Colette Chabbott - Böcker

Since 1988, the Board on International Comparative Studies in Education (BICSE) at the (U.S.) National Research Council of the National Academies has engaged in activities designed to increase the rigor and sophistication of international comparative studies in education by encouraging synergies between large and smaller scale international comparative education research, to identify gaps in the existing research base, and to assist in communicating results to policy makers and the public. Under the current grant (1998-2002), funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, BICSE has sponsored public events and commissioned papers on the effects of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the power of video technology in international education research, international perspectives on teacher quality, and advances in the methodology of cross-national surveys of education achievement. This report responds to a request from the board's sponsors under the current grant to produce a report that builds on its previous work.

Recent research has advanced the understanding of how global processes have led to standardized ideas about modern schooling. Chabbott provides an insightful examination of how the processes of international development have effected the role of education at a global level since World War II.

Health for All and Education for All have been rallying cries for a host of international development activities for more than a quarter century. Where did these global goals come from? Why have the health goals seemingly advanced so much faster than those in education? In this book, author Colette Chabbott explores the foundational role that international development organizations and the innovations they champion have played in shaping and advancing such goals. Chabbott demonstrates the importance of science and measurement in rendering some innovations more universal and compelling than others. Her analysis includes in-depth case studies of innovations developed at the grassroots and scaled up at the national and international levels by the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research and by BRAC, once a Bangladeshi now a major international NGO. These studies all suggest that greater investment in new types of education research, based in the Third World, but with strong ties to research centers of international scope in the First World, are likely the prerequisites for achieving better, cheaper, faster universal education. This important book will provoke scholars, students, and international development practitioners to think more deeply about the cultural and scientific underpinnings of education and international development. The author’s careful analyses are particularly needed as the international community defines new global goals for the post-2015 era.