This study investigates the domestic dwellings built in Brisbane by twenty first-generation migra... more This study investigates the domestic dwellings built in Brisbane by twenty first-generation migrants, natives of the Veneto region in Italy, who migrated to Australia in the post WWII period and built their houses in the 1980s and 1990s in Brisbane. The purpose of this research study is to explore whether notions of culture were present in the homes migrants constructed in Brisbane, both in the material realm (interpreted as internal and external organization of space and the composition of the façade) and in the symbolic realm (the meanings attached to these houses by Italian migrants). The project is of qualitative nature and as primary sources of data uses semi-structured interviews, associated when circumstances made this possible, to photo-elicitation interviews, and focus group discussion. The semi-structured interviews were conducted both in Australia with twenty first-generation Italian migrants, and in Italy with another ten informants who are indigenous to the Veneto region and who built their homes there. These primary data are supplemented by (4) secondary data in the form of photographs and drawings. The findings reveal that home is both a physical structure and a set of meanings where these two components are tied together rather than being separate and distinct. It shows that there were two models the Veneto migrants chose for the erection of their houses in Brisbane and these correspond to: (1) the rural houses built in the 1970s and 1980s by their family and friends in the Veneto region and (2) the villas designed for noble families by the architect Andrea Palladio in the 15 th century in the homeland of the respondents.
This article highlights and explores the hermeneutical phenomenology found in Haitian/Vilokan Ide... more This article highlights and explores the hermeneutical phenomenology found in Haitian/Vilokan Idealism. The work posits that Haitian ontology, Vodou/Vilokan, gave rise to its epistemology, Haitian/Vilokan Idealism, which subsequently gave rise to the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism and the lakou system as its form of social and system integration, respectively. Within Haitian/Vilokan Idealism, the work concludes, is a hermeneutical phenomenology that parallels Martin Heidegger's hermeneutical phenomenology.
Article History Received: 04.07.2018 Accepted: 18.07.2018 Published: 30.08.2018 Abstract: This th... more Article History Received: 04.07.2018 Accepted: 18.07.2018 Published: 30.08.2018 Abstract: This theoretical paper uses document analysis to probe South Sudan‟s new National Curriculum Framework (2014) as an official text and its implications as a change agenda with a view to arriving at a perspective about the task of the school in the world‟s newest country. The study notes that the country‟s curriculum change policy seeks to enact a curriculum model that provides both equality and quality with a pedagogic philosophy that is humanistic in essence, transformative in outlook and historical in perspective. The new model shifts from subject-specific to generic curriculum that offers more student choice, relies on environment and accentuates social and life skills in a broader milieu of competencies. The new arrivals on the subject scene are information & communication technology, vocational education & enterprise, and values education in the form of environmental sustainability, life sk...
Article History Received: 08.02.2018 Accepted: 15.02.2018 Published: 30.03.2018 Abstract: This ar... more Article History Received: 08.02.2018 Accepted: 15.02.2018 Published: 30.03.2018 Abstract: This article seeks to render problematic the ideological underpinnings and theoretical conceptions, or lack thereof, of teacher education in the education system of the Republic of South Sudan. It uses the emergent perspective to question the construction of the country‟s Teacher Persona as envisioned in the legal and policy frameworks such as the General Education Act 2012 and the National General Education Policy (2017-2027). The Government sees these instruments as an essential catalyst to professionalize teaching and attract candidates of high calibre to the teaching profession using the political model as an offshoot of its paternalist and utilitarian national ideology to control and guarantee the quality of the teacher education enterprise. The political model, however, needs the generative practice of the institutional model and the replicative feature of the professional model to provid...
This study reviews the decentralisation of education in six West African countries during 1980-20... more This study reviews the decentralisation of education in six West African countries during 1980-2005 using a dual conceptual framework of systems theory of public policy and political bargaining model of management. The study notes that in many respects, decentralisation of education has been more spatial than substantial, essentially moving responsibilities for decision and operation a peg or two down but withholding authorities at the central level. The basic decision making for educational service delivery has been mainly transferred within the same legal entity, signalling the strength of deconcentration as the main mode of decentralisation in West Africa. These countries‟ tools and techniques to organise school work and acquire and allocate resources to achieve educational goals are invariably based on the bureaucratic and flexible models of educational administration undergirded by a national governance model that is by and large monocentric and nurtures verticality. Thus, cons...
DOI: 10.21276/sjhss.2018.3.2.1 Abstract: This paper explores and characterizes the relationships ... more DOI: 10.21276/sjhss.2018.3.2.1 Abstract: This paper explores and characterizes the relationships between human development and education using critical literature review to engage the strands of argument for basic social justice and quality of life at the crossroads of economics, ethics and politics. The oversold conventional approach to development as an income line, people as a means and markets as a focus of concern has long lost its shine on account of the rise of the Human Development Paradigm which accords education a fundamental role in equipping people with competencies and capabilities to enlarge their choices and enhance their well-being. Accordingly, education offers a new language of hope and possibility about what people can actually acquire overtime to choose their kind of life they value; brings into its orbit social justice and equity by training people not just as an economic enterprise but as an attribute of power relations in the structure of any society; and meas...
