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I successfully defended my thesis
in January 2009. This page will be updated soon with
more details. Large-scale, centralized
education reform has occurred in a variety of
jurisdictions in recent years. Such reforms usually
include new approaches to funding, and major changes
to policies governing school board organization,
curriculum, student assessment, and teacher working
conditions. Such reforms are shaped by the processes
undertaken to develop them, and by the variety of
individuals and groups involved in the process. While
there is a great deal of contemporary research
concerning the outcomes and impacts of educational
policies, few have examined the process of educational
policy development and its relationship to democracy
in education. This dissertation will provide a
comparative analysis of curriculum policy development
case studies in two very different contexts, both of
which underwent large-scale education policy reform
during the 1990s: Ontario, Canada and Porto Alegre,
Brazil. My dissertation will be the
first to present an in-depth analysis of policy
formulation of Ontario and Porto Alegre. The
differences begin with how each jurisdiction
conceptualizes educational purpose, and include the
role that citizens and stakeholders play in policy
development as well as the nature of the process
undertaken. Whereas the Ontario policy development
process was highly centralized and involved
"policy elites" as key decision-makers,
Porto Alegre took a decentralized, participatory
approach, relying on extensive citizen involvement in
the process. This research will focus exclusively on
the curriculum policy component of the reform in the
jurisdictions examined. Click HERE
for a more detailed overview of my research. |
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