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ICH4801 Assignment 4 2023
SECTION A: HISTORY OF EDUCATION [50] Question 1 Section A is based
on the given extract from chapter 2 of the prescribed textbook (Seroto, Davids
& Wolhuter 2020). Read the extract and then answer the questions that follow.
Geographical focus of research and of authorship Scholars, analysts,
progressive scholars and academics in all education sciences and beyond, have
expressed concern that the corpus of scholarly publications is dominated by
researchers in the global world and that their focus is lopsided in favour of the
Global North or themes favoured by the interests of the Global North. In a
content analysis of articles published in the first 50 years of the top journal in
the field of Comparative and International Education, the Comparative
Education Review, Wolhuter (2008:330-331) found that countries of the Global
North dominate the geographical focus of research. In addition, where countries
of the Global South are the subject of research, it is dominated by researchers
from the Global North (cf Wolhuter, 2018). Of the 18 523 articles published in
the total pool of Thomson-Reuters indexed education journals for the year 2012,
a mere 2.13% were authored by scholars in Africa (ibid). Depaepe and Simon
(1996) do not include the geographical terrain of articles in their research but do
provide an interesting analysis of author provenance. For the articles published
during 1961 to 1989 in Paedagogica Historica, the rank-order of national
provenance of authors is illustrated in table 2.2. The pattern for the period 1990
to 1995 does not differ much. However, in this period, the Global South fares
worse with 1.6% of all authors (South Africa: 0.8% and Zaire: 0.8%) as shown
in table 2.3. Table 2.2 National provenance of authors published in rank order,
1961 to 1989 National provenance of authors (Global North) 1961 to 1989 1.
Germany: 22.7%; 2. US: 21.5%; 3. UK: 10.6%; 4. France: 7.4%; 5. Belgium:
6.5% National provenance of authors (Global South) 1961 to 1989 1. India:
1.2%; 2. Malaysia: 1.2%; 3. Nigeria: 0.6%; 4. Sri Lanka: 0.6%; 5. Argentina:
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0.3%; 6. Oman: 0.3%; 7. Pakistan: 0.3%; 8. South Africa: 0.3%; 9. Thailand:
0.3%; 10. Zimbabwe: 0.3% Assignment 04 Comparative and International
Education Due date: 31 October 2023 Unique assignment number: 20 (Source:
Depaepe & Simon, 1996:426) Table 2.3 National provenance of authors
published in rank order, 1990 to 1995 National provenance of authors (Global
North) 1990 to 1995 1. Netherlands: 20.2%; 2. Germany: 17.8%; 3. Belgium:
14.0%; 4 France: 10.1%; 5. US: 7.0% National provenance of authors (Global
South) 1990 to 1995 1. Only 1.6% of all authors in the Global South; 2. South
Africa: 0.8%; 3. Former Zaire: 0.8% (Source: Depaepe & Simon, 1996)
Freeman and Kirke (2017) deal with geographical foci in their analysis,
although the limitation of their study is that it covers English medium journals
only. Freeman and Kirke (2017:830) found that in geographical coverage,
throughout the period 1952 to 2016, England and Great Britain dominated as
geographical terrain of study. During the decade 1980 to 1989, 43.9% of all
published articles dealt with England and Great Britain; in 2016, 25.7% of all
published articles focused on England and Great Britain. While colonialism and
colonial education policy remain an area of interest in the field, as do race and
ethnicity, two provisos should be mentioned. On the second (race and ethnicity),
research has been spurred by events in the Global North and is dominated by the
Global North as terrain. These events include the 1960 Civil Rights Movement
in the United States of America, the school desegregation movement in the
same country, right up to the #BlackLivesMatter movement in the USA and the
immigration patterns and increasingly multicultural composition of the
population of the United Kingdom (UK). In 2016, 14 of the 19 articles in the
“race and ethnicity” category identified by Freeman and Kirke (2017:843), were
about the US. On colonialism and colonial education, the proviso can be tabled
that the current imperative for the decolonialisation of education makes the
attention given to colonialism and the neglect of decolonialisation appear rather
lopsided. While many historians eschew recent history, where the “fog of
proximity” makes the true significance of events hard to see, and not entirely
without merit, it could be said that the Global South has had a long run of
decolonialisation – sub-Saharan Africa over 60 years; in the case of Latin
America, already more than two centuries. Its history merits attention. This call
has also been made and elaborated upon by Davids (2013). The need to recentre
History of Education in the Global South Most states in the Global South have
been subjected to European imperialism in one form or another and dominated
by “foreign” histories. The need to retrieve new processes of producing and
valorising legitimate epistemologies, whether scientific or non-scientific, is
imperative for the Global South. The validation of such knowledges will only
happen when historians of the Global South revisit spaces and practices that are
characterised by systemic oppression, discrimination, capitalism and
colonialism. The Global South does not only refer to geographical location; it
also refers to the pain caused by capitalism and colonialism at different levels.