Education in the Broader Middle East: Borrowing a Baroque Arsenal

Overview & Synopsis

This book brings together academics and postgraduate students, practitioners and Ministry officials all of whom are wedded to developing an understanding of what is happening to education in the broader Middle East. They cover many countries whilst recognising that many more could have been included. In drawing attention to education in Pakistan, Palestine, Oman, Turkey and Qatar they indicate the wide range of education "policy borrowing" and, most importantly, the effects of this exchange. The contributors know that the countries of the broader Middle East are not alone in having purchased glitzy, glossy and tantalisingly wonderful educational reforms, only to find how quickly they became outdated. In other words, they became a "baroque arsenal" of educational goods, services and models of practice which, having been discussed, designed and generated many years before in countries elsewhere, have then been sold and delivered to the unsuspecting countries of the broader Middle East. It is argued that many of the countries of the region did not suspect that their purchases were, more frequently than not, the "off-loading" of failed educational experiments in countries of "the centre." This book discusses what this means not only for educational reform projects but also for the impact upon regional political stability. The two final chapters discuss the underlying key concerns of gender and of cross-border education. This book contains the following: (1) Education Policy Transfers--Borrowing and Lending Education Policy: A conceptual expedition into baroque arsenals (Gari Donn & Yahya Al Manthri); (2) Education Policy Borrowing in Pakistan: public-private partnerships (Sajid Ali); (3) The Politics of Foreign Aid and Policy Borrowing in Palestine (Mohammed Alrozzi); (4) Qatar's Independent Schools: education for a new (or bygone?) era (Brooke Barnowe-Meyer); (5) Higher Education in Qatar: does a US medical school break the baroque arsenal? (Tanya Kane); (6) The School Education System in the Sultanate of Oman (Sana Al Balushi & David Griffiths); (7) International Influences on Adult Literacy and Basic Education in Turkey (Ozlem Yazlik); (8) Gender and Education in the Arabian Gulf States (Salha Abdullah Issan); and (9) Crossborder Education in the Gulf Countries: changes and challenges (Jane Knight).