Autor/Autorin: Achren Lynda
Lynda Achren´s work on development assistance projects in Laos nhas included writing a national curriculum, and nresearching the introducion of English into primary nschools. She has taught at La Trobe and Victoria universities nand currently manages projects for the Adult Multicultural nEducation Services in Melbourne, Australia.
Achren deftly weaves Lao voices into a series of narratives to reveal how Lao values are enacted at classroom, management and policy level in an educational change process. With a development assistance project serving as a lens for viewing broader development issues, the study engages in debates within critical development studies and applied linguistics, and draws on understandings from sociology. It is argued that the cultural underpinnings of Lao pre-colonial, Buddhist-legitimated social organisation has continued to influence the values and priorities of the ethnic Lao throughout their history of foreign domination and their more recent political embracing of Marxism-Leninism. The study then examines the disjunctions between these values and those of the dominant development discourse with its roots in the Eurocentric notion of modernity. Ultimately, the actions of culturally knowledgeable Lao agents present us with a glimpse of a distinctly Lao alternative development possibility. As a result, this book contributes to a deeper, more nuanced understanding of appropriate development assistance from Lao socio-cultural perspectives.
Achren deftly weaves Lao voices into a series of
narratives to reveal how Lao values are enacted at
classroom, management and policy level in an
educational change process. With a development
assistance project serving as a lens for
viewing broader development issues, the study
engages in debates within critical development
studies and applied linguistics, and draws on
understandings from sociology. It is argued that the
cultural underpinnings of Lao pre-colonial, Buddhist-
legitimated social organisation has continued to
influence the values and priorities of the ethnic
Lao throughout their history of foreign domination
and their more recent political embracing of Marxism-
Leninism. The study then examines the disjunctions
between these values and those of the dominant
development discourse with its roots in the
Eurocentric notion of modernity. Ultimately, the
actions of culturally knowledgeable Lao agents
present us with a glimpse of a distinctly Lao
alternative development possibility. As a result,
this book contributes to a deeper, more nuanced
understanding of appropriate development assistance
from Lao socio-cultural perspectives.
Lynda Achren s work on development assistance projects in Laos
has included writing a national curriculum, and
researching the introducion of English into primary
schools. She has taught at La Trobe and Victoria universities
and currently manages projects for the Adult Multicultural
Education Services in Melbourne, Australia.
Klappentext
Achren deftly weaves Lao voices into a series of narratives to reveal how Lao values are enacted at classroom, management and policy level in an educational change process. With a development assistance project serving as a lens for viewing broader development issues, the study engages in debates within critical development studies and applied linguistics, and draws on understandings from sociology. It is argued that the cultural underpinnings of Lao pre-colonial, Buddhist-legitimated social organisation has continued to influence the values and priorities of the ethnic Lao throughout their history of foreign domination and their more recent political embracing of Marxism-Leninism. The study then examines the disjunctions between these values and those of the dominant development discourse with its roots in the Eurocentric notion of modernity. Ultimately, the actions of culturally knowledgeable Lao agents present us with a glimpse of a distinctly Lao alternative development possibility. As a result, this book contributes to a deeper, more nuanced understanding of appropriate development assistance from Lao socio-cultural perspectives.
