This BERA Blog special issue highlights educational topics in the Global South that require urgent attention if we want to reach the goal of quality education for all. The contributions illustrate local challenges in relation to social inequality, pedagogy and decolonisation in China, Tanzania, Peru and India.
The special issue is the result of a collaboration between Antonia Voigt and Deepti R Bhat, two doctoral researchers at the School of Education, University of Bristol. In their definition, Global South encompasses countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and Oceania. These countries tend to be, relatively to other countries in the world, less economically affluent, while countries in the Global North are usually financially wealthier. However, looking beyond this predominately economic differentiation, these disparities exist within a broader context of global social inequalities and power imbalances (Martins, 2020). Within this world of asymmetric opportunities, this special issue reminds us that country-specific education systems are impacted by local inequalities as well.
The contributions in the issue explore:
- how multi-dimensional challenges reinforce social inequalities and how the expansion of private international schools in China has ripple effects and deepens social injustices
- how linguistic injustices in Tanzanian classrooms prevent students from being able to engage fully in the learning experience
- the context of teaching historical conflict in Peru
- research with an indigenous community in India to re-examine Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 through the lens of decolonisation.