Empowerment

About: Empowerment is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 42112 publications have been published within this topic receiving 752953 citations.

Legitimizing local knowledge: From displacement to empowerment for third world people

Abstract: Increasing attention has been given to “indigenous” knowledge in Third World rural societies as a potential basis for sustainable agricultural development. It has been found that many people have functional knowledge systems pertaining to their resources and environment, which are based on experience and experimentation, and which are sometimes based on unique epistemologies. Efforts have been made to include such knowledge in participatory research and projects. This paper discusses socio-political, institutional, and ethical issues that need to be considered in order to understand the actual limitations and contributions of such knowledge systems. It reviews the nature of local knowledge and suggests the need to recognize its unique values yet avoid romanticized views of its potential. Local knowledge and alternative bottom-up projects continue to be marginalized because of the dominance of conventional top-down Ra instead, people need to establish legitimacy of their knowledge for themselves, as a form of empowerment.

ISLAM, AUTHORITARIANISM, AND FEMALE EMPOWERMENT What Are the Linkages?

Abstract: Most Islamic countries are governed by authoritarian regimes, and in most Islamic countries women’s economic, social, and political rights are significantly less than those of the men of their country. These well-known facts provide the basis for a highly original and important analysis by M. Steven Fish.1 Fish’s major contribution is his suggestion that the relationships at issue are not merely a matter of spurious correlation but rather are indicative of a deep underlying causal pattern. In a sophisticated cross-national quantitative analysis, he shows the following: 1. Even controlling for many other alleged influences on countries’ political systems, countries with a largely Islamic religious tradition have significantly more autocratic governments than do non-Islamic countries. 2. Controlling for level of economic development, the condition of women is significantly worse in Islamic countries than in others. 3. In a more limited test, even when controlling for economic development and Islamic tradition, a low level of women’s rights may produce lower levels of democracy. 4. More speculatively, Islamic states may be more autocratic so as to repress women’s rights more effectively, or autocratic government may permit and even require the repression of a range of human rights, including those of women.

Policy as practice : toward a comparative sociocultural analysis of educational policy

Abstract: Introduction: Policy as/in Practice--Sociocultural Approach to the Study of Educational Policy by Bradley A.U. Levinson and Margaret Sutton Global and Nation-State Policy Processes: Sociocultural Studies Are Pedagogical Ideals Embraced or Imposed? The Case of Reading Instruction in the Republic of Guinea by Kathryn M. Anderson-Levitt and Ntal-I'Mbirwa Alimasi Linking Research to Educational Policy and Practice: What Kind of Relationships in How (De)Centralized a Context? by Donald K. Adams, Mark B. Ginsburg, Thomas Clayton, Martha E. Mantilla, Judy Sylvester, and Yidan Wang Policy Research as Ethnographic Refusal: The Case of Women's Literacy in Nepal by Margaret Sutton Local Educators Appropriating and Forming Educational Policy Multicultural Curriculum and Academic Performance: African American Women Leaders Negotiating Urban School Accountability Policies by Khaula Murtadha-Watts Teachers' Perceptions of Their Participation in Policy Choices: The Bottom-up Approach of the Nueva Escuela Unitaria in Guatemala by Martha E. Mantilla When Politics Becomes Pedagogy: Oppositional Discourse as Policy in Mexican Teachers' Struggles for Union Democracy by Susan Street Beyond Educational Policy: Bilingual Teachers and the Social Construction of Teaching "Science" for Understanding by Pamela Anne Quiroz Health Education Policies and Poor Women in Brazil: Identifying Myths That Undermine Empowerment by Isabela Cabral Felix de Sousa Community-Educator Negotiations of Policy Meanings and Practice The Impact of Life Histories on Local Policy: New Immigrant Education in the Rural Midwest by Sandra L. Cade "That School Gotta Recognize Our Policy!": The Appropriation of Educational Policy in an Australian Aboriginal Community by R.G. Schwab "We Are Mountain": Appalachian Educators' Responses to the Challenge of Systemic Reform by Maureen Porter Myth Making and Moral Order in a Debate on Mathematics Education Policy by Lisa Rosen Index

Doing student voice work in higher education: An exploration of the value of participatory methods

Abstract: This paper will review the existing student voice work in higher education and critique its current weaknesses, particularly in relation to conceptualisations of and commitments to participation, transformation and empowerment. It will be argued that the employment of participatory methods in higher education student voice work offers a way to address these weaknesses. The potential of participatory methods is illustrated and discussed using two case examples drawn from one higher education institution in the UK. The first case provides an illustration of what is called ‘transformation of the familiar’, while the second case provides an illustration of empowerment, through recognising the importance of what is not voiced by students, as much as what is voiced. It is concluded that whilst a participatory approach to student voice work in higher education has potential, further work is required in order to evaluate the long‐term impact of projects that use such methods.

The Worldwide Expansion of “Organization”:

Abstract: We offer an institutional explanation for the contemporary expansion of formal organization—in numbers, internal complexity, social domains, and national contexts. Much expansion lies in areas far beyond the traditional foci on technical production or political power, such as protecting the environment, promoting marginalized groups, or behaving with transparency. We argue that expansion is supported by widespread cultural rationalization in a stateless and liberal global society, characterized by scientism, rights and empowerment discourses, and an explosion of education. These cultural changes are transmitted through legal, accounting, and professionalization principles, driving the creation of new organizations and the elaboration of existing ones. The resulting organizations are constructed to be proper social actors as much as functionally effective entities. They are painted as autonomous and integrated but depend heavily on external definitions to sustain this depiction. So expansion creates organi...