FreshEd

The UK is set to leave the EU on March 29, 2019. Will there be a delay? A hard exit? A people’s vote? With four days before the deadline, it is too unpredictable to tell with any certainty. In an effort to reflect on the Brexit process, today we re-air Will’s conversation with Susan Robertson about Brexit, which took place mere days after the vote on June 23, 2016. As we await the conclusion of the chaotic exit process, it is valuable to remember just what the discussion sounded like immediately after the UK voted to leave the EU. Susan Robertson is a Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Cambridge. When I spoke with her in 2016, she worked for the University of Bristol. http://www.freshedpodcast.com/susanrobertson-brexit/ email: info@freshedpodcast.com twitter: @freshedpodcast

Today we dive into the nightmare that is the growing tide of fascism worldwide and the prospects and perils this nightmare holds for public education. My guest today is the renowned scholar, Henry Giroux. He has a new book entitled American Nightmare: Facing the challenge of Fascism, which will be published in May. Henry Giroux is the McMaster University Professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest and the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. He has written over 60 books and is considered one of the top educational thinkers today.

Last week, the Trump administration invited university, higher education association, and private company officials to the White House to discuss international students and post-college work. At the time of this recording, we aren’t sure what exactly was said or decided. But in an effort to provide some background on international student experiences in American Higher Education, Jenny Lee is with me today to discuss the underlying U.S. political climate for international students and scholars. In our talk, Jenny discusses the rise in discrimination and hate crimes since Trump’s election and the presence of neo-racism on campuses. Jenny J. Lee is a Professor at the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona. She is currently a NAFSA Senior Fellow, Associate Editor of the Review of Higher Education, and Co-editor of the book series, Studies in Global Higher Education. Her latest piece can be found in the NAFSA newsletter, Trends and Insights. www.freshedpodcast.com/Lee email: info@freshedpodcast.com twitter: @freshedpodcast

The University of Sussex was ranked the world’s best for development studies in the 2019 QS World University Rankings by subject. To celebrate, we re-air Mario Novelli's 2016 FreshEd interview. In that interview, Mario talked about the role of schools in the production of inequality. Mario not only details how modernity, capitalism, and colonialism combine to create systems of inequality inside school systems but also publicly struggles with his role in the production of inequality through his work in international educational development. Mario Novelli is Professor of the Political Economy of Education and Director of the Centre for International Education (CIE) at the University of Sussex. His latest article discussed in this podcast can be found in the most recent issue of the British Journal of the Sociology of Education. Citation: Novelli, Mario, Interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 41, September 12, 2016. Transcript, translation, and resources: http://www.freshedpodcast.com/marionovelli/

My guest today is Iveta Silova, Director of the Center for the Advanced Studies in Global Education at Arizona State University. Professor Silova has spent her career studying post-socialist education transformation processes. In today’s show she discusses some of her new work comparing Latvian textbooks before, during, and after Soviet occupation. http://www.freshedpodcast.com/ivetasilova/ Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Twitter: @freshedpodcast

Last week, Linda Darling-Hammond was named the head of California’s State Board of Education, the governing and policy-making body of the California Department of Education. With over six million students and nearly 300,000 teachers in California, this is a powerful position. Last year, Linda Darling-Hammond joined me to talk about her co-authored book Empowered Educators: How high-performing systems shape teaching quality around the world. The book explores how several countries and jurisdictions have developed comprehensive teaching and learning systems that produce a range of positive outcomes, from student achievement to equity and from a professionalized teaching workforce to the integration of research and practice. Linda Darling-Hammond is the president of the Learning Policy Institute and a Professor of Education Emeritus at Standard University. http://www.freshedpodcast.com/lindadarlinghammond/ Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Twitter: @freshedpodcast

How did vouchers and charter schools become key elements in the education reform agenda in the United States? My guest today, Professor of Education Policy at the University of Illinois, Chris Lubienski, speaks about the rise of policy orchestration among a network of private and non-profit actors and what this means for democratic decision making. His research shows how Philanthropic Foundations, such as the Gates and Walton Family Foundations, and think tanks, such as the Brookings Institute and RAND Corporation, have come to promote a common agenda that has helped propel vouchers and charters into the national spotlight. Professor Lubienski explores the changing structures of educational policy making in the United States, and argues that the contracting out of policy making to actors such as Gates, Brookings, and RAND has resulted in the privatization of public policy making. http://www.freshedpodcast.com/chrislubienski/ Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Twitter: @freshedpodcast

A group of Yale graduate students are protesting their labor conditions as teachers. They are demanding the administration recognize them as a union and negotiate their contract as full employees of the university. After all, graduate students teach many undergraduate classes. But the administration is stalling, waiting for Donald Trump to appoint an anti-union National Labor Relations Board that, they hope, will throw out the union’s right to exist. My guest today is Jennifer Klein, a professor of history at Yale University who has followed the unionization efforts closely. She’s written a recent New York Times op-ed detailing the events at Yale. The fight over graduate student’s right to unionize at Yale is a microcosm of the reliance on precarious work across the American higher education system. You can find the solidarity statement in support of the graduate students here. http://www.freshedpodcast.com/jenniferklein/ Email: info@freshedpodcast.com Twitter: @freshedpodcast

Many countries around the world participate in the Programme for International Student Assessment, the cross-national test administered by the OECD. Today we look at the economic costs for a country to participate in PISA. My guests are Laura Engel and David Rutkowski. They followed the money through publicly available budget documents in the United States to uncover exactly how much the test costs both the federal and state governments. Through this complicated web, they found a host of contractors and sub-contractors hired to implement PISA and call for a full cost-benefit analysis in order to determine if PISA is worth it. Laura Engel is an Associate Professor of International Education and International Affairs at the George Washington University and David Rutkowski is an Associate Professor with a joint appointment in Educational Policy and Educational Inquiry at Indiana University School of Education. Their latest co-written article published in the journal Discourse is called “Pay to play: What does PISA participation cost in the US?” www.freshedpodcast.com/LauraEngel-David Rutkowski/ email: info@freshedpodcast.com twitter: @freshedpodcast

What’s the connection between education and development? My guest today, Dan Wagner, argues that it’s past time to move beyond conceptualizing development as economic growth. For Dan, the framework we should use is learning as development. He calls on social scientists to work towards a Learning Gini Index that not only takes learning seriously but also equity. Dan Wagner is Professor of Education and UNESCO Chair in Learning and Literacy at the Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, where he is also the director of the International Literacy Institute and International Educational Development Program.  In today’s show we talk about his new book, Learning as Development: Rethinking International Education in a Changing World (Routledge 2018). He has also published a new book for UNESCO entitled Learning at the Bottom of the Pyramid (UNESCO 2018). www.freshedpodcast.com/danwagner/ email: info@freshedpodcast.com twitter: @freshedpodcast