This study examines the differential patterns of access to higher education of students from rural areas in transition from a planned to a market economy. In respect to college access, the research argues that market reforms have reproduced the advantages for students from the cadre’s and the professional’s families while simultaneously creating new opportunities for the children of the new arising economic elite. Yet, it has performed less for traditional peasant families whose children still fail to gain access to college in proportions higher than the size of the population. Based on the literature, this research places a special emphasis on how economic and cultural resources become the main influence on rural students? college access. The process dimension -- how families from different social backgrounds within rural society involve themselves in the schooling of their children and how this contributes to inequality of college access within rural society, are investigated. This research unpacks this process by examining the school involvement experiences of parents in Zong, a county located in the province of Anhui. Parental involvement is conceptualized in terms of how economic and cultural resources are converted to social capital as part of family strategies within the increasingly stratified social context of rural China. The research identifies the consequences of activating different types of social networks within family and community, and also between family and school to facilitate this process by gaining advantages in access to college. Household interviews and field notes were used as the main methods of data collection with a range of parents and teachers involved in this ethnographic study. The data analysis suggests that state, schools and teachers provide few formal and routine channels for rural parents to become involved in schooling. This raises the importance of family strategic initiatives to employ interpersonal social networks (guanxi) within family, community and between school and family. Parents from cadres and professional backgrounds are capable of maintaining these social networks that are useful for their children’s chances of entering higher education. Their counterparts from the new economic elites? backgrounds have developed the means to capitalize upon their families economic and cultural resources by converting them into social capital that creates advantages in college access for their children. Peasants, however, rely heavily on teachers and relatives in education and are substantially marginalized from those important interpersonal social networks of capital conversion. Although this research found the structure constrains interpersonal social network of peasant families, it also highlights the agency of parents from different families. For example, in some cases it found, that peasants actively use their kinships to create chances for school involvement to potentially improve the chances of their children’s college access. This research is one of the first empirical studies to inquire about the mechanism of capital conversion in affecting higher education opportunities in the post-socialist era, which will help to re-evaluate the influence of market reforms over rural education system in China. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

M.A. / This dissertation is about how poor households struggled to keep children in the school system during a protracted political and socio-economic crisis in post-2000 Zimbabwe. The setting of the research is Nyamande village in Murewa District, Zimbabwe. Fieldwork was conducted between May 2010 and July 2010, at a time that many believe to be past the peak of Zimbabwe’s crisis in 2008. In-depth interviews and observations were used to collect qualitative data from families and households in Nyamande village. My findings revealed that even when such households did not get surplus produce, they still sold what they had in order to obtain income to fund their children’s schooling. Households supplemented their farm produce with off-farm activities such as casual labour on plots, informal trading and sale of assets. Child labour was also employed as a means of supplementing family income in order to meet schooling requirements through activities such as casual labour on farms and roadside selling of produce. The introduction of the multi-currency system or dollarisation (as it was commonly known) in April 2009 improved the conditions in Zimbabwe to some extent; however complexities experienced in Nyamande village included access to the US dollar and Rand currencies. These challenges led to the re-emergence of the barter or exchange system during and after dollarisation as most households adopted this as a strategy to provide for their children’s schooling. Although households displayed various forms of resilience in their efforts to keep children in school, interventions regarding the viability and sustainability of some of these strategies should be considered. Various stakeholders including government, private sector and non-government organisations need to play an active role in uplifting rural communities in promoting children’s schooling.

