The economic viability and stability of ‘capitalised family farming’: An analysis of agricultural decollectivisation in Peru

Abstract

The overall goal of this study is to examine if there is a dropout problem in rural China and to explore the effectiveness of a Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programme on the rate of dropping out. To meet this goal, we conduct a randomised controlled trial (RCT) to assess the impact of the CCT using a sample of the poorest 300 junior high school students in a nationally-designated poor county in Northwest China. We find that the annual dropout rate in the study county was 7.8 per cent and even higher, 13.3 per cent, among the children of poor households. We demonstrate that a CCT program reduces dropout by 60 per cent. The programme is most effective among students with poor academic performance, and likely more effective among girls and younger students.     

Decolonising online development studies? Emancipatory aspirations and critical reflections – a case study

Academics in high-income countries are increasingly launching development studies programmes through online distance learning to engage practitioner-students in low-income countries. Are such initiatives providing opportunities to critically tackle social injustice, or merely ‘mirroring’ relations of global inequality and re-entrenching imperial practices? Building on recent scholarship addressing efforts to ‘decolonise development studies’ and the complex power dynamics they encounter, we reflect on this question by analysing experiences of faculty and students in a United Kingdom-based online development studies programme, focusing particularly on perspectives of development practitioner-students working from Africa. We discuss barriers to social inclusivity – including the politics of language – that shaped participation dynamics in the programme as well as debates regarding critical development course content, rethinking possibilities for bridging counter-hegemonic development scholarship with practice-oriented approaches in a range of social contexts. Our analysis unpacks key tensions in addressing intertwined institutional and pedagogic dilemmas for an agenda towards decolonising online development studies, positioning decolonisation as a necessarily unsettling and contested process that calls for greater self-reflexivity.     

The Impact of School Meals on School Participation: Evidence from Rural India

This article assesses the effect of transition from monthly distribution of free food grains to the daily provision of free cooked meals to school children on enrolments and attendance in a rural area of India. School panel data allow a difference-in-differences estimation strategy to address possible endogeneity of programme placement. The results suggest that programme transition had a significant impact on improving the daily participation rates of children in lower grades. The average monthly attendance rate of girls in grade one was more than 12 percentage points higher while there was a positive but insignificant effect on grade one boys' attendance rate. The impact on enrolment levels was insignificant.     

Does the Heterogeneity of Project Implementers Affect the Programme Participation of Beneficiaries?: Evidence from Rural Cambodia

This study employs the dataset collected for the assessment of a post-harvest technology project in rural Cambodia and focuses on the heterogeneous preferences of project implementers, frequently overlooked in the literature on programme evaluation studies. We focus on the ‘implementer effect’ on the programme participation of the treated farmers. We demonstrate that the heterogeneous programme participation of ordinary farmers could be induced due to heterogeneity in the characteristics of the project staff. In particular, we indicate that the baseline altruism of the project staff, measured by the dictator game, consistently increases the participation rate and the number of participations in the training sessions of beneficiaries. This type of heterogeneity in project staffs’ preferences across treatment sites could be a source of treatment heterogeneity for programmes conducted at a certain cluster level. While few studies have focused on the heterogeneity of programme implementers, our empirical results indicate that the preference of implementers could be a source of treatment heterogeneity and imply the importance of implementation of an actual project.     

An Assessment of the Impacts of Sri Lanka’s Programme for School Improvement and School Report Card Programme on Students’ Academic Progress

Abstract

This paper examines two education programmes in Sri Lanka: the Programme for School Improvement (PSI), which decentralises decision-making power, and the School Report Card Programme (SRCP), which was designed to provide parents and other community members with information on the characteristics and performance of their local schools. Using a difference in differences identification strategy, it finds the following results. First, the PSI programme significantly increased Math and English reading test scores among Grade 4 students, but not first language (Sinhalese or Tamil) test scores. However, PSI has had no effect on any test scores of Grade 8 students. In contrast, the SRCP had no significant impacts on any test scores in either grade, and further inquiries revealed that the SRCP was never really implemented. Second, the paper examined the impact of both programmes on teacher and school principal variables. Overall, few effects were found, and in some cases effects were found that one would associate with reduced school quality. On a more positive note, the PSI programme does appear to have led schools to form School Development Committees (SDCs), as the programme stipulates, to establish a list of school priorities and to implement projects funded through local fundraising.     

