My new article on educational privatization in Cambodia is out. You can download the article here. The piece is a portrait of a director of a non-formal school. What propelled him to start this enterprise? How does he see his school’s value and purpose? By exploring the life and history of one person, I argue that educational privitization is not only a process of policy creation but also a social practice. Cambodia is an excellent location to explore the social practice of privatization since the country has, since the 1990s, enacted policies to strengthen public education. Case in point: I learned yesterday that next year the country will spend 3.5 percent of GDP on education. That’s huge. So why does privatization continue? My article tries to answer that.

My piece is also aimed at showing the value of what Pasi Sahlberg calls “small data“. Through an in-depth study of one individual, we can learn as much as any big data research study. In this way, my piece is a call for more ethnographic, small data educational research.