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Knowledge Management
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Nelly Stromquist & Joel Samoff
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 Compare, Vol. 30, No. 3, 2000

Knowledge Management Systems: on the promise and

actual forms of information technologies

NELLY STROMQUIST, University of Southern California

JOEL SAMOFF, Stanford University
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ABSTRACT As globalisation expands, the twin forces of the market and information
technologies are pervading the educational arena. One instance is the Knowledge
Management System (KMS), which proposes to produce easily retrievable materials via
the Internet and hypertext. KMS attempts to be more than a mere data bank, for it seeks
to provide highly selected and targeted knowledge. For its implementation, KMS
depends on a manager to determine what constitutes ‘relevant’ and ‘best’ evidence.
Since powerful institutions in the North are the most likely to develop KMS, this
innovation augurs further dominance by the North, with detrimental consequences for
the South in the selection of research that Ž ts ideological and methodological paradigms
preferred by such institutions. Further, the notions of ‘just-in-time’ knowledge and ‘best
practices’ risk confusing what is bound to become segmented and decontextualised
information with what should be knowledge (and wisdom) appropriate for educational
decision-making.

Introduction
With the advent of widespread use of computer-mediated communications technologies,
such as e-mail and the World Wide Web, has come the expectation that information and
its more complex articulation—knowledge—will become more accessible, focused to
meet needs of speciŽ c social sectors and their decision-makers, and able to improve the
basis on which public policies are made. An increasingly common strategy intended to
improve access to reliable and timely information is the development of a knowledge
management system (KMS). Commonly, a KMS seeks to select existing knowledge on
a given subject, reduce and synthesise its content into manageable text, attach key
categories, and then make it available to KMS subscribers.
An increasing number of people believe that electronic mail and the Internet will
change the nature and distribution of knowledge. The extraction of core Ž ndings can be
made by people with expertise, and these Ž ndings can be circulated with great speed.
Additionally, the knowledge they offer may be available to people and institutions,
particularly those in the Third World, previously either precluded from obtaining this
knowledge (presumably because they have neither the funds nor the skills to engage in
research) or unable to access it (because costs of acquiring books, journals, or consul-
tants have been higher than people in poor countries can afford).

ISSN 0305-792 5 (print)/ISSN 1469-3623 (online)/00/030323-1 0

Ó 2000 British Association for International and Comparative Education
 324 N. Stromquist & J. Samoff

What is Knowledge in the Social Sciences?

Typically, generating knowledge in the social sciences has involved one or both of two
major approaches: systematic and controlled experimentation and hypothesis testing,
whether in laboratories or in the Ž eld, and more subjective and interpretative modes of
understanding the world. One orientation, perhaps more common (with important
exceptions) in sociology, political science, and economics inclines toward experimen-
tation and hypothesis-testing. The effort has been to develop causal models, to create
discrete variables based on clear operational deŽ nitions, to isolate variables to determine
their independent and collective effect, and to create models of reality, usually predicated
on their ability to explain variance in the phenomena or relationships of interest. The
second orientation, more common in anthropology and history, highlights the constant
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interaction among all societal forces and prefers holism to dissection and segmentation.
This approach is especially sensitive to the embeddedness of social phenomena and is
careful to describe the surrounding environment and internal dynamics of the objects of
study.
The social sciences in general have come to a better understanding of what constitutes
knowledge. In contrast to information—small and disjointed pieces of data—knowledge
is a structure of relationships that brings information into a coherent whole. Knowledge,
thus, implies the creation of an organising scheme in which to anchor otherwise disparate
information. Knowledge is by nature embodied. It is clear that knowledge is essentially
a social process subject to multiple social forces. The value of knowledge, or its utility,
depends on the social context and the historical period in which it was created (Curry,
1997).
Prodded by Foucault, we have learned to recognise the structural links between
knowledge and power, as the powerful will seek the knowledge that beneŽ ts them and,
in turn, knowledge will tend to be framed in ways that do not contest existing power
relations. Foucault (1979) reminds us that every era creates its own set of ‘subjugated
knowledges’, those of lesser value to the dominant classes. In his view there is always
a power-knowledg e articulation that operates through four kinds of technologies. Two of
these particularly relevant to KMS are (a) technologies of signiŽ cation (what knowledge
is classiŽ ed as true/false, high quality, competent), and (b) technologies of production
(how knowledge is organised in time, space, and capacities, notably now through the
Internet). In Foucault’s view, a key articulator of technology and power is the state. In
the KMS we are seeing the emergence of the multilateral and bilateral agencies as the
linking pin. One corollary of the knowledge-power nexus is the existence of a hierarchy
of texts, with some knowledge accepted as more important and more legitimate than
others. A second corollary is that knowledge is not permanent but subject to changing
times and thus subject both to being accumulated and to being discarded (Curry, 1997),
depending both on new discoveries and on current power alignments.
Social science knowledge has generally been presented in long texts, identifying
approach, methodology, orienting theoretical and conceptual frameworks, groups or
individuals studied, limitations of the research, and the contingent nature of the Ž ndings.
While researchers have emphasised either quantitative or qualitative methods, several
foundational notions are widely shared. Causes of social phenomena are multiple; not
only are there multiple forces at work but these forces interact with one another. We do
not possess categorical, unambiguous knowledge but rather contingent probabilities and
possibilities; it is seldom possible to deal with Ž ndings independent of their context and
time; and we can describe much more successfully than we can explain. Moreover, the
 Knowledge Management Systems 325

