Re: Alternative definitions of educational success (fwd)

Bill Penuel (bpenuel who-is-at unix.sri.com)
Thu, 23 Sep 1999 08:43:40 -0700

<<Although most of the public basic schools in rural areas of Africa
define their principal mandate in terms of the narrowing staircase model,
many of them also perform additional local service functions as a
community library, as a community forum for discussion of public affairs,
and as a base for continuing education. I suggest that educational
planners could profitably borrow from these existing practices the notion
of schools as nodes in their planning models, in order to build local
accountability into the public legitimation accorded by central
administrative authorities to the activities of rural schools.>>

Robert--

What strikes me in what you write about schools in rural Africa is that
the boundaries between school and community are not so strong as they are
in the U.S. Even where schools have attempted to bring the community in,
many times they fail for a host of reasons, especially because schools'
policies, procedures, and spaces are often inaccessible to parents and
community members who don't have the time or knowledge to navigate them.

I think the permeability of schools to community functions is relevant
to discussions of assessment. I would argue that the more permeable
schools are to families and communities, the less the need for big,
large-scale assessment. As many people working in the area of portfolio
assessment have pointed out, student work can serve as a kind of "boundary
object" for everyone (teachers, administrators, students, parents,
community) to use as a thinking device for the quality of schools and as an
indicator of the kind of learning that's taking place. On the other hand,
I believe the relatively alienated relationship that most people have to
various public entities like schools and local government means that when
we want to know whether schools or governments are 'good' we quickly go for
measures that sound more objective, that carry the weight of
'accountability.'

I wonder how schools are in fact held accountable in rural Africa, in
the eyes of community members there, aside from what policy-makers seem to
be trying to do in building schools on the traditional Western model?

Bill
----------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Penuel, Ph.D.
Research Social Scientist
SRI International
333 Ravenswood Avenue, Mailstop BS116
Menlo Park, CA 94025
tel. 650-859-5001
fax 650-869-5001
email: bpenuel who-is-at unix.sri.com

Check out our website at

www.sri.com/policy/ctl
---------------------------------------------------------------