October 6, 2020
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Payal Shah, PhD
University of South Carolina

In this talk Dr. Payal Shah presents aspects of an 8-year longitudinal ethnographic study of gender, education, and empowerment in Gujarat, India. After describing the study and its methodology, she uses findings to illuminate the relational and intergenerational dimensions of empowerment. She will then discuss current and future research that stem from this project to better investigate empowerment as an intergenerational and relational process. She discusses this new research in light of the global covid-19 pandemic and will close with an overview of the challenges of conducting participatory, qualitative research at this historic moment.

Dr. Payal P. Shah (Ph.D., Indiana University-Bloomington) is an Associate Professor of Educational Foundations and Qualitative Inquiry in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of South Carolina. She conducts critical ethnographic and participatory research on gender, education, and development in India and has published across the fields of international and comparative education, qualitative inquiry, and women’s and gender studies. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in qualitative inquiry, social foundations of education, and comparative and international education.

October 21, 2020
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Gabrielle Oliveira, PhD
Boston College 

While we have an incredible amount of statistical information about immigrants coming in and out of the United States, we know very little about how migrant families stay together and raise their children. Beyond the numbers, what are the everyday experiences of families with members on both sides of the border? Focusing on Mexican women who migrate to New York City and leave children behind, Dr. Oliveira shares insights from her book, Motherhood across Borders, to examine parenting from afar and the role education plays, as well as the ways in which separated siblings cope with different experiences across borders. Drawing on more than three years of ethnographic research, Dr. Oliveira offers a unique focus on the many consequences of maternal migration. She illuminates the life trajectories of separated siblings, including their divergent educational paths, and the everyday struggles that undocumented mothers go through in order to figure out how to be a good parent to all of their children, no matter where they live. Despite these efforts, the book uncovers the far-reaching effects of maternal migration that influences both the children who accompany their mothers to New York City, and those who remain in Mexico.

Dr. Gabrielle Oliveira is assistant professor of foundations of education at the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College. Her research focuses on immigration and mobility—on how people move, adapt, and parent across borders. Her expertise includes gender, anthropology, transnationalism in Latin America. Merging the fields of anthropology and education through ethnographic work in multiple countries, Dr. Oliveira also studies the educational trajectories of immigrant and first and second generation children. She received her bachelor’s degree in her native Brazil and earned her master’s and doctoral degrees from Teachers College and Columbia University, where she was also a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation. Dr. Oliveira has recently published Motherhood Across Borders: Immigrants and Their Children in Mexico and New York (2018) by NYU Press that won the Inaugural Outstanding Book Award in Ethnography at the Penn Ethnography Forum. Dr. Oliveira was also a 2018 Concha Delgado Gaitan Presidential Fellow awarded by the Council of Anthropology and Education. She is also the co-founder of the group Colectiva Infancias, a Latin America group of women scholars who study migration of children across the Americas. The group was recently awarded a grant by The National Geographic Foundation to assemble an online mosaic of migrant children’s experiences. Dr. Oliveira lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two children.

November 17, 2020
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Regina Cortina, PhD
Teacher's College, Columbia University 

In this presentation, Dr. Regina Cortina will offer reflections building on her recent publication that applies decolonial theory to the field of Comparative Education. She will also highlight new strategies for teaching and learning and will use practical examples to show how new knowledge can be generated from the perspective of the Global South. Her hope is to engage in a fruitful dialogue with all participants in the Colloquium.

Dr. Regina Cortina is Professor of Education in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her Presidential Address, “’The Passion for What is Possible’ in Comparative and International Education,” was published in the Comparative Education Review in November 2019. Professor Cortina’s teaching and publications are advancing the field by focusing on Decolonial Theories in Comparative Education. Most recently, two of her articles were published in 2019 and 2020 in Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. Professor Cortina’s book published in 2017, Indigenous Education Policy, Equity, and Intercultural Understanding in Latin America, is a comparative study of policies designed to increase the educational opportunities of Indigenous students, protect their rights to an education inclusive of their cultures and languages, and improve their education outcomes. Her earlier book, The Education of Indigenous Citizens in Latin America (2014), examines unprecedented changes in education across Latin America that resulted from the endorsement of Indigenous people’s rights through the development of bilingual intercultural education. Professor Cortina’s other areas of expertise are gender and education, the education and employment of teachers, public policy and education, and the schooling of Latinx students in the United States. Among her other major publications are Women and Teaching: Global Perspectives on the Feminization of a Profession (Palgrave, 2006), Immigrants and Schooling: Mexicans in New York (Center for Migration Studies, 2003), and Distant Alliances: Promoting Education for Girls and Women in Latin America (Routledge, 2000). She has a Ph.D. in Education, a master’s degree in International and Comparative Education, and a master’s degree in Political Science, all from Stanford University, and a bachelor’s degree from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. Professor Cortina was President of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) in 2018-2019.

