Globalizing Education

Policy

Fazal Rizvi and Bob Lingard

Globalizing Education Policy

In what ways have the processes of globalization reshaped the educational policy terrain?
How might we analyse education policies located within this new terrain, which is at once
local, national, regional and global?
Over the past two decades, educational systems throughout the world have undergone sig-
nificant changes as systems continue to interpret and respond to the ever-changing economic,
social and political contexts within which education takes place. Educational policies have
been deeply affected by these developments, as national governments have sought to realign
their educational priorities to what they perceive to be the imperatives of globalization.
In Globalizing Education Policy, the authors explore the key global drivers of policy change in
education and suggest that these do not operate in the same way in all nation-states. They
examine the transformative effects of globalization on the discursive terrain within which edu-
cational policies are developed and enacted, arguing that this terrain is increasingly informed
by a range of neo-liberal precepts which have fundamentally changed the ways in which we
think about educational governance. They also suggest that whilst in some countries these
precepts are resisted, to some extent, they have nonetheless become hegemonic. The book pro-
vides an overview of some critical issues in educational policy to which this hegemonic view of
globalization has given rise, including:

• devolution and decentralization

• new forms of governance
• the balance between public and private funding of education
• access and equity and the education of girls
• curriculum particularly with respect to the teaching of English language and technology
• pedagogies and high-stakes testing
• the global trade in education.

These issues are explored within the context of the major shifts in global processes and ideo-
logical discourses currently being negotiated by all countries. The book also outlines an
approach to education policy analysis in an age of globalization and will be of interest to those
studying globalization and education policy across the social sciences.

Fazal Rizvi is a Professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Illi-
nois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.
Bob Lingard is a Professorial Research Fellow in the School of Education, University of
Queensland, Australia.
Globalizing Education Policy

Fazal Rizvi and Bob Lingard

First published 2010
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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© 2010 Fazal Rizvi and Bob Lingard.
Typeset in Garamond by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or

utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Rizvi, Fazal, 1950-
Globalizing education policy / Fazal Rizvi and Bob Lingard.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Education and state. 2. Education and globalization. I. Lingard, Bob.
II. Title.
LC71.R59 2009
379—dc22 2009016869

ISBN 10: 0-415-41625-6 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-41625-2 (hbk)

ISBN 10: 0-415-41627-2 (pbk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-41627-6 (pbk)

ISBN 10: 0-203-86739-4 (ebk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-203-86739-6 (ebk)
For Patricia Rizvi and Carolynn Lingard
Contents

Acknowledgements viii
Preface ix

1 Conceptions of education policy 1

2 Perspectives on globalization 22

3 Globalizing education policy analysis 44

4 Education policy and the allocation of values 71

5 Curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation 93

6 From government to governance 116

7 Equity policies in education 140

8 Mobility and policy dilemmas 161

9 Imagining other globalizations 184

References 203
Index 221
Acknowledgements

We view this book as a sequel to a book we wrote more than 12 years ago, with
Miriam Henry and Sandra Taylor. And although Miriam and Sandra have not
collaborated on this book, it would not have been possible without the ringing
in our ears of their voices and wisdom. This book has benefited greatly from the
comments of our students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in
the United States, the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, the University of
Sheffield in England and the University of Queensland in Australia. Fazal would
like to thank his students in the Illinois programme in Global Studies in Edu-
cation, particularly Jason Sparks, Laura Engel, David Rutkowski, Viviana
Pitton, Rodrigo Britez, Esther Kim, Gabriela Walker, Ergin Balut, Daniel
Taseema, Rushika Patel, James Thayer and Shivali Tukdeo. He would also like
to acknowledge the support and wise counsel he has received from his Illinois
colleagues: Michael Peters, Tina Besley, Nick Burbules, Linda Tabb, Nicole
Lamers, Garret Gietzen, James Anderson, Walter Feinberg, Bill Cope, Mary
Kalantzis, Jan Nedeveen Pieterse and Cameron McCarthy. Bob would like to
thank the students in his policy classes at the Universities of Sheffield, Edin-
burgh and Queensland, as well as his recent doctoral students, especially Geor-
gina Webb, Kentry Jn Pierre, Shaun Rawolle, Ian Hardy, Hazri bin Jamil,
Farah Shaik and Sajid Ali and his colleagues at those universities. In particular,
he would like to thank Shereen Benjamin, Sotiria Grek, Martin Lawn, Pamela
Munn, Jenny Ozga, Lindsay Paterson, David Raffe, Sheila Riddell, Lyn Tett
and Gaby Weiner at the University of Edinburgh, Wilf Carr, Jennifer Lavia,
Jackie Marsh, Jon Nixon and Pat Sikes at Sheffield University and Martin Mills
and Peter Renshaw at the University of Queensland. Our gratitude also goes to
our friends at Routledge: Anna Clarkson, who unfailingly supported this
project, even as we asked for extensions, and also Catherine Oakley, for her edi-
torial support. Sincere thanks also to Glenda McGregor, who proofread various
versions of the text, to Stephen Heimans who proofread the penultimate version
of the book, to Ian Hextall who read the entire manuscript and commented on
it, to Holly Chen and Minglin Li, who helped with the reference list, and to
Rebecca Donohue who assisted with formatting. Finally this book is dedicated
to Patricia Rizvi and Carolynn Lingard, who have tolerated and supported our
lives as globally mobile academics.
Preface

In 1997, together with Miriam Henry and Sandra Taylor, we published a

book on education policy studies called Educational Policy and the Politics of
Change. The book was designed to examine the ways in which education poli-
cies are developed and can be analysed, within the broader context of the
politics of change. We explored the ways in which particular interests were
served by public policies in education, and suggested that educational policy
analysis was an inherently political activity. We argued that through public
policies the state laid out a framework which guided educational practices
but did not wholly determine them. Education policies were articulated at
various levels of specificities; some were merely symbolic, while others had
more material consequences, such as the redistribution of resources or alloca-
tion of authority structures and value positions. Through public policies, the
state expressed its value preferences, either as an expression of democratic
choices of a community or in steering that community’s expectations. But we
insisted that just as policies embody particular values, so does their analysis.
Policy analysis, we maintained, served numerous purposes, from providing an
environmental scan for the development of policy options to evaluating the effec-
tiveness of particular policies. Much depends on the reasons for undertaking policy
research, and on the terms of reference set. Sometimes a distinction is made
between analysis for policy, which contributes to actual policy production, and
analysis of policy, which is a more academic and critical activity. Academic research
into the political processes of policy development, analysis of policy, is likely to
differ markedly, for example, from consultancy work conducted to determine
policy options or to hold particular institutions accountable, or from research con-
ducted by policymakers located inside the educational bureaucracy, analysis for
policy. The tasks allocated to policy analysts thus determine, to a significant
extent, how the context in which the policy was developed is interpreted, the
theoretical and methodological resources that are used, and the recommendations
that are articulated. The location of the policy analyst is significant. Analysis con-
ducted by the lone academic researcher, positioned within a university, is likely to
adopt a different approach from someone working with a team of evaluators
within an organization, such as a large bureaucracy. This is not to say that there
are no general standards for assessing the quality of policy research, but simply to
note that the nature of the analytical task undertaken, the location of the analysts
x Preface
and the perspective they bring to the task are not irrelevant to policy analysis. The
question of positionality in policy analysis is thus of utmost importance.
In this book, we explore many of these issues in more depth. Our aim is to
provide a new account of educational policy studies based on our experiences
working with, and teaching about, educational policies over the past two
decades, as well as the insights we have developed from our various research
projects designed to examine the dramatic changes brought about by the
processes of globalization and how they require rethinking education policy.
In our previous book we included a chapter on globalization, and argued then
that globalization had the potential to shift the broader context within which
educational policies were developed and would therefore need to be analysed
and taken account of in future educational policy studies. We noted that glo-
balization has reconfigured the state and its authority in developing public
policies, and that national and local policies are now linked to globalized edu-
cational policy discourses, pressures from international organizations and
global policy networks, and globalization effects more generally. Ten years
on, we now have a much better grasp of the global transformations, and how
they demand new ways of conducting policy research in education. In this
book, then, global processes lie at the centre of our attempts at providing a
new introduction to the field of educational policy studies.
This introduction is informed not only by our scholarly engagement with
the recent literature on globalization and educational policy, but also by our
personal experiences of policy processes. In the mid-1990s both of us worked
at the University of Queensland in Australia, while our colleagues Sandra
Taylor and Miriam Henry taught educational policy at Queensland Univer-
sity of Technology. Given our experiences, the examples we used to discuss
policy issues in education in our earlier book were mostly derived from Aus-
tralia, even if we sought to generalize from them. Much has changed since
that time. While both Sandra and Miriam have now left academic jobs, our
careers have taken us to various parts of the world. This has helped us to
‘internationalize’ our understanding of policy processes, as we have had to
engage with global processes on the one hand and historically embedded dif-
ferences in policy practices on the other. We have come to realize that glo-
balization cannot be viewed as a generalized phenomenon, but rather needs to
be seen as a dynamic phenomenon expressed in particular histories and politi-
cal configurations. Thus, while there are today global policy pressures and
globalized policy discourses, these always manifest in vernacular ways, reflect-
ing the varying cultures, histories and politics within different nations. We
have also come to appreciate the importance of agency in the interpretation
and negotiation of policy processes, and in policy effects.
The account of public policy in education we present in this book is therefore
based on insights we have developed through the opportunities we both have had
in working in different organizations in a number of countries. In the mid-1990s,
Fazal was a member of Australia Council for the Arts, where he chaired a com-
mittee responsible for developing a policy on Arts for Multicultural Australia.
This position enabled him to recognize how the development of national policies
 Preface xi
could not overlook policy developments taking place around the world; how
globalization was producing intricate demographic profiles through immigra-
tion and the global mobility of cultural workers, which produced new policy
challenges and opportunities for the arts; and that educational policies could not
be easily separated from other policy domains such as those relating to economic
and cultural matters. He began to see in new ways how global processes affected
the cultural field in which education is located.
Towards the end of the 1990s, Fazal took up a position at RMIT University
in Melbourne, Australia as a Pro-Vice-Chancellor, responsible for coordinating
the vast array of international activities in which that university was involved.
This gave him an opportunity not only to become familiar with the higher edu-
cation policies of various Asian countries from which RMIT drew most of its
15,000 international students, but also to understand how globalization was
placing new demands on universities, requiring them to work in an emerging
global education market for their economic sustainability. This required them
to renew their curriculum and pedagogy, in response to their changing demog-
raphy and to the demands of transnational corporations for new kinds of global
worker. In 2001, Fazal moved to the United States to take up an academic
appointment at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he now
directs its programme in Global Studies in Education. Living and working in
the United States after September 11, he has come to realize that globalization
does not represent a spatially and temporally static phenomenon, but that it can
be transformed as a result of major world events, as well as by particular policy
dictates of powerful nations such as the United States.
In the 1990s, Bob had the opportunity to work closely with the Department
of Education in Queensland, where he directed a major research project designed
to investigate how policies affected educational practice, and how they could be
better articulated to ensure significant improvement in educational outcomes.
The project produced a major report, proposing the concept of ‘productive ped-
agogies’, in order to challenge the dichotomy between state-mandated and
locally-initiated educational reform. Later, Bob also chaired the Queensland
Studies Authority, a statutory authority with responsibility for curriculum and
assessment across all schools in the state of Queensland. These positions gave
him an acute sense of the important social and cultural changes that are taking
place in Queensland, as they are elsewhere – the policy responses to which
require not only empirically grounded research to garner a better sense of how
policy imperatives are interpreted and translated into practice, but also a nor-
mative commitment to use policy to steer education policy in the direction of
democracy and justice. He is now convinced that empirical and normative
aspects of educational policy cannot be easily separated because education is
ultimately about a better moral order. Educational policy always sits at the
intersection of the past, present and future, with the latter often expressed in
policy texts as an imagined desired future.
Over the past few years, like Fazal, Bob too has worked outside Aus-
tralia, first at the University of Sheffield in England and then at the Univer-
sity of Edinburgh in Scotland. At Sheffield, he directed an offshore doctoral
xii Preface
programme in the Caribbean, working with students employed in a range
of teaching, administrative, union and policymaking positions. This gave
him a deeper appreciation of the ways in which globalization is interpreted
and negotiated to develop and implement educational policies in develop-
ing countries; how policy processes operate in an uneven and unequal geo-
political space, creating conditions that often extend global inequalities;
and how historical traces of colonialism are not easily erased and are reart-
iculated in various post-colonial ways within the new configurations of a
globalizing world. At Edinburgh, Bob’s attention was drawn to issues sur-
rounding an emergent European educational space, and how the European
Commission represents a new transnational policy actor in Scottish educa-
tion, with the capacity to steer policy priorities in education. His policy
research has reaffirmed his conviction about the important role that tran-
snational organizations such as the EU, OECD and UNESCO now play in
forging educational policy at the level of national systems, and holding
them accountable against international indicators and benchmarks of
various kinds.
The insights we have developed as a result of our experiences, both as policy
actors and researchers, and as a result of our engagement with the scholarly
literature, are thus fundamental to the arguments developed in this book. We
have drawn heavily on examples of policy processes in education from both of
these sources of information and understanding. Our argument is that public
policy in education is still largely made by national governments, but that
the nature of the state is now rapidly changing. The state now represents a
site increasingly influenced not only by transnational institutions, but also by
global ideologies that constantly seek to steer the social imaginaries of policy
actors everywhere, but in ways that are mediated by national traditions and
local politics.
This book is intended as a general introduction to education policy studies,
but from a particular perspective. It seeks to show how educational policy is
becoming increasingly ‘globalized’ and how this requires new ways of analys-
ing policies in ways that are ‘deparochialized’ – that is, they take seriously
their global, postnational dimensions without ignoring the realities of the
state. This requires developments in theoretical and methodological
approaches to studying and researching education policy in an age of globali-
zation dominated by a neoliberal social imaginary. During 2008 and into
2009, the global neoliberal order has been challenged in a number of ways,
especially against the realization of its role in creating the global financial
crisis that is now affecting all policy areas, education systems and nations.
This crisis has given rise to the urgent task of negotiating a new social imagi-
nary that not only deals with the economic and social consequences of the
failures of neoliberalism, but begins also to consider new ways of conceiving
education policy and practice.
Fazal Rizvi and Bob Lingard
January 2009
1 Conceptions of education
policy

Introduction
Policy studies is a relatively recent field of academic endeavour. It emerged
during the 1950s in mainly liberal democratic countries, where governments
sought the resources of the social sciences to develop public policies, replacing
earlier approaches that were largely intuitive and ad hoc. Fifty years later, policy
studies has become an established field of study, central to the ways in which
societies are now governed. Governments now employ a large number of policy
experts to help them think through social problems, develop programmes and
assess their effectiveness. Policy experts are also used to justify and promote
political decisions, helping to steer social formations in particular directions. In
this sense, policy studies as a field is inextricably linked to the processes of
change. Especially in its more technical and bureaucratic forms, it has even
come to replace politics, sidelining debates about values, shifting attention
instead to matters of administrative dictates and directions.
In the early stages of its development, policy studies was grounded mostly
in ‘policy sciences’, an approach developed by political scientists to enquire
into the ways in which public policies were best developed, implemented and
evaluated (de Leon and Danielle 2007). Policy studies thus largely addressed
the needs of the state, helping it to develop its priorities and programmes and
determine ways of ensuring their efficiency and effectiveness. Governments
believed that the intractable problems they faced could only be solved through
the rigorous application of research knowledge and techniques developed by
social scientists. There thus emerged a so-called ‘rationalist’ approach to
policy processes, which prescribed a number of determinate steps, from an
analysis of the policy context and the elucidation of a range of policy options
to the processes of policy selection, production, implementation and evalua-
tion (Wagner 2007). In addition to providing information helpful to policy-
makers, academic policy researchers were also interested in what governments
did: how they negotiated various political interests, and more generally
managed policy processes.
The rationalist approach to policy studies in liberal democratic countries
was developed during a period when it was widely believed that government
2 Globalizing education policy
intervention was both desirable and necessary for solving social problems. It
was widely assumed that increased expenditure on social programmes would
not only enhance national economic performance, but would also ensure
greater equality of opportunities, especially through various redistributive
measures. This state activity, however, required reliable information and
advice upon which to base decisions and create programmes. Governments
thus turned to policy scientists to help them both create and promote policies
and programmes. In response, political groups outside the state also began to
embrace this approach, marshalling information to argue for particular policy
preferences. This inevitably blurred the dividing line between policy analysts
inside and outside government – between policy development and advocacy.
As sources of policy advice multiplied, lobby and pressure groups came into
existence, professing technical expertise that often masked their particular
interests (Knoepfel et al. 2007).
During the 1980s, however, the rationalist approach to policy studies began
to lose popularity for a number of reasons (Wagner 2007). First, it was believed
that the approach did not produce the reliable, generalizable and predictable
policy knowledge it had promised. Secondly, the positivist view of (social)
science upon which the rationalist approach was based was increasingly discred-
ited or at least challenged within the social sciences. Thirdly, a range of new
theoretical developments such as critical theory, feminism, post-structuralism
and post-colonialism undermined rationalist approaches and claims to knowl-
edge, and their alleged value neutrality. Fourthly, the Keynesian economic
theories upon which many policy interventions were based lost popular support,
especially following the ideological assault on them by the Thatcher and Reagan
governments. Market ideologies framed by neoliberalism became ascendant
around the world. And finally, and perhaps most significantly, the emerging
processes of globalization transformed the political and economic contexts in
which public policies were developed (Kennett 2008). More than anything, the
fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 signified a fundamental shift in policy thinking
around the world, both resulting from and giving rise to the globalization of
capitalism and the emergence of a ‘neoliberal’ ideology, reshaping the ways in
which policies are now forged, implemented and evaluated.
Public policies were once exclusively developed within a national setting,
but now are also located within a global ‘system’. While national govern-
ments continue to have the ultimate authority to develop their own policies,
the nature of this authority is no longer the same, affected significantly by
imperatives of the global economy, shifts in global political relations and
changing patterns of global communication that are transforming people’s
sense of identity and belonging. In the early 1990s, these epochal shifts led
some scholars such as Francis Fukuyama (1992) to even speak of the ‘end of
history’, suggesting that liberal democracy and market ideologies had now
become ‘globalized’ and that this was the endpoint of ideological struggle.
These shifts have inevitably affected education policy. With the rejection of
the ideas associated with the Keynesian welfare state, governments have
 Conceptions of education policy 3
increasingly preached a minimalist role for the state in education, with a
greater reliance on market mechanisms. As educational systems around the
world have become larger and more complex, governments have been either
unable or unwilling to pay for educational expansion, and have therefore
looked to market solutions. This has led to an almost universal shift from
social democratic to neoliberal orientations in thinking about educational pur-
poses and governance, resulting in policies of corporatization, privatization
and commercialization on the one hand, and on a greater demand for account-
ability on the other (Lipman 2004). At the same time, educational purposes
have been redefined in terms of a narrower set of concerns about human capital
development, and the role education must play to meet the needs of the global
economy and to ensure the competitiveness of the national economy.
Over the past two decades, then, a new global policy paradigm seems to
have emerged. Yet while similarities in policy shifts occurring in a wide
variety of nations are clearly evident, it is also the case that these changes are
mediated at the national and local levels by particular historical, political and
cultural dynamics (see, for example, Mok and Tan 2004). An understanding
of the nature of this mediation suggests that there is nothing inevitable about
these changes. The concept of globalization does not have a single uniform
meaning, and its various expressions are as dynamic as they are context-
specific. If this is so, it is important to try to elucidate the reasons for the
global dominance of the neoliberal policy paradigm: how it might be unrav-
elling in the current global economic crisis, and how it might be possible to
resist its negative effects and forge a different, more just and democratic glo-
balization that implies a broader conception of education’s purposes.
This book is largely concerned with an examination of the ways in which
global processes are transforming education policy around the world, in a
range of complicated, complex, commensurate and contradictory ways. It
seeks to provide a new introduction to policy studies in education, informed
by our recent experiences in policymaking and evaluation, and with our schol-
arly engagement with the literature designed to understand processes of glo-
balization. It is based on our conviction that some of the older theoretical and
methodological resources are no longer sufficient, and that new tools are
needed to understand policy processes in a world that is increasingly net-
worked and shaped by a range of transnational forces and connections,
demanding a new global imagination. We want to argue that while some of
the older accounts of policy processes might still hold to some extent at least,
the processes that now frame education policy are often constituted globally
and beyond the nation-state, even if they are still articulated in nationally
specific terms. Using insights from a range of theoretical and methodological
traditions, including critical theory, post-structuralism, post-colonialism and
critical discourse analysis, we provide a somewhat eclectic view of critical
education policy analysis, which attempts to show how education policies
represent a particular configuration of values whose authority is allocated at
the intersection of global, national and local processes. Our focus is on both
4 Globalizing education policy
new policy content and processes; the new production rules for education
policy associated with globalization; and the related need for new approaches
to education policy analysis.

What is policy?
Let us begin with a discussion of the question: ‘what is policy?’ Over the
years, a wide variety of definitions has been suggested, indicating that policy
is a highly contested notion. The simplest of all definitions has been provided
by Dye (1992), who argues that policy is ‘whatever governments choose to do
or not to do’. Two points might be made about this statement. First, Dye is
concerned here about public policy – that is, policy developed by govern-
ments. Other institutions such as intergovernmental organizations (IGOs)
and corporations also make policy. Our focus in this book is largely on public
policy. It needs to be noted, however, that in the contemporary context, a
range of public/private partnerships are becoming common, resulting in more
private sector involvement in policy processes (Ball 2007). Secondly, some-
times non-decision-making is as much an expression of policy as are the actual
decisions made. Significant manifestations of policy and power are often
evident when things stay the same or when issues are not discussed or are
deliberately suppressed. In this way, policy can be expressed in silences, either
deliberate or unplanned.
More than 20 years ago, Hogwood and Gunn (1984: 13–19) suggested a
number of meanings for the concept of policy. The concept of policy, they
argued, is variously used to describe a ‘label for a field of activity’, for example
education policy or health policy; as ‘an expression of general purpose’; as
‘specific proposals’; as ‘decisions of government’; as ‘formal authorization’; as
a ‘programme’; and as both ‘output’ and ‘outcome’, with the former referring
to what has actually been delivered by a specific policy, and outcomes refer-
ring to broader effects of policy goals. Wedel and colleagues (2005: 35) more
recently have offered a similar account of the meaning of policy, suggesting it
refers to a field of activity (e.g. education policy), a specific proposal, govern-
ment legislation, a general programme or ‘desired state of affairs’, and what
governments achieve. Public policy, then, refers to the actions and positions
taken by the state, which consists of a range of institutions that share the
essential characteristics of authority and collectivity. While policy is often
synonymous with decisions, an individual decision in isolation does not con-
stitute policy. A policy expresses patterns of decisions in the context of other
decisions taken by political actors on behalf of state institutions from posi-
tions of authority. Public policies are thus normative, expressing both ends
and means designed to steer the actions and behaviour of people. Finally,
policy refers to things that can in principle be achieved, to matters over which
authority can be exercised.
Policies are often assumed to exist in texts, a written document of some
kind. However, a policy can also be viewed as a ‘process’ involved in the
 Conceptions of education policy 5
production of an actual text, once the policy issue has been put on the politi-
cal agenda. Policy processes thus include agenda setting, as well as work on
the production of policy texts. They also refer to implementation processes,
which are never straightforward, and sometimes also to the evaluation of
policy. In this sense, then, policy may refer to both texts and processes. In
Stephen Ball’s (1994: 10) terms, ‘Policy is both text and action, words and
deeds, it is what is enacted as well as what is intended.’ This observation
recognizes that policy purposes and goals are not always achieved in prac-
tice. This is because policies as they are implemented always encounter
complex organizational arrangements and already-existing practices. For
policy is not the only factor in ‘determining’ practices. In recognition of this
policy/practice gap, Ball notes, ‘Policies are always incomplete in so far as
they relate to or map onto the “wild profusion of local practice”’ (Ball 1994:
10). In our earlier book on education policy studies (Taylor et al. 1997:
24–25), we summarized this distinction in the following way:

… policy is much more than a specific policy document or text. Rather, policy is
both process and product. In such a conceptualization, policy involves the pro-
duction of the text, the text itself, ongoing modifications to the text and proc-
esses of implementation into practice.