social sciences are becoming increasingly suspicious of text and its representations of
reality. As Hastrup (2000) notes, “Representation is deceptive, because it gives the
impression of knowledge as nondialogical and Ž nite, while it is in fact dialogical,
temporal, and profoundly processed” (p. 12). Will KMS acknowledge this evolution of
knowledge generation in the social sciences or rather assert that the new technology
transforms the nature of knowledge?

The Promise of KMS

We should indeed be optimistic about knowledge development in the future. With rapid
improvements in hardware it is now possible to produce and save information on a wide
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variety of storage media, to transfer information from computer to computer and thus site
to site, and to access vast amounts of information from nearly any part of the world.
Scanners permit converting printed text into electronic form and thus revision, editing,
and even translation.
Some believe that the principle of connectivity—everyone linked electronically to
everyone else and every issue linked to others—will beneŽ t the entire world (for
example, Ilon, this volume). An optimistic scenario anticipates that no problem will
remain isolated as now, but rather through connectivity large numbers of people and
resources can be mobilised to solve it (Fouche, 1998). Some idealise that the new
knowledge-based economy will lead to a world without experts or leaders, but will
produce instead smooth working groups without hierarchies in which everyone con-
tributes more or less equally to the solution of complex problems. That prospect is
especially attractive to the world’s poorest countries, outlining a strategy for rapidly
closing the development gap. Echoing the sentiments of several African scholars,
Adesida (1998, p. 252) maintains that the current “information and knowledge revolu-
tions offer Africa a real chance to achieve its own vision of the future”.
Among the optimistic predictions about the new knowledge is that as speciŽ c new
problems come to the fore, knowledge will be tailored to local circumstances. Thus small
and distant communities will not only receive more attention but they themselves will
engage in the creation of value and in the consumption of new products, services, and
knowledge. This dynamic is expected to facilitate the inclusion of marginal groups in the
production of knowledge. The argument is that as clients become more heterogeneous
there will be a need to develop collective ways of producing knowledge. This collabo-
ration is expected to bring together actors from the South and the North. Within
countries the new knowledge is expected to promote greater co-operation among
transnational corporations, universities, communities, and even marginalised groups. The
prediction is that these alliances will cut across social classes, cultures, and disciplines.
Those who look toward a knowledge-based economy and the development of KMS
consider that communications based on computers will lead to widespread sharing of
diverse types of knowledge, thus making disciplinary boundaries ‘seamless’ (Drucker,
1993). They consider also that knowledge will become so pleasant that the nature of our
work will change from labour to relaxation or pleasure (Masuda, 1981). The notion is
that KMS will provide instant access to expert and updated knowledge. This perspective
regards the shift from contemporary forms of knowledge production to a knowledge
production economy as unproblematic and commonly does not address the existing and
widening digital gap between those who have access to the Internet and those who do
not and most likely never will. Others, however, for example Castells (1998), warn us
 326 N. Stromquist & J. Samoff

that the increasing prominence of and reliance on information technologies is at present

strongly intertwined with rising inequality and exclusion throughout the world.