November 18, 2020
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Dr. Deevia Bhana
University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

In this talk, Dr. Deevia Bhana will focus on the utility of a three-ply yarn approach in the study of violence in educational settings in South Africa. Her starting point is that questions about violence in educational spaces are inextricably bound to gender and sexuality, and no engagement with violence can exclude it. Despite this, an understanding of violence as an individual pathologisation of behavior often remains in educational research and interventions. The residues of this individualized approach continue to shape and mark the experiences of children and young people in education- with punitive consequences. In South Africa, the effect of this approach has served to reproduce racialized/classed and gendered binaries in relation to an active predatory masculinity and an unprotesting black femininity. Instead, she argues that a three-ply yarn approach permits attention to the complexity of the cultural production of violence by addressing masculinities, heterosexuality, gender, race, culture, class, and structural inequalities as it is experienced in educational spaces and in South Africa, this will include the historical legacies of apartheid. The talk ends with the importance of framing violence as coextensively produced in localized settings which is necessary to avoid individualistic approaches in interventions that often fail to address the significance of gender and sexuality and the broader structures of power that are embedded within it.

Dr. Deevia Bhana is Professor and the DSI/NRF South African Research Chair and Professor in Gender and Childhood Sexuality at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. She is known for her interdisciplinary approach, her critical stance and international outlook in researching the social aspects of childhood and young people, gender, sexuality and schooling. Among her recent book publications are Love, Sex and Teenage Sexual Cultures in South Africa; 16 turning 17 (Routledge, 2018) and Childhood Sexuality and AIDS Education: The Price of Innocence (Routledge, 2016). Her talk is based on a new co-edited book entitled, ‘Gender, Sexuality and Violence in South African Educational Spaces’ to be published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2020.

December 2, 2020
10:00 am - 11:00 am

Kelly Grace, Independent Researcher
Channa Yong, Regional Teacher Education Advisor- VSO
Salav Oul, Teach for Cambodia 

Often academic education research is criticized as difficult to interpret and challenging to implement and, in some cases, deepens inequitable power dynamics between academics, educators, and development practitioners. Conversely practical research can be deemed “messy” or lacking rigor and may not look to answer broad-based complex international issues in education that academics often pursue. Bridging this divide is not a simple task. This panel brings together practitioners and scholars to illuminate the challenges and opportunities for bridging the divide in Comparative and International Education (CIE). Invited panelists include scholars and practitioners who have worked together for several years in a University-NGO partnership between Lehigh University and Caring for Cambodia. The initial partnership sought to develop and implement research, program development, and evaluation in local schools around Siem Reap, but the collaboration continued beyond the initial project. Together, they will discuss their experiences, the methods and strategies they devised, and lessons learned in building a practice/academic bridges in CIE gender research. This panel will illuminate the complexities of working internationally and collaboratively to overcome challenges in contextualization, power dynamics of colonialism and Western hegemony, and practicalities of capacity of both academics and practitioners. While it may seem like an untenable chasm, the panelists see value in working with “the other side,” and present a framework for translating that value into equitable, tangible, and useful collaboration and research.

Dr. Kelly Grace is a research consultant focusing on gender in Comparative and International Education (CIE). She holds a PhD in CIE from Lehigh University and is a Visiting Scholar at Drexel University in the School of Education. Her primary research interest examines barriers related to gender in early childhood education and primary school programs, and she works broadly in the area of gender in education programs in K-12 and university settings. Her contextual area of expertise is in the Cambodian education system, with a particular interest in Chbab Srey, or Rules for Women. Dr. Grace also supports the development of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems for education programs, specializes in project data management and analysis, and develops and implements trainings in both gender and M&E in education settings.

Channa Yong was the Gender Equity Program Manager for Caring for Cambodia. She holds a BA in English Literacy and an MBA from Build Bright University in Siem Reap, Cambodia. She worked on gender equity in schools and community to provide awareness, conduct community dialogue, home visits, counseling, and to update curriculum. She also works on M&E frameworks, translation, helping students find job, and conducts research related to girls' early marriage and pregnancy.

Salav Oul graduated from the Royal University of Phnom Penh Cambodia majoring in Psychology. She received a fellowship award to study in the US for one year at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta in 2019. She currently is a teaching fellow at Teach for Cambodia where she teaches moral-civic education to public high school students with institutions that partner with Teach for Cambodia. She is pursuing her graduate degree in in education at the Royal University of Phnom Penh. She is passionate about women's education and providing a safe environment for young people to be vulnerable and grow by accepting themselves for who they are.

January 12, 2021
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm 

Alia Ammar
PhD Candidate, Drexel University School of Education 

Special education is a relatively new field in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region. As such, there are widely divergent definitions, policies and programs designed to address education for children with disabilities. Egypt provides an interesting case to examine what happens when special education comes to mean different things to diverse stakeholders such as policymakers, educators and parents, and the role context plays during implementation. This presentation introduces the different laws pertaining to the education of differently-abled students in Egypt, and examines how perceptions of those laws impact implementation, particularly at the school level. Data was collected over a three-month period in two phases (phase one: survey specifically designed for this study; phase two: participant interviews) and contextualized through personal experience as a school-level teacher in Egypt for six years. Findings illuminate special education policy as a contested site of struggle. As different stakeholders work to control what it means to provide inclusive education to Egyptian citizens, they reframe special education policy to fit their own particular interests.