The general aim of this thesis is to illuminate the process of learning as it occurs in formal and informal contexts. The study focuses on South African scholars attending school in rural areas where the contrast between learning in formal and informal learning contexts is more pronounced than that in urban areas. The research draws on rural scholars' local knowledge of formal and informal learning contexts in order to gain a rich insight into how cognition is situated in different learning contexts. This is accomplished through investigating the structure of the respective learning tasks, the mediators involved, the task objectives and the means for achieving these objectives in the different learning contexts. The thesis draws on a socio-cultural approach to the study of cognitive development to probe the activity of learning in a formal and informal learning context. Through the use of a context sensitive methodological methods especially Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) tools and techniques, it was possible to illuminate tacit local knowledge structures and to get participants to actively explicate their understandings related to learning in different contexts The research results illustrate the assertion that the activity of learning is fundamentally situated in the learning context from which it arises. Learning is framed by the community of practice which structures affordances for situated learning, through mediation, within zones of proximal development. Learning in a formal context such as the school is often abstract, rule-based, standardised and theory related. Learners also find it difficult to reflect on the learning tasks and the mediational means used in a formal learning context. In contrast, the learning which takes place in an informal setting is often practical, individualised, flexible and environment based. This learning is structured around everyday activities and is dynamically defined and supported. In a situation where a learner is exposed to dislocated learning contexts, the essential goal of educational initiatives is to bridge the gap between the two. This can be achieved through mediators creating effective zones of proximal development which facilitate the individuals adaptation between learning contexts. Exposing rural scholars' local knowledge of learning in formal and informal contexts allows for a fuller understanding of the cognitive development structured within formal and informal communities of practice. It is this understanding that is necessary to address the situation where learning contexts, drawing on different knowledge bases find ways of thinking, prove challenging and/or conflicting to the scholar.

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No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertacao - Ester Alves Lopes Mendes - 2016.pdf: 5908849 bytes, checksum: a8c82f0fa43829453ffd7780dbd0c529 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-06-20 / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Goiás - FAPEG / This research, entitled Rural Children Education in the field in the municipality of Bela Vista de Goiás: pre-school for children living in rural areas, linked to the research line “Training, Teacher Professionalization and Educational Work” of the Posgraduate Program of College of Education in the Federal University of Goiás (FE/UFG), composes one of the subprojects integrated to the research "Public Policy and Education of Children in Goiás: history, conceptions, projects and practices" developed by the Studies and Researches Center of Children and your Education in Different Contexts (NEPIEC/FE/UFG), coordinated by Prof. Dra. Ivone Garcia Barbosa. This is an issue of research considered is relatively new in the scenario of research in the area of education, presenting it is important to be debated and studied, in view of the limited number of studies performed and the urgent need to think and give the child education also the children living in the field. Researches have denounced the lack of institutions for this portion of society and pointing to the need for more quality in educational directed children younger than 7 years from rural area. Faced with this problem, the objective of this work understand. was pre-school children education living in rural area in the state of Goiás, Brazil, in order to understand the directions set out in brazilian educational policies and the implementation of education for children aged 4 to 6 years old residents of the countryside. In order to apprehend the social and historical reality of our research object, based on the dialectical materialist method, we developed a theoretical and documentary research, as well as an empirical stage, in which 20 professionals of education were participants in Bela Vista of Goiás. The research results indicated the importance of constituting systematic dialogue among studies on Children Education and Rural Education. Still, we found that the effectiveness of a Rural Children Education policy covers a complex process in so far as pre-school education offered to children living in rural areas take place in urban schools, which do not always articulate a curriculum with the rural reality. In this sense, the root of the discussion about Rural Children Education does not end in the reality of the municipalities, but presents itself as a conjunctural problem that permeates financing discussions, structure, teacher training; and actions and State policies, not only emergency measures coated in government policies. / A presente pesquisa, intitulada Educação Infantil do Campo no município de Bela Vista de Goiás: a pré-escola para crianças residentes na área rural, vinculada à linha de pesquisa Formação, Profissionalização Docente e Trabalho Educativo do Programa de Pós-graduação da Faculdade de Educação da Universidade Federal de Goiás (FE/UFG), compõe um dos subprojetos integrados à pesquisa “Políticas Públicas e Educação da Infância em Goiás: história, concepções, projetos e práticas”, desenvolvido pelo Núcleo de Estudos e Pesquisas da Infância e sua Educação em Diferentes Contextos (NEPIEC/ FE/ UFG), coordenado pela profa. Dra. Ivone Garcia Barbosa. Essa é uma temática de investigação considerada relativamente nova no cenário das pesquisas na área da Educação, apresentando-se importante de ser debatida e estudada, tendo em vista o número reduzido de estudos realizados e a urgente necessidade de se pensar e ofertar a Educação Infantil também as crianças moradoras do campo. Pesquisas têm denunciado a escassez de instituições para essa parcela da sociedade e apontando para a necessidade de mais qualidade no atendimento educacional direcionados as crianças menores de 7 anos advindas de área rural. Diante dessa problemática, objetivamos nesse trabalho compreender as indicações constantes nas políticas educacionais brasileiras e a implementação da educação das crianças de 4 a 6 anos moradoras do campo no município de Bela Vista de Goiás, no estado de Goiás. No intuito de apreendermos a realidade sócio-histórica de nosso objeto de pesquisa, com base no método materialista dialético, desenvolvemos levantamento teórico e documental, bem como uma etapa empírica, na qual participaram 20 profissionais da Educação do município de Bela Vista de Goiás. Constatamos que a efetivação de uma política de Educação Infantil do Campo abrange um processo complexo na medida em que a educação pré-escolar ofertada às crianças residentes na área rural acontece em escolas urbanas, as quais nem sempre articulam um currículo com a realidade do campo. Neste sentido, a raiz da discussão acerca da Educação Infantil do Campo não se esgota na realidade dos municípios, mas, apresenta-se como um problema conjuntural que perpassa discussões de financiamento, estrutura, formação de professores; e ações e políticas de Estado, não somente de medidas emergências revestidas em políticas de governo.