Writing from an anthropological perspective, Wedel et al. (2005: 35) suggest

that although the question ‘What is policy?’ is important, a more important
question might be, ‘What do people do in the name of policy?’
Policy is about change (Weimer and Vining 2004). It is through policy
that governments seek to reform educational systems, for example. Policy
desires or imagines change – it offers an imagined future state of affairs, but
in articulating desired change always offers an account somewhat more sim-
plified than the actual realities of practice. In many ways policies eschew com-
plexity. Given the level of generality, policies could be seen to be more like a
recipe than a blueprint (Considine 1994). They are designed to provide a
general overview, leaving a great deal of room for interpretation. To use
another metaphor, a policy is designed to steer understanding and action
without ever being sure of the practices it might produce.
Policy texts often take the form of a legal document, but not always. Other
kinds of text, such as speeches and press releases by a Government minister
and papers by senior policymakers, can express policy intentions and have real
effects. Here we are in agreement with Jenny Ozga (2000: 33), who works
with a very broad and ecumenical definition of policy. She observes that a
policy text is any ‘vehicle or medium for carrying and transmitting a policy
message’. Further, in terms of the trajectory across the production of the
policy text and its implementation into practice, practitioners can also be
regarded ‘as policy makers or potential makers of policy, and not just the
passive receptacles of policy’ (ibid.: 7). In the context of schooling systems,
policy is also mediated by the leadership practices within the school, as well
6 Globalizing education policy
as by the ways teachers interpret that policy and translate it into practice (Bell
and Stevenson 2006). This process of translation is fundamental to under-
standing how policies play a role in producing and shaping change.
It is possible to conceptualize policy processes in terms of what has been
called the ‘policy cycle’ (Ball 1994). This view rejects a one-way, linear
account of relationships between the setting of policy agendas, the production
of the policy text and its implementation into practice. Instead, the notion of
a policy cycle points to the messy, often contested and non-linear relation-
ships that exist between aspects and stages of policy processes. Ball (ibid.) has
written instructively about the various contexts of the policy cycle, namely
the context of influence, the context of policy text production and the context
of policy practice or implementation, to capture the interactive, synergistic
set of relationships between these contexts.
There is often contestation within and across these contexts. In the pro-
duction of policy texts, for example, there are attempts to appease, manage
and accommodate competing interests. Jane Kenway (1990: 59) has argued
that policies (here read policy as the actual text) represent ‘the temporary set-
tlements between diverse, competing, and unequal forces within civil society,
within the state itself, and between associated discursive regimes’. Drawing
from theories within literary criticism, then, we can see most policy texts as
being heteroglossic in character; that is, policy texts often seek to suture
together and over competing interests and values. At the same time, policies
usually seek to represent their desired or imagined future as being in the
public interest, representing the public good. As a result they often mask
whose interests they actually represent. Thus, contestation occurs right from
the moment of appearance of an issue on the policy agenda, through initia-
tion of action, to the inevitable trade-offs involved in formulation and
implementation.
Policies are also often assembled as responses to perceived problems in a field
such as education. Here, however, we again have to be aware of the discursive
work that policies do in constructing problems in certain ways, perhaps differ-
ently from what the best research-based empirical and theoretical analyses
might suggest. The nature of the problems is never self-evident, but is always
represented in a specific manner, from a particular point of view (Dery 1984).
Policies thus proffer solutions to the problem as constructed by the policy itself
(Yeatman 1990). McLaughlin (2006: 210), in an extensive review of the US
policy implementation literature in education, speaks of the ‘problem of the
problem’ – of the manner in which the problem is constructed in order to give
a policy proposal its legitimacy. Nor is the idea of policy context objectively
given, but it is similarly constructed (Seddon 1994), designed to present issues
in a particular light. The description of the context, so constructed, may include
the historical backdrop to the policy. The constructed nature of such history is
intended to give legitimacy to the policy’s intentions.
An example might be helpful here. In recent years, many countries have
instituted new policies on literacy education. These policies have been based
 Conceptions of education policy 7
on an understanding of the broader context, over the representation of which
there has been much argument. On the one hand, there are those who have
characterized the context in terms of what they regard as the declining levels
of literacy. They have demanded the re-institution of the traditional policy
emphasis on phonics, grammar and canonical texts (see Snyder 2008). The
critics of this view, on the other hand, deny such a crisis, and represent the
context instead in terms of the changing nature of society which is increas-
ingly multicultural, and in which new forms of media literacy have become
essential, thus necessitating, for example, a focus on ‘multiliteracies’ (Cope
and Kalantzis 2000). It is not hard to see how the competing policy proposals
are grounded in differing representations of the context, historical narratives
of what has worked or has not, and the contemporary problems that need to
be solved through policy.
In another useful discussion of education policy, Luke and Hogan (2006:
171) have emphasized policymaking as opposed to policy as text: ‘We define
educational policy making as the prescriptive regulation of flows of human
resources, discourse and capital across educational systems towards normative
social, economic and cultural ends.’
In their use of ‘prescriptive regulation’, they stress the authoritative, man-
dating aspects of policy – that is, policy tries to change the behaviours and
practices of others so as to steer change in a particular direction. Luke and
Hogan’s definition also suggests that the idea of policy involves allocation of
resources of various kinds, namely human, economic and ideological. Policies
have discursive effects, often changing the language through which practi-
tioners engage with policy in practice. Further, their definition also recog-
nizes the normative nature of education policy, emphasizing the goals or
purposes of education. They suggest that education policy is about having
effects in the broader social, cultural and economic domains or what could be
seen as policy outcomes. Considine (1994: 4) has similarly observed that ‘A
public policy is an action which employs governmental authority to commit
resources in support of a preferred value.’ Values are either implicit or explicit
in any given policy.
The issue of values is thus central to policy. In an early definition of policy,
the American political scientist David Easton (1953: 129–130) argued that:

The essence of policy lies in the fact that through it certain things are denied to
some people and made accessible to others. A policy, in other words, whether for
a society, for a narrow association, or for any other group, consists of a web of
decisions that allocates values.

This definition was encapsulated in Easton’s well-known statement that

policy involves ‘the authoritative allocation of values’, to a discussion of which
we shall return later in this chapter. But suffice to say at this stage that the
authoritative allocation of values is often evident in terms of the funding for
certain things and denial of funding for others. It is also evident in the ways
8 Globalizing education policy
in which policy problems are framed and contexts represented. It is evident in
the discourses within which policies are located.
The distinction between policy as text and policy as discourse demands
further clarification. Stephen Ball (2006) argues that policy texts are framed
by broader discourses. The text here refers to the actual words on paper, the
use of certain language to signify certain meanings. Thus, for example, poli-
cies are often written in the first person plural, with the heavy use of ‘we’ and
‘our’ seeking to reflect and constitute a putative consensus about the concerns
of the policy and its prescribed direction of change, between the creators of
the policy and the readers of it. It is Ball’s contention that such policy texts
are located within and framed by broader discourses, more comprehensive
ways of conceptualizing the world. As he puts it: ‘Discourses are about what
can be said, and thought, but also about who can speak, when, where, and
with what authority’ (Ball 2006: 48).
Ball’s concept of discourse is derived from Foucault (1977), and is
designed to suggest that policies are located in a collection of interrelated
policies – a ‘policy ensemble’. Ball (2006: 48) notes, ‘we need to appreciate
the way in which policy ensembles, collections of related policies, exercise
power through a production of “truth” and “knowledge”, as discourses’.
Discourses help to position us – they speak us rather than us speaking them.
Policy texts and policy ensembles, then, are framed by discourses that we
need to understand in order to better grasp the actual policy text. The
concept of a policy ensemble also implies ‘intertextuality’ between policies
that constitute the ensemble. Intertextuality refers to the specific and
explicit cross-referencing to other policy texts, but also to implicit referenc-
ing to other texts in the echoing usage of words, phrases and concepts. In
this book, we use the notion of ‘social imaginary’ to suggest that policies
are not only located within discourses, but also in imaginaries that shape
thinking about how things might be ‘otherwise’ – different from the way
they are now. It is in this way that policies direct or steer practice towards a
particular normative state of affairs.

Purposes and types of policy

Why do we need public policies? As we have already noted, policies involve
the authoritative allocation of values. But values can be allocated in a number
of ways and for a variety of purposes. Most frequently, policies are designed to
steer actions and behaviour, to guide institutions and professionals in a certain
direction. Sometimes this is done simply for symbolic purposes, while on
other occasions policies have more material consequences with respect, for
example, to the allocation of resources, such as the distribution or redistribu-
tion of funds. Some policies are sanctioned and the failure to pursue them can
lead to all kinds of penalties, while others are forged in order to build consen-
sus around certain ideas. But above all, policies are designed to ensure consist-
ency in the application of authorized norms and values across various groups
 Conceptions of education policy 9
and communities: they are designed to build consent, and may also have an
educative purpose.
Different purposes, then, shape the ways policies are articulated and pro-
moted. This much can be shown, for example, by pointing to the differentia-
tion between symbolic and material policies. Symbolic policies are often
political responses to pressures for policy. They usually carry little or no com-
mitment to actual implementation and usually do not have substantial
funding attached. Rein (1983) has argued that there are three factors which
significantly affect the likelihood of the implementation of policy: the clarity
of the goals of the policy and their potential for effective operationalization;
the complexity of the envisaged implementation strategy; and the commit-
ment or otherwise to funding the policy and its implementation. Such com-
mitment and funding are usually absent in the case of symbolic policies. They
also tend to have vague, ambiguous and abstract goals statements and lack
well thought-through implementation strategies. Now this is not to say that
they have no effects. Rein (ibid.: 131) suggests that their very existence can
have strategic functions in terms of legitimating particular political views
and also of altering the climate in which some issues are discussed and dealt
with. Further, in respect of highly contested policy domains, for example
gender equity, the existence of a symbolic policy might be the perceived first
step in a longer-term strategy by policymakers working inside the state. It
might also offer some policy legitimacy to the work of the activists (Lingard
1995). A material policy, in stark contrast, is strongly committed to imple-
mentation. It is accompanied by funding, and sometimes effective evaluation
mechanisms to ensure the achievement of its goals. The symbolic/material
distinction then turns on issues of resourcing and commitment to implemen-
tation, and in some cases strong sanctions. Today, symbolic policies are often
associated with ‘media spin’ created around a policy (Gewirtz et al. 2004).
A distinction is often also drawn between incremental and rational poli-
cies. This refers to the way the policy text is produced. Incrementalism recog-
nizes that policies are usually built on or developed out of previous policies.
In this way policy development and change are seen to be small step by small
step, rather than through large steps or disregard for policies that have pre-
ceded the emergence of new ones. In political terms, policymakers usually
want to stress the extent to which their policies are different from those that
have gone before. In some ways there are always some incremental aspects to
policymaking, given the continuity of state structures and policy history.
Rational policies are pointedly prescriptive; that is, they are directed to
policymakers inside the state and are prescriptive about the steps that need to
be followed in their development. This involves a number of distinct and
quite linear phases through policy development, text formulation and imple-
mentation. Usually these phases include: problem definition; clarification of
values, goals and objectives; identification of options to achieve goals and
objectives in line with values; assessing options including, sometimes, cost–
benefit analyses; selecting a course of action; developing an implementation
10 Globalizing education policy
strategy; evaluation of the policy as implemented; modifications to the
program in light of the evaluation. Sometimes this rational approach to policy
production is referred to as the ‘stage heuristic’ (Weaver-Hightower 2008:
153), given its focus on assisting governments to develop actual policy that is
technically sound. These steps or stages might be a useful ‘guide’ to those in
bureaucracies, but in reality most actual policy development occurs in a less
rational, more disjointed fashion with more politics and trade-offs involved.
In providing an account of a rational approach to policymaking, one of the
major rational theorists of public policy from an earlier era, Carley (1980),
suggested that there are three elements to policy and its development: first,
political decisions about the values to be allocated through a given policy;
secondly, rational determination through the phases listed above; and finally
the impact of the bureaucratic organizational arrangement upon the actual
policy. Carley argued that values and organizational realities mediate and
have effects, even when the policy production processes are highly rational.
Recognizing the political character of actual policymaking and commenting
specifically on the evaluation phase of the rational model, Hudson and Lowe
(2004: 228) observe that ‘decision makers are rarely inclined to conduct policy
making according to the rational, evidence rich, scientific approach that forms
the classic model’.
In a similar vain, Rein (1983: 135) saw policy processes as attempts by the
state to ‘resolve conflicts among authoritative, rational and consensual imper-
atives’. What this suggests is that state policymaking processes are never
totally rational, and involve political negotiations of various kinds, both
within and outside the state. Claus Offe (1975: 135) has noted a symbiotic
relationship between the state, its bureaucratic structures and policy
processes:

… it is not only true that the emergence of a social problem puts into motion the
procedural dynamics of policy formation, program design, and implementation,
but also, conversely, the institutionalized formal mode of political institutions
determines what potential issues are, how they are defined, what solutions are
proposed, and so on.

The state, then, is crucially involved in the political organization of policy

processes in all phases of the policy cycle, including the politics of implemen-
tation. Furthermore, the ways in which its own structures are defined have
implications for the actual focus and content of policies, as well as in relation
to the discourses that frame them.
For example, when the bureaucratic state in most western countries was
reconstituted in the 1980s under what has been called ‘new public manage-
ment’ (Clarke and Newman 1997) or ‘corporate managerialism’ (Yeatman
1990), policy discourses changed significantly to meet the new demands for
faster policymaking and implementation. The restructured state utilizes new
policy discourses surrounding such concepts as choice, markets, and steering
 Conceptions of education policy 11
through measuring policy outputs. What is clear, then, is that changes in the
structures and modalities of the state almost invariably imply new production
rules for education policy in relation to both its content and its processes.
Policies may also be said to be either distributive or redistributive. Dis-
tributive policies, as the term implies, simply distribute resources, human
and otherwise, while redistributive policies seek to intervene against disad-
vantage through positive discrimination, usually but not always in relation to
funding. Redistributive policies in education were quite common in most
liberal democratic societies during the 1960s and 1970s. In Australia, for
instance, there was a disadvantaged schools programme (Connell et al. 1991),
which sought to redistribute funding to schools enrolling disadvantaged stu-
dents in an attempt to open up opportunities for them. More recently, focus
has shifted to distributive policies with an attempt to produce self-sufficient
individuals. No Child Left Behind in the US, for example, is a largely distribu-
tive policy, the focus of which is funding allocated on the basis of various
accountability measures and performance against targets, rather than on redis-
tribution to achieve greater equality of opportunity.
The distinctions between symbolic and material, rational and incremental,
and distributive and redistributive public policies discussed above are useful
in understanding the various purposes of policies – from the allocation of
resources to the use of policy as an instrument for containing political
demands, steering public opinion and affirming the symbolic importance of
certain values. Of course, useful as these distinctions are, they are never abso-
lute. Many public policies serve multiple purposes. They reflect both the
shifting nature of the state and the ways in which the state relates to outside
agencies, in the allocation of values, produced through complex processes of
negotiation and compromise, both within and outside the state.

Public policy and state authority

Our discussion in this chapter has revolved around a most succinct but durable
definition of policy proposed more than 50 years ago by David Easton (1953)
– as the ‘authoritative allocation of values’. Policies, he argued, are normative:
they either articulate or presuppose certain values, and direct people towards
action, but in a way that is authoritative. Their legitimacy is thus derived
from an authority, be it a government or a corporation or a social institution
such as a school system. Easton’s use of the concept of authority is deliberate,
and is designed to mark a distinction from the idea of power. Following
Weber (1948), Easton regards authority as legitimate power. A policy is
designed to ensure that power is exercised legitimately. This legitimacy is
achieved through various institutional norms and practices.
The distinction between power and authority assumed by Easton is not
always clear-cut, however. The claim to authority can sometimes mask aspects
of power for which no community consent is ever secured. The unsaid, the
unspoken can be the clearest manifestation of hegemonic power, where
12 Globalizing education policy
‘common sense’ goes unchallenged. Despite a lack of clarity about the ways in
which policies embody authority, Easton’s definition is useful just the same,
not least because it underlines the importance of understanding how policy is
translated into practice with an assumption of legitimacy. For policy research-
ers, both those working within the positivist and rationalist traditions as well
as those inclined towards interpretivist and critical approaches, issues of
authority are thus central to their accounts of policy processes.
Stephen Ball (1994), for example, regards an exploration of the nature and
scope of authority to be one of the central tasks of policy research. Policy
research, he argues, involves an examination of three key aspects of policy:
texts, discourses and effects. Policies, he suggests, are always contested, value-
laden and dynamic, and are a product of various compromises. They are
encoded in representations of what is mandated and what ought to be done.
They are often expressed in a textual form, but within the framework of a
broader discourse that assumes authority. Policy analysis thus involves the
decoding of texts, in relation both to the context in which they are embedded
and the context they construct, and to the effects they have on practice, linked
to broader social effects, sometimes called ‘policy outcomes’. If the idea of
authority is central to interpreting and analysing policies, where does the
authority underpinning a policy come from, and how is it exercised or allo-
cated? Who has the authority to develop policy, to ensure consent to policy
prescriptions and to steer practice?
As far as public policies are concerned, it is the nation-state that has tradi-
tionally been assumed to have this authority. Without this authority, it is
believed, public policies can neither be supported with resources nor have the
symbolic value to guide action. Indeed, the state uses its authority to justify
policies, and in turn uses policies to legitimate its authority. It is through
these dynamics that it seeks to manage community expectations and to
develop subjects/citizens who are sufficiently vested in its political priorities.
It utilizes various professional organizations, institutional arrangements and
the media to ensure that its policies are implemented in the desired manner.
As Foucault (1991) has pointed out, in contemporary society the state thus
plays a major role in creating ‘self-governing individuals’, a process he refers
to as ‘governmentality’.
Expressed in these terms, while the idea of authority is central to the notion
of policy, few policy researchers address it explicitly. So, for example, while
Ball’s discussion of the idea of policy highlights the complexities of the
various ways in which a policy is constructed and interpreted, it does not prob-
lematize issues surrounding the nature of the authority underpinning that
policy. In his earlier work, Ball assumed this authority to be located within
the structures of the nation-state, from where policy texts and discourses got
their purchase. This is not surprising, because public policies in education
have traditionally emanated from a national (or sub-national) government
and its agencies, designed to deliver educational provision in a most effective
and efficient, and sometimes equitable, manner. Understandably, therefore,
 Conceptions of education policy 13
most policy researchers assume state authority to be sovereign. This assump-
tion is based on a Westphalian understanding of the nature of political author-
ity (Krasner 2000), which includes the contentions that authority can only be
exercised by a state over a defined geographical territory, that each state has
the autonomy to develop its own policies, and that no external actor can direct
that state’s priorities.
Modern nation-states are thus assumed to hold ultimate territorial juris-
diction, organized around a specific set of administrative functions. This
assumption of territoriality can be found in the work of most twentieth-
century social theorists and policy researchers alike. Indeed, it has been con-
sidered a fundamental feature of modernity, upon which the political
architecture of the modern state system is based (Mann 1997). The modern
nation-state is represented as a kind of container that separates an ‘inside’ of
domestic political interactions from an ‘outside’ of international or interstate
relations (Brenner et al. 2003: 2). The state is thus given an authoritative
monopoly over the subjects and institutions located within its territory, allo-
cated through a system of international relations.
This conception of authority, based on the institutional, territorial and
centralized nature of the state, cannot however be sustained without popular
consent. It requires a social imaginary, a collective conception that people
have about the nature and scope of political authority. It demands people’s
consent to view national formations as inevitable, timeless and natural, terri-
torially bounded and entirely legitimate. This view is in line with Anderson’s
contention (1991) that nations are ‘imagined communities’ that were brought
into existence in early modernization processes initially by intellectuals,
artists, political leaders and others, and which only later became infiltrated
into the whole society, through mass literacy and mass schooling systems,
myths, stories, songs and the like. Processes of formal schooling played a
major role in developing and sustaining national imaginaries. The nation-
state came to be widely accepted as having the authority to enforce its will,
sometimes even through the exercise of violence. As Weber (1991: 23) argues,
for example, the state has the legitimate right to exercise violence (e.g.
imprison and punish people, go to war), but this right is exercised mostly
through the inculcation of a social imaginary that cannot even conceive of
how things could be otherwise. Bourdieu (1998b) refers to this as ‘symbolic
violence’. Most policy research in education continues to operate within this
Westphalian framework, which takes the authority of the nation-state as given
and assumes that policies are developed within its boundaries.
While the concept of the nation-state has been much debated over the
years, there is a general agreement that ‘nation’ in the construction ‘nation-
state’ refers to cultures and histories of a people within a bounded space,
while ‘state’ refers to the bureaucratic administrative structure inside that
bounded space. As we have already noted, traditionally it has been assumed
that the legitimacy a public policy has is derived from the authority a
nation-state has over its citizens, and that this authority is exercised through
14 Globalizing education policy
a wide variety of state structures and processes. In this book, we will show
how globalization has destabilized this assumption, and has created condi-
tions for the reconstitution of both nation and state. In what follows in this
chapter we present, in a very general way, a set of observations of how,
under the conditions of globalization, public policy processes are changing;
how education policy is now framed, produced, disseminated and imple-
mented differently; and how there have been significant shifts in the manner
in which education policy relates to other domains of public policy. These
observations are then elaborated in subsequent chapters, with examples that
seek to show how education policy is becoming globalized, and therefore
requires a new approach to education policy studies.

Shifts in education policy processes

As we have already observed, policy is more than the policy document or the legis-
lation, that is, the text (Taylor et al. 1997). Processes of policy production and
implementation are also significant. These processes refer to the chronology
of an issue coming onto the policy agenda, the construction of a policy text,
its implementation and sometimes evaluation. This is not to suggest that
the words contained within a policy text are not important; on the contrary,
they are often carefully crafted, and hide the contestation and compromises
involved in the actual construction of the text itself. The words of the policy
text are today often ‘mediatized’ (Fairclough 2000), with final drafts finessed
by journalists working in the education bureaucracy or the policymaker’s
office, with an intended readership of the public rather the professionals
who will implement the given policy. This suggests that text is always
affected by the context of its production, which has in recent years been
increasingly shaped by the discourses of globalization and globalized
discourses.
The discourses that frame policy texts are no longer located simply in the
national space but increasingly emanate from international and supranational
organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Devel-
opment (OECD), the World Bank and the European Union (EU) (Henry et al.
2001; Lawn and Lingard 2002; Dale 2006; Kallo and Rinne 2006). However,
texts and indeed discourses do not exist in material vacuums. Rather, they are
located in specific material realities and cultural formations. These include
the nation-state, but increasingly also what we might call, after Appadurai
(1996), post-national spaces. Lingard et al. (2005) have described an emergent
global education policy field. They have pointed out that in recent years the
scalar framing of policy discourses and texts has extended beyond the nation;
the context of policy texts is now multilayered in scalar terms across the local,
national and global, leading to what Robertson et al. (2006a) refer to as the
‘rescaling of contemporary politics’.
What this suggests is that policy is multidimensional and multilayered and
occurs at multiple sites. Globalized discourses and agenda-setting and policy
 Conceptions of education policy 15
pressures now emerge from beyond the nation. The relationships between the
various sites of policy production and implementation have been extended in
many instances. But even in considering a national policy and its implemen-
tation at a school level, for example, we can see the different positioning of
the different policy players; those involved in policy text production com-
pared with those involved in policy implementation or practice will often
have different and competing interests. Both sets of players are also located
within different logics of practice and differential power relations (Bourdieu
1998b; Rawolle and Lingard 2008). Consider, for example, a policy emanat-
ing from an international organization and its take-up within a nation of the
Global South through to implementation: here we see a stretching and dis-
persing of the multilayering and multidimensionality of contemporary policy
processes in education.
Spatial thinking now appears essential in understanding education policy
texts as well as the processes of their production and implementation (see
Gulson and Symes 2007). Massey has written about the deep imbrication of
the local and the global, noting how each helps constitute the other. Speaking
about daily life, she observes (Massey 2005: 184):

The lived reality of our daily lives is utterly dispersed, unlocalised in its sources,
and in its repercussions. The degree of dispersion, the stretching, may vary dra-
matically between social groups, but the point is that the geography will not be
simply territorial.’

