The agricultural sector in India has come to prominence as a source of employment and livelihood. It is one of the most significant informal sectors in the country, and one in which informal learning ...plays a major role. This article analyses the informal learning of farmers in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. In the course of this research, qualitative interviews with 34 farmers in Coimbatore were conducted and analysed with regard to informal learning. The findings show that informal learning is lifelong and chiefly takes place at home in a family and peer group context. Informal learning is facilitated by training courses specifically adapted to farmers’ needs, which can help them improve their situation on their respective farms. However, not every farmer attends these courses, indicating a need to strengthen the programmes, conduct information campaigns to raise awareness, and improve accessibility, especially for farmers and agricultural labourers.
Even though technologies have always been useful for promoting lifelong learning, in recent decades, the use of generative Artificial Intelligence like ChatGPT has come to radically influence the way ...we perceive learning, learner and educator. Technology positivists assume that newer technologies will enhance lifelong learning whereas its critics argue that the learning gap that currently exists will widen further because, given the existing global inequalities, its benefits will continue to be disproportionate. Nested in an unequal history of technological innovation, this paper investigates the potentials and limitations of learning technologies in enhancing lifelong learning. The paper argues that digital inequality, artificial community, and epistemic exclusion are three major limitations of learning technologies; therefore, they have almost no resonance with life-wide and life-deep approaches to lifelong learning. The findings are crucial for setting post-2030 global goals on education.
As decolonization of the curriculum in higher education (HE) gains traction, academics may question their positionality and role as actors in the field. The concept of decolonization is contentious, ...but primarily focuses on uncentering the Western filter through which the world is viewed both socially and academically. Just as Gavin Sanderson has argued, that internationalization of HE requires the internationalization of the academic self, so we discuss how decolonizing the internationalized HE curriculum must begin with the decolonization of the individual. The strategic directions of our three European institutions reflect the tensions reported in international literature between HE as an income generator, and as a public good. In the autoethnographic project underpinning this article, we employed the unconventional Collaborative Analytics methodology and its iterations of share data, share results, share decisions to explore institutional strategy as experienced by academics. Our novel approach may help others reflect on decolonizing as a process of 'forever becoming'.
The purpose of this article is to analyse how education and schooling took part in handling the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in eight European countries (Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, ...Italy, Norway, Poland and Sweden). The focus is on primary education and on decisions to close schools, or not. Our research was informed by assemblage theory in order to analyse how different components interacted in developing societal responses to mitigate the pandemic. The research was designed as a comparative case study of practical reasoning in diverse contexts. Data sources were the mass media and statements from governments and authorities. Our analyses showed that decisions to close schools, or not, were based on two alternative discourses on schooling. Closing primary schools was a preventive measure underlined by discourses of schools as places for infection. Keeping primary schools open was underlined by a discourse in which schools were conceived of as a place for social supportive measures and caring. Furthermore, the closing alternative was often combined with attempts to replace school practices by distance learning or computerized instruction. Legal constitutions and lawmaking were of significant importance in selecting discourses and the relative impact of different components, mostly political or medical, in responding to the pandemic.
This article revisits methodological perspectives on international comparative research on teacher education (TE). Benefits and problems related to comparative educational research methodology in ...general are discussed. Further, methodological issues associated with designing and carrying out an international comparative study on TE are addressed using a multi-level study on teacher education in Finland and Norway an as example. Towards the end of the article, the promises and limitations of international comparative research on TE are presented. Important benefits of comparative education on TE include widening the understanding of one's own and other TE systems as well as gaining an understanding of international trends. However, uncritical use of such research may lead to decontextualised, ahistorical and standardised transfer and development of education and educational policies. The article concludes by urging researchers in the field of international comparative research on teacher education to address the questions: What is being compared? How is context addressed?
This article briefly explores the pandemic’s impact on higher Education in BRICS member states. Attention is brought to the measures BRICS nations adopted to continue providing quality education ...despite the imposed restrictions and challenges. As explained in the text, transformations imposed by the pandemic affected the functioning of the entire education system and adapted responses depended on the available resources and overall capacity to adapt to the crisis by individual institutions and contexts. Furthermore, the transformations pointed out the existing inequalities and many unknowns for which various educational stakeholders were not always prepared. As evident from the account, strategic planning must better prepare education systems for emergencies such as the Covid-19 pandemic. It is also paramount that the narrative of the strategic planning and the vision for the future focuses on thriving instead of surviving.
The purpose of this study is to outline a new approach to the comparative analysis of student finance systems based on social rights, an approach widely applied in other areas of social policy. It ...focuses on rights codified in national legislation and financed by central governments, and the collection of indicators measuring formal eligibility and entitlements using model family analyses techniques. We illustrate the usefulness of the approach by exploring the relationship between the generosity and the degree of low-income targeting of student support in 21 OECD countries. The results show that student support is less generous in countries that concentrate benefits on students from low-income families.
The idea of the public good of higher education is closely related to the political, social and educational cultures in which higher education is embedded. It varies across contexts. However, widely ...used notions of the 'public' aspects of higher education, including the concepts of economic public goods and private goods, conventionally assume Anglo-American state/society/university assemblages. Anglo-American (and more generally, Western) discourses and terms are dominant in scholarship on public policy and higher education. This creates obstacles and lacunae in comparative studies, and employing solely Anglo-American notions can be especially problematic in non-Anglo-American contexts. This paper attempts to move beyond the conventional approach by conducting a lexical-based comparison of the Chinese and Anglo-American approaches to the public aspects of higher education. It identifies and explores key concepts of the public good of higher education in both the Chinese and English languages, establishing similarities and differences. The comparison contributes to a more balanced understanding of the public roles of higher education, illuminates new aspects of 'public', and may facilitate mutual understanding between scholars and between the Chinese and Anglo-American higher education systems.
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