Summer break

The spring term is over. The first year master's students managed to survive and I am quite impressed with their improvement. This term, in the M1 seminar, we have focused on JICA for the aid organization research project and interviewed Mr. Atsushi Matachi, education sector advisor of JICA.

Liu Jing returned from Pittsburgh and Kyohei and Yoko have left for Malawi as JOCV volunteers.

I have just published a book titled “Multiple Conceptions of Education for All and EFA Development Goals: The processes of adopting a global agenda in the policies of Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia". It is an outcome of a joint project I have led and worked in collaboration with scholars in Kenyatta University (Kenya), Dar es Salaam University (Tanzania), and Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia). I will donate a copy to the GSID library soon for your review!

Shoko Yamada

Multiple Conceptions of Education for All and Efa Development Goals

The book analyzed the responses of three east African countries – Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia – to the changes brought under the paradigm of EFA and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which spread the virtue of universal basic education and a new decision-making mechanism fostering partnership with external stakeholders.

International environment since the late 1990s has effected systematic and wide-spread standardization, which resulted in less diversity of policies across countries. At the same time, the responses of the governments towards such external forces were different according to the conditions such as the respective countries’ historically developed educational system, ways of decision-making and operation in the bureaucracy, relationship among key actors, and socio-political, economic, and cultural contexts.

Based on the in-depth interviews with key ministry officials, aid officials, NGO representatives, and academics involved in educational policy-making processes, the book shed light on the things happened in the process of making national education policies experienced by actors with different perspectives.

Chapter contributors:

• Yacob Arsano, Associate professor of political science & international relations; former dean of College of Social Sciences; Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia
• Eustella P. Bhalalusesa, Associate professor in Adult Education of the School of Education, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
• Fatuma N. Chege, Senior Lecturer, Department of Educational Foundations, Kenyatta University, Kenya; teaches Philosophy and Sociology of Education
• Regina G. Mwatha Karega, Commissioner and Chairperson, National Commission on Gender and Development, Kenya; currently on leave of absence from Kenyatta University where she is Senior Lecture
• Ayalew Shibeshi, Associate Professor, Department of Educational Planning and Management, College of Education, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia.
• Shoko Yamada, Associate Professor in International and Comparative Education and African Studies, Graduate School of International Development, Nagoya University, Japan