Education, well being and the emergent economies of Brazil, Russia and South Africa

Lead Research Organisation: University of Bath
Department Name: Education

Abstract

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Publications

10 25 50
publication icon
Daniels H An Outline of Relationships between Economic Growth, Education and Well-being in ??????? ?????????? / Voprosy Psykhologii

 
Description The project has three major findings which cut across the main research questions. Detailed responses to the research questions will be published in a forthcoming series of articles.



We found that economic growth in all three countries was driven in significant part by the extraction of natural resources. This meant that while each country had elite universities that could produce high skilled workers to service the basis for existing economic growth, a range of factors, peculiar to each country impeded the development of high quality mass education systems. In particular, in all three countries the education systems seemed to support the aspirations and credentialing of existing elites such that there was little social mobility. In part this was due to high levels of inequality which made it difficult for those in poverty to be upwardly mobile, while at the same time educational quality for them was low. For example, in Brazil the elite universities were, for the most part, public institutions that service the most privileged, while poorer students had to cope with low quality private tertiary institutions. At secondary school level this process was reversed.



Secondly, there seemed to be little relationship between economic growth and young people's well being. In part, this was due to the extensive poverty in each country and the poor quality of the opportunities afforded by schooling (access to education and health facilities may have improved but there is little evidence of enhanced quality of provision). A consequence is that in all three countries there was the possibility of an alternative future to that in education in a world of youth crime. The practices of crime enabled young people to access a set of cultural tools that enabled them to create an identity and a living.



Tools, such as language, are cultural, historical products that mediate thinking and feeling, and are in turn shaped and transformed through their use in human activity. It is through tool use that individual/psychological and cultural/historical processes become interwoven and co-create each other. In this case what we see are the historical residues of poverty and colonialism in the case of Brazil and South Africa and the breakdown of a highly state regulated society in Russia.



The third finding was that in each country there was awareness that policies needed to be implemented to develop higher quality education systems that were more closely linked to the labour market. However, while policies were being implemented in Brazil and Russia, we saw less by way of policy formation and implementation in South Africa

.

The Major Issues that will inform the basis for publications are:



1. In general there are weak relations between higher and technical education and economic growth.

2. Economic growth has lead to polarisation and it seems that only Brazil has reduced formal measures of inequality. These have been adjusted through a focus on participation rather than quality of provision, experience and outcome.

3. These forms of inequality have not been mitigated by education. Rather they have been exacerbated through the structures of provision and the resources that are made as a result of conflicts of interest. The dividend from economic growth timidly translates into a material social dividend.

4. Reforms and benefits from 'booming economies' are mediated by artefacts which carry the cultural historical relays of inequality and marginalisation whether this be due to socio-economic, gender, ethnicity and location .

5. The above result in patterns of marginalisation which are resistant to intervention - ie organised crime, corruption etc.
Exploitation Route The Network has established very strong, very high level contacts in policy and academic fields in each country.



These have been of benefit to the Network itself and also to the host universities where each Visiting Fellow (VF) is based. This is most notably the case in Russia where a strong link has been forged between senior policy strategists and the University at a time when policy is seeking to ensure that each IHE develops strong visible links with commerce and industry.

In Brazil it has been influential in the formation of strong research and continuing professional development links between the host university and the City of Sao Paulo and the State of Sao Paulo. Future research is focused on Rising Powers bid we have submitted to the ESRC with Professor Phillip Brown and is establishing closer links for additional funding in Brazil and Russia. At the same time our focus in the Rising Powers bid has widened to include China and India. Given our tentative findings concerning the other BRICSAs, it is important to develop a theoretical framework that enables us to compare the relationships between economic growth, education and well being across these countries.



The PI and CI have both been invited to become Visiting Fellows at The Institute of Adult Learning of the Workforce Development Agency, Singapore. They have indicated that they are willing to fund a three year project which will examine the relationship between education and labour market opportunity for Professionals, Managers, Executives and Technicians (PMET) in Singapore. This would complement the current second round Rising Powers proposal in that it would examine trajectories in continuing professional development of workers whereas the ESRC project would examine the trajectories in initial training.
Sectors Construction
URL http://www.bath.ac.uk/education/research/projects/risingpowers.html
 
Description In discussions concerning education policy in the UK and the study sites
First Year Of Impact 2002
Sector Electronics