The South African schooling system is faced with a number of crisis situations. Of these is the high under resourcing in rural public schools. Macfarlane (2005:5) deduces that despite rapid recent urbanization, half of South Africa’s learners still attend schools in theses rural under resourced areas. The Eastern Cape is one of the provinces that have saturated the media with a discrepancy of having a lot of under resourced schools especially in rural areas. This study, therefore, investigated pedagogical strategies used by teachers in under resourced schools - how teachers teach to ensure that teaching and learning occurs under such dire circumstances. The study followed a qualitative approach under an interpretive paradigm with a case study research design. Furthermore, the data collection techniques involved semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and documentary analysis. This study revealed that all the respondents from both schools seemed to have a common understanding of what a school resource means though put in different statements. The findings also revealed that all the respondents were silent in mentioning parents as school resources. From the documents analysed, it however, came to view that it is expected of the teachers to use a learner centred approach kind of teaching, where learners are mostly used. Responding on parents the teachers alleged a lack of involvement of parents in their children’s learning and other activities run in their school. The study recommends that the Department of Education officials need to make regular visits on schools for the betterment of teaching and learning standard, regular improvement on school facilities and handling of finances.

Many learners failed at school and were often causing over identification of learners with a mild intellectual disability. A national intervention, the Foundations for Learning was regarded as a national curriculum adaptation that addressed many learning needs. The aim of the study was to investigate the responsiveness of the Foundations for Learning in meeting the mathematics educational needs of Foundation Phase learners with a mild intellectual disability who lived in a disadvantaged village in Mpumalanga Province. A survey involving 39 teachers was conducted in the village and data was collected using a questionnaire. The main findings were that the national curriculum adaptation was significantly responsive and promoted mathematics achievement of some of the learners with a mild intellectual disability. The recommendations included that teacher informal identification of learners with a mild intellectual disability needed to be followed by formal assessment by psychologists and support from the District Based Support Team. / Inclusive Education / M. Ed. (Inclusive Education)

Many learners failed at school and were often causing over identification of learners with a mild intellectual disability. A national intervention, the Foundations for Learning was regarded as a national curriculum adaptation that addressed many learning needs. The aim of the study was to investigate the responsiveness of the Foundations for Learning in meeting the mathematics educational needs of Foundation Phase learners with a mild intellectual disability who lived in a disadvantaged village in Mpumalanga Province. A survey involving 39 teachers was conducted in the village and data was collected using a questionnaire. The main findings were that the national curriculum adaptation was significantly responsive and promoted mathematics achievement of some of the learners with a mild intellectual disability. The recommendations included that teacher informal identification of learners with a mild intellectual disability needed to be followed by formal assessment by psychologists and support from the District Based Support Team. / Inclusive Education / M. Ed. (Inclusive Education)