This observation applies equally well to considerations of policy production

and practice in education and to the extended multilayering of policy, recog-
nizing the simultaneous plays of the local, national and global as spatial rela-
tions in the education policy cycle. The geography of policy discourses and
processes is today not simply territorial.
Yet policies exist in context: they have a prior history, linked to earlier poli-
cies, particular individuals and agencies. In the past the policy context was
largely viewed in national terms. In recent years, however, new scalar consid-
erations have become important, requiring us to rescale our lenses from the
national to also include the global. What Mahony and her colleagues (2004)
call the ‘policy creation community’ in education has been extended and
stretched to include policy agents and agencies beyond the nation. Global
agents and agencies, both public and private, are now often involved in the
gestation and establishment of education policy agendas. The involvement of
new actors in policy processes is affected by the changing public/private rela-
tionships in relation to education policies. Here, Mahony et al. (2004) speak
of the ‘privatization of policy’. The context of education policy production is
thus changing, and involves a complex rescaling across the local, regional,
national and the global. There is also a new context for education policy pro-
duction in terms of the spatial location of their rationale, often expressed
today in terms of global competitiveness and other global imperatives. This
16 Globalizing education policy
extended context has implications for analysing and understanding policy
ecologies (Weaver-Hightower 2008).
This suggests that policy is value-laden. Values pervade policy processes
and policy content. Traditionally these values articulated national interests.
However, in the past two decades, as will be discussed in greater detail in
Chapter 4, global considerations now enter the articulation of values as
never before, transforming the balance between economic efficiency and the
social equity goals of education. This shift can be observed in the discursive
policy frames of an international organization such as the OECD (Rizvi and
Lingard 2006), where market efficiency concerns now seem to override
equity ones. This economistic reframing of education policy has led to an
emphasis on policies of education as the production of human capital to
ensure the competitiveness of the national economy in the global context.
In most countries now, economic restructuring has become the metapolicy
framing proposals for education policy reform. This focus on instrumental
values has been strengthened with talk today of education’s role in the crea-
tion of a knowledge economy, whose dominant discourse has a decidedly global
character.
Yet, public policy remains a state activity and is produced in the bureaucratic
structure of the education state. The state, however, is a complex structural
arrangement with complex relationships existing between its various compo-
nent parts, say Treasury and the Education Ministry, and between the state
and civil society and the private sector in the economy. Today, however, edu-
cation policymakers within the state are also networked with policymakers in
agencies beyond the nation, including international organizations such as the
OECD, UNESCO and supranational organizations such as the EU, resulting
in the creation of an emergent global education policy community. There are
also looser policy networks that work in new scalar and cellular ways. This has
extended and reconstituted the frame of reference of the state in education
policy production.
So far from becoming obsolete in the face of global pressures, as some theo-
rists have suggested, the state now works differently in education policy pro-
duction. It is now positioned in particular ways in relation to a range of
organizations which sit outside or beyond the nation, for example the OECD,
the World Bank, UNESCO, the EU. These relationships are asymmetrical,
with different nations being positioned in different ways. For example, a
developing country relates differently to an organization such as the World
Bank than does the United States. In his late work, Bourdieu (2003) argued
that ‘national capital’ mediated global effects upon the state and nation. This
suggests that an understanding of policy processes now requires a ‘global
analysis of contemporary states’, rather than an acceptance of a ‘stateless globe’
(Therborn 2007: 91). In considering a global analysis of contemporary state
activities and relations, we need to take account of history (e.g. colonialism),
political aspirations (e.g. post-colonialism) and the state’s geopolitical loca-
tion within a changing world order.
 Conceptions of education policy 17
The emergence of what Cerny (1990) has called the ‘competition state’,
that is, the restructured managerialist state, has also affected its workings and
both the content and production of education policy. The state has tradition-
ally been associated with public sector activities. Under new managerialism,
public/private sector relationships have been reconstituted through privatiza-
tion, through the creation of quasi-markets in the public sector and through
a range of public–private partnerships (Ball 2007). However, these policy
agendas are played out in different ways in different nations. As Appadurai
(1996) has pointed out, the flows of global ideologies always come up against
local and national histories, cultures and politics; in a word, such global flows
are ‘vernacularized’ in the context of specific nations as they meet local cul-
tures and politics. This is clearly the case in respect of the privatization agenda
in education, which is articulated in India and Britain, for example, in radi-
cally different ways.
Given the flows of people (migrants, refugees) associated with contempo-
rary globalization, Appadurai (1996) has argued that the relationship between
nation (ethnic composition and national identities) and state (political and
administrative structure) has become somewhat attenuated, with each now
the project of the other. Education policy is linked to the construction of the
imagined community of the nation (Anderson 1991) and to issues of differ-
ence and national identities. While globalization has seen an enhanced
number of scapes and flows crossing national borders (Appadurai 1996), Sep-
tember 11 and subsequent events have witnessed some interruption to such
flows and more state intervention around them, an attempt at strengthening
national borders. Education policy is tied in to these state activities (Rizvi
2004) and the enhanced fear of difference, which has resulted from state poli-
cies in the so-called age of terrorism (Gilroy 2004). Such developments have
not gone unchallenged, so that there is simultaneously some policy talk about
the need for education to produce global, cosmopolitan citizens able to value
and work with difference.
The new state formation, new managerialism and new public/private
sector relations have been described as ushering in a transition from govern-
ment to governance (Rhodes 1997). This is a move away from a state-centric
approach to policy production and implementation, to the utilization of
multiple agencies and agents across the public/private divide, which is no
longer a discrete binary. This form of governance works through the discur-
sive production of self-responsibilizing individuals (Rose 1999), including
policymakers and implementers, and involves networks and partnerships of
various kinds that cut across older hierarchies. This shift from government to
governance is more developed in some nations than in others, but the ‘poly-
centric state’ (Jessop 1998) associated with it has begun to emerge in many
nations and has reconstituted public/private relationships. In a sense, we see
horizontal networked governance forms operating simultaneously with hier-
archical government forms, in a way similar to the simultaneous workings of
both Westphalian and post-Westphalian relations. The argument about a
18 Globalizing education policy
transition from government to governance is also used to depict the signifi-
cance of post-national realities in governmental processes.
Education policies interact with policies in other fields. Today, in the context of
globalization, education (as we have observed) is seen as the best economic
policy, necessary to ensure the competitiveness of the national economy. Here,
education is regarded as the producer of the required human capital. This
economizing of education policy has also seen a push for valid and reliable
comparative measures of educational outcomes, so that a nation can see where
it sits within a global field of comparison to give it a measure of its potential
global economic competitiveness. Since our earlier thoughts on education
policy (Taylor et al. 1997), such international comparisons and educational
indicators have become more influential, constituting an emergent global
policy field. OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)
has become very influential in this way.
The 2006 PISA involved 57 countries, almost twice as many as the actual
number of OECD member nations. Involvement by some nations of the
Global South in PISA is sometimes a requirement of World Bank funding.
The OECD’s World Education Indicators are also another component of the
emergence of a global field of comparative education performance, covering
many of the nations of the Global South. The OECD’s annual publication
Education at a Glance is yet another manifestation of such a field. For members
of the EU, a range of performance indicators also work as an above-the-nation
field of comparison (Grek et al. 2009). So the interactive aspect of education
policy today includes its intimate relationship to economic policy as well as a
stretching to a global field of performance comparison. Most national educa-
tional bureaucracies today have their international divisions, which deal with
global educational indicators and comparative performance measures.
Policies in education such as a focus on citizenship are at times linked to a
post-September 11 concern about strengthening the nation and are also
related to new requirements about citizenship and migration. Anti-racism
and multiculturalism, under some pressure since September 11, can also be
seen as linked to a whole range of other social policies. Education policy is
often closely aligned with science policy and so on. Indeed, governments
today attempt to achieve what they call ‘joined-up government’, building
policy coherence with a particular policy ensemble across portfolios so as, they
would contend, to better address social issues.
There is too a way today in which policies produced in other parts of the
state bureaucracy also have an educational focus. This reflects, perhaps, what
Bernstein (2001a, 2001b) has referred to as the ‘totally pedagogized society’
or what Thomson (2006) calls the ‘pedagogization of everyday life’. These
descriptors pick up on the ways in which aspects of most public policies
today have pedagogical or educational components; think, for example, of
health policy and preventative measures; think of culture, heritage and
museum policy and its pedagogical functions; think of welfare policies and
some of their training requirements. So there are important ways in which
 Conceptions of education policy 19
education policy today is also produced in ministries and bureaucracies of
state other than the specific education one. Young (1998) has spoken of the
‘de-differentiation’ of educational institutions to encapsulate these broader
social changes that carry implications, we suggest, for the study of education
policy. There are substantial openings here for education policy analysis.
Policy implementation is never straightforward. The idea of policy as edict from
on high was always a crude measure to achieve effective change. This is par-
ticularly so when more effort is put into the production of the actual policy
text than to a thought-out implementation strategy involving, amongst other
things, adequate funding and support for professional development. We dem-
onstrated the complex contestation, resistances and refractions at play between
policy text production and practice. Policy is palimpsest in the move from
production to practice and sometimes back again. We mentioned above the
issue of positionality and differing logics of practices framing the work of
policymakers and those who actually implement the policy. We also noted in
our earlier book how, if we are considering schools, the principal or head is a
very important mediator between these two sites of practice, a topic which is
the focus of Bell and Stevenson’s (2006) book on education policy.
The number of steps in the policy process from text to practice is another
factor complicating the implementation process in education. And, of course,
when professionals implement a policy they demand a degree of autonomy
and space for professional judgement in the practice of the policy. Indeed, it
is the latter understanding which has seen education policy in England
attempt to tighten state control of teacher practices, with the resultant resist-
ances and strife and lowered morale of the profession. The culture of change
in the institutions of policy production and practice is also a factor affecting
policy implementation. Globalization has also sometimes witnessed policy
‘requirements’ coming from agencies above the nation, for example a request
to a school to participate in the national PISA sample.
Policy has also become more ‘mediatized’ (Lingard and Rawolle 2004)
since we wrote our earlier policy book. This has seen the policy text itself
often being more of a public relations, glossy document, constructed to put a
positive ‘spin’ on the actual policy, trying to ‘sell’ the policy. Often apho-
risms, catchy titles, alliterations in the actual policy text reflect the mediati-
zation of the policy’s production. Policy releases today in some ways can be
seen as synonymous with media releases. The spinning of policy is perhaps
most advanced in England (Gewirtz et al. 2004), but there are aspects of this
in most education policy production in the nations of the Global North today
(see Rawolle (2005) and Blackmore and Thorpe (2003) for two Australian
examples). This mediatization of the policy text has significant implications
for implementation, as its implied readership is often the public, the elector-
ate, rather than the professionals who will be involved in its actual
implementation.
Policies result in unintended as well as intended consequences. In our earlier book
we commented: ‘Policy making is a precarious business, the consequences of
20 Globalizing education policy
which are unpredictable given the complex interrelationship of contextual
factors, different and sometimes opposing interests, linguistic ambiguities
and the variety of key players involved in policy processes’ (Taylor et al. 1997:
17). This observation about the often unintended consequences of policy,
resulting from the complexity of factors, individuals and interests involved,
holds equally true today. Perhaps the expanded scalar framing of education
policy production and the global flows of education policy discourses and
rationales have made the policy cycle even more complex, a contributing
factor in producing unintended consequences from policy implementation.
Recognition of these refractions in the policy cycle has seen some education
systems attempt to put in place tighter accountability frameworks to ensure
achievement of policy goals. Such legislated conformity can often result in a
situation where the goals of one policy are achieved, but the resulting con-
formity inhibits the achievement of other goals. Think, for example, of the
tension in the Singapore system between the focus of good academic out-
comes set against the desire for more creativity in schools (Koh 2004). In
England, there has been strong usage of performance data linked to academic
and other outcomes to measure school performance, ensure accountability and
steer school and professional practices. However, such a policy regime appears
to inhibit the achievement of the policy goal of producing creative, proactive
individuals (Hartley 2003).
The policy as numbers approach has seen the development of an expansive
infrastructure of measurement and a culture of performativity (Lyotard 1984)
pervade the schools and education system. New computer systems have expe-
dited this development. Accountability and performance measures for teach-
ers also contribute to this culture, which is associated with the new
managerialism in state practices. This is as much about being seen to perform
as actually performing. It has also technicized pedagogies and encouraged
teaching to the test and concentration on those pupils who are close to the
desired achievement levels to the neglect of others, who are often the focus of
a range of other policies to do with social inclusion (Gillborn and Youdell
2000). Further, the sorts of pedagogy necessary to the achievement of the
types of entrepreneurial individual thought necessary for the emerging knowl-
edge economy are not produced by such policies and accountability demands
(Hartley 2003; Ranson 2003; Lingard 2007). Stephen Ball (2004) has exten-
sively documented the unintended and dysfunctional effects of this culture of
performativity within English education, while Ranson (ibid.) has shown the
profound effects of the new frameworks of accountability on the practices of
teachers and the resultant thinning out of pedagogies and educational goals.
The paradox in one sense is the tension between mandating required policy
change, which implicitly denies the extent of professional autonomy in policy
practice necessary to achieve the articulated policy goals. In the period of the
last 20 years or so when education policy has become almost synonymous
with educational change and linked to what we might call fast policymaking,
education professionals have become more sceptical of reform agendas and
 Conceptions of education policy 21
thus less committed to fidelity in policy implementation, often resulting in
unintended consequences. Ball (2007: 3) speaks of a ‘confusing interplay of
trust/distrust’ inside the discourses of contemporary public sector reform that
reconstitute education systems. There is sometimes talk of ‘reform fatigue’,
regarded as a form of resistance by those implementing top-down policy and
as a form of intransigence by those wanting the policy implemented, an
example of the significance of positionality to policy stances.
To this point we have spoken generically about policy and policy processes
in education. We would stress again, however, the need to take account of the
specificities of particular national education systems and national cultures,
politics and histories. This much is evident in considering, for example, the
relationship between education policy and legislation. In some nation-states,
education policies flow from legislation that creates laws which then result in
the production of education policies. This tends to be the case, for example, in
the USA, particularly at the federal level, for example in relation to affirma-
tive action policies. It also tends to be the case in contemporary China. In the
UK and Australia, in contrast, there is not necessarily a specific legislative
framework for education policy. Thus we need to recognize the complex inter-
play between legislation and policy and the way this works its way out in
different nations.
The overarching point, though, is that globalization and the emergence of
a post-Westphalian reality mean that both policy content and policy produc-
tion processes have been affected, requiring us to rethink our approaches to
policy studies in education. The general move from Westphalian assumptions
to post-Westphalian considerations lies at the heart of our attempt to rethink
education policy studies. We are interested in showing how post-Westphalian
considerations require us to examine not only the shifting character of the
activities of the nation-state, but also the ways in which global networks and
imaginaries have become more relevant than ever before in both policy content
and policy production processes. We would also make the point that policy
has become even more important in the working of education systems in the
context of globalization. Policy at times is an expression of the specific effects
of globalization, but can also be seen as the way the state and policymakers
seek to manage and rearticulate global pressures, balanced against competing
national and local pressures and interests.
2 Perspectives on globalization

Introduction
In the previous chapter we suggested that over the past two decades there
have been major shifts in the ways in which education polices are developed,
implemented and evaluated. We indicated that the values that national
systems of education now promote through policy are no longer determined
wholly by policy actors within the nation-state, but are forged through a
range of complex processes that occur in transnational and globally net-
worked spaces. As a result, we have witnessed the reconfiguration of the
state’s authority structures, altered by new patterns of communication, com-
petition, cooperation and coercion across national boundaries. Not only has
the authority of the state been transformed, so have the processes through
which states now allocate their policies so that citizens regard them as legiti-
mate. Indeed, one of the main tasks of public policy now is the creation of
subjects predisposed towards the values it embodies. In this respect, the
media play a more significant role than ever before.
These shifts in public policy processes are historically significant. They
have resulted in a particular conception of education becoming dominant.
The so-called neoliberal view of education is widely promoted by most inter-
governmental and many non-governmental organizations and is readily
embraced by national systems. International organizations such as the World
Bank and the OECD have now become major policy players, determined to
influence national education policies and their evaluation. International prac-
tices of benchmarking and regional coordination of policies and programmes
have now, for example, become common. Policy circulation and comparison
across national boundaries occur on a regular basis. In this chapter we want to
examine how contemporary processes of globalization influence these histori-
cal shifts, and how these shifts demand new ways of interpreting and analys-
ing education policy.
Globalization, we will suggest, is a highly contested notion. It refers not
only to shifts in patterns of transnational economic activities, especially with
respect to the movement of capital and finance, but also to the ways in which
contemporary political and cultural configurations have been reshaped by
 Perspectives on globalization 23
major advances in information technologies. It is a concept that is used not
only to describe a set of empirical changes, but also to prescribe desired inter-
pretations of and responses to these changes. Within this mix, globalization
affects the ways in which we both interpret and imagine the possibilities of
our lives. In this way, the idea of globalization represents both an ideological
formation and a social imaginary that now shapes the discourses of education
policy. We describe some of the processes through which a neoliberal global
imaginary has become dominant. We argue, however, that there is nothing
inevitable about this social imaginary of globalization and that alternatives
are not only possible, but also necessary. This much became evident in 2008,
with the global financial crisis further illustrating the ideological character of
neoliberal globalization, pointing to the pressing need to imagine another
form of globalization.

Debates about globalization

It is now widely noted that contemporary processes of globalization are
reshaping most aspects of our sociality. In his book Globalization and Everyday
Life, Larry Ray (2007) goes so far as to suggest that globalization has reconsti-
tuted the concept of the social itself. It has transformed economic, political
and cultural institutions, and even the manner in which we think about our-
selves and imagine our futures. Pervasive as its reach is, the idea of globaliza-
tion does not, however, admit any simple definition. Debates about
globalization relate not only to its definition, but also to its origins and con-
sequences. These debates focus on such questions as: how globalization should
be measured; what is its chronology; what are its causes; how might we
explain the ways in which globalization contributes to various economic,
social and cultural transformations; and, more relevantly, what are its impli-
cations for public policy.
In their highly influential analysis, Held and McGrew (2005) argue that
while there are no definitive or fixed lines of contestation surrounding the
globalization debate, at least three contrasting positions can nonetheless be
identified. The globalists, they argue, view globalization as a real and signifi-
cant historical development that has fundamentally altered all aspects of our
lives. The sceptics deny this claim, and view globalization as a primarily ideo-
logical social construction that has limited explanatory value. Global enthusi-
asts such as Giddens (1990) argue that globalization involves a significant
reconfiguration of the organizing principles of social life and world order. By
eroding the constraints of time and space on patterns of social interaction,
globalists maintain, globalization creates the possibility of new modes of
transnational social organization. In contrast, sceptics believe that the claims
about globalization are based on various myths, and that the changes that are
described are largely exaggerated, and indeed there is nothing new about
global changes, which have been occurring at least since the 1880s (Hirst and
Thompson 1996).
24 Globalizing education policy
While the debate between globalists and sceptics is indeed intense, it needs
to be recognized that these categories are ideal-types, constructed as heuristic
devices that are helpful in understanding the principal lines of disagree-
ment. No one completely denies the significance of recent global changes
that have been caused by the revolutionary developments in information
and communication technologies. Nor does anyone suggest that everything
has changed, and that we live in a world that is unrecognizably different.
Much of the debate centres instead on the degree to which we are witness-
ing the ‘transformation of dominant patterns of socio-economic organiza-
tion, of territorial principles and of power’ (Held and McGrew 2000: 7).
Held and McGrew take a middle position between the globalists and scep-
tics, which they refer to as transformationalist, a perspective that suggests
that globalization has an undeniably material form insofar as it describes
shifts resulting from growing flows of trade, capital and people as well as
ideas, images and ideologies. Globalization, they argue, has produced
entrenched and enduring patterns of worldwide interconnectedness – the
stretching of social relations and activities across national spaces and regions,
resulting in almost all communities becoming enmeshed in worldwide
systems and networks of interaction.
It is recognized, however, that these shifting patterns of global interaction
do not affect all communities in the same manner. Globalization is an outcome
of various structural processes that manifest in different ways in the economy,
politics and culture (Glenn 2007). The globalized world is fundamentally
heterogeneous, unequal and conflictive, rather than integrated and seamless.
It is experienced differently by different communities, and even individuals,
and is sustained and created by people and institutions with widely different
histories and political interests. If this is so, how should we describe its various
forms? We want to suggest that it is possible to understand globalization in
at least three different ways: as an empirical fact that describes the profound
shifts that are currently taking place in the world; as an ideology that masks
various expression of power and a range of political interests; and as a social
imaginary that expresses the sense people have of their own identity and how
it relates to the rest of the world, and how it implicitly shapes their aspira-
tions and expectations.
Of course, these three ways of understanding globalization are not mutu-
ally exclusive, but describe different aspects of the same phenomenon. Much
of the confusion surrounding the idea of globalization, including the debates
between globalists and sceptics, stems from the failure to recognize it as a dis-
course that is descriptive and normative simultaneously. As an idea that has
clearly become ubiquitous, used widely around the world in policy and
popular discourses alike, globalization does not only describe how the scale
of human interaction has linked distant communities with each other, but
also often suggests a value orientation towards these changes. But beyond
these aspects of globalization, it represents a social imaginary, an awareness
of growing interconnectedness that has the potential for international
 Perspectives on globalization 25
understanding and cooperation on the one hand and reactionary politics and
xenophobia on the other (see Appadurai 2006).
At the level of description, the idea of globalization is used to understand
the various ways in which the world is becoming increasingly interconnected
and interdependent. It refers to a set of social processes that imply the ‘inexo-
rable integration of markets, nation-states and technologies to a degree never
witnessed before – in a way that is enabling individuals, corporations and
nation-states to reach round the world farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than
ever before’ (Friedman 1999: 7). Globalization has enabled people in dispa-
rate locations to experience events simultaneously. Increasing instantaneity
has ‘created a complex range of social interactions governed by the speed of
communication, thereby creating a partial collapse of boundaries within
national, cultural and political spaces’ (Ray 2007: 1). Such global integration
is far from complete and, as we have already noted, clearly benefits some com-
munities and people more than others. This suggests also that global pro-
cesses are dynamic, constantly changing in light of new economic and
political, as well as technological, developments.
It is thus impossible to periodize globalization because its different forms
are spatially and temporally specific. Historically, it can be argued that the
contemporary expressions of globalization grew out of a range of colonial
practices (Rizvi 2007), built upon the patterns of global inequalities pro-
duced by colonial conquest. Indeed, colonialism sought to bring communi-
ties across vast distances into a singular political space, controlled and
coordinated from a centre. In this way, globalization is not entirely a new
phenomenon. Scholte (2000) has suggested that an incipient globalization
was already evident in the second half of the 19th century, with the develop-
ment of capitalism, along with the emergence of more consistent and coordi-
nated practices of colonialism. Under colonial regimes, globally integrated
markets and financial systems were forged, as it became possible to transport
goods across vast distances, and as people were able to remain in touch with
each other using new communication technologies such as the telegraph.
International brand names like Campbell’s Soup, Coca-Cola and Heinz
Foods all emerged in the 1880s and, in less than 20 years, became household
names in many parts of the world. Also during this period, new international
organizations and civil society bodies were formed to regulate the market and
to promote political causes such as women’s suffrage and the campaign against
slavery.
Globalization’s more recent forms are associated with even more extensive
and profound technological developments in transport, communications and
data processing, which have altered concepts of time and space. In earlier eras
space was understood largely in terms of concrete localities. Mobility was
limited, and for most individuals it was safer to stay in the same place. Horse-
drawn coaches or ships travelled at no more than ten miles per hour, while
jetliners today can go from Singapore to New York in less than 15 hours.
Similarly, it took time for ideas to travel from one place to another. Today, it
26 Globalizing education policy
is possible to send a message around the world instantaneously, giving rise to
globalized media. It has thus become possible to lift cultural meanings out of
their original social context and transplant them in a radically different
community.
Recent developments in information and communications technology, espe-
cially the satellite technologies, have revolutionized the circulation of ideas and
information. It is now possible to transfer a large amount of money across
national boundaries with the click of a computer key, and hold a meeting of the
representatives of a transnational corporation from every continent without ever
having them leave their offices. These developments have transformed the
nature of economic activity, changing the modes of production and consump-
tion. As Harvey (1989: 7) points out, in the age of globalization, time and space
have become compressed in a number of ways, through better communication,
virtual contact, cheaper travel and digitization. Capitalism has clearly taken
advantage of these possibilities, stretching the reach of markets and bringing
the whole globe into its sphere of influence.
Improved systems of communication and information flows, and ration-
alization in the techniques of distribution, have enabled capital and com-
modities to be moved through the global market with greater speed. At the
same time, there has been a shift away from an emphasis on goods to greater
trade in services, not only in business, educational and health services, but
also in entertainment and lifestyle products. The rigidities of Fordism,
which emphasized standardization, mass production and predictable supply
and demand chains, have been replaced by a new organizational ethos that
celebrates flexibility as its foundational value, expressed most explicitly in
ideas of subcontracting, outsourcing, vertically integrated forms of admin-
istration, just-in-time delivery systems and the like, producing niche prod-
ucts for a highly differentiated market.
Harvey (1989) uses the term ‘flexible accumulation’ to characterize the
radical shift in economic activity that has taken place in the past three decades.
National boundaries no longer act as tight containers of production processes,
with fewer and fewer industries oriented towards local, regional or even
national markets. At the human level, Harvey argues, this has resulted in
increased worker insecurity, unpredictable quality and increased pace of life.
The new global economy ‘emphasizes the fleeting, the ephemeral, the fugitive
and the contingent’ (Ibid.: 171). An ‘intense period of time-space compres-
sion’, Harvey insists, has produced ‘a disorientating and disruptive impact on
political-economic practices, the balance of class power, as well as upon cul-
tural and social life’.
Recent developments in information and communication technologies
have not only resulted in new transnational modes of production, but have
also helped create a new kind of economy that is knowledge-based, post-
industrial and service-oriented. As Manuel Castells (1996) argues, globali-
zation not only embeds national production and financial and commercial
activity within worldwide networks of economic organization, through the
 Perspectives on globalization 27
existence of global markets, manifested most obviously in round-the-clock
trading across world’s financial centres; but also involves more rapid flows
of information than ever before. He suggests that the global space of flows
is facilitated by the hardware of microelectronics, telecommunications and
the like, the nodes and hubs where the information is stored, exchanged and
distributed, and by the spatial organization of the social actors who partici-
pate in information flows across national spaces. He speaks of an ‘informa-
tional mode of development’ through which global financial and
informational linkages are accelerated. The new economy, he maintains, is
thus ‘organized around global networks of capital, management, and infor-
mation, whose access to technological know-how is at the roots of produc-
tivity and competitiveness’ (ibid.: 23).
The ideas of a ‘flexible regime of accumulation’, an ‘informational mode of
development’ and ‘network society’ focus our attention on the changing
nature of work. The global economy is not only informational, but also
implies a shift from manufacturing to service jobs. In 1950, services accounted
for almost 50% of the jobs in the United States; they now represent more
than 75% (Dicken 2003: 525). Leisure and services industries, with low-paid
low-skills jobs, have been the fastest growing areas of employment. At the
other end, high-skills jobs have emerged in technology and financial services,
creating a major differentiation between not only income levels but also the
skill sets required. At both ends of the occupational structure, jobs have
increasingly become casualized and insecure. George Ritzer (2004) suggests
that the global services economy has been successful because it has maximized
the market and profitability potential provided by four operating principles:
efficiency, calculability, predictability and control through technology. But
this success has largely benefited corporations and the global elite, creating
increased levels of insecurity for workers (Sassen 1998). In European and
North American countries, labour insecurity has been intensified by the
decline of union power to negotiate conditions, and also by the experiences of
growing competition from the Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) in Asia
in particular (Lee 2002).
As global capitalism has become fragmentary, time and space have been rear-
ranged by the dictates of multinational capital. Acquiring a new form, capital-
ism has extended its reach, and now potentially shapes all aspects of human life
and relations. Traditionally, nation-states defined the social and economic con-
ditions under which people worked, but they are no longer the sole arbiter of
these conditions. Increasingly, global capital in the form of transnational corpo-
rations (TNCs) has become equally if not more important. In an era of flexible
accumulation, TNCs are able to exercise an enormous amount of power and
influence, especially in the least developed countries. Controlling economic
activity in two or more countries, TNCs benefit from globalization by maxi-
mizing the comparative advantage between countries, profiting from differences
in wage rates, market conditions and related political and fiscal regimes. They
have geographical flexibility and are hence able to shift resources and operations
28 Globalizing education policy
between different locations on a global scale. They are also the carriers of a
global political ideology that stresses such notions as a diminished role for the
state, free trade, privatization, and individualism and consumerism (Cohen and
Kennedy 2007: 176). Together, these ideas constitute what is now widely
referred to as ‘neoliberalism’ (Harvey 2005).
According to Dicken (2003), TNCs are the single most powerful force in
creating global shifts in economic activity. By definition, TNCs are spatially
dispersed and therefore have employees in many countries. The degree to
which they invest, and the proportion of employees they have in countries
other than the country in which their headquarters are located, have indeed
become indexes of the extent to which they have decentralized their opera-
tions and have become globalized. Yet their freedom to operate around the
world is greatly dependent on both favourable international trade regimes
such as those supported by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and sup-
portive national governments with taxation, infrastructure and other policies
sympathetic to capital accumulation on a global scale. Such policies include
favourable education policies that TNCs often demand from national govern-
ments in order to meet their human resource and skills needs. In order to
attract foreign direct investment from TNCs, national governments are happy
enough to oblige, creating ‘export processing zones’ (EPZs) within their
national borders, offering special tax privileges, duty-free imports, the promise
of cheap labour, limited safety and environmental regulations and perhaps
free infrastructure. EPZs effectively become transnational economic spaces,
where TNCs can exercise a great deal of power without national
responsibility.

