Chapter title: Globalization, Education Policy and Politics - chapter 5, p. 65.
Three main topics are covered in this chapter:
- the effects of globalisation on state education policies
- the role of new technologies of governance, especially data and measurement in policy
- the relationship between research and policy making in educaiton - how does evidence-based/informed policymaking act on and steer research, and thus affect the production of independent analysis and critique of policy?
- state capacity to make policy and to manage economic, political and social life within nathional boundaries is considerable affected by globalisatin, and as a consequence, policy looks increasingly homogenous in education systems around the world (p. 66)
- "we believe that context really matters, and that understanding of the resources available in specific conditions and circumstances is essential in assessing the possibilities for productive politics in the face of globalising trends and forces" (p. 66)
- globalisation can thus be defined as the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice-versa - this is a dialectical process - local happenings may move in an 'obverse' direction - local transformation is as much a part of globalisation as the lateral extension of social connections across time and space (Giddens, 1990, p. 64 - as cited in Lingard & Ozga, p. 66).
- we understand education, including educaiton policy, to be contradictory in its effects and possiblities: education is simultaneously a means of improving life chances and enriching life, as well as a process that maintains inequality and sustains conservative social formations. It has the potential to be both conservative and progressive, reproductive and transgressive.
- possibilities for progressive development lie in ways that education produces what Connell calls 'the capacity for social practice' or what Sen calls 'capabalities' (p. 67)
- Education policy can help frame the likelihood of these possibilities (e.g. development of capacity for negotiation, dialogue, and cooperation) but it is teacher pedagogies and curricular frameworks which put them into practice
- Yeatman - ponts out that most academic approaches to policymaking seem to accept, without comment, its profoundly undemocratic and gendered nature (p.67)
- Yeatman - policy should be conceived as a process that is negotiated and struggled over, and thus it follows that policy making and the ork of policy makers hsould be understood in relation to the extent to which they recognise and reflect democratic principles
- separating policy from politics has the effect of protecting and sustaining bureaucratic logis of prctice from democratic possibilities
- dominant conception of policy as human capital development - with a preoccupation with raising attainment and improving national economic performance and competitiveness globally - human capital development policy consensus
- dominant conception is missing a "normative vision about what educated individuals and active citizens might look like in this new globalised world and about the kinds of societies we might wish to sustain" (p. 68)
- policymakers rely on restricted form of evidence, promote reliance on performance measurement and management, and make only superficial and contradictory acknowledgementof differenceand diversity
- "policy as numbers through international education indicators"
- Example of this - ---- Report
- Where does the policy formation come from in this case? Schools and boards analyze results and in order to counteract 'poor' performance institute various policies?
- Summary so far: at international level a coherent set of policy themes and processes (globalised policy discourses) has emerged, through which policy makers (at national, international and transnational levels) seek to reshape education systems; there has emerged a globalised education policy field situated between global pressures and local vernacular education policy responses; globalised policy agendas and processes interact with traditions, ideologies, institutions and politics that have developed on national terrains, resulting in vernacular education policy outcomes (p. 69)
