the post-modernists whose implicit assumption is the acceptance of full individualisation of behaviour and of society’s powerlessness over its destiny (Castells, 1993). The schooling process is a vital part of the hegemony process in terms of forging national identity and conveying messages regarding the nature of knowledge, ways of thinking, talking and acting and – through assessment – what achievements and people are of greater or lesser worth.
In Ghana, the economic and social differences including tribal (and language) affiliations, will have a strong influence over the messages associated with schooling and the resulting identity of the children. The forging of a national identity as an overt political and educational objective includes language teaching, civic education and moral development.