DOI: 10.21276/sjbms.2017.2.12.9 Abstract: This paper contributes to an understanding of the main ... more DOI: 10.21276/sjbms.2017.2.12.9 Abstract: This paper contributes to an understanding of the main factors and actors that create the imperative for educational change in the six member countries of the East African Community (EAC) and how governance dynamics reflect on their policy positions. The method of study is qualitative and uses mainly existing literature as a synthesis. The study notes that the main drivers of educational change in the region are national and political transformation agenda; foreign aid conditionality; the advent and revival of the East African Community; and patronage, clientelism and corruption inherent in the neo-patrimonial set-up of the state. The member countries of the bloc initially drew upon the imperative of nationbuilding back in the 1960s to assign value to educational change as intertwined with Independence from colonial rule. Orthodox reform later assumed greater prominence in the 1980s and 1990s as aid conditionality drastically undermined gain...
DOI: 10.21276/sjhss.2018.3.8.13 Abstract: This is a theoretical paper with a charge to examine th... more DOI: 10.21276/sjhss.2018.3.8.13 Abstract: This is a theoretical paper with a charge to examine the scope and character of gender equality in the education systems of Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan through a review of cross-national literature using feminist lens to interpret their connotations. While Uganda and South Sudan have invariably sought to enact affirmative action geared at achieving increased access for girl children, Rwanda has by and large focused on shifting from affirmative action to more holistic genderresponsive strategies in its crusade. This, perhaps, is the most convincing notion of salience among the three East African countries; confirming that formal opportunities for equal treatment of girl children ensure neither a shared starting point nor equal outcomes because of different cross-national milieus of change. In Uganda, the flagship of government initiative is the 1997 UPE which has since its launch spurred a big rise in the number of school girls across the ...
DOI: 10.21276/sjhss.2017.2.11.12 Abstract: In this paper, I argue that there is clear evidence of... more DOI: 10.21276/sjhss.2017.2.11.12 Abstract: In this paper, I argue that there is clear evidence of neglect of higher education in post-independent South Sudan. The study, therefore, interrogates the scope of the higher education crisis in the country and assesses prospects for change from the standpoint of equity and quality using institutionalism as a theoretical framework. The study points out that the crisis of the system runs through the tapestry of South Sudan’s history of state formation against which the variable of nation-building at the dawn of Independence in 2011 has failed to assign adequate value for higher education in the pursuit of the objectives of national transformation in particular, and modernisation in general. It remains to be seen if the political leadership and the academic community could define the payload of South Sudan’s higher education system as the country transitions into a constitutional democracy capable of according greater autonomy and initiative ...
This paper seeks to comparatively procure prospect in understanding the evolution of language use... more This paper seeks to comparatively procure prospect in understanding the evolution of language use in the education systems of Kenya, Tanzania and South Sudan using cultural pluralism as an ideological casing and policy change as a theoretical setting. While the transitional and developmental phases in the language policies of Kenya and Tanzania date back to early 1960s through 1980s against the backdrop of colonial domination, South Sudan grapples with the unorthodox task of launching a language policy in 2011 that is both transitional in terms of breaking free from the hegemonic grip of Arabic; and developmental in terms of scrambling to assign value to its home languages and develop them. It is obvious both Kenya and Tanzania have long embarked on bilingual education driven by Kiswahili and English in an uneasy duality that has stood the test of time. The nature of policy change in their context is path dependence, meaning their current trajectories have been established by the initial conditions of colonial language policy and the conjuncture of their independence era. By contrast, it is the punctuated equilibrium of political separation from Sudan that defines South Sudan"s nature of policy change, rendering it more likely to embrace policy diffusion based on functionality, commonality and diversity. Developing a mother tongue-based multilingual education remains the only viable reasoned use of language that Kenya, Tanzania and South Sudan should foster by atoning for the vices of status planning in their language policies; while using corpus planning to line up systematic provisions for linguistic designations and thus create the missing link between language choice and national poise. That being said, this study remains essentially theoretical and illustrative and would benefit more from additional empirical research.
Rethinking Decolonisation of Education in Africa and the Rise of China as an Imperial Contingency: A Social Realist & Deconstructive Post-Colonialist Critique, 2020
This paper critically reexamines the narrative of decolonization of education in Africa and quest... more This paper critically reexamines the narrative of decolonization of education in Africa and questions the extent to which the supposed decolonization processes are sensitive and responsive to new forms of exploitation of Africa as may arise from new centres of global power such as China. Using Archer"s realist social theory, the study notes that African nations still by and large use colonial-era curriculum frameworks, power relations and institutional structures to enact and validate schooling for its human capital formation; suggesting decolonization processes are neither effective nor enduring. African education systems are under-utilizing local climate and culture to promote indigeneity alongside modernity mainly because the element of agency is lost in the shuffle of its elite class"s inability to accumulate meaning over the last six decades. There is need, therefore, to reclaim Africa"s humanity and subjectivity by decolonizing production of knowledge of Africa if decolonization processes are not to become a metaphor. Using Syrotinski"s deconstructive post-colonialism, the study critiques the representation of China in the post-colonial epistemic subtlety of partnerships and argues that China"s influence in Africa is primarily conditioned by the structure and culture of colonization and that China may seek greater elaboration of the same cyclical charade to look both "different and pertinent." Chinese overtures to Africa literally constitute a contingency that affects the story of Africa"s decolonization and its outcomes by coming with a price tag of exploitation, albeit more muted and less refuted. Prudence dictates that African education systems should provide avenues to question the narrative of China-Africa cooperation from the standpoint of unequal relations that could undermine Africa"s efforts to eliminate dependence and so eventually fully decolonize. African nations need to rethink China and their education systems must provide the standpoints for doing so by widening the social base of political consciousness and action against possible neo-imperial takeover.
