Public policy targeting and educational reforms : issues, trends and options for a developmental state

Abstract

The article examines the relationship between politics and education in developing nations in light of the question: under what conditions is educational reform successful? The objective is to create a framework for investigating policies based on outcomes rather than objectives or needs. The authority recommends that, in addition to technical and cultural criteria for policy, educational researches should consider three political dimensions of policydecision making, implementation, and effects of a given policy on a system’s capacity for dealing with inevitable spin-off problems. Review of existing research on the politics of education in developing nations indicates that most researchers have concentrated on a historical-descriptive style of analysis, overemphasised data such as cross- national surveys, and underemphasised data studies, analytical approaches, and research on questions such as the success or failure of particular policies. The conclusion is that major sins of co-operative educational public policy studies currently should be to discern regularities in the conditions that shape outcomes, examine specific policies with regard to their effects on society, and analyse conditions and settings, which encourage or discourage particular types of education policy relationships.