Brazilian education inequalities discussed at CIES 2022
About the author: Julia Ishikawa is an MA student in the International Comparative Education at Stanford University and a recipient of an FSI Conference Grant.
On April 18–22, the Comparative International Education Society held their annual conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The event was attended by researchers, students, practitioners, and institutions from different parts of the world. “Illuminating the power of idealism” was the conference motto in 2022. Resuming the in-person experience in a conference was exciting for both the organizers and participants. The panels were diverse in terms of topics, regions and methods covered. Topics ranged from Early Childhood Development, Psychology, and Teacher Training to Financing, Accountability, and the Politics of Education. Besides the rich academic content in the sessions, the event also provided cultural experiences, such as a reception at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and several performances throughout the conference days and at the closing ceremony.
My roundtable discussed Brazilian education inequalities. It was interesting to present my research in progress with peers from the International Comparative Education program at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and the Lemann Center for Entrepreneurship and Educational Innovation in Brazil. The session was chaired by Professor Martin Carnoy, who runs the Lemann Center and advises all the research projects presented. Bruna Pecin discussed school principal’s professional development in the context of Jovem de Futuro Program in the state of Espirito Santo, Brazil. Her research focuses on equitable frameworks for school leadership, analyzing challenges and opportunities for the program to develop necessary skills to inclusive leadership approaches in schools. Lara Vilela discussed intersectionality of race, gender and socioeconomic status in different regions in Brazil. Her findings show intriguing patterns of inequalities among regions in the north and south, based 9th grade students test score data provided by the National Education Assessment System in the country. Sara Rezende Vitral presented novel data collected from a household survey conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. She analyzes the relationship of opportunities to learn during the schools’ closure — represented by access to remote learning such as computer, TV, and other ICT devices — with time spent with school activities. Finally, my own research analyzes the effects of middle-tier management on student learning outcomes in the state of Minas Gerais. Using a mixed-methods approach, I examine how managerial practices at the middle-tier level bureaucracy relate with test scores in different regions in one of the largest states in the Brazilian federation.
As a master’s student, I was honored to present my research at CIES. It was a privilege to discuss the findings and collect feedback from researchers from different institutions and my peers in the roundtable. It was also interesting to debate inequalities in Brazil from different angles. Although each of us had very different topics, there was a coherent discussion around the main factors and levers to address education inequalities in the country. Feedback provided will be essential improve the analysis and to conclude my research in the next months at Stanford.
