The main argument of this article is to shed light on the dubious nature of the decentralization policy of education and the 'intention' of the state to recentralize it, in one way or other, despite the widespread clatter of decentralization. By taking policy documents into account, I intend to justify my claim that what the Nepal government calls it, an educational decentralization, is nothing but policy rhetoric and a reign hold tactically at the centre. I claim what the state calls it as an autonomous power of ground-level functionaries to exercise their discretionary in decentralized education system instead is, 'a rein in a horse nose', where jockey (the centre) is 'always' in a commanding position. To expatiate educational decentralization, I employ Weiler's (1990) standpoint and juxtapose his arguments: redistributing power, enhancing efficiency, and improving learning to show that though these arguments are put in favour of decentralization, the same arguments are shown to conflict with powerful forces favouring centralization. I also focus on the context and motivation in which the educational decentralization was carried out to understand the egression of decentralization in education in Nepal. In the final section, I try to analyse the dubious tendency of the state and try to explore, 'why despite prioritizing decentralization in policies, there is a periodicity of higher bodies in the education system'.
The paper aims at uncovering the practices of educational decentralization in Nepal that started after the restoration of democracy in 1990. Though decentralization in education in Nepal began with the aim of greater community participation and autonomy to the needs and priorities perceived by the local level functionaries in school, it has been subject to elite capture in its governance. Because of control in planning, organization, management, financial liability and different activities for the education system, the paper argues that practices of educational decentralization have been shaped by the local elites who capture the local resources and power to operate the school with their network and 'one-upmanship'. While arguing so, the paper is based on the ethnographic case study of two public schools located in the Mid-Western region of Nepal. Applying the Gramscian concept of hegemony, the paper narrates the process of a 'sustained' selection of the School Management Committee Chairpersons and shows how they negotiate and balance their power to sustain their capture. The paper concludes that the informal mechanisms of individual attributes such as trust and capital are playing an important role in their sustained elitism.
Community School, in its day-to-day planning, operation, and management, is governed and guided by various acts/policies/laws/frameworks. The functioning of the school is operated following the state laws, which are formal/written and codified, and these rules are visible in nature. Apart from the formal rules, the school management in its functioning and operation is also dominantly governed and guided by informal and unwritten rules. These types of rules are not written but appear as a tacit agreement between school and community. Thus, taking informality as a central theme for study, I investigated how these rules are created, communicated, and continued. This study also sheds light on how informal rules interact with formal rules and focuses on the implications of such informal rules and practices.To understand, investigate and explore the creation, communication, and continuation of informal rules and to elaborate on how informal rules interact with formal rules, the study had framed three research questions: i) How do the actors of a community school create and communicate informal rules in school, i.e., the day-today functioning, operation and, management of the school? ii) How do the actors of a community school embed and/or continue the practices of informal rules within school management? iii) How do informal rules performed by school actors interact with formal rules? JER KUSOED
Field engagement of the researchers in ethnographic research determines the quality and the rigor of academic work. The engagement of the researcher in the field to elicit information, however, is a result of confidence and/or faith, named trust, that the researcher develops with his/her participants during the research process. Trust-building is a basic but fundamental research phenomenon that a researcher goes through in his/her fieldwork. But how to establish trust with research participants? This article is a reflection based on the product of my fieldwork and narrates my experience of the trust-building process that I had undergone in my research field. Though hailing from the same area, I had entered my ethnographic space like a university researcher rather than my native identity for different reasons. Thus in this paper, I narrate my field experiences of difficulty, reward, and the dilemma of my field journey i.e., difficulty in establishing trust while entering the research field; rewards with my shifting identity (revelation of my native identity) while engaging in the field; and my dilemma in protecting my participants' trust and their voices while exiting from the field. Out of many perspectives and approaches to conceptualize and establish trust, I take one put forth by Williamson (1993), who says trust builds mainly on repeated positive experiences, formally or informally, made over time and longstanding relations, and is built on the initial knowledge about the other.
The use of expensive lab techniques has left many high schools and even university students unacquainted with the basic experimental procedures and protocols in developing country including Nepal. Horizontal gel electrophoresis is one of the expensive protocols, which every student in the laboratory may not get an equal chance to access individually. However, this technique, being indispensable and inevitable in molecular biology principles, is of abounding importance for students to be familiar with. Thus, realizing its importance, we present an extremely simple and inexpensive design of gel-electrophoresis unit, which emulates electrophoresis analysis with the use of nichrome and aluminum wires as a substitute for platinum wires, together with daily used plastic materials. Because of these factors, the approximate cost of unit design is significantly reduced to an amount of 10 USD. The efficiency of the substitute wires was confirmed and it resulted in satisfactory data characterized by good resolution of the DNA fragments. The inexpensive nature, good results and simplicity of the device make it an ideal unit for teaching and learning in developing countries.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.