Education and human resources development in the Canadian International Development Agency
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Date
1995
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University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, CA
Abstract
This dissertation is a study of the educational and human resources development (HRD)
activities of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). It provides an
overview of CIDA's policies and activities in these fields beginning with the Agency's
inception in 1968, but it pays closest attention to the period between 1980 and 1993, when
all of CIDA's education and training activities became subsumed under the rubric of HRD.
It also looks at two of CIDA's largest bilateral aid programs -- in Zambia and Zimbabwe -as
cases for understanding the implementation of CIDA's education and HRD policies. The
dissertation explores how Canadian educational aid came to be reconstituted as HRD, and
investigates the kinds of interests and assumptions which were organized through its
institutionalization.
The first chapter of the dissertation introduces a framework for exploring international
educational aid, based on Nancy Fraser's "politics of needs interpretations" approach. Chapter
Two looks at the political economy of Canadian aid, arguing that the rise of "human
resources development" in the Canadian aid program occurred in the context of a mounting
crisis of the Canadian welfare state in the 1980s. Chapter Three traces the origins of HRD
and the institutionalization of educational assistance among international donors. It then looks
at the contemporary usage of HRD in relation to major currents and contradictions in the
public policies of Western states.
Detailed research on CIDA's HRD and educational activities is presented in three chapters:
Chapter Four traces the domestic and international origins of CIDA's involvement in
educational aid, and explores the dramatic decline in CIDA's educational activities in the late
1970s. Chapter Five tracks the rise of HRD within CIDA in the 1980s, and looks at the kinds
of interests and assumptions which lay behind it. Chapter Six provides a critical review of
CIDA's bilateral HRD and educational activities in Zambia and Zimbabwe in order to
illustrate the contradictions and tensions in CIDA's HRD and educational assistance policies.
These chapters seek to illustrate and explain the concentration of Canadian educational aid
on high level training and education, and its failure to target the learning needs and
productive capacities of poor or marginalized populations.
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The table of contents for this item can be shared with the requester. The requester may then choose one chapter, up to 10% of the item, as per the Fair Dealing provision of the Canadian Copyright Act
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Keywords
CIDA, HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT, EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, EDUCATIONAL GRANTS, CANADA, RESEARCH RESULTS