Emerging Forms and Processes of KMS

Knowledge management systems are being developed in all types of organisations,
ranging from business Ž rms to international bureaucracies. Among the development
assistance organisations, the World Bank is currently playing a leading role in that
regard, since KMS is considered a main pillar in its ‘Strategic Compact’ initiated in
1997, which will make the World Bank a ‘knowledge bank’, in which the main product
will be advice to developing countries, making the Bank “the world’s premier resource
of all development knowledge by the year 2000, whether it be the Bank’s advice or
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expertise from another organisation” (Bank’s World, 1997, p. 9; World Bank, 1998). In
1999 the World Bank allocated 4% of its substantial annual administrative budget to the
development of KMS, a share its managers expect to grow sharply (Denning, 1999).
Other agencies such as OECD, USAID, DFIC, NORAD, are engaged in the development
of such systems, but literature on their efforts is not readily available; therefore, this
paper concentrates on the World Bank.
Knowledge management systems are conceptually different from data banks. The
‘management’ element signals selection of the knowledge considered most relevant or
appropriate for the organisation co-ordinating the system. Among international agencies,
the tendency is to produce brief and therefore shallow accounts of previous experiences
(from projects and programmes) and then move to ‘best practices’ and ‘lessons from
experience’ narratives within which strong prescriptions are offered as demonstrated
truths (APQC, 1997; World Bank, 1998;) and in which the role of error in learning is
cast aside, as McGinn noticed in an examination of educational reforms (1999).
There is, of course, already paper dissemination of knowledge and World Bank
documents have ample distribution. For instance, about 150,000 copies of the World
Development Report are printed (and widely distributed) yearly. Will the electronic
dissemination of knowledge change this pattern? We predict that it will as KMS will be
much more readily available, instantaneous in some cases, and the ease of cross-refer-
encing might convey the illusion that its knowledge is precise, complete, and unbiased.
Denning (1999) describes eight major components for that initiative: (1) building
‘communities of practices’ (whose core members are cross-cutting thematic groups); (2)
developing computer databases for storing and disseminating the World Bank’s exper-
tise; (3) establishing help desks and advisory services; (4) creating a directory of
expertise; (5) providing key sectoral statistics; (6) providing access to information about
World Bank operations; (7) creating opportunities for professional dialogues, and (8)
developing external access and outreach.
For this discussion we will focus on a core element of KMS, the nature of the
knowledge to be included in knowledge databases. We limit our discussion to the
application of KMS to development co-operation in education, taking as a case in point
the education-focused KMS materials being set up by the World Bank.
An essential Ž rst step the World Bank took was the speciŽ cation of the categories for
the knowledge to be collected and stored, for the categorisation is itself as much a part
of knowledge generation as data collection and interpretation.
To create several of those databases, the World Bank asked the premier US
professional organisation in international and comparative education, the Comparative
and International Education Society (CIES), to identify academicians willing to produce
 Knowledge Management Systems 327

annotated bibliographies on the selected categories of knowledge. Both because de-

cision-makers in large bureaucracies and programme ofŽ cers in development agencies
are assumed to be too busy or unwilling to read longer documents and for technical
reasons, the summaries for the KMS were required to be very brief (about three–four
paragraphs). We think that this is a regular feature of KMS sources and a major reason
for concern.
The World Bank KMS categories were re ected (as of October 1999) in several
publicly accessible databases on: access and equity, adult outreach, early childhood
development, economics of education, education reform and management, education and
technology, effective schools and teachers, school health, and tertiary education. Six of
these themes presently comprise primarily World Bank publications and reports; this
overrepresentation of World Bank views is another matter of concern.
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It is important to note several critical steps here: (1) by selecting the categories the
World Bank determined unilaterally which education issues mattered most; (2) by
seeking professionals in the North, the World Bank granted greater legitimacy to
knowledge produced in the North (and in English); (3) by reducing research knowledge
to a few statements, situational conditions and features delimiting the research Ž ndings
were discarded, resulting in knowledge that is fragmented, reduced to its minimum
expression, and decontextualised; and (4) by working through CIES to prepare the
abstracts, the World Bank bought instant legitimacy for its project. Notwithstanding the
recruitment of senior CIES scholars, the World Bank retained control over the content
of the databases, rejecting without explanation several of the abstracts that were prepared
and asking for “improvement in the quality of some of the annotated notes on particular
sources” (comment by participant US professor, March 2000).

