Excellence & Equity in Public Education: Global Perspectives

 

Description of series’ scope and content

This series examines the synergies and the tensions between the two broad goals of excellence and equity across various international and educational sites. Currently three books in the series have already been published by Palgrave, with two further volumes nearing publication and others in preparation. It is intended that each successive volume in the series will address the broad themes of excellence and equity in public education systems in a specific regional or national context. Each volume will also be strongly linked around our chosen themes as these have been conceived around the globe, thus preserving logical series coherence.

Currently we are envisaging a series of between nine to fifteen volumes, each of which would address the issues surrounding excellence and equity in a specific regional or national context. It is our intention that such a multinational series will make a major contribution to the broad international and national debates surrounding excellence and equity. Hence, the series will be of interest to the wider research community and beyond.

As series editors, we are relatively flexible in respect to how contributors to the project might go about preparing such a volume. Hence, your role could be either as a sole or joint author of a volume, or as a sole or joint editor of a volume. We would envisage that, either as author or editor, you would have responsibility for overall content and for quality control regarding your respective volume. Within these various formats, there is considerable leeway for editors/authors to explore the interplay of excellence and equity within or across a number of contested sites (early childhood education, elementary-primary schooling, secondary schooling, the tertiary sector, cross-sector ethnic issues, etc). Contributions are welcomed across a variety disciplinary/multi-disciplinary perspectives such as sociology, history, psychology, multicultural or gender studies.

Our role as series editors is to oversee the process of publication, and to provide a series foreword that might link the respective volumes to others in the series, both those already published and those planned for in the future. Volumes to date typically run between 65,000 to 80,000 words. Because ours is a Palgrave international series with an internal coherence, the authors/editors of each volume will need to illustrate how excellence and equity are, or have been, broadly conceived within their specific region or nation. They might do this in a number of ways. For example, they could choose to analyse in some depth the various ways in which the concepts of excellence and equity have been conceptualised and addressed in the past. You might, on the other hand, focus on how excellence and equity are currently conceptualised and addressed. Alternatively, you may choose to combine an exploration of past and present tendencies. All of these approaches would permit some consideration of what the future may hold for the volume’s chosen site or location of inquiry.

After you have contacted us with a proposal, we will forward you the Palgrave Book Proposal Form, which you will need to complete and send back to us. This arrangement has the advantage that, when everyone is happy, the completed proposal can be forwarded directly to Palgrave for final approval with some confidence. Both the Palgrave editorial board, and ourselves as series editors, believe that it is of the utmost importance that books in the series clarify for both specialist and general readers, the development and rationale behind current policy pronouncements in a manner that is both scholarly and accessible. Hence, the discussion in each volume should ideally involve a broadly conceived and critical examination of the tensions and challenges involved in implementing both excellence and equity within public education systems. Finally, it is suggested that the authors/editors of each volume in the series should make broad links between your own specific national context and other national contexts spanned by the series.

For all the above reasons both Palgrave as major international publishers, and ourselves as general series editors, see this series as being a most timely venture. This is because, in the view of many researchers, teachers, policy makers and parents, the goals of excellence and equity, however conceived, remain dominant themes in education today. It remains the case that, as yet, there have been few sustained attempts by a series to critically examine the way in which excellence and equity both complement and also conflict with one another. Moreover, there is a pressing need to extend and broaden the discussion with a particular focus on the various ways education systems around the globe have conceived and responded to the issues associated with excellence and equity. This series, then, is intended to serve an important educative function. Indeed, it has a crucial role in enabling students, lecturers, researchers, and policy makers to develop knowledge about the constructs of excellence and equity, and to learn how these play out within a range of different contexts.

In short, we are very excited about the series so far, and we look forward eagerly to receiving a proposal from you should you wish to contribute.

Best wishes

Roger Openshaw and Margaret Walshaw (Series Editors)