Education Quality and Social Justice in the Global South: Challenges for policy, practice and research

Although more children than ever before are now enrolled in school, in the global South a good quality education remains out of reach for all except a privileged few. Most pupils experience inadequately prepared and poorly motivated teachers struggling to deliver new and complex curricula with insufficient learning resources in overcrowded classrooms, often using language that neither learners nor teachers speak outside school. For these learners, a good quality education must be a socially just education that is inclusive, relevant and democratic. It must develop the capabilities of learners to promote economic growth, create sustainable livelihoods, contribute to peaceful and democratic societies and achieve individual wellbeing. This in turn requires developing the professional capabilities of teachers and leaders. This book includes contributions from leading scholars in the field of education and development. It draws on state of the art evidence from the five year EdQual research programme on implementing education quality in low income countries and other relevant research. Through exploring recent initiatives in areas such as the curriculum, the use of ICTs, language and literacy, school effectiveness and leadership, the contributions go beyond looking at inputs and outputs for good quality education to open up the black box of the classroom and explore how practices of teaching and learning impact on different groups of learners. Some of the cross-cutting themes explored include defining quality, gender, inclusion, taking successful initiatives to scale and planning for both quality and equality. Education Quality and Social Justice in the Global South will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers within the fields of international and comparative education, teacher education, educational policy, poverty and development studies, African and Asian studies and related disciplines in the global North and South.