The need for preparing our youth to live in an interdependent world on this finite planet has become urgent since the beginning of the nuclear age at the end of World War II. There is a need to extend the loyalty of the citizen tor the nation-state to human needs seen from a global view. The involvement of the United States in the international community already is extensive because of its predominant power. This involvement is not reflected in our education, either from the amount of time devoted to social studies in our schools or in the emphasis on international relations in that curriculum. To achieve the global view which our changing society demands it is suggested that some unifying concepts be chosen which cross the various social science disciplines namely, the concepts of change (both violent and non-violent), conflict, authority or power, order, freedom and responsibility. These concepts enable the teacher, using a problem-solving approach, to raise questions which make values explicit, and provide flexibility in subject matter and range of student ability. In a global context, the following specific goals would be encouraged: overcome ethnocentrism, recognize the diversity of faces that the U.S. presents to the world, seek a transnational view based on human rights, emphasize the problem rather than the institution, and seek foreign points of view in source materials. During the 1960s there have been 80me innovations in both subject matter and method in teaching social studies, ranging from entire school systems to single schools and classes, and there are a number of new curricula materials coming out of projects funded by both government and private sources. This thesis has l.dent1tied a number of these with the idea that the teacher who is interested in presenting a global orientation now has a growing number of tools to choose from. He need not wait to construct a new curriculum but can supplement and reorient his approach in his own classroom. However, this implies that the teacher baa a global view already. Opportunities for foreign studies are becoming widespread and, hopefully, more and more teachers will feel they are an essential part of their preparation. Unfortunately, there is very little course preparation for the global view at the college level, where the largest proportion of teachers will develop.-or not develop--an international awareness. The community at the state or local level can often be of considerable help in encouraging this kind of experience for its teachers. It is probable that the more activist role of today’s student has been a factor in the trend toward using the inquiry, or discovery, method in the classroom. Certainly, this method has the advantage, for a global view, of using concepts which' can present controversial subject matter in an open-ended way. It uses the techniques of a scientific approach and enables the social studies to introduce more social science findings of current global concern. Discussion of values becomes an essential element. Such discussion begins with the student's experience, and by exposing him to a clash of personal beliefs there is evidence that motivation is increased and a possible shift in attitudes occurs. The teacher who aims to teach from a global viewpoint will need help, both in keeping abreast of the current curricula and in having available the most recent findings of social science and educational research which could affect the attitudes of his students. In particular, the area of conflict studies has potential for resolving international problems. The teacher, thus, has a key role in preparing future citizens to meet the changes of a global society.

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International education served a dual function in the American-Iranian relationship during the thirty-seven-year reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. On the one hand, education was the most important component to the shah's project of authoritarian development - a model of rapid socio-economic development predicated on the premise that anti-communist statism, a less vibrant political milieu, and a more forceful role for the security forces would maintain domestic stability, guarantee the westward flow of Iranian oil, and keep Iran firmly entrenched in the American camp in the cold war competition. Iranian alumni of American universities were elected to the majlis, entered the shah's bureaucracy, staffed the Plan Organization, worked in the financial sector, served in the armed forces, joined university faculties, and assumed the premiership. On the other hand, the influx of Iranian students to American campuses spawned debates outside of traditional foreign policymaking communities about international relations, human rights, and development that were quite different from those that took place in the halls of power in Washington or Tehran. What emerged was a coalition of progressive American and Iranian internationalists that rejected the shah's authoritarian model of development, challenged the American assumptions that propelled U.S. ascendance in the Persian Gulf region, and called for the realization of civil and political rights in Iran. These educational networks made the American-Iranian relationship at once the most intimate and volatile of the cold war era. In the end, I argue that international education produced more friction than harmony as proponents of authoritarian development and progressive internationalists negotiated the acceptable boundaries for the exercise of state power. / History

The Solomon Islands (SI), a small developing nation in the South Pacific, demonstrates an emergent community-based kindergarten model with the potential to promote context and culture relevant early learning and development. SI early childhood education (ECE) particularly rose in prominence with a 2008 national policy enactment requiring all children to attend three years of kindergarten as prerequisite for primary school entry. However, these ECE programs remain severely challenged by faltering community support. Internationally, many ECE programs dramatically resemble a universalized Western-based model, with a decidedly specific discourse for “high quality” programs and practices for children ages 0-8. Often these uncritical international transfers of Euro-American ideologies promote restricted policies and practices. This has resulted in a self-perpetuating set of practices and values, which arguably prevent recognition of, and efforts to reinvent, more culturally-relevant, sustainable programs for the Majority World. Based on the Kahua region (est. pop. 4,500) of Makira-Ulawa Province, this collaborative, ethnographically-inspired, case study explores how community characteristics have affected the cultural and contextual sustainability of community-based ECE in remote villages. The study traces historical and cultural influences to present-day SI ECE. Subsequently, it explores the re-imagined SI approach to formal ECE program design, remaining challenges preventing these programs from being sustained by communities, and potential community-wide transformations arising from these initiatives. To achieve this, the study collaborated with stakeholders from all levels of SI society through extensive participant-observations, interviews, and participatory focus groups. Findings aspire to enlighten regional sustainable developments and resilient behaviors relating to ECE. Key research findings suggest five overarching principles influencing kindergarten sustainability: presence of “champion” for the ECE vision; community ownership-taking, awareness-building, and cooperation-maintenance; and program cultural/contextual sensitivity and relevance. These elements were found to be strongly linked with an intergenerational cultural decay in the Kahua region, as conceptualized through a model of Cyclically-Sustained Kindergarten Mediocrity.