‘I do not have the means to speak:’ educating youth for citizenship in post-conflict Liberia

Although policymakers stress the importance of education in promoting peace, little research examines the ways that schools prepare students affected by conflict to participate in the restoration of peace in their political community. Post-conflict societies experience severe challenges in strengthening political processes and social cohesion. This paper discusses citizenship education at a school run by a non-governmental organization near Monrovia, Liberia, examining the implemented curriculum in an 8th grade civics classroom. The paper details the ways that young people expressed civic critiques within the classroom, and provides a counterstory to narratives of harsh and violent educational environments in the region. This classroom was a space where students and their teacher engaged in talk about contentious issues: students discussed corruption and injustice, and highlighted the relationship between economic and political power. I argue that if the goal of education is to produce engaged, effective citizens, teachers should have pedagogic support to confront the differences between the implemented curriculum and students’ lived experiences. Peace education in such contexts must include equipping students to seek justice. Furthermore, because possibilities for civic education are embedded in students’ local and national contexts, current global civic education initiatives must be adaptive to local realities.     

Education for territorial peace in Colombia: what role for transrational peace?

ABSTRACT

In this article, we present the idea of a territorial peace and explore it in the context of Colombia. We locate our investigation in peace education, particularly in Colombia’s Catedra de Paz, and explore the adaptations and application of the iPEACES programme (originally the iPEACE programme, developed by one of the authors with Bevington in 2017) as a possible way of contributing to sustaining the plurality of many peaces in this and other contexts. We outline the Innsbruck school’s many peaces approach and Elicitive Conflict Mapping (ECM) framework in order to show how they contributed to developing the iPEACES programme – which is responsive to territorial peace in the Colombian context. We end by presenting limited findings from four surveys with teachers in Colombia who attended a taster day for the iPEACES programme in 2018. We discuss their contributions and perspectives, and the ways in which we feel the iPEACES programme might be taken up more widely in schools in Colombia and elsewhere.     

Computer-Assisted Instruction for Child Development: Evidence from an Educational Programme in Rural Zambia

This paper examines whether computer-assisted instruction has a positive impact on the literacy and numeracy skills of early grade students. An educational intervention implemented in Zambia integrated technology into classroom activity in order to mitigate weaknesses in teaching skills and address specific unmet student needs. Using a difference-in-difference combined with inverse propensity weights, results show that students’ numeracy and literacy skills are not significantly different from untreated community or government school students. At a third of the cost, the programme is the most cost-effective means of educating children in this poor region of Zambia.     

Analyzing the Link Between Job Satisfaction and Performance in Educational Institutions

The relationship between job satisfaction and organizational performance has been one of the most controversial issues in organizational management. This study examines how job satisfaction affects organizational performance analyzing the panel data collected from educational institutions in Korea. The results demonstrate that teachers’ organizational satisfaction is likely to improve students’ performance in standardized tests, whereas their work satisfaction is negatively related to it. Private school teachers showed higher organizational satisfaction than public school teachers and produced higher students’ test scores. No significant difference in work satisfaction between public and private school teachers was found.     

Exploring Language Dominance,English Literacy and Life Satisfaction Among Dominican Children of Immigrant Parents

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this pilot study was to explore language dominance and English language literacy, and examine the effects of an intervention focused on facilitating English language acquisition among Dominican children. Eighteen first and second generation Dominican children, ages 7–11, participated in a school based after school literacy language immersion program. Following participation in the literacy language immersion intervention, participants demonstrated an increase in school satisfaction and improvements in English literacy levels. This article makes recommendations for the provision of school-based programs that focus on the specific needs of Latino students associated with Spanish language dominance.     