Cultural and political shifts

This brief discussion of globalization of economic activity shows that capital-
ism requires the help of national governments to sustain its accumulation
strategies, and that it needs to create social subjects sufficiently invested in its
operations, as well as cultural practices predisposed towards its products and
services. What this also indicates is that far from the state becoming redun-
dant in a globalized economy, it is now required to play a crucial role in
developing public policies favourable to the processes of global capital accu-
mulation. In this way, global economic shifts are dialectically related to con-
temporary political and cultural shifts. The changing architecture of the state
may thus be viewed as both an expression of and a response to global eco-
nomic processes, and the cultural changes we are now experiencing are partly
a product of the consumerism promoted by the global economy.
Over most of the 1990s, many social theorists argued that the exclusive
link between the state and political authority was broken. They maintained
that sovereign states could no longer claim exclusive authority over their citi-
zens and their territory, and that recent changes in the structure of the global
economy, as well as international law, regional political associations and
 Perspectives on globalization 29
institutional formations, had altered the fundamental constitution of the state
system. In her highly influential book, The Retreat of the State, Strange (1996:
13) went so far as to argue that governments had lost much of their authority:
‘the impersonal forces of a world market, integrated over the postwar period
more by private enterprise in finance, industry and trade than by cooperative
decisions of governments, are now more powerful than states’.
Over the past decade, and especially since September 11, however, these
claims about the imminent demise of nation-states (Ohmae 1990) appear
grossly exaggerated (Rizvi 2004). Indeed, against a new discourse of security,
it has become clear that many powerful states, such as the United States, have
reasserted their authority; and that national policy authority is indispensable
in coordinating and controlling global mobility, interactions and institutions.
It has become equally clear that this new discourse of security is linked inex-
tricably to the imperatives of global capitalism. Evidently, without global
security, the structures of global capitalism cannot be sustained. But if capi-
talist and security imperatives now work off each other, they need, more than
ever before, a system of nation-states. As Wood (2003: 152) has argued, ‘the
more universal capitalism has become, the more it has needed an equally uni-
versal system of reliable local states’.
The need for the state can also be demonstrated by looking at the recent US
rhetoric of the ‘war on terrorism’ (Buck-Morss 2006). It has been suggested
that the ‘war on terrorism’ is a war without borders, because the terrorists
work across national boundaries. However, as we have seen, the main targets
of this war are nation-states, albeit ‘weak’ ones such as Afghanistan and Paki-
stan. This is so because it is argued that it is the weak states that inevitably
harbour terrorists. Stronger states, on the other hand, can more readily control
the movement and actions of their citizens. Global capitalism thus requires
strong, reliable nation-states, which do not pose great risks to global eco-
nomic activity but can influence and coordinate the behaviour of their citi-
zens. In the supposed interests of security, nation-states are able to exercise
considerable coercive power in order to produce the social conditions neces-
sary for capital accumulation, including greater educational provision and
individual dispositions favourable to market activity.
Wood (2003: 140) maintains that ‘globalization has certainly been marked
by a withdrawal of the state from its social welfare and ameliorative functions;
and, for many observers, this has more than anything else created an impres-
sion of the state’s decline’. But this is misleading, for it is impossible for
global capitalism and organizations to dispense with many of the social func-
tions performed by the state, such as security, social stability and infrastruc-
tural provisions, that have proven essential for economic success. Global
capitalism depends more than ever on ‘a system of multiple and more or less
sovereign states’. Wood (ibid.: 141) insists:

The very fact that ‘globalization’ has extended capital’s purely economic
powers far beyond the range of any single nation state means that global capital
30 Globalizing education policy
requires many nation states to perform the administrative and coercive func-
tions that sustain the system of property and provide the kind of day-to-day
regularity, predictability, and legal order that capitalism needs more than any
other social form.

This suggests that issues of economic and political globalization are inextrica-
bly linked, and that public policy, including education, is now increasingly
required to serve the interests of global capitalism.
Within the system of modern nation-states, considerable cultural impor-
tance was always attached to education. Educational systems carried the nar-
ratives of the nation. As Gellner (1983) points out, it was mass educational
systems that provided a common framework of understanding, enhancing the
processes of modernization. Through diffusion of ideas, meanings, myths and
rituals, citizens were able to ‘imagine’ the nation, and filter conceptions of
their ‘other’. While education continues to serve this function, many globali-
zation theorists (for example Steger (2003)) suggest that the nation-state faces
a more difficult task in performing it. This is so because the lives of its citi-
zens are now inextricably linked to cultural formations that are produced in
faraway places, and the dispersion of people implies multiple senses of belong-
ing and loyalty.
Under the conditions of globalization, the assumption of discrete national
cultural formations can no longer be taken for granted, as there is now an
ever-increasing level of cultural interactions across national and ethnic com-
munities. With the sheer scale, intensity, speed and volume of global cultural
communication, the traditional link between territory and social identity is
now much more complicated; people now more readily choose to detach their
identities from particular times, places and traditions. Not only the global
media, but also greater transnational mobility of people, have had a ‘plural-
izing’ impact on identity formation, producing a variety of hyphenated iden-
tities which are less ‘fixed or unified’ and which are hybrid in character. This
has led to the emergence of a ‘global consciousness’ which may represent the
cultural basis of an ‘incipient civil society’ (Hall 1996: 332).
Among the many factors that have contributed to the development of this
global consciousness, the increased movement of people across national
boundaries has played an important role. Characterized by a new interna-
tional division of labour, the activities of transnational corporations, the
effects of liberal trade and capital flow policies, together with better commu-
nication and cheaper transport, a globalizing economy means that a greater
number of people inevitably cross national borders (Cohen 1997: 157). The
movement of people – for family visits, business, international education,
intermittent stays abroad and sojourning – has given rise to new global sensi-
bilities and imaginations, leading to cultural practices based on what Tom-
linson (2000) refers to as ‘complex interconnectivity’.
Increasing levels of mobility and the intensification of economic,
political and cultural interconnectivity have created conditions for the
 Perspectives on globalization 31
development of ‘global cities’, ‘whose significance resides more in their
global, rather than in their national role’ (Cohen 1997: 157). However, as
the scale of mobility from the developing to developed countries has become
a major problem for global cities such as London and New York, it is only
the nation-state that has the capacity to control the volume of flows of
people through policies that encourage the mobility of global capital and
the cosmopolitanization of city spaces, on the one hand, but to discourage
the unfettered movement of people, especially unskilled workers and refu-
gees, on the other (Sassen 1998).
What this discussion shows is that we are not so much experiencing the
demise of the system of nation-states as witnessing its transformation. What
is challenged is the traditional conception of the state as the fundamental
unit of world order, a unitary phenomenon characterized by its relative
homogeneity with a set of singular purposes. A fragmented policy arena,
permeated by transnational networks as well as domestic agencies and
forces, has replaced this system. As Held and McGrew (2005: 11) argue:
‘the contemporary era has witnessed layers of governance spreading within
and across political boundaries’, transforming state sovereignty into a shared
exercise of power. With the emergence of new patterns of political intercon-
nectedness, ‘the scope of policy choices available to individual governments
and the effectiveness of many traditional policy instruments tends to decline’
(ibid.: 13). The transformed state is now increasingly located within various
webs of global and regional networks that not only challenge the traditional
authority of the state, but also require the state to perform new functions of
policy coordination and the development and delivery of programmes.
Recent shifts in education policy are arguably located within this changing
architecture of the state and cultural practices, responding to the demands
of global capitalism, promoting a particular ideology consistent with its
political interests.

Globalization as an ideology
Globalization represents a range of loosely connected ideas designed to
describe new forms of political-economic governance based on the extension
of market relationships globally. It replaces an earlier view of governance that
implied the provision of goods and services as a way of ensuring social well-
being of a national population. In contrast, the dominant view of globaliza-
tion – widely referred to as ‘neo-liberal’ – is associated with a preference for
the minimalist state, concerned to promote the instrumental values of compe-
tition, economic efficiency and choice, to deregulate and privatize state func-
tions. As Peck and Tickle (2002: 394) maintain, as a constellation of ideas,
neoliberal globalization promotes and normalizes a ‘growth-first approach’ to
policy, relegating social welfare concerns as secondary. It rests on a pervasive
naturalization of market logics, justifying them on the grounds of efficiency
and even ‘fairness’. It emphasizes the notion of choice, and privileges ‘lean’
32 Globalizing education policy
government, privatization, deregulation and competitive regimes of resource
allocation over the notions of a centralized state. It stresses global regimes of
‘free trade’, applying to both goods and services, even to services such as health
and education that were traditionally marked by their highly national
character.
In much of the recent literature, neoliberal globalization is presented as
simply a description of global processes, as an objective set of social processes,
implying their historical inevitability. But arguably neoliberalism is but one
way of interpreting globalization, designed to steer a particular formation of
the subjective or phenomenological awareness of people. It not only encour-
ages a particular ‘reading’ of recent changes in global economy and culture – a
specific way of interpreting the ‘facts’ of global interconnectivity and interde-
pendence – but arguably presupposes a set of values attached to that ‘reading’,
which directs us towards a consciousness of the world as a single space in
which our problems are said to be interconnected; requiring a cosmopolitan-
ism that demands us to recognize our interdependence, but from a particular
point of view. Cohen and Kennedy (2000) refer to this phenomenon as ‘glo-
balism’, which they contrast with globalization which ‘mainly refers to a
series of objective changes in the world that are partly outside us’. Globalism,
on the other hand, suggests a set of value preferences – ‘changes associated
with globalization so that they are now incorporated into our emotions and
our ways of thinking about everyday life’ (ibid.: 58).
This distinction between objective and subjective interpretations of glo-
balization is helpful, but perhaps too simplistic, because the norms with
which we interpret the world necessarily affect the ways in which we describe
that world. These objective and subjective dimensions are therefore insepara-
ble. In this way, many popular discourses on globalization found in both cor-
porate and academic literatures can be viewed as highly ideological. One of
the main problems with these discourses is that they treat globalization as ‘a
pre-given thing, existing outside of thought’ (Smith 2000: 21) with its own
developmental logic. In so doing, Smith argues, they privilege economic over
political and cultural processes. But this mode of analysis pays scant attention
to the subjectivities of people, how these are formed, and how communities
develop a sense of global interconnectivity and interdependence. In this
manner, these discourses lack an effective theory of political agency, or any
other kind of agency. They do not view global processes as ever-changing
products of human practices, but interpret them instead as expressions of the
deeper logic of economic imperatives, failing to come to terms with their
‘situatedness’ in the world of people, communities and nations alike. Time-
space compression, for example, does not occur independently of the ways
people experience their social location and relations, and this is not simply a
product of some deeper structural imperatives.
Neoliberal discourses on globalization, and indeed some of the accounts
critical of them, run the risk of treating global processes as historically inevi-
table, as a kind of juggernaut, which people and nations simply have to come
 Perspectives on globalization 33
to terms with and negotiate as best they can. These discourses are based on a
politics of meaning that appear to seek to accommodate people and nations to
a certain taken-for-grantedness about the ways the global economy operates
and the manner in which culture, crises, resources and power formations must
be filtered through their universal logic. They thus ‘ontologize’ the global
market logic, creating global subjects who are asked to consider policy options
through its presupposed conceptual prism, which revolves around such market
principles as free trade; the production of profits through greater productiv-
ity; a minimalist role for the state; a deregulated labour market; and flexible
forms of governance. In this way, the term ‘globalization’ is deeply ideologi-
cal, implying certain power relations, practices and technologies, playing a
‘hegemonic role in organizing and decoding the meaning of the world’ (Schi-
rato and Webb 2003: 1). This is what Bourdieu (2003) has referred to as a
performative usage of the concept of globalization – one taken to mean neo-
liberal globalization, which elides other more critical accounts of recent global
transformations.
An ideology is a highly contested theoretical construct. In popular par-
lance, it refers to a set of ideas to which one is totally committed, even if those
ideas have no basis in fact or empirical reality. It is a system of widely shared
beliefs, guiding norms and values, and ideals accepted as truth by a group of
people. The dominant account of globalization contains an unmistakable ide-
ological dimension filled with a range of norms, values, claims, beliefs and
narratives which, while they are not always grounded in truth and are often
inconsistent, are nonetheless sufficiently plausible to suggest historical accu-
racy. The debate about whether globalization is good or bad arguably takes
place within the arena of ideology. It has become a strong ideological dis-
course, so much so that it is, as Steger (2003: 96) points out, ‘notoriously
difficult to resist and repel because it has on its side powerful social forces that
have already pre-selected what counts as “real”, and that it therefore shapes
the world accordingly’. It suggests that globalization of the economy in par-
ticular is inevitable and irreversible. It implies moreover that nobody is in
charge of globalization; and that it benefits everyone. Now it is possible to
contest each of these claims, but as ideological assertions they are often
assumed, rather than put forward as claims to be tested or debated.

The social imaginary of globalization

If many of the recent claims about globalization and its implications for
practice are ideological, the question remains as to how it is that people
internalize them. How do these claims become a part of their world view,
shaping the ways in which they think about their social relations and forge
conceptions of their future? In short, how is ideology translated into actual
material practices steering our sense of possibilities and conceptions of the
future? In what follows, we make a distinction between ideology and a
social imaginary to understand this process of translation. This is not an
34 Globalizing education policy
absolute distinction, but is nonetheless useful for understanding how the
ideology of globalization is reshaping people’s social imaginary, in ways
that lead to the development of a heightened sense of what Robertson
(1992) calls a ‘global consciousness’. Globalization has produced not only
material economic shifts, but also a changing sense of identities and
belonging. It has done this, we argue, through the development of a social
imaginary about how the world is becoming interconnected and interde-
pendent, an imaginary that now guides and shapes people’s sense of the
options for organizing their conduct.
According to the Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor, the idea of a social
imaginary involves a complex, unstructured and contingent mix of the empir-
ical and the affective; not a ‘fully articulated understanding of our whole situ-
ation within which particular features of our world become evident’
(Taylor 2004: 21). In this sense, the idea of social imaginary is akin to Pierre
Bourdieu’s notion of ‘habitus’ (1986), or Raymond Williams’s idea of ‘struc-
tures of feeling’ (1977). A social imaginary is a way of thinking shared in a
society by ordinary people, the common understandings that make everyday
practices possible, giving them sense and legitimacy. It is largely implicit,
embedded in ideas and practices, carrying within it deeper normative notions
and images, constitutive of a society. It involves (Taylor 2004: 23):

… something much broader and deeper than the intellectual schemes people
may entertain when they think about social reality in a disengaged mode. I am
thinking, rather, of the ways in which people imagine their social existence, how
they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows,
the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and
images that underlie these expectations.

A social imaginary is thus carried in images, myths, parables, stories, legends

and other narratives and most significantly, in the contemporary era, the mass
media, as well as popular culture. It is through this shared social imaginary
that relations and sociability among strangers within and across societies
become possible.
Taylor maintains, however, that a social imaginary is embedded not only in
everyday notions and images, but also in theories and ideologies and, by
implication, in policies. For Taylor, the distinction between social theory and
social imaginary is highly significant. Theories are often in possession of a
relatively few people, while a social imaginary is more broadly accepted, ren-
dering possible a widely shared sense of legitimacy, without which people
might not be able to work collectively towards common goals. Theories
emerge out of an established social imaginary, even if they suggest an alterna-
tive way of interpreting the world. While they might start off as theories held
by a small group of people, to be successful, theories must infiltrate the wider
community and then the whole society, creating a new sense of imaginary.
For a theory to become part of a social imaginary, it must evolve into a kind
 Perspectives on globalization 35
of common understanding that enables us to carry out our everyday social
practices: that is, ‘a sense of how things usually go, but (this is) interwoven
with an idea of how they ought to go, of what missteps would invalidate the
practice’ (Taylor 2004: 24).
It is important to stress, then, that a social imaginary is not simply inher-
ited and already determined for us, it is rather in a constant state of flux. It is
thus an enabling concept that describes the ways people act as world-making
collective agents within a given symbolic matrix that refuses an ‘ontology of
determinism’ (Castoriadis 1987). It is a creative force in the making of social-
historical worlds, a force that has to be attentive to the ‘signs of the time’ and
interpret all those particular, rather uneven and emotionally charged, events
that make up everyday life (Maffesoli 1993). A social imaginary thus involves
a collective social force that is not only specific to time and space, but is also
always multiple and highly contested within and across particular communi-
ties. It is through the collective sense of imagination that a society is created,
given coherence and identity, but is also subjected to social change, both
mundane and radical.
Taylor’s analysis suggests that neoliberal discourses of globalization are
embedded within a social imaginary; and that their transformation requires
the exercise of collective political agency, in imagining them differently. Sig-
nificantly, then, a social imaginary exists in a double sense. It exists in ideo-
logical representations of existing discursive and material practices, but it is
also the means by which individuals and communities are able to understand
their identities and their place in the world differently, able to suggest trans-
formations of the prevailing social order. The transformation of a social imag-
inary is of course never easy to achieve, requiring a whole range of formal and
informal strategies to shift the popular images that people associate with dis-
course and practices that are sometimes expressed explicitly, but mostly not
(Steger 2008).
Arjun Appadurai (1996) has analysed the role of a social imaginary in the
formation of subjectivities within the globalizing context in which we now
live, a context that is characterized by diffusion of social images, ideas and
ideologies across communities around the world. This diffusion is facili-
tated by electronic media, mass migration and the mobility of capital and
labour, creating conditions through which most societies around the world
are becoming culturally diverse and hybrid, and cannot therefore avoid, in a
fundamental sense, engaging with social relations transnationally. As Appa-
durai (ibid.: 14) puts it, the ‘system of nation-states is no longer the only
game in town’, not only insofar as international governance and transna-
tional economic and political traffic are concerned, but also with respect to
cultural formations and identities. Any attempt to rethink the role of policy
in the era of globalization can no longer overlook how our social imaginary
is being reshaped simultaneously by both global and local processes, and
how we might critically engage with these processes in order to develop
alternatives to their hegemonic expressions.
36 Globalizing education policy
In the global era, we live amid a multiplicity of social imaginaries. We live
in a world in which ideas and ideologies, people and capital and images and
messages are constantly in motion, transforming the vectors of our social
imaginaries. We have access to many social imaginaries, in addition to those
that are nationally prescribed. Each has a different point of origin, different
axis, and travels through different routes and is constituted by different rela-
tionships to institutional structures in different communities and nations.
Like Taylor, Appadurai (2001: 6) maintains that imagination as a collective
social fact in the era of globalization has a split character: ‘On the one hand, it
is in and through the imagination that modern citizens are disciplined and
controlled – by states, markets and other powerful interests. But it is also the
faculty through which collective patterns of dissent and new designs for col-
lective life emerge.’
Thus, competing social imaginaries now exist side by side in a constant
state of political struggle. There are thus different and competing ways of
interpreting the realities of global interconnectivity and interdependence,
and of deriving education policy implications from them. Richard Falk
(1993), for example, has pointed to a distinction between ‘globalization from
above’ and ‘globalization from below’, that is, the distinction between neolib-
eral globalization advocated by the transnational corporate elite and that prof-
fered by a whole range of social movements committed to global justice and
democracy. But these competing imaginaries do not exist in a neutral space,
but in a context that is produced not only by the residual forces of colonial-
ism, but also by contemporary global dynamics of power relations through
which a particular imaginary has become dominant. Over the past three
decades, as we have already noted, neoliberalism has become ascendant, in the
terms of which most recent accounts of globalization and their implications
for public policy appear to be couched. These accounts are expressed in a lan-
guage that is increasingly magisterial, demanding the implicit consent of
national governments and ordinary people alike.
On the one hand, the neoliberal social imaginary of globalization is
designed to forge a shared implicit understanding of the problems to
which policies are presented as solutions, seeking a sense of political legit-
imacy. On the other hand, it is designed to discipline people and is aimed
at guiding and shaping their conduct. The French philosopher Michel
Foucault (1991) refers to this as bio-power. Foucault argues that govern-
ments are now less interested in imposing laws and more in engaging in
tactics and strategies to ensure consent through policies, both symbolic
and material. He argues that governments are deeply concerned with the
art of government … with securing the fragile link between ruler and ruled,
through the ‘art of manipulating relations of power’ (ibid.: 90). In terms
of Easton’s definition of policy as the ‘authoritative allocation of values’,
governments secure their authority by allocating values through attempts
to forge people’s subjectivities in terms of a dominant social imaginary.
In this way, the processes of allocation – the tactics and strategies designed
 Perspectives on globalization 37
to secure popular legitimacy for public policies – become just as impor-
tant as the values articulated in the policy text.