This thesis explores the experiences, encounters, responses and reactions to Islamophobia through a narrative study of forty female Pakistani and British students with a Pakistani heritage in universities across England. In exploring Islamophobia as a ‘racialised’ phenomenon, the participant narratives locate the experiences and encounters of Islamophobia within their ‘intersubjective’ realities, across various ‘communities’ of ‘discourse.’ These realities are informed by the wider socio-political milieu of a war against Al Qa’ida and its affiliates that ‘securitizes’ the Muslim and Pakistani identity(s) particularly in Britain. The university is also implicated in the counter terrorism agenda of the state, depicted as a ‘vulnerable’ space for radicalizing students. However, females in this discussion are predominantly absent within the academic and public narratives. Therefore, this research will explore the experience of Islamophobia, the way it is perceived by the British/Pakistani/Muslim/female student, and the way students respond and react to it within the university. The research employs a narrative method of inquiry. The narrative analysis is informed by a Bakhtinian notion of ‘dialogics’ to explore the multiplicity of ‘meanings’ that emerge through individual accounts of Islamophobia located within their public and private realms. In exploring these narratives the thesis illustrates how ‘degrees of religiosity’ influences encounters and experiences of Islamophobia, and highlights responses and reactions of students to such experiences, that include individual and group activism to challenge Islamophobia and the insecure meta-narrative about Muslims and terrorism. The research further focuses on both the religious identity of the Muslim student, and their problematic ethnic identity, Pakistani demonstrating how in a securitized socio-political milieu Muslim students are further vulnerable to experiences of Islamophobia, in the form of Pakophobia, where both their religious and ethnic identities are held suspect. These narratives have implications for the emerging understanding of Islamophobia as a ‘racialised’ phenomenon. They further have implications for universities that are encouraged to participate in the government’s counter-terrorism agenda. The narratives by locating the research within the particularities of a wider socio-political milieu that ‘racialises’ and ‘securitizes’ Muslims raises critical questions about the nature of discrimination in a post 9/11, 7/7 era that may have repercussions for other Muslim minority groups.

This thesis addresses the “foreign talent” situation in Singapore with an ethnographic account of the lived experiences of immigrant PRC students on scholarships, or “PRC scholars.” For some two decades, the Singapore government has annually recruited middle school students from China in their hundreds, selecting them through tests and interviews, granting them full scholarships at either pre-undergraduate or undergraduate level, and, very often, “bonding” them to work subsequently in Singapore for a number of years. Wooed and appropriated in such a way as prized potential human capital, PRC scholars exemplify the Singapore state’s desire for “foreign talent.” In the first decade of the twenty-first century, as the influx of all manners of “foreign talent” into the small city-state gathered pace, local sentiments and discourses of resentment arose. The local-vs-“foreign talent” problem became a serious strain on a city and people proud of their cosmopolitanism. This thesis analyzes the “foreign talent” situation through the ethnographic “macro-trope” of desire. It argues that “foreign talent” is a site of convergence and divergence, collusion and collision, accommodation and contestation, fulfillment and failure of various individual, sociocultural, and political desires and longings. Through the lens of desire, and its psychoanalytic undertones and insights, this thesis looks ethnographically into the PRC scholars’ “foreign talent” journeys in nuanced ways. Based on ethnographic fieldworks carried out in a Chinese middle school and a Singaporean university, the thesis shows how Chinese students are constituted as specific subjects of desire, and how they subsequently develop certain perceptions, attitudes, and stereotypes about the local “other” as well as about themselves after arriving in Singapore as “foreign talent.” Infused with multifarious desires, the PRC scholars’ experiences are often characterized by angst and dissatisfaction; yet it is also argued that generative subjective transformations take place precisely amidst these dynamics and pragmatics of desiring. Ultimately, this thesis seeks to make possible an ethical re-imagination of the “foreign talent” situation in Singapore from the perspective of desire; to provide an account of the so far little-studied Chinese migrant students in the context of Singapore; and to speak more broadly to the cultural and subjective dimensions of human experiences in the context of educational mobility, identity politics, and globalization.