Language Policy & Planning in Kenya, Tanzania and South Sudan: The Nature of Policy Change, 2020
This paper seeks to comparatively procure prospect in understanding the evolution of language use... more This paper seeks to comparatively procure prospect in understanding the evolution of language use in the education systems of Kenya, Tanzania and South Sudan using cultural pluralism as an ideological casing and policy change as a theoretical setting. While the transitional and developmental phases in the language policies of Kenya and Tanzania date back to early 1960s through 1980s against the backdrop of colonial domination, South Sudan grapples with the unorthodox task of launching a language policy in 2011 that is both transitional in terms of breaking free from the hegemonic grip of Arabic; and developmental in terms of scrambling to assign value to its home languages and develop them. It is obvious both Kenya and Tanzania have long embarked on bilingual education driven by Kiswahili and English in an uneasy duality that has stood the test of time. The nature of policy change in their context is path dependence, meaning their current trajectories have been established by the initial conditions of colonial language policy and the conjuncture of their independence era. By contrast, it is the punctuated equilibrium of political separation from Sudan that defines South Sudan"s nature of policy change, rendering it more likely to embrace policy diffusion based on functionality, commonality and diversity. Developing a mother tongue-based multilingual education remains the only viable reasoned use of language that Kenya, Tanzania and South Sudan should foster by atoning for the vices of status planning in their language policies; while using corpus planning to line up systematic provisions for linguistic designations and thus create the missing link between language choice and national poise. That being said, this study remains essentially theoretical and illustrative and would benefit more from additional empirical research.
Saudi Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, 2018
This is a theoretical paper with a charge to examine the scope and character of gender equality i... more This is a theoretical paper with a charge to examine the scope and character of gender equality in the education systems of Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan through a review of cross-national literature using feminist lens to interpret their connotations. While Uganda and South Sudan have invariably sought to enact affirmative action geared at achieving increased access for girl children, Rwanda has by and large focused on shifting from affirmative action to more holistic gender-responsive strategies in its crusade. This, perhaps, is the most convincing notion of salience among the three East African countries; confirming that formal opportunities for equal treatment of girl children ensure neither a shared starting point nor equal outcomes because of different cross-national milieus of change. In Uganda, the flagship of government initiative is the 1997 UPE which has since its launch spurred a big rise in the number of school girls across the country. The extension of the free education policy to 12 years represents Rwanda"s best bid to attain gender equality; while the Go to School Initiative is South Sudan"s rarest case of success in promoting access and participation but remains largely embryonic and sporadic. Cultural thinking, economic insecurity and social disadvantage immensely affect the way poor and rural households decide about investing in their girl children"s education. There is need, therefore, to emphasize the intrinsic developmental value of education over and above the compulsion for productivity and employability. It is audaciously mistaken to establish that gender inequality could be altered by education or within the education system without restructuring sexual division of labour in the home and the market at large. To achieve gender equality in their education systems, Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan must decode the cultural capital of their social classes and use that knowledge to empower women and girl children at the family and community levels while schools offer prospect. If these initiatives could be further institutionalised, resourced, and embedded in durable policy visions, it is possible for schools to become standard for broader societal transformation.
Saudi Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, 2018
This paper explores and characterizes the relationships between human development and education u... more This paper explores and characterizes the relationships between human development and education using critical literature review to engage the strands of argument for basic social justice and quality of life at the crossroads of economics, ethics and politics. The oversold conventional approach to development as an income line, people as a means and markets as a focus of concern has long lost its shine on account of the rise of the Human Development Paradigm which accords education a fundamental role in equipping people with competencies and capabilities to enlarge their choices and enhance their well-being. Accordingly, education offers a new language of hope and possibility about what people can actually acquire overtime to choose their kind of life they value; brings into its orbit social justice and equity by training people not just as an economic enterprise but as an attribute of power relations in the structure of any society; and measures learner evaluation not just in terms of literacy tests but people"s ability to express their views. As education constitutes both a foundation and a vehicle for building and extending people"s capabilities, the risk is great that the manner in which it is organised and transacted could always be politically manipulated by the elite and economically deployed as a means to produce an under-class. This paper, therefore, tempers optimism with realism and notes that any given education system is a manifestation of the society that embraces it. Notwithstanding this proclivity, the human development paradigm provides the best chance yet for a life people have reason to value because it offers an ethical-political guide to the imperative of social change and economic growth, using education as a compass; and disproving pay as an exact index of merit.
Saudi Journal of Business and Management Studies (SJBMS) ISSN 2415-6663 (Print) , 2017
This paper contributes to an understanding of the main factors and actors that create the imperat... more This paper contributes to an understanding of the main factors and actors that create the imperative for educational change in the six member countries of the East African Community (EAC) and how governance dynamics reflect on their policy positions. The method of study is qualitative and uses mainly existing literature as a synthesis. The study notes that the main drivers of educational change in the region are national and political transformation agenda; foreign aid conditionality; the advent and revival of the East African Community; and patronage, clientelism and corruption inherent in the neo-patrimonial setup of the state. The member countries of the bloc initially drew upon the imperative of nation-building back in the 1960s to assign value to educational change as intertwined with Independence from colonial rule. Orthodox reform later assumed greater prominence in the 1980s and 1990s as aid conditionality drastically undermined gains made in educational expansion. Reforms undertaken in late 1990s and 2000s have been in response to the quest for democratisation in East Africa. Amid the clamour for policy convergence on educational change, there is need for a region-wide process of mutual policy borrowing, considerable harmonisation of curricula for secondary & higher education, and increased student and staff mobility. The study concludes that the history of state formation, political competition and state-society relations in the EAC points to a complex variable of macro policy convergence in educational change and governance that calls for consummate tact as the region seeks a market-mediated identity and contemplates political federation.
