Summer 2024 King Center Research Project "World Education Reforms: A Global Challenge to Improve Learning for All" (No Travel)

The King Center on Global Development's Summer Undergraduate Full-Time Research Assistant Program offers opportunities for fieldwork and research experience to matriculated, Stanford, undergraduates interested in global poverty and development across all academic disciplines.

When Stanford University travel policies allow, selected students spend up to 12 weeks in a low- or middle-income country conducting full-time research for a King Center faculty affiliate. Each research assistant receives a stipend of approximately $7,500 that covers most associated costs including travel, lodging, and incidental expenses. Should travel not be permitted and the research is conducted remotely (from within the US), the base stipend will be approximately $5,500. Financial aid of up to $1,500 is also awarded to students who qualify.

Students are welcome to apply to multiple opportunities but must apply to each faculty research project separately.  Students may only accept one project if they are offered multiple opportunities.

If you have problems submitting your application, please report issues through the SOLO platform with a screenshot that includes the URL and the full page.  Please email kingcenter_programs@stanford.edu to also let them know. 

RESEARCH PROJECT SUMMARY:

Education sits at the core of the global development agenda. Schooling is often believed to be a tool for enhancing individuals’ lives and attaining greater economic and social goals. However, school systems have been facing persistent challenges of inequality, as well as new crises arising from a global pandemic, natural disasters, and conflict/wars among countries. To tackle these problems in education, governments engage in an array of reforms. While existing studies have assessed the effectiveness of education reforms in particular country contexts and time periods, our research project takes a comparative and historical approach to studying what types of reforms occur, where, and why, and what effects they have on education and society. To answer these research questions, the World Education Reform Database (WERD) team (www.werd.world) has built a database of over 10,000 education reforms from 189 countries and territories, and from years between 1970 and 2020. Reforms in WERD capture publicly stated goals about how governments should enact changes in education systems around the world, thus focusing on a discursive dimension that sheds light on beliefs about the role of education in a society. Research assistants working with the WERD team will gain insights on how low and middle-income countries have sought to address global development challenges through their education systems by helping to build the database (e.g., collecting new reforms, cleaning the dataset to prepare for public release). Skill, time, and interest-permitting, research assistants may also conduct guided analyses to identify thematic areas related to development in low and middle income countries. Students with country- or region specific interests and language fluencies may be given the opportunity to produce case studies or research briefs that contextualize WERD data within the larger literature on education reform and development in these countries/regions.

Research mentor: Professor Patricia Bromley

Dates: A minimum of ten consecutive weeks during summer quarter 2024.

WHAT YOU WILL DO: 

The research assistant will work closely together and in collaboration with the research team to:

• Collect data on education reforms to support expansion of WERD database
• Help clean WERD dataset to prepare latest version of the dataset for public release
• Review and code the content of education reforms from around the world, potential ideas including:
  • Mentions of global/international development goals (e.g. MDG, SDG, EFA) and international organizations (e.g. UN, WB, OECD)
  • Discussions of climate change, disaster planning, or other emergencies
  • Discussions of sustainability (economic, social, environmental)
  • Discussions of social values, such as religion, nation-state, community, etc.
  • Discussions of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity
• Skill, time, and interest-permitting- work on a case study concerning a low- or middle-income country/region (country/region selection in consultation with the research team) to examine the history of national constitutions, education laws, policies, and reforms, using primary and secondary sources; or produce a research brief with descriptive analyses of education reform trends in a specific thematic area or a specific country/region