Educational Chance in South Africa: Reflections on Local Realities, Practices, and Reforms.

• Author: Buher, Andrew
• Position: Book review

EDUCATIONAL CHANCE IN SOUTH AFRICA: REFLECTIONS ON LOCAL REALITIES, PRACTICES, AND REFORMS

Everard Weber (Ed.)

(Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers, 2008), 360 pages.

What sparks educational reform in transition societies? How does a country's identification with the global South affect educational change? What role does globalization play in educational change? Educational Change in South Africa: Reflections on Local Realities, Practices, and Reforms attempts to answer these questions.

Everard Weber utilizes chapters focusing on curriculum and pedagogy, teacher education, higher education, schools and systemic change to simultaneously navigate the complexities of educational change and illuminate what has gone wrong. In examining South Africa, a country that has endured a rapid social and political metamorphosis since the majority rule elections of 1994, Weber offers both a profound treatment of how national and historical evolution connect to educational change and a diagnosis of the cardinal weakness in South Africa's education system--namely, that education is no longer the generator of change, and, as a result, black student learning has...