Journal of Advances in Education and Philosophy, 2018
This theoretical paper uses document analysis to probe South Sudan"s new National Curriculum Fram... more This theoretical paper uses document analysis to probe South Sudan"s new National Curriculum Framework (2014) as an official text and its implications as a change agenda with a view to arriving at a perspective about the task of the school in the world"s newest country. The study notes that the country"s curriculum change policy seeks to enact a curriculum model that provides both equality and quality with a pedagogic philosophy that is humanistic in essence, transformative in outlook and historical in perspective. The new model shifts from subject-specific to generic curriculum that offers more student choice, relies on environment and accentuates social and life skills in a broader milieu of competencies. The new arrivals on the subject scene are information & communication technology, vocational education & enterprise, and values education in the form of environmental sustainability, life skills and peace studies to consolidate civics and cement the country"s diverse society. However, the facility of the Framework to promote inclusive education is constrained by its design possibilities and the practical realities of school education in South Sudan as its official launch date of 2019 approaches. The scope for broader learner experience beyond conventionality will remain largely rhetorical or even inimical in as far as the resources for emancipatory practices are held back by the dual force of curriculum novelty and state priority. The prospect of wide gaps between planned, delivered and experienced curriculum is, therefore, real and vexed. It remains to be seen if the Ministry has a strategy at all to deal with any eventual knock-on effect. The fact remains, too, that the Framework is heavily prescriptive in nature and as such could potentially prove counter-productive to teacher agency with drastic consequences for local teacher appraisal practices. Thus, implementing a new curriculum short of resources and through the political doldrums of shifting timelines is principally an unmitigated disaster. It could lead to a tacit rejection of curriculum change, more out of repulsion than upon reflection. The fortunes of South Sudan"s National Curriculum Framework (2014) are thus defined; and the broader discourse of reform duly confined.
Journal of Advances in Education & Philosophy, 2018
This article seeks to render problematic the ideological underpinnings and theoretical conception... more This article seeks to render problematic the ideological underpinnings and theoretical conceptions, or lack thereof, of teacher education in the education system of the Republic of South Sudan. It uses the emergent perspective to question the construction of the country"s Teacher Persona as envisioned in the legal and policy frameworks such as the General Education Act 2012 and the National General Education Policy (2017-2027). The Government sees these instruments as an essential catalyst to professionalize teaching and attract candidates of high calibre to the teaching profession using the political model as an offshoot of its paternalist and utilitarian national ideology to control and guarantee the quality of the teacher education enterprise. The political model, however, needs the generative practice of the institutional model and the replicative feature of the professional model to provide structure, stability and continuity to teacher education in South Sudan. This is particularly so given the fact that the current theoretical approach to teacher education at the curriculum level is informed by technical rationalist inclinations that essentially favour a strong behaviourist payload, a split of theory and practice, and a disconnect between training institutes and universities. In the same vein, the study points out that the greatest disservice to teacher education in South Sudan in terms of school outcomes has been the structural disconnect between the existing school curriculum and teacher education curriculum, critically failing to capture and engage the official standpoint of valid knowledge drawn upon to teach students in schools. A proper way of developing a national framework for teacher education is to state what good teachers effectively know, do and value. There is a need, therefore, for a new transformative model of teacher education that offers an idealistic, ethical thrust (character) and a specialist, exclusive power (competence) to future South Sudan"s Teacher Persona, equipped with enquiry as its signature feature and as an antidote to a reductionist view. In that lies the promise to place premium in the country"s education system.
In this paper, I argue that there is clear evidence of neglect of higher education in post-indepe... more In this paper, I argue that there is clear evidence of neglect of higher education in post-independent South Sudan. The study, therefore, interrogates the scope of the higher education crisis in the country and assesses prospects for change from the standpoint of equity and quality using institutionalism as a theoretical framework. The study points out that the crisis of the system runs through the tapestry of South Sudan's history of state formation against which the variable of nation-building at the dawn of Independence in 2011 has failed to assign adequate value for higher education in the pursuit of the objectives of national transformation in particular, and modernisation in general. It remains to be seen if the political leadership and the academic community could define the payload of South Sudan's higher education system as the country transitions into a constitutional democracy capable of according greater autonomy and initiative to its universities; and revisiting the whole gamut of post-secondary education in order to render it more responsive to addressing the needs of society, particularly in non-academic streams of learning. Besides the historical and institutional challenges, the higher education system of South Sudan must expedite its internationalisation as its formative years wane out. The fundamental requirement is for its competent and dynamic scholars to lead a spirited dialogue and concerted action that should not be broken off by recurrent political violence. This is a must if South Sudan is to stand on the cusp of real transformation in its higher education landscape.
