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| 2. |
- Bendixen, Christine, 1965-
(författare)
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Voices for Change : Hopes and costs for empowerment - a study on women's claims in the Egyptian revolution
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study investigates women’s possibilities to actively participate in societal change in Egypt. It aims at enhancing the understanding of structural conditions for women’s agency and how these enables and/or restrains women’s participation in the aspiration for societal change as well as their aspiration to live a ‘full life’. Egypt was chosen as a field for studying women’s understanding of their opportunities of participation and empowerment before and during the revolution. The informants in the study are all consciously working for awareness and equality in society. Formal education in Egypt is criticized and the country suffers from a high illiteracy rate, making informal education an important way to attain knowledge that can assist women in their quest for societal change. The acknowledgment of participation as a human right is one of the issues women are fighting for in Egypt today. A specific interest in this study is what motivates some women to oppose social, cultural and political structures despite the often high personal cost, and how informal (educational) channels are being used in the quest for societal change. The theoretical construction in which the analysis is carried out is based on frictions between societal structures and agency, using the Capability Approach (Sen, 1999) which aims at understanding what agency women have in societal change. The concept of functionings is used to indicate what someone is able to do and be. By analyzing women’s valued functionings, their conditions and thus their sense of empowerment and their experienced opportunity costs emerge. Central to the analytically framed societal structures and how agency can be perceived within each structure are the social conversion factors, the norms that allow or hinder action. To frame the complexity of women’s conditions for active agency and the outcome of their actions, I use a theoretical framework that will comprise both goals and processes. Sen’s (1999) ideas on social choice along with Archer’s (1995) theory on social change, using her model of structural elaboration / reproduction, have proved useful when investigating women’s valued functionings and attained social changes. The results of the study show that when formal education is not adequate, knowledge is obtained outside the formal educational institutions. This is done through both non-formal and informal learning. However, to get access to informal learning, a number of valued functions have to be gained. These functionings are thus both conditions for change and an end in themselves. I try to show that the costs involved in transgressing the prevailing norms are high, but lack of hope, agency and empowerment are also experienced as a high cost for those who have, in fact, imagined another better life and are in opposition to the inhibitory societal structures. This is, however, a part of what motivates some women to continue to be involved in societal change in order to achieve a life they have reason to value.
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| 4. |
- O'Dowd, Mina, et al.
(författare)
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Comparative education in the North: Diversity in unity
- 2015
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Ingår i: Comparing Times and Spaces : Historical, theoretical and methodological approaches to comparative education. - 9789525401714 ; , s. 31-56
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- “Is there a Nordic block, complete with a Nordic economic model and a special kind of Nordic welfare? Nordic collective security? Nordic values, Nordic sex, Nordic gloom? Undeniably the Nordic countries—the Scandinavian trio of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, plus Finland on the eastern flank and Iceland far north-west in the Atlantic—have a great many things in common. And undeniably the lure of the European Union has been drawing all the Nordics, even stand-offish Norway and Iceland, into an ever tighter embrace of rules and regulations that are bound to have an economically unifying effect. In a generation or so, perhaps, the Nordic five will come more closely together in one big European family. But, this survey will argue, for the next few years they are as likely to stay apart, as they have done since the end of the cold war. Each of them has been following its own particular path. Nordic solidarity? For the moment, forget it”. So summarized Xan Smiley his view of the Nordic countries in the Economist in 1999 . In February 2013 the Nordic Countries are described in the same context as “the next supermodel”, a new model of Nordic capitalism and are heralded in a special report courtesy of the Economist for their pragmatism, which has led to “generous welfare state[s] that [do] not cost the earth” "Unless the points are pushed too hard the two traditions could locally be placed in Denmark (N.F.S. Grundtvig) and Sweden (the construction of the “new Sweden”) respectively. Due to differences like these and others, comparison is absolutely possible among the Nordic countries and history shows that we have been good at learning from each other. The fact remains, however, that difference is importance, raising the question: has time come to put more weight on the North in its entirety as a unit of comparison?"
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| 6. |
- O'Dowd, Mina
(författare)
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Early Childhood Education in Sweden: The Market Curriculum 2000-2013 ?
- 2013
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Ingår i: Spanish Journal of Comparative Education. - 1137-8654. ; 21, s. 85-118
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Early childhood education in Sweden has long had an international reputation for being a systemic and integrated approach to children’s needs, a family model of preschool centers and an interest in the holistic development and well-being of children. Recent changes occurring in Europe and elsewhere in education along with the reforms implemented by the Conservative government that has been in power since 2006 in Sweden have had and continue to have an impact on early childhood education. In this article early childhood education in Sweden will be presented and discussed from a historical and a conceptual perspective, and the implications that these perspectives have for early childhood education in Sweden today will be discussed.
