n today's fast changing and interconnected global world, researchers in a variety of areas have come to see identity as an important analytic tool for understanding schools and society. A focus on the contextually specific ways in which people act out and recognize identities allows a more dynamic approach than the sometimes overly general and static trio of "race, class, and gender." However, the term identity has taken on a great many different meanings in the literature. Rather than survey this large literature, I will sketch out but one approach that draws on one consistent strand of that literature. This is not to deny that other, equally useful approaches are possible, based on different selections from the literature.

Identity as an analytic lens for research in education

This report describes how tertiary education contributes to building up a country's capacity for participation in an increasingly knowledge-based world economy and investigates policy options for tertiary education that have the potential to enhance economic growth and reduce poverty. It examines the following questions: What is the importance of tertiary education for economic and social development? How should developing and transition countries position themselves to take full advantage of the potential contribution of tertiary education? How can the World Bank and other development agencies assist in this process? The report draws on ongoing Bank research and analysis on the dynamics of knowledge economies and on science and technology development. Using this background, it explores how countries can adapt and shape their tertiary education systems to confront successfully the combination of new and old challenges in the context of the rising significance for tertiary education of internal and international market forces. It examines the justification for continuing public support of tertiary education and the appropriate role of the state in support of knowledge-driven economic growth. Finally, it reviews the lessons from recent World Bank experience with support of tertiary education, including ways of minimizing the negative political impact of reforms, and makes recommendations for future Bank involvement.

Constructing knowledge societies : new challenges for tertiary education

Many reforms today—including the small schools movement, efforts to build small learning communities, and teacher teaming structures—are based on the theory that organizing schools into smaller educational environments will help to build more collaborative and collegial communities of teachers, providing them with the autonomy and motivation to make better curricular and pedagogical decisions in the interests of their students and therefore improving student learning. Using multiple sources of data from a 4-year evaluation of a team-based schooling initiative in a medium-sized urban district, this study tests many of the assumptions underlying this theory. The results suggest that although these types of organizational reforms may succeed in improving the culture within which teachers teach, they alone are unlikely to improve instruction and student learning. The communities that develop are often not communities engaged in instructional improvement. For teacher communities to focus on instructional improvement, the author argues that communities need organizational structures, cultures of instructional exploration, and ongoing professional learning opportunities to support sustained inquiries into improving teaching and learning.

/pdf/developing-communities-of-instructional-practice-4qiwxya0n5.pdf

Developing Communities of Instructional Practice

n 1979 I described the interdependence of states as low but increasing. It has increased, but only to about the 1910 level if measured by trade or capital flows as a percentage of GNP; lower if measured by the mobility of labor, and lower still if measured by the mutual military dependence of states. Yet one feels that the world has become a smaller one. International travel has become faster, easier, and cheaper; music, art, cuisines, and cinema have all become cosmopolitan in the world's major centers and beyond. The Peony Pavilion was produced in its entirety for the first time in 400 years, and it was presented not in Shanghai or Beijing, but in New York. Communication is

Globalization and Governance

Social Capital and Poor Communities

From the Publisher:
MIT Economist, Lester C. Thurow's fascinating look at who will win  and why


The rise of knowledge-based industries  microelectronics, biotechnology, telecommunications, robotics, and computers  has improved the lives of millions and brought great riches to individuals, companies, and nations. Yet amidst the new prosperity there is great anxiety. 
In Building Wealth: The New Rules For Individuals, Companies and Nations In A Knowledge-Based Economy MIT economist and bestselling author Lester C. Thurow provides thorough explanations of the causes of the current anxieties and offers solid economic solutions for the future. Focusing on the critical issue of wealth creation, he shows that great wealth is built from economic disequilibrium and that society itself is being reorganized by the changes wrought by the knowledge economy. While the new technologies allow costs to fall faster than prices, creating a new class of billionaires, these great profits undermine traditional economic stability of the majority  the upper-middle and lower-middle classes. Radical technological advances leading to the development of entirely new industries (like biotechnology) and the transformation of old ones (retailing and banking, for example), the blurring of national borders, and the globalization of companies have all played a role in the creation of this economic disequilibrium and in the rise of national, corporate, and personal anxieties. 
Addressing the vital question of "how individuals, businesses, and societies generate new wealth when what worked in the twentieth century won't work in the twenty-first," Thurow delineates the building blocks essential to creating and maintaining broad-based prosperity: a stable yet flexible social organization; a business climate that rewards entrepreneurs; the acquisition of basic knowledge and practical skills by the entire workforce; investment in tools that create wealth; and the recognition that technological advances augment, rather than destroy, the environment and natural resources. In-depth discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of the major players in the global economy bring his points to life. For example, America stands out in today's economically unstable world because we, unlike Japan and Europe, have and revere entrepreneurs, the change agents of capitalism, and are willing to close down businesses, which are not part of the new economy. Our failure to adequately train a large portion of the workforce, however, remains a serious flaw in our social and economic fabric. Arguing that "no part of the world, just by accident, has all the ingredients necessary to build a 21st century wealth pyramid," Thurow outlines the tasks  both general and specific  America, Europe, Japan, and the Third World must undertake in order to survive and thrive in the future. His provocative insights and pace-setting rules for forward-thinking nations, companies, and individuals include:
Successful companies must be willing to cannibalize themselves to save themselves. They must be willing to destroy the old while it is still successful if they wish to build the new before it is successful. Humans have discovered how to operate successful economies in the midst of modest inflation, but not in the midst of even mild deflation. Given the choice between the same rate of inflation or deflation, take inflation every time. Knowledge-based capitalism isn't going to work without a new system for determining who owns or controls intellectual property rights. Capitalism requires clear, easy-to-enforce ownership rights. The biggest unknown for the individual in a knowledge-based economy is how to have a career in a system where there are no careers. To get wealthy, luck is necessary. Talent, drive, and persistence by themselves aren't enough. The economic payoff from more social investment in basic research is as clear as anything is ever going to be in economics.

The transition to a knowledge-based economy will require the re-evaluation  and sometimes radical modification  of government policies and spending, business practices, workforce training and compensation, and even cultural patterns and beliefs. Building Wealth is a bracing look at how the economic game will be played in the future, from the skills and resources necessary for sustaining a competitive advantage to who will emerge as winners. 

About the Author:
Lester C. Thurow is Lemelson Professor of Management and Economics at MIT's Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One of the world's leading economists, he is the author of four New York Times bestsellers, including the classic, The Zero-Sum Society, Head to Head and The Future of Capitalism.

William Ruoto

Papers

Building Wealth : The New Rules for Individuals, Companies, and Nations in a Knowledge-Based Economy