This thesis consists of a short introduction and three self-contained analytical chapters. Chapter 1 focuses on the question of learning gaps and divergence in achievement across countries. I use unique child-level panel data from Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam to ask at what ages do gaps between different populations emerge, how they increase or decline over time, and what the proximate determinants of this divergence are. I document that learning gaps between the four countries are already evident at the age of 5 years and grow throughout the age trajectory of children, preserving country ranks from 5 to 15 years of age. At primary school age, the divergence between Vietnam and the other countries is largely accounted for by substantially greater learning gains per year of schooling. Chapter 2 focuses on learning differences between private and government school students in India. I present the first value-added models of learning production in private and government schools in this context, using panel data from Andhra Pradesh. I examine the heterogeneity in private school value-added across different subjects, urban and rural areas, medium of instruction, and across age groups. Further, I also estimate private school effects on children's self-efficacy and agency. I find modest or insignificant causal effects of attending private schools in most test domains other than English and on children's academic self-concept and agency. Results on comparable test domains and age groups correspond closely with, and further extend, estimates from a parallel experimental evaluation. Chapter 3 uses panel data from the state of Andhra Pradesh in India to estimate the impact of the introduction of a national midday meal program on anthropometric z-scores of primary school students, and investigates whether the program ameliorated the deterioration of health in young children caused by a severe drought. Correcting for self-selection into the program using a non-linearity in how age affects the probability of enrollment, we find that the program acted as a safety net for children, providing large and significant health gains for children whose families suffered from drought.

There is a critical need for college students to receive an education that fosters global learning in preparation for life in an increasingly interdependent and interconnected world. Universities recognize this need and endeavor to provide a range of programs that target global knowledge and skills, and meet the needs of traditional and non-traditional students. Domestic foreign language immersion programs can contribute to student global learning and development by providing students with an opportunity to participate in a rich global learning experience in the U.S. While some researchers have investigated impacts of domestic foreign language immersion on language proficiency, few studies of other kinds of global learning outcomes are available, and research is needed to gain an understanding of program impacts and make improvements. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which participation in a domestic foreign language immersion program was perceived to influence global learning and development. The study used a mixed-methods design that incorporated as a key instrument a retrospective survey of former participants in a university-level domestic foreign language immersion program. Perspectives from short-term study abroad, foreign languages, transformative learning, and global citizenship informed the research. The study found that participants in a domestic foreign language immersion program perceived influence in all three domains of global development. The degree of perceived influence was similar in the three domains except in the area of social responsibility, which received a significantly lower rating. Finally, student characteristics, including age, language level, prior international or other intercultural experience, and on/off-campus residence were not associated with perceived program influence. A qualitative analysis helped explain these findings.

This thesis presents an interpretative study of an Australian offshore education program in educational leadership conducted at Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province in China from 2002 to 2003. It is a study of the influence of international education on the conceptions of the participants in a particular context, where Chinese culture and Western cultures came into contact. The study is significant because it investigated a relatively new aspect of international education, offshore education, this time from the perspective of the participants. It explored the conceptions of learning and leadership brought by a group of Chinese educational leaders to the course and investigated the perceived influence of the course upon their conceptions and self-reported leadership practice. It employed a culturally sensitive approach which recognizes that a complex interaction between Chinese and Western cultures is occurring in the participants of this study. This interpretative study was inspired by the phenomenographic approach. Phenomenography is an approach to research that has been used to help understand the key aspects of the variations in the experiences of groups of people (Marton & Booth, 1997). The study examined the experiences and understandings about learning and leadership of Chinese leaders in an offshore program, a Master of Educational Leadership. The program was delivered in a flexible mode in three intensive teaching brackets of six subjects. The study employed a semi-structured and in-depth interview technique. Twenty participants were interviewed twice over a 12-month period. The study sought a better understanding of their conceptions by making a comparison between their perceptions prior to and after undertaking the course. Participants were from schools, universities and educational departments. Potential differences across the three sectors were also considered in the analysis. The findings showed that most participants developed more complex understandings of learning and leadership throughout the course. Comparison of conceptions prior to and after the course indicated an expanded range of conceptions. There was reportedly a movement towards more complex and diversified perspectives. Prior to the course, participants reported comparatively traditional conceptions of learning and leadership in quite a limited range. Learning experience and exposure to Western educational ideas and practices seems to have led participants to reflect on their inherited assumptions and to expand their conceptions. They generally increased their awareness of key aspects of variations in learning and leadership. This study identified a general shift from content/utilitarian-oriented learning conceptions to meaning/developmental-oriented conceptions after undertaking the course. There was also a shift from task/directiveorientated conceptions about leadership to motivation/collaborative-oriented leadership conceptions. Many participants reported that they expanded their leadership practice after the course. The findings also revealed some differences regarding conceptual and practice changes across the three sectors. The study contributes to understanding of learning and leadership in an international education context. The learning and leadership conceptions and self-reported practices are context and culture dependent. The study illustrates the tensions between different cultural forces in the process of teaching and learning. The methodology which explores the subjective understandings of participants renders more complex understandings of intercultural processes than cross-cultural comparisons which have been predominant in the educational leadership field in the past. The results highlight the need for appreciation of local contexts in designing international programs. The discussion questions the universal applicability and transferability of Western ideas, and also highlights the importance of critical reflection and adaptation on the part of educational practitioners from non-Western cultures. It highlights the potential for growth of change in both providers and recipients of international education as a result of very different cultures and traditions coming into contact. Intercultural dialogue and integration of educational ideas and practices are likely to come about when East meets West in an open and reflective dialogue.