Processes of policy allocation

So, how has the neoliberal social imaginary become globally dominant in the
development and promotion of public policies? To answer this question, we
need to point first to the strategies and tactics governments have employed.
These have included the highly ideological claim that there is no longer any
choice but to pursue neoliberal policies, an idea captured in the acronym
TINA (There Is No Alternative). Furthermore, most government reports, not
only in the countries of the Global North but also of the South, now begin
with a customary framing discourse of the ‘global imperatives’, of how best to
meet the challenges of globalization, or take advantage of the opportunities it
offers (Spring 1998). This discourse has been particularly salient in accounts
of education systems – the problems they confront and policy reforms that are
needed to solve them.
It is not possible, however, to explain the emergence of the neoliberal
social imaginary by pointing to the strategies and tactics of governments
alone. A range of complicated global processes has also been involved,
resulting from the new networks of transnational communication and inter-
actions. Indeed, it can be argued that these processes have largely shaped
national strategies of public policy allocation. Each of these processes has
involved a different pattern of political activity, and each has had varied
consequences for educational systems, but together they help to explain
how a neoliberal social imaginary of globalization has become globally nor-
malized, informing education policy deliberations around the world,
helping to steer them in a particular direction.
The neoliberal imaginary of globalization has not emerged in a political
vacuum, but in a context of the global flows of policy ideas. With revolution-
ary developments in transport, communication and information technologies,
these flows have never been greater, mediated by the global mobility of
people. People move for a wide variety of reasons, from tourism and immigra-
tion to education, trade and business, creating new diasporas. The elite among
these diasporas are no longer reluctant to intervene in the policy processes of
countries that they have left to settle elsewhere. New technologies enable
them to remain connected. In relation to this, Appadurai (1996) talks of a
postnational or diasporic public sphere. An inevitable consequence of this
mobility is an increased circulation of ideas, images and ideologies across
national spaces, and the emergence of transnational policy networks around a
particular set of policy ideas. These ideas are reproduced in business schools
that an increasingly large number of international students now attend and
that produce corporate leaders. As Waters (1995: 82) points out, these ideas
are embedded in Master of Business Administration programmes, form the
basis of research on organizational and commercial questions, and are ‘written
38 Globalizing education policy
up as easily digestible popular books that can be peddled to managers as
manuals for organizational transformation’. These are thus located within
what Thrift (2005) refers to as the ‘cultural circuit’ of global capitalism.
In the formation and promotion of the neoliberal social imaginary, global
media have also played a major role. The media have become centrally impor-
tant in the processes of policy production. The production of policy texts
inside the state has become increasingly ‘mediatized’ as an element of what
Fairclough (2000) calls the ‘mediatization’ of politics and policy. More jour-
nalists are involved in the finessing of policy documents to place the appropri-
ate spin on them to ensure positive renditions in the media of policy
development. This has seen a ‘glossification’ of policy texts. Fairclough (ibid.:
157) suggests that language is central to the practices of government, but the
involvement of journalists in policy text production brings another logic of
practice to bear on the texts produced (Bourdieu 1996).
At the global level, Appadurai (1996) has spoken of ideoscapes, which are
constituted as ‘concatenations of images’ which circulate throughout the
world in a profoundly political manner. While it is of course possible for both
neoliberal ideologies and ideologies opposed to them to circulate freely
through global media spaces, education policies have globally converged
towards a particular concatenation of neoliberal ideas, despite some opposi-
tion from many sources. This concatenation is evident in the processes of
policy borrowing, modelling, transfer, diffusion, appropriation and copying
that occur across the boundaries of nation-states and which lead to universal-
izing tendencies in thinking about educational reform responsive to the chal-
lenges of globalization (Phillips and Ochs 2004).
These tendencies are strengthened by the work of intergovernmental
organizations (IGOs), whose policy deliberation and evaluation are increas-
ingly couched in neoliberal terms. We (Rizvi and Lingard 2006) have shown
how the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD),
traditionally a site for the free exchange of educational ideas, has now become
a policy player in its own right, influencing, cajoling and directing member
states towards a predetermined social imaginary. The OECD (1985: 3) once
viewed itself not ‘as a supranational organization but a place where policy-
makers and decision-makers can discuss their problems, where governments
can compare their points of view’. But in more recent years it has evolved as
an instrument of policy advocacy, promoting a range of neoliberal ideas about
the global economy and its implications for public policy. It has worked hard
to promote a particular view about how best to restructure the public sector
to meet the requirements of the global economy. It has argued that:

The common agenda that has developed encompasses efforts to make govern-
ments at all levels more efficient and cost-effective, to increase the quality of
public services, to enable the public sector to respond flexibly and more strategi-
cally to external changes, and to support and foster national economic
performance.
 Perspectives on globalization 39
The OECD’s advocacy for the policies of deregulation and privatization has
been based squarely on its ideological beliefs about the role of the state, free
trade and individual enterprise. It would be a mistake, however, to assume
that the OECD’s audiences throughout the world receive, interpret and expe-
rience its policy ideas in the same way. Indeed, the processes of reception have
always been much more complicated than this. As Bourdieu (1999: 221) has
noted:

The fact that texts circulate without their context, that – to use my terms – they
don’t bring with them the field of production of which they are a product, and
the fact that recipients, who are themselves in a different field of production, re-
interpret the texts in accordance with the structure of the field of reception, are
facts that generate some formidable misunderstandings and that can have good
or bad consequences.

Nevertheless, the policy proposals the OECD has circulated are largely
couched within the neoliberal social imaginary, as indeed are the ideas pro-
moted by other major international organizations concerned with education
policy such as the World Bank and, increasingly, also UNESCO, which once
promoted a contrasting perspective but which has now joined forces with
IGOs created specifically to address economic issues.
It needs to be noted that the circulation of policy ideas often takes place
against the backdrop of a range of international and regional settlements,
both formal and informal. These settlements are expressed in terms of con-
sensus and conventions, and involve agreements and commitments that
expose national policy practices to external dictates and scrutiny. They
reduce the policy autonomy that nation-states possess to set their own policy
priorities. Examples of conventions include agreements on human rights,
democratic elections and social benefits and educational opportunities.
While conventions are supposedly entered into voluntarily, there is often a
great deal of pressure on countries to conform to particular ideologies. In
recent years, almost all conventions have been framed in ways that make
them consistent with market principles located within the social imaginary
of neoliberalism.
Perhaps the best example of a consensus that promoted a neoliberal view
of the economic and social order is the Washington Consensus. The term
‘Washington Consensus’ was coined by John Williamson in 1990 to refer to
‘the lowest common denominator of policy advice being addressed by the
Washington-based institutions to Latin American countries’ (Williamson
1990: 1). Williamson viewed the Washington Consensus as an example of
an ‘intellectual convergence’ towards a set of beliefs about the need for and
content of economic reform. George Soros (1998) refers to these beliefs as
‘market fundamentalism’ and suggests that their worldwide popularity rep-
resents their success in the battle of policy ideas. These policy ideas, accepted
by most Washington-based development agencies, include the values of
40 Globalizing education policy
macroeconomic discipline, trade openness and market-friendly microeco-
nomic policies. In the field of education, this has implied fiscal discipline
about educational funding, and a redirection of public expenditure policies
towards fields offering both high economic returns and the potential to
improve income distribution, such as primary education, as well as privati-
zation and deregulation.
Through most of the 1990s, the Washington Consensus was used by
development agencies in the Global North to persuade debt-ridden coun-
tries of the Global South that they had no other choice but to follow its
dictates. Already captured by a social imaginary, most Western-trained
economists in the Global South had no difficulty embracing policy pro-
posals that assumed that poverty reduction and economic redistribution
were impossible without trade openness and the deregulation of economic
activity. And despite doubts expressed by many non-government organi-
zations (NGOs) and some governments, the Washington Consensus
reigned supreme in the field of development. It served to institutionalize
everywhere the neoliberal notion that governments were highly inefficient
in promoting growth, and even in addressing the problems of social ine-
qualities. It promoted the ideology that only markets could solve the
intractable problems facing societies. Markets thus defined the limits of
national politics, by exerting an unprecedented amount of influence in
shaping policies and in allocating funds for social and educational pro-
grammes. The policy role of nation-states was thus redefined as a facilita-
tor of markets rather than an instrument that steered them or mediated
their effects.
The Washington Consensus, of course, never delivered the kind of benefits
it had promised. Towards the end of the 1990s, many policy experts, organi-
zations and governments began to view the Washington Consensus as a rela-
tive failure. Williamson (2000) himself spoke of the need to develop a new
discourse of a Post-Washington Consensus (PWC), which admitted some of
the limitations of the Structural Adjustment Programs to which the Wash-
ington Consensus had given rise, and through which national governments in
the Global South were forced to deregulate their economies, leaving them
open to the exploitative practices of global capitalism. However, so entrenched
is the neoliberal imaginary that the formulation of a PWC remained tied to
the same ideological assumptions. As Jayasuriya (2001: 1) maintains, the
PWC ‘should be more properly viewed as an attempt to develop a political
institutional framework to embed the structural adjustment policies of the
Washington Consensus’. This discussion shows that conventions that govern-
ments sign are never neutral with respect to differing interests, but are located
within a social imaginary that seeks to divorce its key assumptions from the
murky terrains of political contestation, rendering them beyond critical scru-
tiny and challenge.
The neoliberal social imaginary has not, however, remained uncontested.
The 2001 Porto Alegre Declaration, signed by Iberian and Latin American
 Perspectives on globalization 41
activist groups, for example, is radically opposed to its tenets (Gret and Sin-
tomer 2005). The Declaration objects, for example, to deregulation policies
in education, citing fears that these might lead to the removal of legal, politi-
cal, fiscal and educational quality controls, and to national governments aban-
doning their social responsibilities for combating social inequalities. It
maintains, furthermore, that deregulation policies serve only to weaken
national sovereignty and erode some of the cultural values that define and
sustain communities. Also, it suggests that in the field of education, deregu-
lation benefits only those who already possess the resources to access educa-
tion. In the battle over competing social imaginaries, however, the Porto
Alegre Declaration has largely been sidelined by national governments facing
greater pressure from IGOs. Even the Brazilian government has been unable
to resist this pressure, developing educational policies that are mostly in line
with the dictates of neoliberalism.
In the countries of the Global South, these policies have led to the consoli-
dation of ideological power that has a transparently global character, based on
a common set of ideological beliefs about the capitalist path of accumulation
and appropriation of new resources and new labour power. This can be shown
by pointing to the politics of international aid. To policymakers in poorer
countries, the offer of aid and grants represents a major dilemma. On the one
hand, it is almost impossible for the countries in severe economic difficulties
to reject the offer of help, and yet this often means having to accept alienating
and exploitative policies that have perhaps little chance of success in the
longer term. Ultimately, these policies require nation-states to concede some
of their autonomy, and to pass legislation designed more to create conditions
conducive to investment of international capital than to the improvement of
social conditions and educational opportunities.
It is not only the international lending agencies that demand neoliberal
restructuring of educational systems as a condition of loans to developing
countries; the transnational corporations (TNC) offering to invest in them do
so as well. The relationship between TNCs and governments is a complex
one, involving dynamics of both conflict and cooperation. Dicken (2003)
argues that sometimes governments and TNCs may be rivals, but they may
also collude with one another. In a global economy, governments need TNCs
to help them in the process of material wealth creation, while TNCs require
nation-states to ‘provide the necessary supportive infrastructures, both physi-
cal and institutional, on the basis of which they can pursue their strategic
objectives’ (ibid.: 276). TNCs and governments are often involved in a bar-
gaining process as each tries to get maximum advantage from the other. As
Dicken (ibid.: 276) observes, ‘states have become increasingly locked into a
cut-throat competitive bidding process for investments; a process which pro-
vides TNCs with the opportunity to play off one bidder against another’.
Some of this bargaining involves the demand by TNCs that education be
restructured, with policies conducive to creating a human resource pool they
need as low-cost labour.
42 Globalizing education policy
Conclusion
What this discussion indicates is that there is no single process that has
resulted in neoliberalism becoming a dominant social imaginary of globaliza-
tion, but that this has occurred through a range of historically specific and
interrelated processes which include: the global circulation of ideas and ide-
ologies; international conventions and consensus that steer educational poli-
cies in a particular direction; cooperation and competition inherent, for
example, in the practices of international trade in education; formal bilateral
and multilateral contracts between systems which often involve a high degree
of coercion. The circulation of ideas and ideologies through social and policy
networks has become a noted feature of the global community. Conventions
involve agreements in which educational systems expose their own policy
practices to external scrutiny, agreeing to subscribe to an ideological consen-
sus forged multilaterally. In a globally interconnected order, both coopera-
tion and competition can generate similarities in educational policies, which
different systems might pursue to achieve market advantage. A contract is an
agreement between two or more parties to pursue policies that have been
negotiated bilaterally or multilaterally. And finally, coercion involves an
imposition of policies upon a weaker system under threat of sanctions. Each of
these global processes not only plays a significant role in driving national
systems of education towards a similar policy outlook, but also has served to
institutionalize the neoliberal imaginary of education.
It needs to be said again, however, that these global processes do not affect
all educational systems in the same way. They are filtered through particular
national political and cultural traditions, as well as the specific ways in which
policymakers engage with global pressures. If this is so, policies are still made
by national governments, but in ways that cannot overlook global processes.
We have noted in this chapter that globalization has spawned a highly con-
tested debate, but a particular social imaginary of globalization has become
dominant. While this is so, we have also pointed to the risks associated with
naturalizing the concept of globalization. Our view is thus consistent with
that of Ball (2007: 6), who argues that a transitive meaning of globalization
helps in overcoming the temptation to reify globalization as the explanation
for certain contemporary education policy developments and pushes us instead
to seek for the organizational and individual sources of emergent policy dis-
courses on a global scale. Dale’s (1999) attempt to document the mechanisms
of globalization stems from a similar motivation to avoid reifying globaliza-
tion as the ‘cause’ of education policy developments.
It is clear that technology has facilitated the formation of extended policy
networks and communities, which now sit within and across new spatial rela-
tions (rescaling) of the local, national, regional and global and facilitate rela-
tions between national and provincial arms of the state, as well with
international organizations of various kinds. These networks and communi-
ties are more than just a policy-generating community, which has also been
 Perspectives on globalization 43
broadened through the networking of policymakers around the globe; they
include participants in all aspects of the politics of policy processes. We have
noted that international and supranational agencies such as the OECD, the
World Bank, UNESCO and the EU now play an enhanced role in policy
processes, and have often been central to the development of the emergent
global education policy field. While all policies self-construct their own con-
texts, the involvement of more international agencies has seen context con-
structed as global. Indeed, competitiveness within the global economy is
articulated as a central rationale for education policy changes. As noted earlier,
to facilitate an understanding of this policy field we also need a global analysis
of contemporary states and their location geopolitically, as well as of their
specific histories.
An examination of the ways in which education policies have been reshaped
in neoliberal terms, demands new ways of carrying out education policy anal-
ysis, linked not only to local and national considerations, but also to global
forces, connections and imaginaries (Burawoy et al. 2000). This raises a range
of new theoretical and methodological issues about education policy analysis.
It is to a discussion of these issues that we now turn in Chapter 3.
3 Globalizing education policy analysis

Introduction
Working with an ecumenical definition of policy as the ‘authoritative alloca-
tion of values’, we have argued that an awareness of the processes of globaliza-
tion demands paying attention to the effects these processes have upon the
location of political authority, practices of allocation via a reconstituted state
at the national level, and the framing of policy by discourses which, while
they often have their gestation in various global networks, are negotiated and
rearticulated at regional, national, provincial and local levels. These changes
have been referred to as the rescaling of politics (Paul 2005). Such rescaling,
we have noted, has affected both policy content and the processes of policy
production. There have emerged new globally networked education policy
communities. Changes associated with the processes of globalization raise a
range of new political, theoretical and methodological issues, demanding a
reconsideration of how we ought to carry out education policy analysis.
We have noted, however, the danger of reification, which often lurks in
considerations of globalization in education policy studies; that is, a tempta-
tion to explain policy shifts simply as a causal outcome of global processes. It
is mistaken, we have argued, to focus resolutely on the structural transforma-
tions that globalization represents, without recognizing the role that politi-
cal agencies play in the creation of discursive and material practices associated
with education policy. We have suggested instead that changing histories of
global relations in education policy need to be understood in their specific
cultural and political contexts, with a focus on the institutions, organizations
and individuals who are the bearers of globalized education policy discourses.
Good education policy analysis thus involves an understanding of how glo-
balization effects actually work, rather than reifying globalization as the
blanket cause of specific policy developments (Dale 1999, 2006). In this
chapter we explore some of the major characteristics of such ‘good policy
analysis’ in education, as a backdrop for a discussion in subsequent chapters
of recent shifts in education policy thinking in a number of areas in a range
of different locations. Our approach to policy analysis departs from tradi-
tional rationalist and interpretivist approaches and uses instead resources
 Globalizing education policy analysis 45
from critical, post-structural and post-colonial theories to suggest ways of
globalizing studies of education policy.

Purposes and positionalities

We begin this exploration with the recognition that there is no recipe for car-
rying out policy analysis in education (Ozga 2000). In part, the appropriate
approach to adopt will depend on the nature of the policy being analysed.
Here one could contrast the articulated policies in education of governments
with strong reform agendas with policies produced within a school concern-
ing, for example, student dress and behaviour; or compare both with an edu-
cation policy of the World Bank and its effects in the education systems and
on professional practices within nations of the Global South. Policy analysis
depends on the site of production of the policy as well as on the nature of the
policy in question.
The purposes of policy analysis are equally important for the theoretical
and methodological approaches to be adopted. In the traditional policy litera-
ture a distinction is made between what is called analysis of and analysis for
policy (Gordon et al. 1977). The former is the more academic exercise, con-
ducted by academic researchers, seeking to understand why a particular policy
was developed at a particular time, what its analytical assumptions are and
what effects it might have. The latter, analysis for policy, refers to research
conducted for actual policy development, often commissioned by policymak-
ers inside the bureaucracy within which the policy will be developed, and ipso
facto is more constrained as to theoretical framework and methodology and
most often has a shorter temporal frame. Analysis of policy sets its own
research agenda; it does not take for granted the policy construction of the
problem which a new policy seeks to address. Indeed, the first step in policy
analysis might very well be a critical deconstruction of the problem as con-
structed by the policy, and of the context and history assumed by the policy.
In contrast, analysis for policy takes as given the research problem as con-
structed by those framing policy, and thus often lacks a critical orientation.
We would not want to overstate this binary, however. Perhaps it might
be better to see the two sitting at various points on an academic/applied
education policy studies continuum (Cibulka 1994). Academic policy
research, nonetheless, also has policy and political effects. Some policymak-
ers inside educational organizations are knowledgeable about such research
and utilize it in their work. Carol Weiss’s (1979) classic documentation of
research utilization in public policy, however, suggested that the most
common mode of effect was indirect through ‘percolation’ or ‘enlighten-
ment’, as social science research changed the way policymakers thought
about things, including policy problems. Policy activists, located inside the
policy bureaucracy as well as outside (Yeatman 1998), often have a more
explicit awareness of academic policy research. In some policy domains in
education, for example in gender policies, feminist policymakers have
46 Globalizing education policy
worked with short- and long-term strategies towards gender justice and
could be seen as inside policy activists. The same is the case with indigenous
policy activists inside government bureaucracies in Australia. In this way,
even what might be seen as symbolic policy, that is, one constructed in
response to pressures of various kinds but with little material commitment
to implementation, might be important as a first policy step towards more
progressive material policies. Research for policy also need not be of an
instrumental and narrow kind. Additionally, sometimes research for policy
can provide grounds for not pursuing a particular policy.
The analysis of/for binary also implies different relationships between these
two forms of policy research and actual policy, which we might see as an
activist relationship geared to enhancing understanding or ‘enlightenment’,
as opposed to a more instrumental, ‘engineering’ relationship geared to
problem solving and sometimes legitimation (Trowler 2003). Implicit here
are the purposes of policy research. All of this goes to broader considerations
of how research, in this instance education policy analysis, reaches policymak-
ers and practitioners and has effects. There are multiple, multifarious and
mediated ways in which policy research reaches policymakers and practition-
ers (Whitty 2006; Pawson 2006).
The focus of policy research can vary from the analysis of: the context of
policy; the construction of the problem which the policy addresses; values
articulated by the policy content; policy production processes; the informa-
tion needed for policymaking; the policy actors and processes of advocacy;
policy allocation, dissemination and implementation; to policy evaluation
and review. (See Figure 3.1 for a more elaborated listing of possible questions
for education policy analysis across contextual, textual and implementation
considerations.) Given the multiple foci of policy analysis, we need to con-
sider issues relating to the positionality of the policy researcher and the sig-
nificance of such positionality to policy analysis. The questions of who is
doing the policy analysis and for what purposes, and within what context, are
clearly relevant in determining the approach to be taken to policy analysis.
Purposes may stretch from the more utilitarian through the legitimating
towards more critical approaches aimed at understanding or enlightenment.
Positionality here has at least three meanings, perhaps four. The first relates
to the actual location of the policy researcher in respect of the focus of analy-
sis. For example, we can contrast the positionings of the academic researcher,
the doctoral student, the policy bureaucrat, the commissioned researcher, the
freelance analyst for hire, the consultant researcher, the policy entrepreneur;
and consider how such positioning frames the type of policy analysis con-
ducted. The second meaning of positionality links to the theoretical and
political stance adopted by the policy researcher, which has implications for
the intellectual resources brought to bear on the research topic, including
theory and methodology. Theoretical and methodological considerations also
include matters of ontology (what we believe the nature of reality to be) and
epistemology (how we justify knowledge claims).
 Globalizing education policy analysis 47
Here one could contrast positivist and interpretivist accounts of social
reality and positivist and post-positivist and critical accounts of knowledge
claims. In very general terms, the positivist view justifies knowledge in terms
of observable, generalizable and predictable data, while interpretivism empha-
sizes the social construction of reality and seeks to provide explanations of
human behaviour in terms of intentionality. Post-positivist perspectives, in
contrast, focus on the processes involved in meaning-making, while critical
approaches underline the importance of power in the construction and justifi-
cation of knowledge claims. One of these critical approaches is critical race
theory, which many researchers in the United States in particular (for example
Ladson-Billings 2004; Sleeter 2005) have used to consider the ways in which
policy authority is exercised through racial configurations.
In contrast, commissioned policy research – that is, research for policy –
usually demands methodologies that often assume a kind of rationalist ‘engi-
neering’ model, involving a series of steps, from the specification of policy
goals, an examination of the possible implementation strategies, a determina-
tion of the resources available for implementation, the selection of the most
efficient strategies to realize the specified policy goals, to actual implementa-
tion. In this approach ends and means are resolutely separated, while the
operational values of efficiency and effectiveness are considered paramount.
The emphasis is on evidence and calculations of performance. In recent years
this approach, which represents policy realities through numbers, has become
globally popular among IGOs and governments alike. Rose (1999) has used
the phrase ‘policy as numbers’ to refer to the ways in which the new public
management associated with the restructuring of the state in the face of glo-
balization has constituted policies in relation to certain outcome accountabil-
ities, often framed through sets of key performance indicators. These indicators
are part of what Power (1997) has called the ‘audit state’. The emergence of
this audit culture clearly has implications for analysis for policy, and certainly
for policy evaluation.
There is at least a third meaning of positionality in respect of policy research
that is intimately linked to the features of globalization. Here, positionality is
taken to refer to the spatial location of the researcher, specifically national loca-
tion and the positioning of that nation in respect of global geopolitics, includ-
ing location within the Global North/Global South divide, and we recognize
the danger of essentializing these categories. As noted in Chapters 1 and 2,
issues of spatiality have become new foci of contemporary social theory and
research in the context of the apparent time/space compression associated with
globalization, affected through new communication technologies. Tikly (2001)
has observed that the problem with much theorising about globalization and
education – and we would add education policy – is that it fails to recognize
the different positionings of different nations vis-à-vis IGOs such as the World
Bank, UNESCO and the OECD. In developing their educational policy, the
countries of the Global South are, for example, much more constrained than
those of the Global North. This differentiation is further underlined by the
48 Globalizing education policy
fact that social theories produced in the high-status universities of the metrop-
olises of the Global North (Appadurai 2001; Connell 2007) often sideline
other voices, treating the nations of the Global South simply as sites of empiri-
cal research and the application of theories developed elsewhere. Connell (ibid.:
vii–viii) has examined how ‘modern social science embeds the viewpoints, per-
spectives and problems of metropolitan society, while presenting itself as uni-
versal knowledge’. This situation is being challenged, however, with calls for a
stronger form of internationalization of academic theorizing, what Appadurai
(ibid.) has referred to as the need to ‘deparochialize’ research, and methodo-
logical developments. Connell (ibid.) has also emphasized the usefulness of
‘Southern theory’.
It is important to recognize that positionality may also refer to the national
location of the policy researcher, which has implications for the nature of the
analysis done and the theoretical and methodological options available.
Working with doctoral students from various nations of the Global South has
made us aware of this meaning of positionality in education policy analysis.
Indeed, we have realized that in many nations of the Global South the only
extant education policy analysis is research commissioned by donor agencies
such as the World Bank or the UK Department for International Develop-
ment (DfID), with all the implications that result in relation to problem
setting, theoretical frameworks and methodologies. It would not be inaccu-
rate to describe some of this research as ‘quick and dirty’, reflecting position-
ality and purposes of the research.
This discussion underlines the importance of taking an historical approach
to understanding how globalization might affect policy processes (Rizvi
2007). This point is well exemplified in respect of the postcolonial aspirations
of many nations of the Global South and the role that education policy is
expected to play in achieving those aspirations. Neglecting the history of
their education systems – what Gregory (2004) calls the ‘colonial present’ –
will necessarily reduce the veracity and quality of the education policy analy-
sis we carry out. Colonial histories are necessary to an understanding of the
education policy effects of globalization. In this way, the temporal location of
the education policy analyst is another fourth aspect of positionality, which is
important in the chronological consideration of what policies have preceded
any given policy, and the extent to which the policy represents an incremen-
tal or a radical change.
Contemporary accounts of research methodologies in the social sciences
stress the significance of reflexivity to quality research. Reflexivity demands
transparent articulation of researcher positionality and the significance of this
to data collection and analysis. Bourdieu (Bourdieu et al. 1999), for instance,
has spoken of the need to reject ‘epistemological innocence’, a stance which
can be compared with Appadurai’s (2001) call for ‘epistemological diffidence’
and Smith’s (1999) talk of the need for ‘epistemological openness’. Such a
rejection of epistemological innocence demands that researchers articulate
their positioning within the research, in terms of their value stances, their
 Globalizing education policy analysis 49
problem choice, and their theoretical and methodological frames. Bourdieu
(2004: 94) thus sees the necessity of researchers ‘objectivating’ themselves in
order to deconstruct their ‘taken for granted’ assumptions. Bourdieu’s argu-
ment, with which we agree, is that doing this is necessary to arrive at more
trustworthy and justifiable accounts of the data. Positionality, in the multiple
meanings of the concept considered above, then affects the form of analysis
taken, but also demands that all policy analysis practises reflexivity.
It is perhaps important here to make a distinction between how policy
analysis is actually conducted in various ways and how we would suggest it
ought to be conducted. Some times the analyst does not have much degree
of choice. We are thinking of the academic policy analyst commissioned by
the state to conduct policy analysis. Here the researcher is most often con-
strained by the research problem, which is taken from its bureaucratic con-
struction and which is taken as given, and often restricted as to theoretical
and methodological approaches. However, this is not always so. For example,
one of us (Lingard) conducted a large commissioned research project for a
State Department of Education in Australia, which through a number of
political contingencies, including the politics of the commissioning of the
research and a change of government, granted the researchers considerable
space theoretically and methodologically and in respect of publishing from
the research. On the other hand, we have also been involved in policy
research in relation to issues of racism and boys’ education, where there was
much tighter control of the research and policy analysis proffered, from
problem setting through research design, data collection, analysis, write-up
and policy recommendations.
In recent years, there has been much talk of the need for evidence-based
policy and professional practice in the public sector, a focus on ‘what works’
as the basis for public policy. This rise of evidence-based policy is linked to
the new public management and pressures for efficiency and effectiveness in
the delivery of public policy (Head 2008) and perhaps could be seen as the
contemporary version of the rational approach to policymaking. This evi-
dence-based movement is another example of how the purposes of policy anal-
ysis and the positioning of the policy researcher are important factors in
framing the type of analysis conducted. Its emphasis assumes a direct instru-
mental relationship between policy research and policymaking, also often
providing legitimation of the given policy. However, because of the contested
nature of theory and research methodologies within the social sciences, some
‘evidence’, derived from certain research, gets utilized, while other ‘evidence’,
derived from different research and theoretical and methodological frame-
works, is neglected.
Given our acceptance of a definition of policy as the authoritative alloca-
tion of values, we would suggest that in reality evidence (research- and
practice-based) can only ever be one contributing factor to policy develop-
ment in education. As Head (2008: 9) has demonstrated, policies in the
public sector are ‘inherently marked by the interplay of facts, norms and
50 Globalizing education policy
desired actions’, reflecting three knowledge bases: those of political judge-
ment and professional practice in addition to (social) scientific research. We
prefer the descriptor, evidence-informed policy. We would hope that such
evidence would also include evidence that is critical of extant policies. (See
also Pawson 2006.) We should also note that contemporary education policy
associated with the restructured state and new public management has also
been concerned with supporting certain types of education research and
rejecting other types. Indeed, in both the UK and the USA there has been a
politics around education research generally, attempting to legitimate
certain kinds of research and denying other kinds, with support for more
traditional experimental design and dismissive attitudes to more critical
and qualitative approaches (Ozga et al. 2006).
To sum up our discussion in this section, we have argued that there is no
straightforward recipe for policy analysis in education, and that the approach
adopted will be affected by the nature of the policy being analysed and the
site of production of the policy. The positionality of the researcher is another
important factor, as are the purposes of the policy analysis: whether the analy-
sis is of or for policy, whether it is conducted as a stage in the policy develop-
ment or policy review, or for the purposes of political advocacy or a general
academic exploration. Important, therefore, is the positionality of the policy
analyst and relationship to the realpolitik of actual policymaking, theoretical
and methodological stance, national location in global politics and temporal
position. In other words, policy analysis not only explores the workings of
political power and authority, but is also embedded within relations of power.
As Foucault (1980) has suggested, every relation of power has an associated
knowledge and every form of knowledge exists within relations of power.
This is an important insight in relation to policymaking and analysis. Issues
of power are thus centrally involved: in whose interests are the policy made
and the analysis conducted?