Alia A. Ammar is a PhD Candidate in Drexel’s School of Education. She is passionate about education, equity, and English Language and Literature teaching. She earned her B.A. in Psychology with a minor in English Literature (2007) and an M.A. in International and Comparative Education with a concentration in international education development and policy (2014) from the American University in Cairo. Her research interests include equitable special education policy, literacy and reading comprehension, learning disabilities, and program evaluation. The focus of her dissertation is on special education policy in Egypt. She enjoys using an international comparative framework, when appropriate, in her projects.

January 27, 2021
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams, EdD
Gettysburg College 

This presentation is based on a critical analysis of school/structural violence and historically sanctioned educational inequity in Trinidad & Tobago. What started as a 7-month qualitative case study in 2009 has now extended into a 10-year, longitudinal project. As a decolonial endeavor, this project is an amalgam of research, activism, and intervention. Dr. Williams has merged theories on dynamical systems, decoloniality, and critical peace education to highlight the structures, processes, and policies that maintain a colonially constituted time warp in Trinidad’s educational system. As a possible way to destabilize this warp, Dr. Williams has been piloting a Systemic Restorative Praxis as a form of decolonial peace education. This praxis proposes combining critical historical reflection with restorative, healing practices, as a necessary step in de-linking from systems of oppression, and re-envisioning and enacting sustainable, radically alternative, community-based social change. The data for this study are based on extensive participant observation and field notes, interviews (with students, parents, and administrators), student focus groups, 300+ student-conducted surveys, 600+ national adult surveys (online), 1000+ hours of trainings/workshops in restorative circles, conflict resolution, mediation, leadership development, and activism with students and parents.

Dr. Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams, a native of Laventille, Trinidad & Tobago, is Associate Professor of Africana Studies, Director of Peace and Justice Studies, and faculty affiliate in Education, Globalization Studies, and Public Policy at Gettysburg College (Pennsylvania, USA). He is also a lecturer in the conflict resolution and mediation program at the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, Columbia University. He completed his B.A. in Psychology at St. Francis College, Brooklyn, and his Master of Arts, Master of Education and Doctor of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University in International Educational Development/Comparative and International Education with foci in philosophy of education and peace education. His research centers on school/structural violence, educational inequities, and youth and community empowerment. He has conducted many workshops/trainings on anti-racism, mediation, conflict resolution, intercultural communication, restorative circles, leadership development and activism in diverse settings.

February 17, 2021
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Dr. Bjorn Nordtveit, PhD
University of Massachusetts Amherst

Using critical auto-ethnographic data, Dr. Bjorn Nordtveit presents research methodologies and evaluation strategies related to donor-driven international, longitudinal research projects with multi-member teams. Drawing on three projects on girls and women’s education in contexts of extreme adversity – two projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and one in Senegal – using both qualitative and quantitative data, this presentation presents challenges and opportunities for overcoming “imperialism” in donor-driven education research. Dr. Nordtveit’s work is based on an understanding of research presented in Denzin and Salvo’s (eds., 2020) New Directions in Theorizing Qualitative Research (4 volumes), as well as the Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies (Denzin, Lincoln and Tuhiwai Smith, eds., 2008) and in Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (2nd edition, 2012). Following a discussion of the vocabulary and literature related to monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and international project-related research, his presentation focuses on three aspects of the projects: (i) Methodological hegemony: the donors requested adhesion to “gold standard” practices in research, as defined by them (donors) with little acceptance for alternative methodologies; (ii) Lack of ethics: The ethical standards of research were not clear and there was little or no consultation with local participants and stakeholders about the appropriateness of the research questions and methodologies; and (iii) Selective Evaluation: The focus on evaluating one action vs. another displaced the focus from larger issues about the general approaches and appropriateness of the project. These three aspects contribute to the characterization of research as “the dirtiest words in the indigenous world's vocabulary” (Tuhiwai Smith 2012, 1). The presentation ends with suggestions towards a community-driven, participatory and transformative research design, in projects that are implemented in a community-led manner. 

Dr. Bjorn Nordtveit is an Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst since 2011, after serving for five years as Research Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong. He has also served as visiting faculty at Zhejiang Normal University. Prior to joining academia, he worked for twelve years (1994-2005) with UNESCO in the Lao PRD and with the World Bank (mostly in West African countries) on non-formal youth and adult education. His research, teaching and writing focus on three areas: (i) aid effectiveness in education and development, including public-private partnerships and integrated service provision; (ii) child protection in contexts of adversity; and (iii) critical and alternative epistemologies, including critical auto ethnography, decolonial methods and critical discourse analysis. His most recent book is Schools as Protection? Reinventing Education in Contexts of Adversity (Springer 2016). Dr. Nordtveit is the editor of the Comparative Education Review (2013-2023).