Communications in Education - ERIC

Communications in Education

Frances Hunt, Centre for International Education, University of Sussex

Communications in Education. Hunt, 2007

i

Table of Contents

Acronyms .........................................................................................................1

Acknowledgements .......................................................................................... 2

1

Introduction........................................................................................2

1.1 Communications in the formal education sector................................3

1.2 Importance of communications in education .....................................4

1.3 Terminology.......................................................................................5

1.4 Limitations .........................................................................................6

2

Discussion and evidence...................................................................6

2.1 Communications with policy makers in education .............................6

2.2 Global communications: shaping the agenda in international

education ......................................................................................... 18

2.3 Policy to practice: communicating messages to schools and

communities ....................................................................................20

2.4 Communications in and around schools..........................................22

2.5 Information communication technologies (ICTs): opening up spaces

and opportunities? ...........................................................................24

3

Conclusions ..................................................................................... 30

4

References ......................................................................................32

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Acronyms

C2005 CREATE

CSO DAC DFID DoE EDUCAIDS EFA GAPs GMR HEI IBE ICD ICTs IIEP ITESM MDGs NGO OECD

PETS PRSP RCL RNCS UNESCO

UNGEI USAID

Curriculum 2005 Consortium for Research on Educational Access, Transitions and Equity Civil Society Organisation Development Assistance Committee (OECD) Department for International Development (UK) Department of Education (South Africa) Global Initiative on Education and HIV & AIDS Education for All Gender and Primary Schooling in Africa project Global Monitoring Report Higher Education Institute International Bureau of Education (UNESCO) Information and Communication for Development Information and Communication Technologies International Institute for Educational Planning Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education Millennium Development Goals Non-Governmental Organisation Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Public Expenditure Tracking Study Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper Representative Council of Learners Revised National Curriculum Statement United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization United Nations Girls Education Initiative United States Agency for International Development

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people for their advice and suggestions on this project: Kwame Akyeampong; Angeline Barrett; Sandra Baxter; Keith Holmes; Rosemary Lugg; Pauline Rose; Yusuf Sayed; Alistair Scott and Nigel Scott. A special thanks to Pauline Rose who read through this draft, and provided incredibly useful ideas and advice for improvements.

1 Introduction

This report has been commissioned as part of the DFID-funded Information and Communications for Development (ICD) Knowledge Sharing and Learning Programme. This programme aims to: provide an overview of the evidence base related to the role of communications in development; provide access to studies and reports related to the impact of communication on development outcomes; and inform policy debates on the role of communications in development. Its central premise is:

`To impress upon senior-level decision makers ... the importance of prioritising communications for development principles and methodologies in all problematic areas, and the need to allocate human, technical and financial resources for this effort.' Inter-agency Round Table report, 2007

This report has been commissioned not necessarily to support this premise, but rather to provide evidence of the role of communications in education, to identify where it has been successful and some of its weaknesses. The paper will focus on spaces for communications in education, the processes of communications and the direct and indirect impacts of communications initiatives. It gives examples of a range of communication initiatives and provides evidence of impact, where available.

There seems to be an increasing (usually donor-driven) demand to map the evidence of impact of communication initiatives as the role of communications is increasingly enhanced. At the same time education policy makers and practitioners are looking for information to fill gaps in knowledge bases and advice on how to attain national and international educational targets (e.g. Millennium Development Goals, the Education for All global movement). Thus for a range of educational stakeholders, communications is playing and can play an increasingly important role. This paper provides a source of information on the potentialities of communications throughout the education system.

The study is a desk-based review of documentation available about the spaces, processes and impacts of communications in the formal education sector. Documentation reviewed included academic articles; development reports; advocacy papers; newspaper articles; theses; and website content. A number of academics and educational professionals were also contacted and provided impetus and ideas for some of the directions of the study. The paper starts with background information about the workings of formal education systems and the role communications can play; it then provides information on the terminology and methodology used. There are five main sections of analysis: 1)

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Communications with policy makers; 2) Global communications; 3) Policy to practice; 4) Communication in and around schools; and 5) Information communication technologies (ICTs) and education. The Conclusion brings some of the discussions together.

1.1 Communications in the formal1 education sector

The paper does not have the space to look at the complexities of contextspecific education sectors and the role communications might play in each one, rather it provides a brief outline of some of the principles of communication within `typical' education systems and highlights some of the potential tensions involved.

Education systems tend to work on three inter-connected levels: a) the macro level ? where national policies are developed and negotiated; b) the meso level ? which oversees the implementation of national policy into practice, this is often located in the equivalent of provincial/local departments of education; c) the micro level: the schools and communities where policies are put into practice, and where educational stakeholders want to see change in practices in education. Effective communications in formal education systems therefore have to take place at a range of levels and include diverse groups of actors, depending on the messages and ideas being communicated. Civil society organisations often interact at all levels of educational systems, building support at the grassroots level and advocating for change at the governmental level.

In most education systems policy making takes place at the national level, and it is here that most education systems take their lead. The majority of knowledge outputs from research, development and advocacy programmes are directed to this level; and interactions with donors and the international education community mostly happen at this level. Communications in this respect are multi-layered and multi-directional. There is communication around the policy making processes themselves: why and how certain policies are pursued; how different stakeholders are involved in the process; the role of research and development advocacy in these processes.

In most countries there are also provincial/local educational authorities, whose responsibilities and communication roles vary according to country context. There has been a growing trend in recent years to decentralise some of the activities from central government to these provincial authorities. Decentralisation is seen as a pathway for improved delivery of social services and a mechanism to improve the democratisation of decision-making for increased system efficiency (see Dunne et al, 2007 for a recent review). However, criticisms of how this has worked in practice in some contexts question the degree to which power is actually transferred to provincial authorities (e.g. Kataoka, 2006, in Sri Lanka), and the extent to which education planning actually remains centralised (Dyer & Rose, 2005) and highlight possibilities of manipulation by elite groups (UNESCO, 2004; cited in Dunne et al, 2007). There are a range of potential communication roles and activities at the provincial level. In many countries provincial level educational authorities act as a conduit through which national policy traverses - they are expected to ensure implementation takes place at the school level and perform monitoring functions on school level performance. There is also a sense that communities and schools can work better with local educational authorities (rather than national), as lines of communication should be more immediate and aims more localised.

1 Given the length restrictions of this report, the focus will be on the formal educational sector, rather than non-formal provision, although there are some crossovers.

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