Issues for Re ection

We see here that the path from the promises to the useful beneŽ ts of knowledge
management systems is arduous. Several of the major structural problems in this use of
a knowledge management system should be noted. It is understood that the examples we
cite are works in progress, changing as we write. At the same time, we deem it essential
to highlight in uences and directions in that evolution and their structural sources.

Who Decides what is Valuable Knowledge?

Knowledge management systems are dependent on a manager, an administrator of the
input and output of knowledge. Upon this person or a small team will fall the tasks of
selecting the knowledge deemed valuable, synthesising it to “weed out material that has
become obsolete”, and creating the most relevant “knowledge classiŽ cation schemes”
(APQC, 1997). Establishing and maintaining knowledge databases is most likely to be
dominated by powerful institutions that can command the human, Ž nancial, and technical
resources to select and collect research and convert it to electronic format, to organise
Ž ndings in carefully chosen categories with meaningful linkages, and subsequently to
distribute the new knowledge. It is quite likely that those in charge of creating KMS
databases will not be neutral but will express preferences for the kinds of knowledge that
they or their organisations consider important, valid, or relevant. Thus, in the World
Bank’s education KMS databases, areas considered to have high priority include, for
instance, student achievement and school management but apparently not what is taught
 328 N. Stromquist & J. Samoff

in school or teacher education methods. Adult outreach seems to be an important

category, but not discrimination or afŽ rmative action or women or minorities.
This approach to KMS also reinforces global power relations. In the contemporary era,
the World Bank has assumed major responsibility for overseeing and managing the
integration of the world economy and especially the incorporation of poor countries into
this economy on terms they do not set. Control over relevant information, or the
positioning of the World Bank as the major repository for and distributor of knowledge
about development, entrenches and enhances the Bank in that global role.
The manner and pace of the inception of KMS in this context portends several
troubling consequences. First, what is deemed valid and legitimate knowledge is likely
to become increasingly centralised in the North. While there may be efforts to collect
information generated in the South, that information will be Ž ltered, perhaps modiŽ ed,
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and approved in the North before being incorporated into the corpus of ofŽ cial
knowledge. As the information that is collected in the South is shaped and framed by its
Northern interpreters, the ofŽ cial knowledge collectors will have important though
largely invisible authority over what is to be regarded as knowledge and over the
constructs used to organise it, for example, ‘indigenous’, ‘traditional’, and ‘authentic’.

What will be ‘Quality’ Research?

The role of the rich and powerful in determining what is and what is not knowledge will
be obscured by the mystique of science and scientiŽ c methods. Decisions about what to
include in ofŽ cial knowledge databases will be defended on the basis of claims about
reliability, validity, and generalisability, with little critical attention accorded to the ways
in which basic assumptions about a problem and the methodology used to study it
effectively determine which information and whose understanding are to be considered
ofŽ cial knowledge. If, for instance, only studies published in refereed journals are
considered, that approach clearly advantages researchers who have better access to those
journals and disadvantages researchers for whom refereed journals are expensive and
mostly inaccessible. Extrapolating from current practices, large, controlled sample
surveys will be considered more reliable sources of knowledge than individually
conducted case studies. Claiming that knowledge generation and collection are primarily
technical matters governed by the rules of science, neither KMS researchers nor the
World Bank need confront the recognition that generating knowledge is linked to power
advantages.

What will Become Knowledge?

It seems likely that the World Bank KMS databases will stumble over its strategy for
promoting accessibility. Ironically, very brief summaries of complex research on
complex issues may be simultaneously too superŽ cial to be useful and too abstract to
understand. When constructing those databases requires reducing major research results
to a few sentences, the complexities and ambiguities of the everyday world disappear
and knowledge becomes decontextualised and disembodied. Abstracts are likely to
trivialise Ž ndings and dismiss limitations and contingencies. While the assumption is that
KMS will generate new knowledge, it is much more likely that it will represent old
knowledge in reformatted, abbreviated, and cross-indexed ways, and that in doing so it
may be distorting what we thought we knew. Nor is there reason to be optimistic that
reorganising existing knowledge within constructs and categories speciŽ ed in the world’s
 Knowledge Management Systems 329

