Education systems, aspiration and learning in remote rural settings

虽然过去二十年来在入学率方面取得了重大进展，但教育成果往往很差，特别是在女孩、土著群体和少数民族青年、社会经济地位较低的青年和偏远农村地区。世界银行和其他具有全球影响力的机构最近一直在宣传这样一种观点，即部分原因是这些儿童及其父母的愿望有限。确实有一些证据表明，弱势群体的抱负较低，因此在学校的成绩也较差。然而，矛盾的是，也有证据表明，许多来自结构上处于不利地位的群体的青年有着难以实现的高愿望，这种情况导致幻想破灭，大批年轻人离开学校时没有技能和知识参与农村生计，他们认为这代表了他们愿望的失败。目前许多关于教育和志向的学术和政策论述存在两个关键问题。首先，抱负的概念非常狭隘。旨在“提高愿望”的干预措施假定愿望是一维的，然而愿望可能或多或少是具体的，或多或少是稳定的；它们充满情感和价值，可能与非常不同类型的想象未来有关。人们很少了解愿望是如何单独或集体地产生变化的。其次，人们对学校系统塑造年轻人抱负的过程知之甚少，也不知道年轻人的抱负如何影响他们对学校的参与或他们所学到的知识。众所周知，愿望是通过复杂的方式产生的，涉及到广泛的（甚至全球的）社会和经济情况以及家庭和社区关系。这些因素如何在学校发挥作用还需要进一步研究。目的：深入了解教育系统如何制定有效的政策和干预措施，以满足年轻人提高学习成果和解决偏远农村地区结构性劣势的愿望。研究问题1)21世纪的教育系统在塑造偏远农村地区年轻人的愿望方面发挥了什么作用？2)生活在偏远农村地区的年轻人的愿望是如何与学校教育及其更广泛的社会、经济和文化背景产生联系的？3)年轻人的抱负如何影响他们的教育投入和学习成果？研究将由一组经验丰富的研究人员和三名博士后研究人员进行。实地考察将在印度、老挝和莱索托偏远农村地区的两所学校及其当地社区进行。1)案头研究——对学术文献、组织报告和政策文件进行分析2)以学校为基础的民族志研究，包括与学生一起参与小组活动、课堂观察、对教科书、课程和考试的话语分析。对教师和学生的访谈3)基于社区的民族志研究，包括对父母、其他家庭成员、社区领袖、中学青年和不再受教育的年轻人的访谈/焦点小组4)对政策社区的利益相关者的访谈5)以政策为重点的传播和反馈研讨会，从学校学生，通过当地社区，到国家和国际层面的利益相关者6)设计调查问卷；并在每个国家5个偏远农村地区的200名11-22岁的年轻人中进行试点，探索如何将定性研究结果用于定量研究。

Although there have been major advances in school enrolment in the past two decades, the outcomes of education are often poor, especially among girls, young people from indigenous groups and ethnic minorities, those of lower socio-economic status and in remote rural areas. The World Bank and other globally influential agencies have recently been promoting the view that this is partly due to the limited aspirations of such children and their parents. There is certainly some evidence that disadvantaged groups have lower aspirations, and consequently achieve less in school. Yet paradoxically, there is also evidence that many youth from structurally disadvantaged groups have unattainably high aspirations, a situation that leads to disillusionment and large numbers of young people leaving school without the skills and knowledge to participate in rural livelihoods which they see as representing the failure of their aspirations. There are two key problems with much of the current academic and policy discourse concerning education and aspiration. First, the conceptualisation of aspiration is very narrow. Interventions aimed at 'raising aspiration' assume it is one-dimensional, yet aspirations may be more or less concrete, more or less stable; they are emotionally imbued and value laden and may relate to very different types of imagined future. Little is understood of how aspirations function to produce change, individually or collectively. Second, little is known of the processes through which school systems shape young people's aspirations, or of how young people's aspirations shape either their engagement with schooling or the learning they achieve. Aspiration is known to be produced in complex ways, in relation to broad-scale (even global) social and economic situations as well as family and community relationships. How these play out in schools requires further study. AIMTo provide insight into how education systems can develop effective polices and interventions that work with young people's aspirations to enhance learning outcomes and address structural disadvantage in remote rural placesOBJECTIVES1) To develop a robust understanding of the mechanisms that connect schooling, aspirations and learning outcomes2) To develop methods suitable for capturing and understanding these mechanismsRESEARCH QUESTIONS 1) What roles do 21st century education systems play in shaping young people's aspirations in remote rural areas? 2) How are the aspirations of young people living in remote rural areas produced in relation to both schooling and their wider social, economic and cultural contexts? 3) How do young people's aspirations shape their educational engagement and learning outcomes? METHODS The research will be undertaken by a team of experienced investigators alongside three postdoctoral researchers. Fieldwork will be conducted in two schools and their local communities in remote rural areas of India, Laos and Lesotho. 1) Desk research - analysis of academic literature, organisational reports and policy documents 2) School-based ethnographic research including participatory group activities with students, lesson observation, discourse analysis of textbooks, curricula and exams, interviews with teachers and students 3) Community-based ethnographic research including interviews / focus groups with parents, other family members, community leaders, young people in secondary education and young people no longer in education 4) Interviews with stakeholders in the policy community 5) Policy-focused dissemination and feedback workshops, cascading up from school students, via local communities, to national and international level stakeholders 6) Design of a questionnaire, and piloting with 200 young people aged 11-22 in 5 remote rural areas per country, to explore how the qualitative findings might be operationalised for quantitative research.