This study investigates the domestic dwellings built in Brisbane by twenty first-generation migra... more This study investigates the domestic dwellings built in Brisbane by twenty first-generation migrants, natives of the Veneto region in Italy, who migrated to Australia in the post WWII period and built their houses in the 1980s and 1990s in Brisbane. The purpose of this research study is to explore whether notions of culture were present in the homes migrants constructed in Brisbane, both in the material realm (interpreted as internal and external organization of space and the composition of the façade) and in the symbolic realm (the meanings attached to these houses by Italian migrants). The project is of qualitative nature and as primary sources of data uses semi-structured interviews, associated when circumstances made this possible, to photo-elicitation interviews, and focus group discussion. The semi-structured interviews were conducted both in Australia with twenty first-generation Italian migrants, and in Italy with another ten informants who are indigenous to the Veneto region and who built their homes there. These primary data are supplemented by (4) secondary data in the form of photographs and drawings. The findings reveal that home is both a physical structure and a set of meanings where these two components are tied together rather than being separate and distinct. It shows that there were two models the Veneto migrants chose for the erection of their houses in Brisbane and these correspond to: (1) the rural houses built in the 1970s and 1980s by their family and friends in the Veneto region and (2) the villas designed for noble families by the architect Andrea Palladio in the 15 th century in the homeland of the respondents.
This article highlights and explores the hermeneutical phenomenology found in Haitian/Vilokan Ide... more This article highlights and explores the hermeneutical phenomenology found in Haitian/Vilokan Idealism. The work posits that Haitian ontology, Vodou/Vilokan, gave rise to its epistemology, Haitian/Vilokan Idealism, which subsequently gave rise to the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism and the lakou system as its form of social and system integration, respectively. Within Haitian/Vilokan Idealism, the work concludes, is a hermeneutical phenomenology that parallels Martin Heidegger's hermeneutical phenomenology.
Article History Received: 04.07.2018 Accepted: 18.07.2018 Published: 30.08.2018 Abstract: This th... more Article History Received: 04.07.2018 Accepted: 18.07.2018 Published: 30.08.2018 Abstract: This theoretical paper uses document analysis to probe South Sudan‟s new National Curriculum Framework (2014) as an official text and its implications as a change agenda with a view to arriving at a perspective about the task of the school in the world‟s newest country. The study notes that the country‟s curriculum change policy seeks to enact a curriculum model that provides both equality and quality with a pedagogic philosophy that is humanistic in essence, transformative in outlook and historical in perspective. The new model shifts from subject-specific to generic curriculum that offers more student choice, relies on environment and accentuates social and life skills in a broader milieu of competencies. The new arrivals on the subject scene are information & communication technology, vocational education & enterprise, and values education in the form of environmental sustainability, life sk...
Article History Received: 08.02.2018 Accepted: 15.02.2018 Published: 30.03.2018 Abstract: This ar... more Article History Received: 08.02.2018 Accepted: 15.02.2018 Published: 30.03.2018 Abstract: This article seeks to render problematic the ideological underpinnings and theoretical conceptions, or lack thereof, of teacher education in the education system of the Republic of South Sudan. It uses the emergent perspective to question the construction of the country‟s Teacher Persona as envisioned in the legal and policy frameworks such as the General Education Act 2012 and the National General Education Policy (2017-2027). The Government sees these instruments as an essential catalyst to professionalize teaching and attract candidates of high calibre to the teaching profession using the political model as an offshoot of its paternalist and utilitarian national ideology to control and guarantee the quality of the teacher education enterprise. The political model, however, needs the generative practice of the institutional model and the replicative feature of the professional model to provid...
This study reviews the decentralisation of education in six West African countries during 1980-20... more This study reviews the decentralisation of education in six West African countries during 1980-2005 using a dual conceptual framework of systems theory of public policy and political bargaining model of management. The study notes that in many respects, decentralisation of education has been more spatial than substantial, essentially moving responsibilities for decision and operation a peg or two down but withholding authorities at the central level. The basic decision making for educational service delivery has been mainly transferred within the same legal entity, signalling the strength of deconcentration as the main mode of decentralisation in West Africa. These countries‟ tools and techniques to organise school work and acquire and allocate resources to achieve educational goals are invariably based on the bureaucratic and flexible models of educational administration undergirded by a national governance model that is by and large monocentric and nurtures verticality. Thus, cons...
DOI: 10.21276/sjhss.2018.3.2.1 Abstract: This paper explores and characterizes the relationships ... more DOI: 10.21276/sjhss.2018.3.2.1 Abstract: This paper explores and characterizes the relationships between human development and education using critical literature review to engage the strands of argument for basic social justice and quality of life at the crossroads of economics, ethics and politics. The oversold conventional approach to development as an income line, people as a means and markets as a focus of concern has long lost its shine on account of the rise of the Human Development Paradigm which accords education a fundamental role in equipping people with competencies and capabilities to enlarge their choices and enhance their well-being. Accordingly, education offers a new language of hope and possibility about what people can actually acquire overtime to choose their kind of life they value; brings into its orbit social justice and equity by training people not just as an economic enterprise but as an attribute of power relations in the structure of any society; and meas...