power centers will improve our ability to deal with persisting problems. One conse-
quence of the construction of highly summarised and decontextualised knowledge
databases is the implicit assumption of the universality of development knowledge.
Shorn of their situational speciŽ city and limiting conditions, cautious observations are
transformed into ‘best practices’, ostensibly applicable nearly everywhere. Moreover,
excessive trust may be placed on such dubious forms as ‘just-in time knowledge’ and
‘just-enough knowledge’ (APQC, 1997).
Given their origins, it also seems likely that the World Bank’s KMS materials will
emphasise knowledge that is explicitly linked to the economic sphere and that is
assumed to have the greatest potential to increase productivity. Knowledge not explicitly
linked to the standard development model, perhaps especially humanistic knowledge and
knowledge that assumes alternative development perspectives, is less likely to be
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included. An additional homogenising effect of KMS is that since most of the ‘quality’
research will be found in English, the language of KMS will also be English and this
dominance not only will not be contested but taken as natural.

Will all Interested Parties have Equal Access?

The distribution of knowledge is also problematic. While KMS promises rapid and
nearly unlimited access to knowledge (to those wired to the Internet), in practice, KMS
tends to centralise rather than decentralise knowledge. This results from the inherent
feature to rely on a central manager. One foreseeable result is that monopoly will drive
away alternative sources of knowledge. Since the World Bank KMS already has a head
start over other institutions, especially national institutions in the developing world, users
will increasingly rely on the World Bank system and some will discard, or not learn
about, alternative sources of education knowledge. The centralisation of the determi-
nation of what constitutes knowledge entrenches the roles of the elite education and
research institutions in the world, nearly all located in the most af uent countries. A few
scholars and institutions in poor countries will be integrated into ofŽ cial knowledge
generation and management, primarily through studies and research at or associated with
those elite institutions. But, with few exceptions, they will remain junior partners in this
effort, observers, commentators, and, as need arises, interpreters. Rarely will they
themselves become knowledge creators or managers. So far, the Internet has not
modiŽ ed the power structure of communications: About 80% of all Web trafŽ c is going
to one half of 1% of all sites. Nearly two-thirds of the global top 1000 sites are US
properties, and “the World Wide Web of 2000 looks an awfully lot like America’s Web.
So much for striking an intellectual balance of trade” (Plotnikoff, 2000, pp. 10E, 11E).
The pattern of computerised KMS in education is likely to be similar, except that instead
of 1000 sites, there may be only a handful, led by the World Bank.
The technology on which the storage, manipulation and dissemination of KMS
knowledge relies will also remain limiting. While the current technology may become
more readily available to poorer countries, that technology (including both hardware and
software) will continue to be developed and reŽ ned under the control of the more
af uent countries. Each new communications or database scheme requires ever faster
processors, more memory, larger data storage capacities, more rapid access to distant
computers, and more complex operating systems and applications software. In this way,
the promise of universal access will be continually frustrated by the need for ever better
technology. Until the poor countries are themselves the developers of new technology,
they will be always be trying—and never succeeding—to catch up.
 330 N. Stromquist & J. Samoff

KMS is justiŽ ed by the World Bank and other institutions adopting it as a way to
provide information for decision-makers. There are two problematic assumptions here.
The Ž rst is the linear notion of policy-making, in which research leads to knowledge
which in turn guides policy and decisions. It is clear, however, that research-supported
knowledge is often used to justify and legitimate decisions previously reached on other
grounds . The second untenable assumption is that the quality and utility of knowledge
are independent of their context, source and presenter. Obviously, information presented
to a decision-maker by a superior ofŽ cial may well have a different impact were the
same information be presented by a women-led NGO. Where the World Bank provides
both funding and knowledge, its knowledge is likely to have greater in uence and
legitimacy than knowledge from other sources. The importance attached to the KMS
thereby both legitimises the knowledge it proffers and at the same time makes it difŽ cult
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to challenge the KMS itself.