Questions for policy analysis

Our own interest in policy analysis is concerned with understanding policy
content, its related processes and its effects in order to contribute to making
things better in educational practice, contributing to progressive social
change. Our theoretical approach is located within what Jenny Ozga (1987)
has called ‘policy sociology’. Policy sociology is ‘rooted in the social science
tradition, historically informed and drawing on qualitative and illuminative
techniques’ (ibid.: 144). We have already shown how historical understand-
ing is important to policy analysis, but argue that policy sociology is affected
in a number of ways by globalization. For example, globalization affects an
elision of a simple homology between society and nation in relation to what
we call the social. As Massey (1994) has noted, globalization is social relations
stretched out. Thus, for example, such ‘stretching out’ challenges ethnogra-
phy as a research methodology, given the focus of such a methodology on the
 Globalizing education policy analysis 51
local and the specific, which is now imbricated in the global and vice versa.
How we define the local has become deeply problematic.
Burawoy and colleagues (2000) have investigated methodological issues
arising from global shifts, particularly in relation to ethnography. They have
suggested that there are three axes of globalization, namely ‘global forces’,
which refer to the large structural developments in respect of global capital-
ism and so on, ‘global connections’, which refer to the connections between
local and global flows of people, and a ‘global imagination’ to encapsulate
how these structural changes and connections provoke the mobilization of
meaning about globalization and the changes it has effected. In a sense, these
axes of globalization provide a specific contemporary account of how the
central problem of social theory, namely the recursive relationships between
structure and agency, might be reconceptualized and interrogated in the
context of globalization.
Methodologically, much of the recent research conducted in the name of
policy sociology has been ‘qualitative and illuminative’. We, however, would
deny an absolute bifurcation between qualitative and quantitative approaches,
for many policy problems empirical quantitative methods can also be appro-
priate, given specific needs. What we would note, however, is the need for
reflexivity in the usage of such methodologies. As Gale (2001: 382) has noted,
‘quantitative data can also prove illuminating, particularly when it is sub-
jected to the methodological assumptions of critical social science. To dismiss
such data entirely is to curtail “our ability to raise and answer critical ques-
tions about the large scale effects”’. We thus accept the point made by Fitz et
al. (2006: 3) that the difficulties and complexities associated with quantita-
tive methods ought not to mean the abandonment of such methods, nor do
such approaches have to be non-critical. What we would stress is the need to
achieve an appropriate fit between research problem and methods adopted,
together with an historically informed reflexivity. The type and site of the
policy, and the focus and purpose of analysis, are all important considerations
to find the methodological fit. Ball (2008) has used the metaphor of a prag-
matic toolbox to suggest that methodologies should not determine the
approach to education policy analysis, but that methodology should be framed
in terms of research purpose and researcher positionality.
Policy sociology has multiple purposes, not only descriptive and analytical
but also normative and imaginative. In our view, policy sociology should not
only describe relations of power and processes through which policies are
developed and allocated, but should also point to strategies for progressive
change which might challenge oppressive structures and practices. In the
contemporary era, considerations of progressive change are, however, more
complex than they once might have appeared. The construction of a progres-
sive politics is now affected by and must take account of globalization. Pro-
gressive social change relates to issues of what Nancy Fraser (1997) has called
a politics of redistribution, seeking to achieve a more equal society, and to a
politics of recognition, which works with a politics of respect for difference, as
52 Globalizing education policy
well as a politics of representation which enables marginalized voices to be
heard. The first politics is concerned with equality and issues of poverty and
social class, the second with matters of identity, while the third relates to
global structures of power and democratic participation.
Our view of policy sociology is based on a set of normative principles,
which encourages equality, respect for difference and democratic participa-
tion in both the content of policy and the manner in which policies are
constructed and implemented. We thus reject the contention that policy
analysis can be value-neutral, involving a set of rational-instrumental tech-
niques, as much of the traditional policy sciences sought to assert. These
rational-instrumental techniques take the status quo for granted, as a given,
as well as a policy’s definition of the problem for which the policy is the
intended solution. This type of policy analysis is circumscribed and does
not confront larger questions relating to the changing structure and func-
tioning of the state and whose interests are represented in both decision-
making and non-decision-making in policy processes. The traditional policy
sciences, then, were only concerned with how best to solve problems and
determine the best course of action to take to realize given ends. In contrast,
we maintain not only that policies embody a particular set of values, but
that analysis of policy is an inherently political activity. We are thus inter-
ested in considering who are the winners and losers with regard to any given
policy and whose interests the policy serves. The articulation of our norma-
tive stance here is thus central to the reflexivity endemic to our approach to
education policy studies and analysis.
This approach to education policy analysis, then, is at one level ecumeni-
cal, but at another it explicitly specifies the normative position we adopt in
analysing texts which have policy effects. This position affects ‘how’ we
research and how we interpret ‘what we find’, and how we suggest alterna-
tives. Drawing on Kenway (1990) and our earlier work (Taylor et al. 1997),
we suggest that policy sociology, as analysis of policy, involves a range of
questions in respect of any given policy, situated against reflexive consider-
ation of the positionality of the policy researcher. Critical social science
theories and methodologies offer ways to research these questions. These
questions are elaborated in Figure 3.1 under a number of categories that
suggest differing foci. We have framed these questions in Figure 3.1 around
Contextual Issues, Policy and Textual Issues, and Implementation and Out-
comes Issues, drawing on our earlier framework for policy analysis of
context, text and consequences (ibid.). We have then located questions
against these issues and also attempted to suggest the need for a deparochi-
alized disposition and global outlook in asking and answering these ques-
tions. As a multifarious activity, policy analysis need not, of course, address
all of these questions at once, but may focus on a selected set: much depends
on both the purpose of analysis and the position of the analyst. For example,
research might focus on the ‘origins’ of policy, textual analysis of a policy or
policy outcomes through implementation. Trajectory and ecological
 Globalizing education policy analysis 53
approaches to education policy (Weaver-Hightower 2008) are also con-
cerned with policy across this cycle and its location in the broader context.
In this way they can be contrasted with rational approaches, which narrow
and contain the focus of policy development (Hudson and Lowe 2004).
Within the broad spectrum of questions that can be asked in analysis of
policy as illustrated in Figure 3.1, various approaches have emerged, each
defined by its focus. It is possible to focus exclusively, for example, on imple-
mentation (Implementation and Outcomes Issues in Figure 3.1). Implemen-
tation studies in education have been highly influential, particularly in the
USA (Honig 2006). These studies are either top-down or bottom-up, with a
‘backward mapping’ approach being a component of the latter type of studies
(Elmore 1979/1980). Backward mapping as a normative policy production
approach looks at the site of practice which the policy wants to change, and
then strategizes backwards to create the policy, structures, culture and imple-
mentation strategy necessary to achieve such change. Top-down implementa-
tion studies are usually concerned with refractions, failures or deficits in policy
implementation, while the bottom-up studies recognize the inevitability of
mediations by professionals. When professionals implement policies they
inevitably take the specificities of the context into account, seeking to align
policy directives to the local conditions. A useful distinction here might be to
see the policy as ‘strategy’ and its implementation as ‘tactic’, using the dis-
tinction developed by de Certeau (1984).
Another common approach to policy analysis is concerned with the criti-
cal analysis of actual policy texts, including analysing and documenting the
discourses within which the texts are located (Taylor 2004). (Figure 3.1
outlines some of the questions that might be addressed when taking a
textual focus.) This approach recognizes that policies are often as much
about language as anything else (Fairclough 2001) and that policies are
often positioned within what Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) called ‘magis-
terial discourse’, that is, language which is unidirectional and which com-
mands and instructs. Such discourse attempts to constrain the possibilities
for interpretation. Rizvi and Kemmis (1987) view policy implementation
as ‘interpretation of interpretations’, a situation which the magisterial
nature of discourse seeks to limit.
An attempt to understand the problem to which a given policy is a puta-
tive solution represents yet another approach to policy analysis. This requires
an appreciation of the problem, rather than simply taking the policy con-
struction of the problem as a given. As Gil (1989: 69) suggests, the first task
of policy analysis is ‘to gain understanding of the issues that constitute the
focus of the specific social policy which is being analysed or developed. This
involves exploration of the nature, scope and distribution of these issues, and
of causal theories concerning underlying dynamics.’ Similarly, McLaughlin
(2006: 210) points out that ‘assumptions about the nature of the policy
problem determine the policy solutions pursued and the logic of action
advanced by a policy. And notions about preferred solutions also determine
54 Globalizing education policy
Figure 3.1 Policy analysis, analysis of policy: Key questions (Framed by reflexive
consideration of the ‘positionality’ of the policy analyst)

Policy issues: Questions for analysis:

Contextual Issues
Issues of historical, Where did this policy originate, including consideration of any
political and relevant global factors/institutions?
bureaucratic origins Why was this policy adopted?
Why was it adopted now?
Does this policy have incremental links to earlier policy/policies?
Is the policy part of a policy ensemble?
Who were the ‘players’ (groups, interests, individuals) involved
in establishing the policy agenda and the policy?

Policy and Textual Issues

Discursive formation of What discourses frame the policy text? Are these globalized
policy and policy discourses?
problem To which ‘problem’ is the policy constructed as a solution?
How is the policy problem conceptualized?
What alternative problem constructions have been rejected/
neglected?
How has the policy constructed its context and/or history?
Will the policy as constructed ‘solve’ the problem to which it is
a response?
What complementary policies are required (in education and
elsewhere) to ensure the achievement of the policy’s goals?
Textual considerations How has the policy text been constructed linguistically?
How does the policy ‘work’ as a text?
Has the policy text been ‘mediatized’?
How have any competing interests been sutured together in the
text?
What is the implied readership of the policy?
What is the ‘intertextuality’ of the policy; that is, how does it sit
in relation to other policies or a ‘policy ensemble’?
Interests involved and Who has advocated and promoted the policy and why?
underpinning the policy
Where are the advocates located (inside/outside the state
bureaucracy and policy processes, inside and outside the nation)?
How have competing interests been negotiated in relation to the
policy agenda and in relation to the production of the specific
policy text?
 Globalizing education policy analysis 55
Figure 3.1 (continued)

Policy issues: Questions for analysis:

What policy communities and/or policy networks have been
involved in the processes of policy production?
Policy structuration What have been the effects of national/provincial state structures
on the policy processes?
What role have international agencies played in its promotion?
Have globalization and associated changes been invoked as a
rationale for the policy?
Has the policy been ‘borrowed’ from a ‘reference society’?
Is the policy driven more by ideology than by research evidence?
Resource issues How have empirical research and policy precedents been used in
support/justification/production of the policy?
What resources (intellectual, empirical, research, human,
material) are mobilized by the policy?

Implementation and Outcomes Issues

Implementation How is the policy ‘allocated’ and disseminated to its target
strategies population?
What are the strategies for implementation? Will these
strategies achieve the policy’s goals?
Is this a material or symbolic policy?
Is this a distributive or redistributive policy?
Are adequate resources and professional development mobilized
by the policy?
Is there an evaluation strategy for the policy and its
implementation? If so, is there an ‘appropriate’ time-frame for
evaluation? Who will conduct the evaluation?
Does the implementation time-frame fit within the temporality
of politics or that of professional practice?
Have indicators been constructed for measuring policy effects
and accountability? Are these relevant and appropriate?
What is the reception given to the policy at the site of
implementation practice?
How does the policy fit with the dominant logics of professional
practice?
What is the implied ‘ideal professional practitioner’ in the
policy?
How does the policy fit with other policies at the
implementation site?
Policy outcomes What are the consequences of the policy, both short term and
long term?
What is the relationship between policy outputs and policy
outcomes?
56 Globalizing education policy
Figure 3.1 (continued)

Policy issues: Questions for analysis:

Does the policy have unintended consequences?
Policy outcomes In whose interests does the policy actually work?
continued…
Is this a significant material or symbolic policy in terms of
outcomes?
Has the policy had material effects or largely discursive ones?
How does this policy fit with other cognate policies within
education and across government?
Will the policy achieve its goals and objectives? (Policy
evaluated against its own goals and framework)
What are the social justice effects of the policy? (Policy evaluated
against some articulated ideal)

how policies are formulated – the policy target, nature of policy implements,
level of support and regulatory structures, for example.’
Traditionally, most policy problems and solutions were constructed within
the nation-state. In recent decades, however, policy gestation, especially for
national, state-centric, top-down policies, can now increasingly be traced to
international organizations and globalized education policy discourses. While
there has always been policy borrowing and policy lending across nations
(Steiner-Khamsi 2004), these processes today have been speeded up with the
emergence of a global field of education policy production, even if local factors
remain important for many nations. But even for these nations, measures of
comparative educational performance on an international scale have become
important. They take the measures of quality and equity outcomes in educa-
tion on the OECD’s PISA, for example, as a point of comparison, thus locat-
ing the national system within a global system. As Nóvoa and Yariv-Mashal
(2003) suggest, the global eye works together with the national eye today in
both education policy and governance.
To reiterate, then, in recent decades the space of policy processes has
changed significantly. While national structures remain important to policy
production, their character and ways they work have changed. If this is so,
it has implications for the ways in which policy research is conducted, in an
attempt to answer the analysis questions listed above and adumbrated in
Figure 3.1. We note here as well how the recognition of the economic sig-
nificance of education has seen restructuring of education policy production
processes within nations as national/provincial/local relationships have been
restructured, with national governments seeking enhanced policy roles,
even in federal political structures such as in Australia, the USA, Canada
and Germany.
 Globalizing education policy analysis 57
Research and policy analysis
In theoretical and methodological terms, education policy research has been
framed differently in different intellectual contexts. So one can compare, for
example, policy analysis in education in the UK with that in the USA. The
dominant approaches in the UK come out of critical sociological traditions,
while those in the USA fit more within traditional instrumentalist perspec-
tives, tending towards positivist and functionalist methodologies. Policy
analysis in the USA is more conscious of policy’s legal framing and conse-
quences than is the case in the UK, where educational bureaucracies have
much more sway. Policymakers in the USA are highly conscious of the pos-
sibilities of legal challenges that often reach all the way to the Supreme Court,
while policy analysts have to consider how policies were developed within the
legal requirements of the American Constitution. Even critical studies of edu-
cation policies in the USA have been linked to legal considerations, as in, for
example, critical race theory.
In the UK, the policy sociology approach first came into prominence during
the 1980s when, under the Thatcher government, sociology of education as a
field of study was politically attacked in a sustained fashion, leading many
sociologists of education to switch focus to policy as a major topic of analysis.
Since that time policy sociology has also been affected by various critical
developments in the social sciences including (pro)feminism, post-structural-
ism, post-colonialism and postmodernism, as well as accounts that suggest
the need to take account of globalization. Extending the tradition of policy
sociology, Gale (2001) has spoken of policy historiography, policy genealogy
and policy archaeology as approaches to education policy analysis, while a
number of education policy scholars such as Peters (2002) have developed an
approach to policy analysis based on Foucault’s (1991) concept of governmen-
tality. Olssen et al. (2004) have also provided a Foucauldian approach to the
analysis of education policy in the context of globalization.
In the US context, following Lasswell’s ‘policy sciences’ approach devel-
oped after the Second World War (see Peters and Pierre 2006), education
policy analysis has remained largely within a politics of education frame-
work, informed by positivism and functionalism. Critical work of the kind
found in the UK and Australia has been resisted. These differing intellec-
tual/national traditions are reflected in the content carried in the two major
journals in the field, notably the Journal of Education Policy from the UK and
the American Educational Research Association (AERA) journal, Educa-
tional Evaluation and Policy Analysis, which focuses on educational evalua-
tion, educational policy analysis and the relationship between the two. Yet
while these differences are significant, globalization has speeded up the
flows of ideas and academics across the globe as part of the global ‘cultural
circuits’ of capitalism (Thrift 2005), such that even with these differences it
is now possible to speak of an emergent global intellectual field of educa-
tion policy studies. This field in some ways parallels the emergent global
58 Globalizing education policy
education policy field. (See Simons et al. (2009) for an extensive contempo-
rary coverage of the education policy field.)
In 1990, commenting in a UK context, Stephen Ball had observed that
critical education policy analysis then had the character of commentary and
critique, which was not often supported by empirical evidence. We would
suggest that this situation has changed somewhat over the past almost two
decades. There have been two sets of pressures here: the first relates to the
theoretical developments within the social sciences generally, while the
second concerns the framing of policy research by government policies, which
is located within the broader move to new public management and a desire
for evidence-based policy. Research paradigms in education have become the
focus of government policy, directly and indirectly (through funding priori-
ties, output and impact emphases, encouragement of policy-relevant research),
and have sought to valorize certain theoretical and methodological frames
over others (Ozga and Lingard 2007: 77–79). This has seen an eclecticism in
education policy analysis (critical and functionalist, qualitative and quantita-
tive), but also a greater concern with theoretical and methodological issues.
Maguire and Ball (1994) classified qualitative approaches to education
policy analysis into three kinds: elite studies (‘situated studies of policy for-
mation’), trajectory studies and implementation studies. To this categoriza-
tion we would add policy text analysis. Elite studies usually involve interviews
with the major policy players as a way of understanding policy texts and
policy processes across the policy cycle, with a particular focus on the politics
of policy text production. Such studies recognize the politics of relationships
between politicians and policymakers and the politics involved inside the
actual site of policy production itself. Elite studies can also be linked to policy
histories, focusing on changing policies over time. For example, Lingard et al.
(1995) drew on interviews with senior policymakers, educational advisers and
ministers for education over a ten-year period as of way of understanding
developments nationally in education policy in Australia and their mediation
by federal/state relations during the period of Labor governments (1983–
1996). This study was thus concerned with structures and agency, with field
and practice in policy processes. Indeed, it was these elite interviews that sug-
gested the emergence of a global education policy field and the significance of
the OECD to education policymaking in Australia.
There is a range of methodological issues which are raised by the elite
studies approach, because such research utilizes interviews with elite policy
players and thus requires access to them. Such access is usually easier for sea-
soned academic researchers than emerging researchers, with the power rela-
tions between the researcher and the interviewees becoming highly
problematic. Interview processes are often also gendered and racialized. Some-
times methodological issues of access can also provide important research evi-
dence. For example, as senior researchers interviewing many senior
policymakers in relation to the creation in Australia in 1987 of the National
Policy for the Education of Girls in Australian Schools, we were granted ready
 Globalizing education policy analysis 59
access, yet our doctoral students had much more difficulty in respect of access
to these same policymakers, reflecting their different academic status but also,
importantly, a different policy climate. Ten years on, these policymakers were
much more considered and careful in the things they said and were much
more careful about checking interview transcripts and the like for accuracy
etc, seeking to ensure that they had not said anything which would create
political or work problems for them. The vastly different policy research data
collection context also tells us a lot about the substantive policies which were
the foci of each research study – in 1987, concerned with gender equity in its
broadest sense and, ten years later, with a focus on boys’ issues within a reac-
tionary or recuperative men’s politics framework (Lingard et al. 2009).
Trajectory studies deal with policy across the stages of the policy cycle,
beginning with elite interviews, concerned with the gestation of a policy and
the often internecine politics involved in the production of the actual policy
text through to implementation and the reception and effects of the policy in
practice. Figure 3.1 lists the extensive questions which would underpin such
a trajectory study. Similar to trajectory studies, policy ecology studies offer
another way of locating policy in its broader ecological contexts (Weaver-
Hightower 2008). Weaver-Hightower (ibid.: 155) suggests that ‘a policy
ecology consists of the policy itself along with all the other texts, histories,
people, places, groups, traditions, economic and political conditions, institu-
tions, and relationships that affect it or are affected by it’. While trajectory
studies trace policy across the policy cycle, policy ecology does this, but also
locates the text and policy processes in a much broader context, as signified by
the metaphor of ‘ecology’ (ibid.: 155). A policy ecology approach would look
at all the questions outlined in Figure 3.1 and locate them within an extended
timeframe and broader ecology. An anthropology of public policy takes a
somewhat similar approach to that of policy ecology from within a different
disciplinary framework (Wedel et al. 2005).
Implementation studies deal with the context of policy practice and use a
variety of research methods including interviews, observations, document
analysis and sometimes ethnographic case study work. In trajectory studies
there has been opposition to separating out policy production from policy
implementation (Gale 1999; Vidovich 2001), with Cibulka (1994: 111)
noting that ‘implementors have an explicit policy role, not merely a technical
one’. Those who use backward mapping for policy production acknowledge
that reality. Nonetheless, implementation studies have been a particularly
strong focus of educational policy analysis in the USA with a cognate litera-
ture in this field, stretching from McLaughlin’s (1987) earlier influential essay
on changes in foci of implementation studies in the USA through Elmore and
McLaughlin’s (1988) Rand Corporation study and talk of ‘backward mapping’
to the more recent collection edited by Honig (2006). In the USA a more
policy-relevant version of implementation studies is policy evaluation, usually
commissioned by governments or state bureaucracies and more limited in
scope and responsive to the demands of those who commission such research.
60 Globalizing education policy
Evaluation studies take the policy problem as a given, as well as the time
frame for measuring effects as established by the bureaucracy and those who
commission the research. This latter type of work – analysis for policy – is
often published in the USA in the journal Educational Evaluation and Policy
Analysis. Traditionally, evaluation studies have fitted within a rational
approach (Hudson and Lowe 2004: 223ff.) and have been framed by a positiv-
ist epistemology (Bate and Robert 2003).
Analysis of policy texts is another common approach to policy analysis.
These studies often take a critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach to text
analysis. These studies are located in the contention that the contemporary
world of consumer capitalism and new global media has become text satu-
rated and that text and language have become central to contemporary poli-
tics and policymaking. In this context, Luke (2002: 98) has spoken of ‘semiotic
economies’ in which ‘language, text and discourse become the principal modes
of social relations, civics and political life, economic behaviour and activity’.
Regarding such economies, Fairclough (2000) has written at some length
about the politics of the language used by the Blair Labour government in the
UK. Focused analyses of specific policy texts usually emphasize either the
linguistic features of the policy text or work with Foucauldian (and post-
structuralist) inspired accounts of texts in context, including discursive
context. Fairclough’s (2003) approach to CDA works across these two catego-
ries and is becoming more influential in this approach to policy analysis (e.g.
Taylor 2004; Mulderrig 2008; Adie 2008). CDA recognizes what Yeatman
(1990) has referred to as the ‘politics of discourse’ associated with policy texts,
but is also concerned with texts in context.
Taylor (2004) has made a strong, illustrated case for the usage of such a
critical discourse analysis approach to policy analysis, analysing an important
metapolicy in Queensland education, Queensland State Education 2010. In her
work, she also recognizes the material effects of discourses and the way dis-
courses position players across the policy cycle. This is not the place to docu-
ment the fine detailed types of analysis taken by CDA approaches, but suffice
to say that Fairclough (2001: 241–242) has suggested the following as fea-
tures of texts which should be the focus of analysis: ‘whole text organization
(structure, e.g. narrative, argumentative, etc.), clause combination, grammat-
ical and semantic features (transitivity, action, voice, mood, modality), and
words (e.g. vocabulary, collocations, use of metaphors, etc.)’. So, for example,
there have been analyses of the use of ‘we’ in policy texts in education. Adie
(2008), in a CDA analysis of Queensland Smart State policies, for example,
shows how ‘we’ is used in the texts to mean both the government and the
people, with slippages between the two. Fairclough’s (2000) analysis of Blair’s
political language in the UK has also argued similarly with respect to usage
of ‘we’ and these dual and blended meanings. Sennett (2004) has noted that
‘we’ is a dangerous pronoun, excluding at the same time as it includes. ‘Our’
is another first person collective pronoun which can do interesting discursive
work in a policy text.
 Globalizing education policy analysis 61
Such textual analysis might also make us aware of what Fairclough (1992)
called ‘overwording’, the repetitive usage of certain words and types of word,
for example ‘new’, in attempts to justify the need for a policy. We would note
here as well the significance of the silences of a policy text; just as a politics of
non-decision-making can be important in relation to policy, so too can silences
in policy texts tell us a lot about power. The post-colonial critic Edward Said
(1983) speaks of reading (literary) texts contrapuntally, that is, reading into
them their silences – the unsaid. This is equally necessary to policy analysis of
a specific text. Said has also talked about how spoken language carries its
context with it, while this is not the case for a written text. To fully under-
stand the written text the policy analyst has to ‘world’ the text, situate it in
its context. Fine-grained textual analyses of policies can thus produce many
insights into the politics of policy production and policy processes and provide
insights into likely policy effects.
Honan (2004) has established an approach to the analysis of policy texts
derived from the work of Deleuze and Guattari on rhizomes, which connote
the complex relationships and connections between texts and their effects.
She refers to her approach as ‘rhizo-textual analysis of policy texts’. Here the
text is understood as a rhizome with connections into various ‘semiotic chains’,
while she understands the relationship between the reader of the policy text
(for example a teacher) and a particular education policy as rhizomatic.
Bourdieu’s work is also helpful to an analysis of policy texts and particu-
larly those which circulate globally. Talking about the global circulation of
texts, Bourdieu (2003) argues that policy and other texts are taken from their
context of production and read in a different context of reception. This leads
to multiple slippages across national borders and between sites of policy pro-
duction and policy implementation, and can also be seen to work in relation
to subnational policy texts implemented in schools. Using Bourdieu’s notion
of fields, it can be argued that the context of the field of text production has
particular logics which are often different from those of the field of policy
reception, school and classroom practices, which have different logics and
which thus ensure policy as ‘palimpsest’, literally a new text written over a
partly erased older text. Policy in practice is palimpsest, as policy gets reread,
rewritten as it moves from text to practice, from the field of policy production
to the field of pedagogical practice.
The concept of social fields was one of the last additions to Bourdieu’s theo-
rizing, when he suggested that the social arrangement consists of multiple
quasi-autonomous fields with their own logics of practice, overarched by a
field of power linked to the economic field and a field of gender relations.
Bourdieu’s use of social field appears to refer to studies of social institutions,
but rather than speak of politics he talks of ‘the field of politics’, instead of the
media ‘the journalistic field’, in place of literature and the arts ‘the field of
cultural production’ and so on. Thus, instead of policy, Bourdieu would talk
of the policy field and we suggest that, in the context of globalization, in
addition to the national education policy field we also need to recognize an
62 Globalizing education policy
emergent global education policy field (Lingard et al. 2005). These fields
encourage certain dispositions or habitus amongst agents and involve contes-
tation over various resources or capitals which are valued in various ways
within the field. The nature of relationships between fields or cross-field
effects (Lingard and Rawolle 2004), here for example the global and national
education policy fields, then becomes an important task for contemporary
education policy analysis.
Also important to explore in our media age are the ways in which policy
texts are distributed – how their authority is allocated. Here the work of Fair-
clough (2000) is useful. In his analysis, Fairclough speaks of the ‘mediatiza-
tion’ of policy and politics. In some ways this refers simply to the enhanced
role of the media in contemporary politics. However, it can have an even more
specific meaning in relation to education policy production, with implica-
tions for policy analysis. As Rawolle (2005) has demonstrated, today many
policy texts are mediatized, that is, the logics of practice of journalism affect
policy production processes. This sometimes involves journalists in the pro-
duction of the actual policy text and the implied readership of the policy (the
imagined policy community) becomes the public, rather than the professional
community which will actually implement the policy in question, with
implications for implementation. The media logic, including the proclivity
to aphorism, alliteration, metaphor and catchy phrases, seeps into the wording
of the policy and renders it less professionally relevant.
In this sense, today a policy release in education might be simply synony-
mous with a media release and the release of the glossy policy document
whose production has been mediatized. In the UK, for example, Gewirtz et al.
(2004) comment on the mediatization of education policy, and show how the
Blair government sought to ‘policy spin’ both the development and launch of
its policy on Education Action Zones (EAZs), using a set of promotional
words in policy documents. Thus close discourse analysis of policy texts needs
to be alert to the possibility of the mediatization of the policy text, which the
analyst might become aware of through interviews with those involved in the
policy process.
Trevor Gale (2001) has used Foucault’s concepts of archaeology and gene-
alogy to also stress the important of discourse analysis. He argues that if
critical policy sociology is to work towards progressive social change, it
needs to understand how policy problems are historically constituted from
a wide variety of perspectives, requiring different modes of analysis of the
ways in which discourses acquire authority. Gale constructs three approaches
or methodologies for critical policy analysis. The first is ‘policy historiogra-
phy’, which focuses on ‘the substantive issues of policy at particular hegem-
onic moments’ (ibid.: 385). The second is ‘policy archaeology’, which is
concerned with the conditions that regulate policy formations at a specific
moment and the actions of policy players in relation to them. And finally,
the third is ‘policy genealogy’, which is concerned with the engagement of
policy actors with policy.
 Globalizing education policy analysis 63
Gale suggests some important questions related to each approach to analy-
sis. Policy historiography asks three broad questions: ‘what were the “public
issues” and “private troubles” within a particular policy domain during some
previous period and how were they addressed?; what are they now?; and what
is the nature of the change from the first to the second?’ (Gale 2001: 385). To
these, necessitated by the criticality of this approach, he adds the following
two questions: ‘what are the complexities in these coherent accounts of policy?
And what do they reveal about who is advantaged and who is disadvantaged
by these arrangements?’ (ibid.: 385). The latter question is a measure of policy
outcomes set against an articulated ideal of social justice, what Ball (1994)
calls second-order policy outcomes. These questions are: ‘what are the condi-
tions that make the emergence of a particular policy agenda possible?; what
are the rules or regularities that determine what is (and is not) a policy
problem?; how do these rules and regularities shape policy choices? And how
is policy analysis similarly regulated?’ (Gale 2001: 387). The last question is
an expression of reflexivity in policy analysis and research. While policy
archaeology is concerned with framing policy settlements, policy genealogy is
concerned with specific realizations of policy (ibid.: 389). Such genealogy is
interested in the development of policies over time, interested in policy con-
tinuities and discontinuities.
Mark Olssen and his colleagues (2004: 56–58) are critical of Gale’s take on
Foucault, particularly in relation to his distinction between policy historiog-
raphy and policy genealogy. They argue that Foucault’s methodological
approach to history is a genealogical one which subsumes what Gale calls
historiography. They argue that genealogy as a methodology traces backwards
from the present (policy) through a line of descent and forwards to understand
emergence (of policy). In this way, it implies the need to combine such a
genealogy with recognition of policy texts framed within broader policy dis-
courses and social practices that are not only aligned to various political ide-
ologies, but are also embedded in dominant social imaginaries. Critical
discourse analysis is helpful in providing an account of how political ideolo-
gies are authorized through policies by locating them in the dominant popular
imaginaries so that they are interpreted as emerging from a commonly agreed
set of values.