DOI: 10.21276/sjbms.2017.2.12.9 Abstract: This paper contributes to an understanding of the main ... more DOI: 10.21276/sjbms.2017.2.12.9 Abstract: This paper contributes to an understanding of the main factors and actors that create the imperative for educational change in the six member countries of the East African Community (EAC) and how governance dynamics reflect on their policy positions. The method of study is qualitative and uses mainly existing literature as a synthesis. The study notes that the main drivers of educational change in the region are national and political transformation agenda; foreign aid conditionality; the advent and revival of the East African Community; and patronage, clientelism and corruption inherent in the neo-patrimonial set-up of the state. The member countries of the bloc initially drew upon the imperative of nationbuilding back in the 1960s to assign value to educational change as intertwined with Independence from colonial rule. Orthodox reform later assumed greater prominence in the 1980s and 1990s as aid conditionality drastically undermined gain...
DOI: 10.21276/sjhss.2018.3.8.13 Abstract: This is a theoretical paper with a charge to examine th... more DOI: 10.21276/sjhss.2018.3.8.13 Abstract: This is a theoretical paper with a charge to examine the scope and character of gender equality in the education systems of Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan through a review of cross-national literature using feminist lens to interpret their connotations. While Uganda and South Sudan have invariably sought to enact affirmative action geared at achieving increased access for girl children, Rwanda has by and large focused on shifting from affirmative action to more holistic genderresponsive strategies in its crusade. This, perhaps, is the most convincing notion of salience among the three East African countries; confirming that formal opportunities for equal treatment of girl children ensure neither a shared starting point nor equal outcomes because of different cross-national milieus of change. In Uganda, the flagship of government initiative is the 1997 UPE which has since its launch spurred a big rise in the number of school girls across the ...
DOI: 10.21276/sjhss.2017.2.11.12 Abstract: In this paper, I argue that there is clear evidence of... more DOI: 10.21276/sjhss.2017.2.11.12 Abstract: In this paper, I argue that there is clear evidence of neglect of higher education in post-independent South Sudan. The study, therefore, interrogates the scope of the higher education crisis in the country and assesses prospects for change from the standpoint of equity and quality using institutionalism as a theoretical framework. The study points out that the crisis of the system runs through the tapestry of South Sudan’s history of state formation against which the variable of nation-building at the dawn of Independence in 2011 has failed to assign adequate value for higher education in the pursuit of the objectives of national transformation in particular, and modernisation in general. It remains to be seen if the political leadership and the academic community could define the payload of South Sudan’s higher education system as the country transitions into a constitutional democracy capable of according greater autonomy and initiative ...
This paper seeks to comparatively procure prospect in understanding the evolution of language use... more This paper seeks to comparatively procure prospect in understanding the evolution of language use in the education systems of Kenya, Tanzania and South Sudan using cultural pluralism as an ideological casing and policy change as a theoretical setting. While the transitional and developmental phases in the language policies of Kenya and Tanzania date back to early 1960s through 1980s against the backdrop of colonial domination, South Sudan grapples with the unorthodox task of launching a language policy in 2011 that is both transitional in terms of breaking free from the hegemonic grip of Arabic; and developmental in terms of scrambling to assign value to its home languages and develop them. It is obvious both Kenya and Tanzania have long embarked on bilingual education driven by Kiswahili and English in an uneasy duality that has stood the test of time. The nature of policy change in their context is path dependence, meaning their current trajectories have been established by the initial conditions of colonial language policy and the conjuncture of their independence era. By contrast, it is the punctuated equilibrium of political separation from Sudan that defines South Sudan"s nature of policy change, rendering it more likely to embrace policy diffusion based on functionality, commonality and diversity. Developing a mother tongue-based multilingual education remains the only viable reasoned use of language that Kenya, Tanzania and South Sudan should foster by atoning for the vices of status planning in their language policies; while using corpus planning to line up systematic provisions for linguistic designations and thus create the missing link between language choice and national poise. That being said, this study remains essentially theoretical and illustrative and would benefit more from additional empirical research.
Rethinking Decolonisation of Education in Africa and the Rise of China as an Imperial Contingency: A Social Realist & Deconstructive Post-Colonialist Critique, 2020
This paper critically reexamines the narrative of decolonization of education in Africa and quest... more This paper critically reexamines the narrative of decolonization of education in Africa and questions the extent to which the supposed decolonization processes are sensitive and responsive to new forms of exploitation of Africa as may arise from new centres of global power such as China. Using Archer"s realist social theory, the study notes that African nations still by and large use colonial-era curriculum frameworks, power relations and institutional structures to enact and validate schooling for its human capital formation; suggesting decolonization processes are neither effective nor enduring. African education systems are under-utilizing local climate and culture to promote indigeneity alongside modernity mainly because the element of agency is lost in the shuffle of its elite class"s inability to accumulate meaning over the last six decades. There is need, therefore, to reclaim Africa"s humanity and subjectivity by decolonizing production of knowledge of Africa if decolonization processes are not to become a metaphor. Using Syrotinski"s deconstructive post-colonialism, the study critiques the representation of China in the post-colonial epistemic subtlety of partnerships and argues that China"s influence in Africa is primarily conditioned by the structure and culture of colonization and that China may seek greater elaboration of the same cyclical charade to look both "different and pertinent." Chinese overtures to Africa literally constitute a contingency that affects the story of Africa"s decolonization and its outcomes by coming with a price tag of exploitation, albeit more muted and less refuted. Prudence dictates that African education systems should provide avenues to question the narrative of China-Africa cooperation from the standpoint of unequal relations that could undermine Africa"s efforts to eliminate dependence and so eventually fully decolonize. African nations need to rethink China and their education systems must provide the standpoints for doing so by widening the social base of political consciousness and action against possible neo-imperial takeover.
