Constructing educational quality in the Arab region: a bottom-up critique of regional educational governance

ABSTRACT

The article challenges the deficit view in which education in the Arab region is portrayed by examining the process of educational regionalisation. It takes as its case study the Arab Regional Agenda for Improving Educational Quality in order to explore the construction of an educational quality space that uses data as a governance model. Drawing on critical theory and evidence collected from 70 interviews, I argue that such approaches promote globalised versions of what quality education means remaining blind to context. I suggest that improving educational quality in the region entails creating responsive approaches grounded in political and socio-economic contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Education quality
• regionalisation
• Arab region
• World Bank
• ARAIEQ

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the journal's reviewers for their helpful and insightful comments. I also wish to thank all the individuals who participated in my study and who assisted me with the research. Finally, a sincere thank you to Seteney Shami, Rami Daher and everyone with the Arab Council for the Social Sciences for their wonderful support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Clara Morgan http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7204-5417

Notes

1 The key organisations here are: (1) IOs: the World Bank, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and (2) Regional organizations such as the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO).

2 See Henry et al. (2001); Rizvi and Lingard (2010); Meyer and Benavot (2013); Martens, Knodel, and Windzio (2014).

3 See Orenstein (2008); Skogstad (2008, 2011); Martens, Knodel, and Windzio (2014); Ozga et al. (2011).

4 Scholars who have studied regionalisation in education include Dale and Robertson (2002, 2009); Ozga et al. (2011); Jules (2014, 2017).

5 See for example Jones (2006); Deacon (2007); Mahon and McBride (2008); and Klees, Samoff, and Stromquist (2012).

6 See Morgan (2014); Henry et al. (2001); Jones (2006); Pereyra, Kotthoff, and Cowen (2011); Meyer and Benavot 2013; and Lingard et al. (2016).

7 By governance, I mean the ‘combinations and coordination of activities, actors/agents, and scales, through which “education” is constructed and delivered’ at different scales (Dale and Robertson 2009, 1118).

8 See Henry et al. (2001); Rizvi and Lingard (2010); Kevin et al. (2012); Sellar and Lingard (2014); Lingard et al. (2016).

9 For example, UNESCO’s Education for All Regional Report 2014 for the Arab States http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/ED/ED_new/pdf/ARAB-REGION_EN.pdf.

10 I would like to thank the journal’s reviewer for this comment.

11 The World Bank endowed the Jordan National Center for Human Resource Development with a three-year Institutional Development Fund. Additional funds were provided through a partnership with the Islamic Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

12 Based on my findings, UNESCO’s involvement was only at the regional level and involved officials in its Beirut office. Once ARAEIQ ended, UNESCO’s involvement in this initiative also ended.

13 See Desrosières (1998), Grek (2009), Ozga et al. (2011), and Lingard et al. (2016).

14 See Government of Lebanon and UN (2015); World Vision (2015); International Alert (2015); MEHE (2014).

15 According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Syria Regional Refugee Response web portal, there is about $612 million gap in funding – less than half of the total appeal. See: http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/country.php?id=107.

16 Gaining research access in the region is extremely difficult. One has to deploy unofficial means in order to secure research access. Although I was not able to secure access to schools in Tunisia, I was more successful in Jordan and Lebanon with the invaluable assistance of a Lebanese official and a Jordanian researcher.

17 I can speak Arabic but my proficiency in reading and writing is poor. I am proficient in French.

Additional information

Funding

This research was carried out with the support of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences – “Inequality, Mobility and Development in the Arab Region” Third Round (2015–2016) and funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Sida.