Post Socialist Transformation Of Primary Schools

This book addresses the transformation of primary education in the former Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) after the fall of the communist regime in 1989. It follows the overall transformation of education and school policy and offers original insights into the everyday life of the schools at that time. It also provides a unique perspective on the whole transformation process. The work discusses the school environment in the context of specific local characteristics, such as parents, community, regional institutions, and national and international contexts. The book specifically focuses on the changes in primary school management in terms of economics, organization, and personnel. The processes of pedagogical change are an essential theme of the book. They cover how teachers proceeded through the changes in their work at the time of the transformation and the reasons for their resistance to change, including the challenges that the transformation introduced into their work and personal lives. The book also monitors how the teachers navigated the selection and use of new textbooks and tools, such as digital tools. The work originates in historical-pedagogical research, based primarily on the oral history method and complemented by the study of contemporary documents.

This volume revisits the book edited by David Phillips and Michael Kaser in 1992, entitled Education and Economic Change in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (https://doi.org/10.15730/books.42). Two and a half decades later, this volume reflects on how post-socialist countries have engaged with what Phillips & Kaser called ‘the flush of educational freedom’. Spanning diverse geopolitical settings that range from Southeast and Central Europe to the Caucasus and Central Asia, the chapters in this volume offer analyses of education policies and practices that the countries in this region have pursued since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This book explores three interrelated questions. First, it seeks to capture complex reconfigurations of education purposes during post-socialist transformations, noting the emergence of neoliberal education imaginaries in post-socialist spaces and their effects on policy discussions about education quality and equity across the region. Second, it examines the ongoing tensions inherent in post-socialist transformations, suggesting that beneath the surface of dominant neoliberal narratives there are always powerful countercurrents – ranging from the persisting socialist legacies to other alternative conceptualizations of education futures – highlighting the diverse trajectories of post-socialist education transformations. And finally, the book engages with the question of ‘comparison’, prompting both the contributing authors and readers to reflect on how research on post-socialist education transformations can contribute to rethinking comparative methods in education across space and time.

The book Post-Socialist Translation Practices explores how Communism and Socialism, through their hegemonic pressure, found expression in translation practice from the moment of Socialist revolution to the present day. Based on extensive archival research in the archives of the Communist Party and on the interviews with translators and editors of the period the book attempts to outline the typical and defining features of the Socialist translatorial behaviour by re-reading more than 200 translations of children's literature and juvenile fiction published in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). Despite the variety of different forms of censorship that the translators in all Socialist states were subject to, the book argues that Socialist translation in different cultural and linguistic environments, especially where the Soviet model tried to impose itself, purged the translated texts of the same or similar elements, in particular of the religious presence. The book also traces how ideologically manipulated translations are still uncritically reprinted and widely circulated today.

This book explores the perspectives of primary school leaders in Serbia as they attempt to navigate its changing political, social and economic situation. As a post-socialist and post-conflict country, Serbia has moved from a state-ruled and planned economy to market-oriented consumerism and competitiveness. In the midst of a rapidly changing and evolving country, school leaders have found themselves on the front lines of a system where infrastructure and support have not been implemented consistently. The clash between the complexities of Serbia’s history and attempts to align education policies to those of the European Union has created unique challenges for primary school leaders: they are expected to be both objects and agents of change in a context where their own political position and relationships with students, parents and the teaching profession at large have been irrevocably altered. By illuminating the perspectives of the leaders themselves, this book emphasises the importance of these actors on the front line of Serbian education: its findings can equally be applied to other post-Communist and post-conflict contexts.

Gendering Post-Socialist Transition presents economic, political, social, and cultural effects and traces of system changes in the lives of women and men after 1989 in 11 countries of Central and Southeastern Europe. The contributions by nine research teams from different countries look into the meaning of these changes for the relationships between men and women, for gender roles and representations, and for the development of normative discourses about femininity and masculinity. With respect to gender relations, these case studies deal with changing values and mentalities in transformation and once again show that poverty, social exclusion, nationalism, social systems, and healthcare systems all have a profound gendered dimension. (Series: ERSTE Foundation Series - Vol. 1)

Both a history of the system and a study of the process of policy making, A Phoenix Transformed analyses the emergence of a distinctive Hong Kong education system during the first post-war decade and describes in detail the largely chaotic government policy-making that engendered it. Through archival reseach and interviews with many of the territory's education policymakers, Anthony Sweeting recounts the rebuilding of the education system, focusing on schooling at the primary and secondary levels.

This volume will provide a comparative account of the meanings and processes of post-socialist transformations in education by exploring recent theories, concepts, and debates on post-socialism and globalization in national, regional, and international contexts.