Language Policy & Planning in Kenya, Tanzania and South Sudan: The Nature of Policy Change, 2020
This paper seeks to comparatively procure prospect in understanding the evolution of language use... more This paper seeks to comparatively procure prospect in understanding the evolution of language use in the education systems of Kenya, Tanzania and South Sudan using cultural pluralism as an ideological casing and policy change as a theoretical setting. While the transitional and developmental phases in the language policies of Kenya and Tanzania date back to early 1960s through 1980s against the backdrop of colonial domination, South Sudan grapples with the unorthodox task of launching a language policy in 2011 that is both transitional in terms of breaking free from the hegemonic grip of Arabic; and developmental in terms of scrambling to assign value to its home languages and develop them. It is obvious both Kenya and Tanzania have long embarked on bilingual education driven by Kiswahili and English in an uneasy duality that has stood the test of time. The nature of policy change in their context is path dependence, meaning their current trajectories have been established by the initial conditions of colonial language policy and the conjuncture of their independence era. By contrast, it is the punctuated equilibrium of political separation from Sudan that defines South Sudan"s nature of policy change, rendering it more likely to embrace policy diffusion based on functionality, commonality and diversity. Developing a mother tongue-based multilingual education remains the only viable reasoned use of language that Kenya, Tanzania and South Sudan should foster by atoning for the vices of status planning in their language policies; while using corpus planning to line up systematic provisions for linguistic designations and thus create the missing link between language choice and national poise. That being said, this study remains essentially theoretical and illustrative and would benefit more from additional empirical research.
Saudi Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, 2018
This is a theoretical paper with a charge to examine the scope and character of gender equality i... more This is a theoretical paper with a charge to examine the scope and character of gender equality in the education systems of Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan through a review of cross-national literature using feminist lens to interpret their connotations. While Uganda and South Sudan have invariably sought to enact affirmative action geared at achieving increased access for girl children, Rwanda has by and large focused on shifting from affirmative action to more holistic gender-responsive strategies in its crusade. This, perhaps, is the most convincing notion of salience among the three East African countries; confirming that formal opportunities for equal treatment of girl children ensure neither a shared starting point nor equal outcomes because of different cross-national milieus of change. In Uganda, the flagship of government initiative is the 1997 UPE which has since its launch spurred a big rise in the number of school girls across the country. The extension of the free education policy to 12 years represents Rwanda"s best bid to attain gender equality; while the Go to School Initiative is South Sudan"s rarest case of success in promoting access and participation but remains largely embryonic and sporadic. Cultural thinking, economic insecurity and social disadvantage immensely affect the way poor and rural households decide about investing in their girl children"s education. There is need, therefore, to emphasize the intrinsic developmental value of education over and above the compulsion for productivity and employability. It is audaciously mistaken to establish that gender inequality could be altered by education or within the education system without restructuring sexual division of labour in the home and the market at large. To achieve gender equality in their education systems, Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan must decode the cultural capital of their social classes and use that knowledge to empower women and girl children at the family and community levels while schools offer prospect. If these initiatives could be further institutionalised, resourced, and embedded in durable policy visions, it is possible for schools to become standard for broader societal transformation.
Saudi Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, 2018
This paper explores and characterizes the relationships between human development and education u... more This paper explores and characterizes the relationships between human development and education using critical literature review to engage the strands of argument for basic social justice and quality of life at the crossroads of economics, ethics and politics. The oversold conventional approach to development as an income line, people as a means and markets as a focus of concern has long lost its shine on account of the rise of the Human Development Paradigm which accords education a fundamental role in equipping people with competencies and capabilities to enlarge their choices and enhance their well-being. Accordingly, education offers a new language of hope and possibility about what people can actually acquire overtime to choose their kind of life they value; brings into its orbit social justice and equity by training people not just as an economic enterprise but as an attribute of power relations in the structure of any society; and measures learner evaluation not just in terms of literacy tests but people"s ability to express their views. As education constitutes both a foundation and a vehicle for building and extending people"s capabilities, the risk is great that the manner in which it is organised and transacted could always be politically manipulated by the elite and economically deployed as a means to produce an under-class. This paper, therefore, tempers optimism with realism and notes that any given education system is a manifestation of the society that embraces it. Notwithstanding this proclivity, the human development paradigm provides the best chance yet for a life people have reason to value because it offers an ethical-political guide to the imperative of social change and economic growth, using education as a compass; and disproving pay as an exact index of merit.
Saudi Journal of Business and Management Studies (SJBMS) ISSN 2415-6663 (Print) , 2017
This paper contributes to an understanding of the main factors and actors that create the imperat... more This paper contributes to an understanding of the main factors and actors that create the imperative for educational change in the six member countries of the East African Community (EAC) and how governance dynamics reflect on their policy positions. The method of study is qualitative and uses mainly existing literature as a synthesis. The study notes that the main drivers of educational change in the region are national and political transformation agenda; foreign aid conditionality; the advent and revival of the East African Community; and patronage, clientelism and corruption inherent in the neo-patrimonial setup of the state. The member countries of the bloc initially drew upon the imperative of nation-building back in the 1960s to assign value to educational change as intertwined with Independence from colonial rule. Orthodox reform later assumed greater prominence in the 1980s and 1990s as aid conditionality drastically undermined gains made in educational expansion. Reforms undertaken in late 1990s and 2000s have been in response to the quest for democratisation in East Africa. Amid the clamour for policy convergence on educational change, there is need for a region-wide process of mutual policy borrowing, considerable harmonisation of curricula for secondary & higher education, and increased student and staff mobility. The study concludes that the history of state formation, political competition and state-society relations in the EAC points to a complex variable of macro policy convergence in educational change and governance that calls for consummate tact as the region seeks a market-mediated identity and contemplates political federation.