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| 7. |
- O'Dowd, Mina, et al.
(författare)
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Hegemony through Education and Governance: Re-thinking gender education research and scholarship
- 2012
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Ingår i: [Host publication title missing].
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the increasingly global educational enterprise and all that it entails,a number of substantial changes can be traced in what is commonly viewed as education, its goals, its uses and usefulness. Over and above the broardly defined phenomenon of globalisation, the influence of suprantional regimes can be discerned. Supranational regimes have increasingly grown in power and importance, not least as regards their influence on education. Included in this term are such organizations as Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the European Union (EU) and the European Commission and its many directories.In other contexts two projects, lifelong learning and the Bologna process, have been discussed as regards their influence on education[1]. In this paper a closer look will be taken at the underlying hegemonic gender theory that is apparent in such initiatives as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Education for All (EFA), as they function to re-produce what Fennell & Arnot (2008) term metropolitan gender theory."The concept of Education for All (EFA) with its implications for national growth is in effect an incentive to export current hegemonic gender theorising in education globally, encouraging other regions of the world to focus their attention on formal mass school (rather than informal education), open up individual ´choice biogaphies´and cultivate policies that release girls from the traditional cultures. In this context, the lack of critical engagement with and validation of ´Southern´ gender theory arguably disadvantages precisely those countries which are the target of the MGCs" (p. 526). The aim of this paper is to problematise hegemonic gender theory, to discuss the new feminist research agenda advanced by Fennel & Arnot and to contribute to a "more globally informed field of gender education research". [1] The importance of globalisation is acknowledged. However, the scope of this paper does not allow for the inclusion of this discussion here. [i] O’Dowd, M (2009) “ The God that Failed. Lifelong learning: From Utopianism to Instrumentalism”. The Bulgarian Comparative Education Society, Conference proceedings, Vol. 7, 2009. (eds) James Ogunleye, Bruno Leutwyler, Charl Wolhuter and Marinela Mihova and O’Dowd, M. (2010) “The Bologna Process and The Re-structuring of Higher Education: Who will bear the brunt of “unexpected outcomes”? In Vandra Masemann (ed.) Papers in Memory of David N. Wilson: Clamouring for a Better World. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
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| 8. |
- O'Dowd, Mina, et al.
(författare)
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Imagination and Scientific Dilemmas: Exclusion, circularity and infinite regress in "scientific texts"
- 2008
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Ingår i: The Emergence of the Knowledge society: From Clerici vagantes to Internet.
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Building on the results of a mapping project, the paper examines two kinds of knowledge, "expert knowledge" and "scientific knowledge" with regard to "dilemmas of exclusion, circularity and infinite regress" (Paulston, 2000a, p. 9) and the consequences of these dilemmas, when seen with another imagination than that used to construct the knowledge built upon them. The constructive imagination used in this paper is characterized by two defining characteristics; metaphysical pluralism (Lynch, 1998) and the definition of science as the cumulative human project, composed of the totality of all cultural forms (Cassirer, 1957). Examination of the six texts included in the mapping project is undertaken in an attempt to clarify the role scientific texts have played in what Latour has called "our culture" (1990).
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| 9. |
- O'Dowd, Mina
(författare)
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Learning from Childhood to Mature Adulthood: What makes people want to learn to learn and keep on learning?
- 2005
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Ingår i: Compare. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0305-7925. ; 35:3, s. 321-338
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article describes 35 individuals who have expressed an interest in taking university courses after retirement. Longitudinal data and individuals' own accounts are presented, in an effort to clarify the role that symbolic resources play in individuals' lives, for their capacity to construct their own identity, to function as social actors, and "to learn to learn". It is argued that their lives provide grounds to consider a re-conceptualisation of adult learning.
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| 10. |
- O'Dowd, Mina, et al.
(författare)
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Missing values in peer assessment of social behavior using the RCP
- 2001
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Ingår i: Social Behavior and Personality. - 0301-2212. ; 29:1, s. 71-80
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article deals with probable causes for missing values when using the Revised Class Play instrument for peer assessment of social behavior. The study was conducted with 10-13 year old primary school children in Sweden. The findings reveal that missing values may be caused by the cognitive and linquistic complexity of the instrument (RCP), as well as by gender stereotypes. The results indicated that investigatin the causes of missing values provides valuable information about the validity of the RCP. This information can be used to improve the instructions on how and when to use the RCP.
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