• EDUC 873: Education Policy - Comparative and International Perspectives
• Semester: Falls 2005
• Instructor: Dr. Valerie O. Sutter, Adjunct Professor
• Syllabus

• Legacy of Apartheid: Assignment • Paper
• The Child and The State in India: Assignment • Paper
• Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Assignment • Paper
• The Bookseller of Kabul: Paper
• Leading Class Discussion: Article (shared) • Presentation Handout
• Final Project:
  • Initial Proposal
  • Final Paper (topic changed):
    Assessment of Pakistan’s Social Action Program - Is it a story of success or just another futile attempt to provide universal access to basic education?
  • Final Paper Presentation Handout

• Fiske, E. & Ladd, H. (2004). Elusive equity: Education reform in post-apartheid
          South Africa. Washington, DC: Brookings.
• Freire, P. (1986). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.
• National Commission on Excellence in Education (1983). A nation at risk: The
          imperative for educational reform. Washington, DC: U.S. Government
          Printing Office. Available online at
          http://www.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/index.html
• Rotberg, I.C., (Ed.) (2004). Balancing change and tradition in global education
          reform. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow.
• Seierstad, A. (2002). The bookseller of Kabul (trans. 2003). New York: Little,
          Brown and Co.
• Weiner, M. (1991). The child and the state in India. Princeton: Princeton
          University Press.

• Comparative Education Review, the journal of the Comparative and International Education Society
• International Journal of Educational Development International Review of Education
• Anthropology and Education Quarterly
• Compare
• Oxford Studies in Comparative Education
• Comparative Education
• A Long List of Recommended Readings (31 Books - see syllabus document for the details)

        This was the first policy course that required a lot of reading and writing (I took this course before EDUC 872, which also required a lot of reading). However, all the readings and writings were rather interesting and helped me develop and understand various perspectives on education policy.  We looked into the educational systems of several industrialized nations, post-apartheid educational challenges faced by South Africa, educational challenges in India, Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, The Bookseller of Kabul, and an interesting article on teacher training in Pakistan.  For the final project, I used PIHS (Pakistan Integrated Household Survey) data to to write a descriptive paper on Pakistan's Social Action Program for its potential successes or failures in improving the quality of education or making education more accessible to the general public.   This was a very productive course I took in policy because it exposed me to different education systems, educational issues faced by several countries including Pakistan, anti-Muslim biases of some Western writers, and a glimpse of the functioning of multi-lateral organizations like UNESCO and the World Bank and some literature on their sucesses and failures.

        [Click here] to see the list of competencies achieved in this course.