Journal of Advances in Education and Philosophy, 2018
This theoretical paper uses document analysis to probe South Sudan"s new National Curriculum Fram... more This theoretical paper uses document analysis to probe South Sudan"s new National Curriculum Framework (2014) as an official text and its implications as a change agenda with a view to arriving at a perspective about the task of the school in the world"s newest country. The study notes that the country"s curriculum change policy seeks to enact a curriculum model that provides both equality and quality with a pedagogic philosophy that is humanistic in essence, transformative in outlook and historical in perspective. The new model shifts from subject-specific to generic curriculum that offers more student choice, relies on environment and accentuates social and life skills in a broader milieu of competencies. The new arrivals on the subject scene are information & communication technology, vocational education & enterprise, and values education in the form of environmental sustainability, life skills and peace studies to consolidate civics and cement the country"s diverse society. However, the facility of the Framework to promote inclusive education is constrained by its design possibilities and the practical realities of school education in South Sudan as its official launch date of 2019 approaches. The scope for broader learner experience beyond conventionality will remain largely rhetorical or even inimical in as far as the resources for emancipatory practices are held back by the dual force of curriculum novelty and state priority. The prospect of wide gaps between planned, delivered and experienced curriculum is, therefore, real and vexed. It remains to be seen if the Ministry has a strategy at all to deal with any eventual knock-on effect. The fact remains, too, that the Framework is heavily prescriptive in nature and as such could potentially prove counter-productive to teacher agency with drastic consequences for local teacher appraisal practices. Thus, implementing a new curriculum short of resources and through the political doldrums of shifting timelines is principally an unmitigated disaster. It could lead to a tacit rejection of curriculum change, more out of repulsion than upon reflection. The fortunes of South Sudan"s National Curriculum Framework (2014) are thus defined; and the broader discourse of reform duly confined.
Journal of Advances in Education & Philosophy, 2018
This article seeks to render problematic the ideological underpinnings and theoretical conception... more This article seeks to render problematic the ideological underpinnings and theoretical conceptions, or lack thereof, of teacher education in the education system of the Republic of South Sudan. It uses the emergent perspective to question the construction of the country"s Teacher Persona as envisioned in the legal and policy frameworks such as the General Education Act 2012 and the National General Education Policy (2017-2027). The Government sees these instruments as an essential catalyst to professionalize teaching and attract candidates of high calibre to the teaching profession using the political model as an offshoot of its paternalist and utilitarian national ideology to control and guarantee the quality of the teacher education enterprise. The political model, however, needs the generative practice of the institutional model and the replicative feature of the professional model to provide structure, stability and continuity to teacher education in South Sudan. This is particularly so given the fact that the current theoretical approach to teacher education at the curriculum level is informed by technical rationalist inclinations that essentially favour a strong behaviourist payload, a split of theory and practice, and a disconnect between training institutes and universities. In the same vein, the study points out that the greatest disservice to teacher education in South Sudan in terms of school outcomes has been the structural disconnect between the existing school curriculum and teacher education curriculum, critically failing to capture and engage the official standpoint of valid knowledge drawn upon to teach students in schools. A proper way of developing a national framework for teacher education is to state what good teachers effectively know, do and value. There is a need, therefore, for a new transformative model of teacher education that offers an idealistic, ethical thrust (character) and a specialist, exclusive power (competence) to future South Sudan"s Teacher Persona, equipped with enquiry as its signature feature and as an antidote to a reductionist view. In that lies the promise to place premium in the country"s education system.
In this paper, I argue that there is clear evidence of neglect of higher education in post-indepe... more In this paper, I argue that there is clear evidence of neglect of higher education in post-independent South Sudan. The study, therefore, interrogates the scope of the higher education crisis in the country and assesses prospects for change from the standpoint of equity and quality using institutionalism as a theoretical framework. The study points out that the crisis of the system runs through the tapestry of South Sudan's history of state formation against which the variable of nation-building at the dawn of Independence in 2011 has failed to assign adequate value for higher education in the pursuit of the objectives of national transformation in particular, and modernisation in general. It remains to be seen if the political leadership and the academic community could define the payload of South Sudan's higher education system as the country transitions into a constitutional democracy capable of according greater autonomy and initiative to its universities; and revisiting the whole gamut of post-secondary education in order to render it more responsive to addressing the needs of society, particularly in non-academic streams of learning. Besides the historical and institutional challenges, the higher education system of South Sudan must expedite its internationalisation as its formative years wane out. The fundamental requirement is for its competent and dynamic scholars to lead a spirited dialogue and concerted action that should not be broken off by recurrent political violence. This is a must if South Sudan is to stand on the cusp of real transformation in its higher education landscape.
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Papers by Joseph Mogga