Research on teacher education and classroom teaching has evolved significantly in recent decades, with more research taking an international or intersectional lens. The International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT) has moved with the field, beginning as a predominantly white European and North American organization in 1983, it…

This paper investigates the epistemic politics at work in radically contrasting academic representations of African university futures. Euro-American policy entrepreneurs and research funders call for major investments in Africa's scientific research training capacity to strengthen the continent's integration into a global knowledge system.…

From a theoretical standpoint, the paper challenges the existing unfair representation of knowledge systems in the African university. We argue that the continued domination of Eurocentric epistemology in African universities at the expense of African indigenous knowledge systems is unjust. We provide evidence of existing models of knowledge…

In recent years heightened attention has been directed towards the connections between schooling and local communities in sub-Saharan Africa. While community participation in school management has been emphasized as a strategy to promote sustainable development and improve quality education in sub-Saharan Africa, in practice this strategy has…

The role of African languages in formal and nonformal learning is the subject of increasing local, national and international interests. Cognitive and pedagogical reasons abound for using the language best understood by the learner. However, many nonpedagogical factors related to politics, economics, language attitudes and colonial history are…

The role of the political class in the debate on how to improve education in the Sahelian countries is examined in this monograph. Although cultural backwardness and faulty inquiry impede educational quality, the major problem is the absence of political forms through which all people can participate in educational reform. A review of the…

Describes the political development of post-colonial Africa. Continuing tension has existed between single party and multi-party solutions to political organization and between mass movements and elitism. While Africans have been responive to socialist rhetoric, the primacy of ethnicity and the weak class structure have militated against genuine…

Education decentralization efforts are examined in six primarily rural, sub-Saharan African countries--Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Stated reasons do not always reflect the real underlying rationales for decentralization. Education decentralization that is publicly advocated to improve service delivery and local…

Although the American political system is characterized by commitment to democracy and self-determination, the American government has traditionally taken an interest in the political development of other countries. The recent intervention of the U.S. in the political development of Southwest Africa/Namibia is an example. In the body of this paper…

This book contains four papers, each a chapter, that share in the discourse of Paulo Freire and provide varying perspectives on the ways to advance social transformation and achieve a politically literate citizenry as a democratic enterprise. The following four papers are included: "Exploring the Limits of Participatory Democracy: Prudent and…