Junior Farmer Field Schools,Agricultural Knowledge and Spillover Effects: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Northern Uganda

We analyse the impact of a junior farmer field school project in Northern Uganda on students’ agricultural knowledge and practices. We also test for the presence of intergenerational learning spillover within households. We use differences-in-differences estimators with ex-ante matching and find evidence that the programme had positive effects on students’ agricultural knowledge and adoption of good practices. The project also produced spillover effects in terms of improvements of household agricultural knowledge and food security. Overall, our results point to the importance of adapting the basic principles of farmer field schools to children.     

A Teenager in Love: Multidimensional Human Capital and Teenage Pregnancy in Ghana

I examine teenage pregnancy in Ghana, focusing on the role and interplay of Ghanaian and English reading skills, formal educational attainment, and adult literacy programme participation. Pursuing several alternative identification strategies three main results are established. First, I confirm the finding from previous studies that educational attainment is negatively related to teenage pregnancy. Second, however, once Ghanaian and English reading skills are introduced, the association between educational attainment and teenage pregnancy decreases or disappears altogether. Third, for the girls who have not completed primary school, adult literacy programme participation is associated with a much lower probability of experiencing a teenage pregnancy.

A bright future is the best contraceptive.

–Marian Wright Edelman     

The ‘Anti-politics machine’ in India: Depoliticisation through local institution building for participatory watershed development

This article investigates the rationale and implications of creating non-elected community-based bodies for India's national watershed development programme in 1994. A discourse of depoliticisation is in use to justify the creation of ‘apolitical’ watershed committees in contrast to ‘political’ panchayats, ostensibly unsuitable for participatory development for their embodiment of political contestation and vested interests. The discourse masks conflicts between key actors in India's development process and is highly malleable, acquiring pertinent meanings in specific contexts. Case-study evidence from two project villages in a south Indian district shows that the attempt to depoliticise this programme of panchayat politics fails, but sets up the ground for depoliticisation of another sort, by distancing watershed project spaces from pro-poor progressive politics.     

Interrogating Gender Divides in Technology for Education and Development: the Case of the One Laptop per Child Project in Ghana

The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project aims to make low-cost computers accessible to the “world’s poorest children,” presuming that the gadgets will support their empowerment via education. The project’s success globally, however, has been mixed at best, with many countries terminating their purchases due to cost, inadequate infrastructure, and negative side effects. In October 2010, Ghana suspended the country’s 3-year participation. This study examines the complex history and failure of OLPC Ghana in two pilot schools, one urban and one rural, with particular attention to gender bias. The analysis draws on interviews with government personnel, students, and teachers in the pilot classes. Despite lacking electric power in the rural community, UNDP’s Millennium Villages Project played a strong support role, making OLPC somewhat more effective with less of a gender divide in the rural school than in the urban school in Accra. Both pilot schools faced severe sustainability challenges raising decade-old questions about modernity and technological determinism. Further, in both schools, particularly the urban school, a digital divide by gender was evident.     

Refugee youth in settlement,schooling, and social action: reviewing current research through a transnational lens

How do refugee youth engage in peacebuilding, civic participation, and social action through their educational experiences? This article draws from transnational frameworks, specifically Ajrun Appadurai’s notion of ‘imagined worlds’ with an emphasis on ethnoscapes as a framework through which to review literature on refugee young peoples’ involvement in peacebuilding, participation, and social action in schools, focusing particularly on experiences from countries of settlement outside of refugee camps. This study examines current literature on refugee youth schooling and social engagement along three main themes: the student, the school, and the wider society. Each section considers the implications of the scholarly literature in a transnational framework, identifying what transnational flows (i.e. people, capital, ideas, media, technology, etc.) and what imagined worlds are reflected in the literature. In conducting this analysis, I aim to dislodge peacebuilding education from spatially fixed contexts of ‘fragility’ that assigns a nation-state as the primary reference point of peace and conflict, to instead examine the transnational nature both of conflict and of the agency that displaced youth can mobilize to transform conflict through peacebuilding.     