While KMS and other computer-mediated information systems assume that the
diffusion of knowledge will broaden the pool of knowledge producers, in practice KMS
seems to widen the gap between knowledge production and consumption, limiting
educators in the South to using rather than generating or reframing knowledge. In that
respect, while KMS promises to create a heterogeneous world of knowledge, inclusive
of indigenous and local knowledges, the opposite is the more likely result: the production
of knowledge increasingly removed from the everyday reality of the local and less
powerful.
Those endorsing the promise of KMS believe that forms of re exivity will be
enhanced among the new generation of knowledge users. Here, some con ict seems to
exist. ‘Managing’ knowledge builds upon a logic that steers understanding into a certain
direction and a certain style. KMS inherently does not promote critical thinking and
generally discourages re exivity since the ‘best’ has already been selected for the users.
While the new technology does permit instantaneous transmission from one end of the
world to the other and does enable researchers in Africa or South Asia to consult the
same electronic databases as researchers in Sweden and Japan, the knowledge that is
circulated already Ž ts parameters determined in the North. In this respect, the new
technologies do not alter the nature and content of knowledge but continue and entrench
asymmetrical relations.
Finally, KMS––like other systems made possible by advances in the technology of
communication––promises to be accessible to everyone. So far KMS products in
education have been available only to a small elite. Indeed, a KMS permits knowledge
to be parcelled out in different segments, with knowledge deemed by the World Bank
or other KMS managers to be relevant for ‘policy-makers’ and another portion, yet to
be deŽ ned, to be considered relevant for ‘all.’
A recent development linked to KMS efforts is the creation of a ‘Global Development
Network’ (GDN) also organised by the World Bank. This initiative seeks to “generate
and share knowledge related to development, by sponsoring activities that increase the
capacity and effectiveness of policy and research institutes worldwide” (Stiglitz, cited in
King, 1999, p. 72). GDN held its Ž rst global meeting in Berlin in December 1999 and,
while it included seven regional organisations, the main co-ordinator has been the US
Center for International Private Enterprise, a body established in 1983 to “promote
private enterprise and market-oriented reform” (King, 1999, p. 74). In his key address at
the meeting, Stiglitz, the Word Bank organiser, stated:

Underlying all of the efforts (of the future) GDN is the pursuit of knowledge—
 Knowledge Management Systems 331

global knowledge about general principles, local knowledge about how these
general principles play out in the multitude of local contexts over our vast
globe—knowledge based on well-constructed theories and meticulous analysis
of empirical evidence (cited in King, 1999, p. 75).

Despite the intentions to produce inclusive knowledge, major social science institutions
from developing countries such as CODESRIA (Africa), CLACSO (Latin America),
and ADIPA (Asia) were not present at the Berlin meeting. A working group created a
month later by the World Bank to moderate an online discussion of the organisational
structure for the GDN comprised mostly economists and institutions from the North
(Gamelin, 1999; King, 1999)—a development that augurs an intellectual dominance not
only by the North but also a reduced number of disciplinary perspectives.
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Conclusion
KMS seems to be an effective and modern tool, with promises of speed, easy access,
uniform interface between users and data sources, high ability of retrieval through
categorisation, and reliance on expertise. In education, however, it risks presenting
access to knowledge in fragmented and decontextualised ways, introducing a layer of
mediators whose view of knowledge and intentions about its use may not coincide
with those of the primary users, and who in fact may be bent on presenting a
perspective that fosters the virtues of privatisation, decentralisation, assessment, and the
reduced state.
Notwithstanding its democratic potential and promise, KMS approaches are likely to
reinforce existing power relations, both within and across countries. At the same time,
they may foster the growth of an intellectual élite operating globally but located
primarily in the North. The working assumptions of this élite are that key knowledge is
purely technical, developed and reŽ ned largely in the North, and that, while anyone may
contribute, all contributions must meet the tests of scientiŽ c rigor, reliability, and
validity designed and implemented by a small élite, also largely but not entirely from
the North.
Political openings in some countries may permit some realignments, but where
information is, at least formally, assigned high priority and value and where (reports of)
research outcomes provide legitimacy, challenges to the political economy of knowl-
edge will be dismissed as non-scientiŽ c or, even worse, anti-scientiŽ c. Entrenching one
organisation, or the external funding and technical assistance agencies more generally,
as the accepted arbiters of relevant development information and knowledge enables
them to exercise vast control that is not only unchallenged but largely unchallengeable.
For a poor community in the South, entrusting its knowledge to a remote computer in
the North and its largely invisible managers is not a strategy for promoting either
democratic participation or self-reliance.
If the power differentials are not narrowed between countries and if already hege-
monic international agencies position themselves in the role of knowledge arbiters, we
might be crafting a future in which homogeneous knowledge from a single conceptual
perspective and methodological approach prevail.

Correspondence: Nelly P. Stromquist, Rossier School of Education, University of

Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089–0031, USA.
 332 N. Stromquist & J. Samoff

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