Challenging the Research Complex

Education, External Influence, and Disrupting Dependence in Africa
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-72924-4
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 234 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 496 g

Reihe: Critical Global Citizenship Education

Starting with an overview of the intersection of local and global dynamics in education in Africa, this book focuses critical attention on education research and the problematic research process.

Education held extraordinary promise at Africa’s independence. Rapid expansion in access and imaginative innovations followed, but progress proved difficult to sustain. As frustration displaced optimism, recourse to foreign aid became common. Education in Africa—critical to national development—combines high expectations and enthusiasm with distress and dependence. Local and global agendas intersect. External influence is internalized. Research is consequential, especially in reinforcing the conservative charter of most education systems in Africa, more concerned with reproducing the national political economy than changing it. Notwithstanding disciplinary border crossers, methodological orthodoxy is blinding. Social engineering remains more important than social justice. Scholarship about Africa is only rarely by Africa. Scholars study poverty and miss impoverishment.

This book unpacks those relationships, exploring the narrow gaze of education research and its problematic character. Examining the research complex—interconnected institutions with distributed authority acting in concert—requires attention to how knowledge is generated, where, and to whose benefit. On this important and exciting terrain—Africa, education, research—readers will find this an accessible and stimulating analysis.

Zielgruppe

Academic and Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Samoff, Joel

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Kultur Staatsbürgerkunde, Staatsbürgerschaft, Zivilgesellschaft
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Teildisziplinen der Pädagogik Multikulturelle Pädagogik, Friedenserziehung
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Pädagogik Bildungssystem Bildungspolitik, Bildungsreform

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Foreword: African Education and Development as a Puzzle

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. Education and Development: Global and Local 2. Education in Africa: Less Transformation, More Reproduction 3. Global Becomes Local 4. Research on Education in Africa: Continuities and Omissions 5. Challenging the Research Complex

Über Autor(innen)

Joel Samoff is affiliated with the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, USA, and retired Adjunct Professor of African Studies in the School of Humanities and Sciences.