Abstract
Clive Harber’s (2014) Education and International Development: theory, practice and issues presents a concise overview of the field of education and international development, drawing on the author’s long engagement with teaching and research in the area. The volume is clear in both its purpose and boundaries: the author sets out to provide an accessible introduction to a wide and contested area of scholarship, and as such, notes the limited detail and nuance that he is able to provide on the book’s selected topics.
This is a useful introductory text for students who are studying issues of global poverty and education. An early section of the book is dedicated to theories of education and development in which Harber presents an accessible overview of major paradigms shaping the field, including modernisation theory, human capital theory and dependency theory. Critical responses to these schools of thought are also surveyed, namely, the significance of liberation theory and more recent developments in capability theory. Included in this section is a thought-provoking chapter entitled ‘Education as Harmful to Development?’ in which Harber raises issues of violence, symbolic violence and social and political control in education. Importantly, such discussions compel critical reflection on the often taken-for-granted assumptions about the ‘good’ of education. The book’s discussions of development theory are brought to life through reference to specific case examples and research. In doing so, each chapter offers an extensive reference list, in addition to ‘further reading’ suggestions of both recent and classic literature, for the reader to consult.
After setting up some of the main theoretical approaches to education and international development, the book moves to consider specific issues and debates in the field, with a focus on primary and secondary education and to a lesser extent teacher education. Topics surveyed include the following: gender and the role of masculinity in education and development, education in emergencies, non-state educational provision, vocational education and employment, education and corruption, health and HIV/AIDS, international aid and literacy and language. Key debates and developments are presented for each topic, again with the help of case examples and research. Ideas are often simplified into lists or organised into tables in keeping with the introductory purpose of the book. Thoughtful discussion questions and learning activities are provided at the end of each chapter to guide the reader’s engagement. Readers looking for more nuanced and detailed discussions of any of these topics may be disappointed with Harber’s at times broad-brush approach. But for those wanting a way in to these areas of research, he offers easy access. In this sense, the text is best read as a large-scale map of a complex field.
The book does not take childhood as a central category of analysis, so readers of this journal and those who have a specific interest in childhood studies may find the text limiting in its contribution to that area of scholarship. The most focused exploration of childhood appears in a section on ‘education, emergencies and vulnerabilities’ in which Harber surveys ‘child-seeking’, ‘child-friendly’ and ‘child-enabling’ responses to education in emergencies. A number of programmes and approaches are listed as examples for each kind of response, but Harber stops short of providing a critical discussion of how the ‘child’ is constituted through such development responses. For example, somewhat problematically, discourses of ‘child labour’ and ‘child rights’ are presented as uncontested and universally understood. Having said this, the theoretical groundwork of earlier chapters, in which Harber encourages readers to engage with the debates about modernisation and its attendant Western/universalising approach to development, provides a way for readers to engage critically with the latter sections of the book, even if this critical reading is not explicitly called for within topic discussions.
Indeed, the absence of explicit argumentation in the treatment of some topics is one of the potential weaknesses of the book. In functioning as an introductory textbook, it attempts to present a ‘neutral’ mapping of the field, even though, as Harber acknowledges, there are limitations to the scope and detail of discussions. The silences and gaps of any book shape one’s reading, arguably even more so for a new scholar who may not be familiar with the lay of the land to identify these gaps. It would have perhaps been useful for Harber to more explicitly identify his theoretical perspective and how this informed his decisions about what topics and debates were included, excluded, foregrounded or made implicit. For example, the book does draw on the contributions of critical development theory and postcolonial theory; however, these perspectives are embedded within discussions rather than being made explicit. As such, a new scholar to the field may finish reading the text without an understanding of the significance of these schools of thought.
However, Harber’s book succeeds in providing an accessible starting point for those interested in key issues in education and international development. Read alongside other texts in the field, it has proved invaluable in my own teaching at undergraduate level.