Globalizing education policy analysis

Our arguments in this chapter so far have thus emphasized an approach to
policy analysis that requires close and fine-grained analysis of texts, analysis of
their framing discursive practices (text production, distribution and con-
sumption) and social conditions and social practices. These have been neces-
sary attributes for understanding processes of education policy development
and implementation within the context of nation-states. However, globaliza-
tion demands at least a set of new dispositions: the rejection of epistemologi-
cal innocence. We now live and work in a globalized space, which implies the
64 Globalizing education policy
need to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions of a society/nation homol-
ogy in policy research. Today society is in some ways simultaneously local,
national, regional and global in terms of experience, politics, effects and
imaginaries. Further, these spaces are overlapped with unequal power rela-
tions, which reflect both contemporary geopolitics and past political strug-
gles. Residual, dominant, emergent and contested geographies of power,
including those of the colonial past and post-colonial present, are at play
across these global spaces and manifest in vernacular ways in the local, national
and regional. Fisher and Mosquera (2004: 5) have noted that Western ‘meta-
culture’ relates to geographies of power, which include academic theories,
epistemologies and research methodologies. Recognition of the researcher’s
positionality within western universities and their relationships to these
geographies of power is a central beginning for challenging the silent valori-
zation of Western epistemologies in research of all kinds, including education
policy research (Connell 2007).
Such a challenge is central to what Arjun Appadurai (2001) calls the
‘deparochialization’ of research and a strong internationalization of the
western academy, in the light of enhanced global flows of students and aca-
demics as part of the mobilities and networks of globalization. He argued
for the need to deconstruct, in both an anthropological and a pragmatic
sense, the ‘taken for granted’ assumptions of contemporary systems of
research. In the context of increased flows of capital, people, ideas, images
and technologies and disjunctions and related asymmetries of power, he
specifically calls for a ‘deparochialization of the research ethic’ (ibid.: 15).
He suggests a number of ways in which the research ethic might be chal-
lenged, including a reconnection with earlier pre-research paradigm think-
ing premised on a strong moral position; the promotion of the style of
argumentation of public intellectuals; and paying greater attention to
research linked to policymaking and state functions in a range of nations,
particularly those in the developing world.
Appadurai postulates that ‘epistemological diffidence’ is necessary to
the project of deparochialization of research, the need to move beyond the
epistemological certainty of dominant forms of modernization theory of
the 1950s and 1960s and its effects, particularly in the so-called ‘Third
World’. That theory accepted without question that theory and research
were metropolitan, modern and western, while the rest of the world was
simply a research site to test and confirm such theory. Here, relations of
researcher and researched paralleled relations of colonizer and colonized,
even within decolonizing and post-colonial politics and aspirations. Linda
Tuhiwai Smith (1999) similarly calls for Decolonizing Methodologies. In her
study of the relationships between research and indigenous peoples and
knowledges in New Zealand, she suggests that the term ‘research’ is inex-
tricably linked to European imperialism and colonialism. Raewyn Connell
(2007) calls for acknowledgement of, and respect for, ‘Southern theory’.
We need to recognize, then, that relations of power and politics in both
 Globalizing education policy analysis 65
macro and individual relations senses distort even the most arcane theo-
ries to some extent.
In rejecting an epistemological innocence characteristic of the dominant
forms of social research, Appadurai, Smith and Connell call for an ‘epistemo-
logical openness’. Such a project, according to Appadurai, needs to be aligned
with ‘grassroots globalization’ or ‘globalization from below’. We need to ask:
‘whose globalization?’ and in doing so, issue a challenge to globalization from
above as driven by leading international organizations and the global cultural
industries (Klein 2001). In his book, Modernity at Large, Appadurai (1996)
speaks of ‘vernacular globalization’ to refer to the ways in which local sites
and their histories, cultures, politics and pedagogies mediate to greater or
lesser extents the effects of top-down globalization. This is an outcome of
relations and tensions between the context-productive and context-generative
effects of globalization; some local sites are more able to be context-generative
and mediate global effects. The idea of globalization from below seeks to
extend and strengthen this mediation and enhance global connections that
resist globalization from above, read simply as neoliberal economics, what
Bourdieu (2003) calls the performative construction of globalization. Policy
is now increasingly located within this struggle.
Appadurai emphasizes the need for research to examine its own rhetoric
and practices of ‘systematicity, prior citational contexts, and specialized modes
of inquiry’, replicability, and ‘an imagined world of specialized professional
readers and researchers’ (2001: 12), which taken together work to inhibit the
deparochialization of research, its theories and methodologies. Prior citational
contexts and an imagined world of specialized readers ensure the reproduction
of more ‘parochial’, western or northern-dominated theories. The argument
here is that a particular post-colonial politics is a useful starting point for a
rereading, re-examination, re-imagining, indeed deparochializing of research
in the globalized context that is dominated by US and western scholarship, a
situation which is often glossed over in talk about globalization.
As we have noted, the reality of trans- and supranational processes labelled
as globalization has challenged contemporary social theory. In sociology, Urry
(2000, 2002) has argued the need to refocus from the social as society to the
social as mobilities, indicating the weakened connectivity between society
and nation-state and the stretching of networks across the globe. We consider
the matter of mobilities associated with globalization in some detail in
Chapter 8 of this book. The spatial turn in social theory has been another
response to the rescaling of experience. Massey (1994: 2) has noted that the
‘spatial is social relations stretched out’. The important spatial turn in social
theory, exploring these relations between space and place as social construc-
tions, reflects the new scalar politics. Brennan (2006: 136) has suggested that
the centrality of space and place in contemporary globalization theory mani-
fests the apparent ‘overcoming of temporality’, with this new theoretical optic
ushering in a transition from ‘tempo to scale’, from ‘the chronometric to the
cartographic’.
66 Globalizing education policy
The anthropologist Auge (1995: 77) has written about non-places, and
suggests that while places are ‘relational, historical and concerned with iden-
tity’, non-places do not have these features. He suggests the contemporary
world has witnessed a growth in non-places, with airports and supermarkets
as archetypal non-places. Brennan (2006: 136) makes a similar distinction
between space and place, suggesting ‘“space” is more abstract and ubiqui-
tous: it connotes capital, history, and activity, and gestures towards the
meaninglessness of distance in a world of instantaneous communication and
virtuality’. ‘Place’ in contrast, he notes, connotes ‘the kernel or centre of
one’s memory and experience – a dwelling, a familiar park or city street,
one’s family or community’. The research disposition we are arguing for
acknowledges this space/place distinction in relation to the conduct of edu-
cation policy analysis. It is interesting to contemplate the significance of a
conceptualization of the space of policy production and the place of policy
implementation in relation to Brennan’s argument, and their differing
logics.
Recognizing the mobilities associated with globalization, Castells (2000)
argues that today power is located in flows, while most people still live in
the space of places; this disjunction, he suggests, results in political schizo-
phrenia. Other theorists have demonstrated the implicit national space of
much social theory and a complementary ‘methodological nationalism’
(Beck 2000). Bourdieu, for example, has observed how ‘[i]ntellectual life,
like all other social spaces, is a home to nationalism and imperialism’ (1999:
220) and that ‘a truly scientific internationalism’ requires a concerted polit-
ical project; this is another way of expressing the project in which Appa-
durai invites us to participate, namely the deparochialization of research
and theory.
Bourdieu’s theoretical stance and methodological disposition allow a way
beyond such spatial and national constraints, a necessary position for ana-
lysing and understanding global effects in contemporary educational policy
and the emergence of a global policy field in education. Globalization has
resulted in the compression of time and space, which has had the phenom-
enological effect of enhanced awareness amongst (privileged) peoples across
the globe of the world as one place, evidenced in, for example, talk of the
‘world economy’, ‘world recession’, ‘global financial crisis’, ‘global warming’,
‘world heritage sites’, ‘world policy’, ‘global educational indicators’, ‘global
higher education market’ and so on. Castells (2000) speaks of the flows and
networks across the globe, which render national boundaries more porous.
He argues, somewhat like Appadurai (1996), that society is now organized
around flows, namely ‘flows of capital, flows of information, flows of tech-
nology, flows of organizational interaction, flows of images, sounds and
symbols’ (Castells 2000: 442), with technology facilitating these flows via
nubs and nodes located across the globe that are dominated by elites of
various kinds. While the post-national accounts proffered by Castells and
others perhaps overstate the ‘porousness’ of national boundaries (Gregory
 Globalizing education policy analysis 67
2004), particularly post-9/11, the suggestion that the world is become
increasingly interconnected is now beyond doubt. This implies that the
local and the national are now nested within regional, international, tran-
snational and global spaces. It also implies the need to see the social rela-
tions of educational policy production as stretched out. It becomes the task
of policy analysis to determine how, and with what effects. The policy cycle
needs to be globalized.
Such a task involves a refusal to reify the concept of globalization, a failure
to historicize it and to recognize its hegemonic role. It needs to determine the
asymmetries of power between nations, and attend to their colonial and neo-
colonial histories and post-colonial aspirations. Also important is the need to
calibrate the differential national effects of neoliberal globalization. Bourdieu
offers a way beyond such reification of globalization and allows for an empiri-
cally grounded account of the constitution of a global policy field in educa-
tion – an example of globalization from above – and an account of global
effects in national policy fields – globalization from below. In his later, more
political work Bourdieu (2003) was concerned with the politics of globaliza-
tion, read mainly as the dominance of a neoliberal approach to the economy.
He was interested in exploring the ways in which global neoliberal politics
have dented somewhat the relative autonomy of the logics of practice of many
social fields, including that of the educational policy field, which has become
more heteronomous, as a subset of economic policy. Bourdieu’s approach
allows for an empirical investigation of the constitution of the global eco-
nomic market, as well as the ways in which the media field and its logics have
affected the degree of autonomy of educational policy production.
In an homologous fashion, we would argue that educational policy is a
political project and yet another manifestation of the emergent politics in the
age of flows and diasporas of people and ideas across the boundaries of nation-
states in both embodied and cyber forms. And just as a social imaginary of
neoliberal globalization has been a central component in the creation of the
global market, so it has been with the global field of educational policy. A
global field of education policy is now established, certainly as a global com-
mensurate space of measurement of educational performance. Such a field does
not, of course, affect all nation-states in the same way, for they are positioned
differently in terms of power and the strength of national capital within the
global fields of the economy and governance and have to relate to these global
fields in terms of their own economic, social and political conditions. Schriewer
and Martinez (2004) argue that nation-states now have significant ‘reference
societies’ which serve as points of comparison of the performance of national
education systems. While nation-states retain their significance for policy-
making in education, their capacity to set their policy priorities has become
relativized, as they now have to refer to the global processes in a range of dif-
ferent ways, including their effects in specific nations.
Drawing on Bourdieu (2003: 91), it can be argued that the amount of
‘national capital’ possessed by a given nation is a determining factor in the
68 Globalizing education policy
degree of autonomy for policy development within the nation. National
capital in one articulation can be seen to consist of the economic, political
and cultural capital (evidenced in quantity and quality of education of a
country’s workforce) possessed by any given nation. Here the Global South
is positioned very differently from the Global North in relation to the edu-
cational policy effects of the World Bank and other international agencies.
National capital can be seen to mediate the extent to which nations are able
to be context-generative in respect of the global field. Under globalization
and the emergence of global fields, the sovereignty of different nation-states
is affected in different ways. As Jayasuriya (2001: 444) suggests, ‘the focus
should not be on the content or degree of sovereignty that the state pos-
sesses but the form that it assumes in a global economy’. It is possible of
course to resist the global dominance of neoliberalism. The state is not pow-
erless in the face of globalization, but different states have varying capaci-
ties to manage ‘national interests’. This capacity should clearly be a focus of
research on education policy. It should be noted, however, that within
nation-states this capacity to resist neoliberal globalization varies. This is so
because the educational policy field is multilayered, stretched from the local
to the global. Mann (2000) speaks of five socio-spatial layers, namely local,
national, international (relations between nations), transnational (pass
through national boundaries) and global, which cover the globe as a whole.
We might also add a regional layer to Mann’s account. It is important to
note, however, that these layers are interrelated, in ways that too are affected
by the processes of globalization.
If this is so, education policy analysis demands an empirical and theoreti-
cal stretching beyond the nation, but in ways that do not overlook the
importance of these layers. We have adapted Bourdieu’s notion of field to
examine the relations between these layers, suggesting that global, interna-
tional, national and local educational policy fields represent a different way
to locate the practices and products of policy. This global educational policy
field encompasses the contexts of the policy cycle, offers some analytical
gains in locating the effects of particular policies, and reframes the contexts,
texts and consequences of policy. That is, it caters for these matters and also
offers a particular way of utilizing Bourdieu’s concept of field to discuss
issues around the impact of different fields on one another within national
fields of power, and of different scalar levels of fields also affecting one
another. All three contexts of the policy cycle, the context of policy text
production, the context of influence and the context of practice are affected
in different ways by globalization through both its policy mediation and
more direct effects. It is probably the case today that the habitus of national
policymakers and of those in international organizations have a lot in
common, thus facilitating flows of policy ideas and ensuring certain
‘policyscapes’.
 Globalizing education policy analysis 69
Conclusion
In this chapter we have sought to show how globalization has given rise to a
number of new theoretical and methodological issues for carrying out educa-
tion policy analysis. Globalization has affected theory and methodology
within critical social science; these changes need to be incorporated into edu-
cation policy analysis. We have argued that at the very least these changes
have demanded a critical reflexivity and awareness of our positionality as policy
analysts. This is to ensure a deparochialized approach to education policy
analysis, one which recognizes the layering today of policy processes across
local, national, regional and global spaces and the globalization of many
policy discourses in education. The disposition for critical education policy
analysis in an era of globalization requires that we recognize the relationality
and interconnectivity of policy developments. This recognition of relationality is
in response to the new spatial politics and interconnectivity within and across
nations that are evident in globalization. We have also suggested the need to
have a historical orientation to policy analysis. We have argued that while tra-
ditional rationalist perspectives took as given the policy problem as con-
structed by the policy, a critical approach to policy analysis needs to determine
how the problem is historically constituted. We also need to deconstruct the
way any given policy text in education articulates its context and history.
In stark contrast to the rationalist approach which views the ‘policy
problem’ in its immediate context, our approach works with larger temporal
and spatial frames, as does the policy ecology framework. It requires the loca-
tion of any given education policy in the context of the policy ensemble of
which it might be a part. It demands consideration of a temporal frame
beyond incremental links to immediate policy precursors. So, for example,
this temporal frame might refer to the broader discursive policy settlements,
the social imaginaries, such as Keynesianism or neoliberalism, the assump-
tions of which underpin a policy. Further, and particularly in relation to the
nations of the Global South, we would suggest that policy analysis in educa-
tion needs to consider both the colonial past and the colonial present, as both
are manifest in policy pressures from beyond the nation, and the contestation
involved in respect of post-colonial political aspirations in relation to contem-
porary education policy.
Critical policy analysis demands recognition of the significance of the posi-
tionality of the education policy researcher, the type of policy being analysed
and the location of the site of policy production. It requires an awareness of
the broader historical constitution of the context or ecology in which a policy
is articulated, requiring the analyst to have a critically reflexive disposition.
‘Critical’ here means that we deconstruct the many ‘taken-for-granteds’ in
policy processes and policy texts. But as part of this reflexivity, we must also
articulate our positionality and political stance – our value position. Our own
value position is informed by a commitment to work progressively towards a
more equal and democratic future that recognizes and respects differences.
70 Globalizing education policy
This means that critical education policy analysis must offer a critique of the
assumptions built, either explicitly or implicitly, into any given policy with a
view to showing how they might either support or undermine the values of
democracy and social justice. Beyond critique, another purpose of critical
education policy analysis is to suggest how policy could be otherwise – to
offer an alternative social imaginary of globalization and its implications for
education. In the remainder of this book we seek to illustrate this approach to
policy analysis, not as a recipe for carrying out policy research, but as a way of
showing how policy analysis can open up a dialogue about globalization and
its educational possibilities.
4 Education policy and the
allocation of values

Introduction
Education is a deliberate, purposive activity directed at the achievement of a
range of ends which could potentially include the development of knowl-
edgeable individuals who are able to think rationally, the formation of sus-
tainable community, and the realization of economic goals benefiting both
individuals and their communities. The term ‘education’ has normative
implications: it suggests that something worthwhile is being intentionally
transmitted, and that something valuable is being attempted. Thinking about
education thus necessarily involves considerations of values. But where are
these values to be found? What might be their content? Whose values are to
be privileged? How should they be justified? These questions have long been
the subject of philosophical deliberations. Philosophers of education have
long sought to elucidate how education might serve various moral, social,
political and economic ends. Some have suggested that education is intrinsi-
cally worthwhile, and that it is designed to produce knowledgeable, responsi-
ble and serious-minded people, while others have articulated educational
goals in more instrumental terms. Some have developed and justified educa-
tional values in terms of what they believe to be the nature of human beings,
knowledge or rational thought, while others have viewed education in func-
tional terms, as a component of social or economic systems.
In this chapter we want to argue that, useful as these philosophical discus-
sions are, it is not possible to simply derive education policies from a particu-
lar value position. A philosophical articulation of an educational goal does not
in itself suggest a particular policy prescription – what ought to be done in a
given set of circumstances. So, for example, a commitment to social equality
by policymakers does not in itself imply the policies that ought to be pursued.
Much depends on how the idea of social equality is interpreted and how it is
reconciled with a range of other values, such as efficiency and freedom. Also
important are the competing political interests involved in policy develop-
ment. In a democratic society these interests are clearly negotiated, resulting
in policy outcomes that most stakeholders can live with. Policy involves com-
promises and trade-offs. Also relevant in the development of a policy are
72 Globalizing education policy
pragmatic considerations relating to what is in fact possible, for example the
level of resources that are available to implement a policy. Equally, policy-
makers have to consider the ways in which policies are to be allocated, so that
those who are subject to them can more or less adhere to the values they
embody.
What this suggests is that policymaking is a fundamentally political
process: it involves major trade-offs between values. Public policies in educa-
tion, in particular, have to deal with a range of values, such as equality, excel-
lence, autonomy, accountability and efficiency, simultaneously. This means
policymakers have to assemble, organize and order them, configuring them in
such a way as to render them more or less consistent. This requires privileg-
ing some values ahead of others, and re-articulating their meaning. So, for
example, in recent years, a commitment to market values in education has not
entirely involved rejecting a concern for social equality, but it has required
that the meaning of equality be re-articulated. Similarly, a commitment to
system accountability may sometimes conflict with the values of autonomy,
requiring autonomy to be redefined so that this conceptual conflict does not
result in loss of policy legitimacy.
In the development of education policies, then, values are negotiated
through a range of political processes. However, in light of what we have dis-
cussed in the previous chapters, it should be clear that these negotiations no
longer take place only within the national political context, but also in an
emerging transnational space. National policymakers now feel obliged to
recraft education policies in relation to what they interpret as the emerging
imperatives of globalization, aligning them loosely to the values negotiated at
the national or local levels. They take note not only of the comparative data
produced by international organizations, but also of the educational values
that have become globally dominant, expressed in a neoliberal social
imaginary.
In this chapter we suggest that there is an unmistakable global trend
towards a convergence in thinking about educational values. This results in
policymakers and experts in differing social, political and economic traditions
often presenting a similar diagnosis of the problems confronting educational
systems and proposing similar solutions and programmes of educational
reform. There is thus a global shift towards a neoliberal values orientation,
manifested most clearly in privatization policies and in policies that assume
the validity of market mechanisms to solve the various problems and crises
facing governments. In education policy discourses, this has involved a reori-
entation of values from a focus on democracy and equality to the values of
efficiency and accountability, with a greater emphasis on human capital for-
mation allegedly demanded by the new knowledge industries, and required
by nation-states to participate and compete successfully in the global economy.
This does not mean that the social values of equality and democracy have been
abandoned, but rather that they have been re-articulated, subordinated to
dominant economic concerns. In this way, policies do not simply express a
 Education policy and the allocation of values 73
particular value, but bring a host of them together – they order, organize and
enact them in a particular configuration.