Conditional Cash Transfers,Adult Work Incentives,and Poverty

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes aim to alleviate poverty through monetary and in-kind benefits, as well as reduce future incidence of poverty by encouraging investments in education, health and nutrition. The success of CCT programmes at reducing poverty depends on whether, and the extent to which, cash transfers affect adult work incentives. In this paper we examine whether the PROGRESA programme of Mexico affects adult participation in the labour market and overall adult leisure time, and we link these effects to the impact of the programme on poverty. Utilising the experimental design of PROGRESA's evaluation sample, we find that the programme does not have any significant effect on adult labour force participation and leisure time. Our findings on adult work incentives are reinforced further by the result that PROGRESA leads to a substantial reduction in poverty. The poverty reduction effects are stronger for the poverty gap and severity of poverty measures.     

Women’s Participation in Communal Activities in Rural Bangladesh

This article seeks to examine the extent of women’s participation in communal activities in rural Bangladesh, based on an analysis of a development programme, namely REFLECT (Regenerated Freirean Literacy through Empowering Community Techniques). This article evaluates the REFLECT programme with regard to its stated goal of enhancing female participation in local community affairs. Using Michael Mann’s classification of sources of power, the study emphasises the importance of participation as a contribution to political as well as ideological power in the community of Monsurabad Island in rural Bangladesh. To that end, this article aims at analysing women’s participation in community decision-making processes through voting behaviour, traditional village court (Salish) involvement and other civic activities. This study also reviews the views of village elders (matabars) on women’s participation at the communal level and the resulting empowerment. Based on the views of participant women themselves, the study concludes that the implementation of the REFLECT project in the local community under investigation has indeed resulted in empowering women, but this effect remains confined to their families and the handling of women’s issues. As the effect of the REFLECT project has not reached out to the realm of community politics, its impact on women’s participation in the community has been limited. This study argues that without any change in the existing social fabric of Monsurabad, women’s ideological power in that community could not be transformed into political power in accordance with Michael Mann’s theory.     

Of texts and practices: Empowerment and organisational cultures in world bank-funded rural development programmes

The World Bank's recent concern for ‘empowerment’ grows out of longer standing discussions of participation, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society. While commitments to empowerment enter World Bank texts with relative ease, their practice within Bank-funded projects is far more contingent, and the meanings they assume become much more diverse. This paper considers the relationship between such texts and the development practices which emerge, using an analysis of the ‘organisational cultures’ of the Bank and the many organisations on which it depends in the implementation of its rural development programmes. The paper presents a framework for analysing these organisational cultures in terms of (a) the broader contexts in which organisations and their staff are embedded; (b) the everyday practices within organisations; (c) the power relations within and among organisations; and (d) the meanings that come to dominate organisational practice. A case study of a development programme in Bangladesh is used to illustrate the ways in which cultural interactions between a variety of organisations – the World Bank, government agencies, NGOs, organisations of the poor, social enterprises – mediate the ways in which textual commitments to empowerment are translated into a range of diverse practices.     

Impact of Cash Transfer Programmes on School Attendance and Child Poverty: An Ex Ante Simulation for Sri Lanka

For countries assessing whether to implement a cash transfer programme, an ex-ante evaluation is vital to assess its potential impacts. This study simulates the impact of alternative cash transfer programmes on school attendance and poverty among Sri Lankan children. We find that cash transfer programmes targeting poor children would be the most cost-effective way to reduce child poverty and encourage school attendance. If means-testing is not feasible, then programmes targeting the children in households with at least three school-age children would provide a suitable second-best solution. Our findings suggest that even a limited programme budget can provide significant impacts.     

Citizen participation in solid waste policymaking: a case study of the spokane experience(1)

The focus of this case study was on citizen participation in solid waste policymaking in Spokane, Washington. It was predicated on the idea that there is a need for government to develop more workable and meaningful approaches to facilitating citizen participation in public policymaking. The formulation and implementation of solid waste management policy in Spokane proved to be a technological and democratic trial for the community. The research used three models of citizen participant styles - coopted, prudent, and confrontive - as it examined the views of citizen group leaders, city and county administrative staff, and elected officials involved in this policy dispute with regard to: 1) the purposes of citizen participation, 2) the desirability of citizen participation, 3 ) the impacts of citizen participation, 4) the most effective approaches for citizen participation, and 5) the levels of satisfaction associated with various approaches to citizen participation.