Philosophical traditions
Issues concerning how best to think about educational values have been
much debated for most of the past century. In the early part of the 20th
century, Whitehead (1929) wrote a highly influential book about the aims
of education, in which he insisted that educational values needed to be
expressed in explicit terms derived from our theoretical assumptions about
the nature of knowledge and its transmission, learning and human nature.
Education, he argued, should actively ‘utilize the knowledge and skills that
were taught to students to a particular end’, of ‘producing men [sic] who
possess both culture and expert knowledge in some special direction’ (ibid.:
1); and that it should ‘impart an intimate sense for the power and beauty
of ideas coupled with structure for ideas together with a particular body of
knowledge, which has peculiar reference to the life of the being possessing
it’ (ibid.: 10). Whitehead’s conception of educational values was thus linked
directly to the structure of knowledge that was judged to be intrinsically
worthwhile, applicable equally to all those who wished to be educated, and
necessarily good for all societies in the same way.
Some 40 years later, Hirst and Peters (1970) similarly argued that the aims
of education should be tied to its ‘knowledge condition’. Educational values,
they argued, specify something general and formal, a conceptual truth about
the very concept of education, as involving a ‘family of processes leading up to
desirable states of mind in people involving depth and breadth’ (ibid.: 26).
They viewed the production of these states of mind as the main aim of educa-
tion. The problem with this analytical approach to thinking about educa-
tional values, however, is that it leaves a range of important questions
unaddressed: for example, how might the desirable states of mind be deter-
mined?; which family of processes is appropriate?; and how might we apply
this definition to a society that is dynamic, democratic and multicultural,
where there exist contrasting and competing value positions about educa-
tional priorities? The approach proposed by Hirst and Peters clearly fails to
link educational values to particular social and historical formations. Instead
it articulates them in terms of highly formal conditions, justified through a
transcendental argument that largely eschews any consideration of changing
economic, political and social circumstances. Nor does it recognize that edu-
cational priorities are an outcome of political negotiations over competing
interests. In short, this analytical tradition of thinking about education is
both ahistorical and apolitical.
This analytical tradition stands in sharp contrast to the functionalist soci-
ological tradition, the main focus of which is on socialization processes
through which the young are inculcated into a given society. One of the
founders of this tradition, Durkheim (1972), viewed educational values in
74 Globalizing education policy
this instrumental fashion. Educational processes, he suggested, reflect under-
lying processes in society because an educational system is a construct built
by society, which ‘naturally’ seeks to reproduce its collectively held beliefs
and norms through its institutions. Educational systems thus contain the
imprint of past stages in the development of a society, even as each era seeks
to develop that imprint in its own image. According to Durkheim, educa-
tion reform requires us to first understand these imprints by analysing them
and, only then, to consider how a society could be developed through the
reconstruction of its educational system. For Durkheim, then, educational
values express ‘societal needs’ at a given time and place. Society constructs its
educational system to promote and reproduce its ideal of how human beings
should live and relate to each other in meeting societal needs.
If Hirst and Peters’s analytical approach to thinking about educational
values is too universalistic, the functionalist sociological tradition rests on a
view of society that is too specific and instrumental. The functionalist tradi-
tion leaves little room for social critique and radical transformation, but ties
educational values largely to instrumental ends. Moreover, it assumes the
borders of a society to be clearly definable and fixed, overlooking the impor-
tance of intersocietal relations. Moreover, issues of power and politics relating
to the determination of ‘societal needs’ are left unaddressed, thus privileging
hegemonic conceptions over values that might be oppositional, suggesting
alternatives to existing social realities and imaginaries.
The pragmatic tradition of thinking about educational values, associated
with the work of the American philosopher John Dewey, cuts across the bina-
ries between the formal and material, the universal and particular, the instru-
mental and non-instrumental, as well as the contrast between the intrinsic
and extrinsic aims of education. Dewey provided his most considered account
of educational values in Democracy and Education (1916). Educational values,
he argued, cannot be found outside the activity of education; they are located
within the educational act itself. An aim of education, therefore, should be a
natural outgrowth of the existing conditions, and should be formed in the
process of realizing it. It should ‘enable individuals to continue their educa-
tion’. In this sense, ‘the object and reward of learning is continued capacity
for growth’ (ibid.: 81). Dewey specifies three conditions that he says are found
in all good educational aims. First, ‘an educational aim must be founded upon
the intrinsic activities and needs (including original instincts and acquired
habits) of the given individual to be educated’. Secondly, ‘an aim must be
capable of translation into a method of cooperating with the activities of those
undergoing instruction’. And finally, ‘educators have to be on their guard
against ends that are alleged to be general and ultimate’ (ibid.: 85). Beyond
these general conditions, Dewey insists that educational values should grow
out of the context of the educative activity itself.
Dewey’s account of education has been criticized for its lack of specificity,
for example by Suppes (1995). However, Suppes acknowledges this lack might
be deliberate on Dewey’s part, for he was reluctant to prescribe a pre-specified
 Education policy and the allocation of values 75
ideal of the educated person, a single greatest good, a universal. Educational
values, for Dewey, have to be negotiated within the process of education itself,
so long as ‘there is adequate provision for the reconstruction of social habits
and institutions by means of wide stimulation arising from equitably distrib-
uted interests. And this means a democratic society’ (Dewey 1916: 78). As
Noddings (1995) suggests, Dewey might well have said that the primary edu-
cational value is to produce people who will understand, appreciate and use
the ‘method of intelligence’. However, even this level of specificity might have
conflicted with Dewey’s contention that educational values should arise out of
the specific contexts in which people find themselves, for he had noted that
contexts change in ways that demand different educational responses. Indeed,
it is not surprising that the context in which Dewey was writing greatly
affected his own analysis of the relationships between society and education.
His was an era of strong nationalisms. His remarks were therefore located
within a national imaginary, characterized in the United States by various
sentiments about democracy and about the role of education in producing
certain kinds of citizen.
For Dewey, while educational values are often articulated in formal terms,
explicitly specified in legislation, statutes or policy documents, they can also
be implicit in social practices representing established ways of doing things
in various informal arrangements. They can also be expressed implicitly in
plans of action or programme descriptions. They therefore have to be dis-
cerned and teased out in a particular context, and then made explicit for the
purposes of analysis. Educational values are often embedded within a broader
context of social relations and practices, or as we have noted in Chapter 2, in
a ‘social imaginary’, a framework that is at once descriptive and prescriptive
of conceptions of how educational practice is best directed towards certain
outcomes and is organized around a set of values. In this sense, educational
values are embedded in policies in a range of complicated ways within a social
imaginary.
An analysis of education policies therefore requires not only an examina-
tion of their specific content but also an investigation of the context that
provides them with meaning and legitimacy. Since education policies cannot
simply be inferred from a particular value position, policy analysis requires an
understanding of how multiple, sometimes competing, values are brought
together, organized and configured in a policy statement and are allocated in
an authoritative manner. Policy analysis needs to show how some values are
glossed over while others are highlighted, re-articulated or sutured together
in any given policy text.

Values and education policy

According to Deborah Stone (2001), public policies in most liberal demo-
cratic societies are structured around five key values – equity, efficiency, secu-
rity, liberty and community. They are, she argues, ‘often invoked as
76 Globalizing education policy
justifications for a policy, for a government action, or for the government not
taking action’ (ibid.: 37). They are also used as criteria for analysing policies
and evaluating programmes. Yet, Stone insists, none of these values admits a
simple and determinate definition; each of them is ambiguous and is subject
to competing interpretations that make it the object of political struggle. She
maintains that the concepts of equity, efficiency, security, liberty and com-
munity are continuously constructed and reconstructed, and in public policy
deliberations the priority of one value over others in particular is constantly
negotiated. Seldom are any of these values completely abandoned, but some
values are foregrounded while others are masked or re-articulated, given a
weaker meaning.
The idea of equity, for example, relates to issues of ‘who gets what, when
and how’. Issues of distribution of material and human resources often lie at
the heart of public policy controversies. Anyone familiar with debates in the
United States about affirmative action would vouch for the complications that
arise in assessments of how the notion of equity should be interpreted. Equity
can be viewed, for example, in a weak sense, as simply implying formal access
to provisions without any examination of the social and economic conditions
that permit such access. Stronger notions of equality, those associated with
the policies of affirmative action, in contrast, emphasize the need to pay atten-
tion to the historical conditions that define people’s capacity to benefit from
state provisions – not simply to issues of access, but also to outcomes.
Those who reject affirmative action policies do not also by and large
favour redistributive measures. Yet they do not entirely reject the impor-
tance of equality, but seek to subordinate it instead to the idea of liberty.
The values of equality and liberty are not always reconcilable, for sometimes
people’s liberty needs to be constrained in an effort to provide greater equity
of opportunity and outcomes. The debate thus revolves around the question
of what kind of interference is acceptable as a price of distributive justice.
In public policy deliberations, then, there is always a certain level of conflict
between values. This conflict is resolved in a number of ways, for example
by trade-offs between values, by sidelining a particular value, or redefining
or re-articulating its meaning (Hall 1996).
Similarly the idea of efficiency is not a self-evident, morally neutral one. To
show how this is so, we might ask a more basic question: ‘Efficiency in terms
of what?’ As the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (1981) points out, there are
strong grounds for rejecting the claim that efficiency is a morally neutral
concept. Rather, it is ‘inseparable from a mode of existence in which the con-
trivance of means is in central part the manipulation of human beings into
compliant patterns of behavior’ (ibid.: 71). Efficient organizations are those
that get things done with a minimum of waste, duplication and expenditure
of resources. But organizations can tolerate some measure of efficiency if other
more worthy values are at stake. Within the logic of input and output meas-
ures of efficiency, who determines what is the correct output goal, how mul-
tiple goals should be compared and evaluated, and how input costs and factors
 Education policy and the allocation of values 77
are counted are more than merely technical questions; they also involve spe-
cific political judgements. In public policy processes, then, the value of effi-
ciency has to be assessed in relation to the other equally important values of
equity, liberty, community and security.
Much has been said since September 11, 2001 about the notion of security
as an important public policy objective (Klein 2007). Security is considered
to be one of the key governmental responsibilities. But security is a compli-
cated idea, which refers not only to physical security of people, but also to
their economic, social and psychological well-being. The idea of security can
never be reduced to a set of objective conditions. And if this is so, it often
conflicts not only with the idea of liberty, but also with the idea of commu-
nity. In assessing security we need to count not only material resources, but
also symbolic meanings provided by resources. Should a government secure
not only the needs of individuals but also their relational needs, such as a
sense of community? The Bush administration in the United States used a
very narrow definition of security, but this clearly had implications for public
policies, as the values of liberty and community in particular were both side-
lined and subordinated (Saltman 2007).
What this discussion demonstrates is that public policies are always
about trade-offs, compromises and of course politics, sometimes informed
by narrow personal or sectional interests but more often by ideological dif-
ferences. The political Left has generally been thought to work with notions
of equity and community, while the Right has emphasized the values of
liberty and security, as well as efficiency. This contrast, however, is some-
what misleading, since no public policy in liberal democratic countries can
entirely ignore any of these values. The debates between the Left and the
Right are more accurately characterized as being located within a discursive
struggle over meaning, as each side seeks to re-articulate and realign differ-
ently the meaning and significance of key values associated with public
policies. In policymaking there are compromises, not only in policy content
but also in the ways in which policies are allocated, characterized, repre-
sented and promoted.
In education policy, David Labaree (2003) has observed that education
has traditionally involved struggle over three distinct but often competing
values: democratic equality, social mobility and social efficiency. He argues
that while these values are not mutually exclusive, historically one has been
given precedence over the others. So, for example, in post-World War II
social democracies the idea of democratic equality became dominant in
many parts of the world, interpreted in Scandinavian countries from a social
democratic perspective but in countries like the United States from a more
liberal perspective. In socialist countries a very different definition of equal-
ity was promoted. In many post-colonial countries equality became some-
thing of an ideological mantra in educational thinking, even if it was seldom
realized. In other countries social mobility and meritocracy were placed
ahead of social equality.
78 Globalizing education policy
For Labaree the concept of democratic equality has long suggested the need
for education to facilitate the development of democratic citizens who can
participate in democratic communities in a critically informed manner. Its
focus is on equal access and equal treatment of all citizens, and on regarding
education as a public good. This implies that maximum benefit to society can
only be realized if every member of a community is educated to realize their
full potential. The primary purpose of education is, then, the creation of pro-
ductive citizens able to maximize personal fulfilment, not simply efficient
workers. This view, however, does not imply a denial of the importance of
vocational training, but stresses that such training must be located within the
broader role that education must play in the development of a socially cohe-
sive democratic community. The purposes of education, from this perspec-
tive, are thus more social and cultural than economic, focused more on the
community than on the individual.
If the democratic equity view of education focuses on its role in promoting
the public good, the idea of social mobility gives precedence to education’s
role in providing individuals with a range of private goods that they can
exchange within the labour market for money, power and prestige. The social
mobility view thus regards education as both inherently rivalrous and desira-
bly competitive, serving the function of allocating economic benefits and
social status to individuals. It suggests that social rewards should be based on
both effort and intelligence. It maintains that the market rewards those who
work harder and have inherently superior skills and talent. Yet the social
mobility view does not deny a role for education in promoting social equality,
but insists on leaving the processes of social formation to the market. It sug-
gests that the only role public policy must play is to strengthen structures
that enable each individual to have formal access to educational institutions
within the market. It thus emphasizes individual choice, freedom for students
to gain in their own way the knowledge and skills they will require for finding
a place within the labour market and thus achieving social mobility. The
focus here is on competition and the ability of the market to reconcile the
values of not only equality and liberty but also efficiency.
A third view of education values highlights its role in achieving social
efficiency. While the social mobility view focuses exclusively on individu-
als, the social efficiency view requires education to play a more important
instrumental role in developing workers able to contribute to the economic
productivity of nations and corporations alike. Its focus is not as much on
the needs and development of individuals as on the efficiency with which
educational systems operate. The emphasis is on the system’s capacity to
make an adequate return on investment, assessed in terms of its contribu-
tion to producing workers with knowledge, skills and attitudes relevant to
increasing productivity within the knowledge economy. In this way, educa-
tion is viewed as both a public and a private good: public because it con-
tributes to the economic well-being and social development of a community;
and private because it serves individual interests within a competitive
 Education policy and the allocation of values 79
market. However, it is important to stress that the notion of the public
good that the social efficiency view promotes is markedly different from
social democratic conceptions, which regard education as intrinsically good,
and not linked instrumentally to organizational efficiency, economic out-
comes and productivity.

Knowledge economy and policy constructions

In recent years, however, it is the social efficiency view of education that
appears to be increasingly dominant, especially among large corporations and
intergovernmental organizations, as well as in many national governments.
As we have noted, it assembles the traditional values associated with public
policy – equity, efficiency, security, liberty and community – ordering them
in a particular fashion, giving each of them a specific meaning that is located
within a broader discursive structure. This structure is now constituted by a
social imaginary that not only defines the ways in which values are inter-
preted, but also points to the manner in which policies should direct practice
and enable us to conceive of possibilities and futures. It is through this neo-
liberal imaginary, as Appadurai (2001: 15) has pointed out, that citizens are
now disciplined and controlled, by states, markets and other powerful inter-
ests, but it is also the faculty through which collective patterns of dissent and
new designs for collective life are conceptualized. The hegemonic power of
the neoliberal imaginary is not absolute, and is constantly resisted.
In the context of globalization there are different and competing ways of
interpreting the contemporary realities of global interconnectivity and inter-
dependence, and of deriving educational implications from them. Yet these
competing imaginaries do not exist in a neutral space, but in a context in
which neoliberalism has become dominant. It is in terms of this imaginary
that most recent statements of educational values around the world appear to
be couched. These statements are expressed in a language that is magisterial
in tone and assumes the authority of its claim, a language that demands
consent and legitimacy. It brings factual and normative aspects of policy
together in an effort to forge a shared implicit understanding of the problems
to which policies are proposed as solutions. In this way the authority struc-
ture within which policies are located demands a shared social imaginary.
In an effort to secure this authority, we have noted, intergovernmental
organizations (IGOs) have played an important role in shaping particular dis-
courses of globalization and their supposed implications for rethinking edu-
cational values. Organizations such as the OECD, the EU, APEC, UNESCO
and the World Bank have become major sites for the organization of knowl-
edge about education, and have created a cajoling discourse of ‘imperatives of
the global economy’ for education. Recognizing that developments in com-
munication and information technologies have enabled increased circulation
of ideas, images and ideologies across national borders, they have created a
space within which ideas are now explored, exchanged, promoted and steered.
80 Globalizing education policy
Their efforts have led to policy borrowing, transfer, appropriation and copying
of ideas across national boundaries as never before (Phillips and Ochs 2004).
Policy debates around the world now display an almost universal deepening
of a shift from social democratic to neoliberal orientations.
There is an enormous pressure on educational systems not only to increase
the amount of formal education young people are now required to have, but
also to align the content of this education with the alleged requirements of
the global economy. As a result, new requirements of policy have emerged,
resulting in the corporatization and marketization of education. This has
involved greater and new demands for accountability and surveillance, creat-
ing new pressures on teachers’ work. As public resources for education in
most countries have declined, there has been a growing emphasis on increas-
ing the role of the private sector and user-pays approaches. Yet amidst all this
change, and despite pressure on educational systems around the world to
diversify – to meet the diverse needs that systems have – educational systems
have seemingly mimicked each other, pursuing a common set of solutions to
their fiscal and organizational problems. Indeed they have even interpreted
the requirements of reform in a broadly similar fashion.
At a very general level, a new human capital theory has informed discus-
sions of educational values. The old human capital theory had postulated
(Becker 1964) that expenditure on training and education was costly, but
that it should be treated as an investment, since it is undertaken with a view
to increasing personal incomes and can be used to explain occupational wage
differentials. The new human capital theory extends this claim to the
requirements of the global economy and to the competitive advantage of
individuals, corporations and nations within the transnational context. The
new theory is technically complex and has been the subject of much debate.
There are a number of strands to its claims. However, in its popular form, it
considers all human behaviour to be based on the economic self-interest of
individuals operating within free competitive markets. It assumes that indi-
viduals are equally free to choose. It also assumes economic growth and
competitive advantage to be a direct outcome of the levels of investment in
developing human capital. It suggests that, in a global economy, perform-
ance is increasingly linked to people’s knowledge stock, skills level, learn-
ing capabilities and cultural adaptability. It therefore demands policy
frameworks that enhance labour flexibility, not only through the deregula-
tion of the market, but also through reform to systems of education and
training, designed to align them better with the changing nature of eco-
nomic activity.
In its most radical form, the new human capital theory not only requires
reform of systems of educational governance, it also demands a reconceptuali-
zation of the very purposes of education. The OECD (1996) has suggested, for
example, that the advances in information and communication technologies
have so transformed the nature of knowledge production and utilization, the
organization of work and labour relations, modes of consumption and trade,
 Education policy and the allocation of values 81
and patterns of cultural exchange, that education now needs to produce dif-
ferent kinds of persons who are better able to work creatively with knowl-
edge, are flexible, adaptable and mobile, are globally minded and interculturally
confident and are lifelong learners. What this view implies is that learning for
learning’s sake is no longer sufficient, and that education does not have any
intrinsic ends as such, but must always be linked to the instrumental pur-
poses of human capital development and economic self-maximization. This
should not, of course, be taken to mean that ethical and cultural issues are no
longer relevant to education, but rather that they should be interpreted within
the broader neoliberal social imaginary. In this way, this view rests on what
George Soros (1998) has called ‘market fundamentalism’, a kind of concep-
tual schema within the framework of which values associated with public
policies must now be interpreted and, if necessary, re-articulated.
In this framework, the idea of a knowledge economy features prominently
(Kenway et al. 2006). It suggests that globalization has fundamentally
altered the relationship between the production of knowledge and its eco-
nomic application; and that the emergence of knowledge-intensive activi-
ties and the production and diffusion of information technologies have led
to the development of new models of work organization (Paul 2002). One of
the countries to embrace and use the notion of knowledge economy early
was New Zealand. The so-called ‘New Zealand experiment’ (Peters 2001)
assumed that a knowledge-driven economy is one in which the generation
and exploitation of knowledge play the predominant part in the creation of
wealth. It maintained that in the industrial era, wealth was created by using
machines to replace human labour, but the new jobs in the knowledge
economy are to be found increasingly in high-technology industries such as
telecommunications and financial services.
Knowledge, of course, has always been central to discussion of education
and the economy. But the new discourse of the knowledge economy marks a
number of major shifts about the changed significance of knowledge. Accord-
ing to Drucker (1999), knowledge as an input is now quantitatively and qual-
itatively more important than capital, especially given the rise of new forms
of trading of knowledge products, including of course education itself. In its
landmark report, the OECD (1996) has presented perhaps the most magiste-
rial account of the knowledge economy. Basing its views on the ‘new growth
theory’, it argues that the growing codification of knowledge and its trans-
mission through communications and computer networks has led to the
emerging ‘information society’, creating new economic opportunities based
on an economics not of scarcity but of abundance. Unlike most resources that
deplete when used, knowledge can be used and may actually grow through
application.
This discourse of knowledge has now become commonplace around the
world, from the OECD countries to the newly industrializing countries of
Asia such as Singapore and India, to countries such as China and Vietnam
where Communist Parties remain in political control but which now speak of
82 Globalizing education policy
‘market socialism’. Every national system, so it seems, is now developing its
education policies to take advantage of the knowledge economy. Everywhere
it is assumed that the knowledge economy will require a larger proportion
of workers to be prepared for highly skilled jobs, workers who have compe-
tencies linked to their ability to use new technologies and their cultural
attitudes towards change, even if most of the new jobs are in low paid and
highly casualized service industries jobs. In a rapidly changing world, it is
believed, these competencies must involve certain behavioural features such
as adaptability, organizational loyalty and the ability to work in culturally
diverse contexts and to provide leadership.
This conception of education involves a new approach to human capital
development, grounded not so much in the amount of schooling individuals
have, but in the learning attributes they are able to develop, with which to
deal effectively and creatively with unfamiliar and constantly changing con-
ditions of work. It emphasizes the development of broad generic skills such as
communication skills, problem-solving, the ability to work independently,
often under pressure, to take responsibility for decisions and to obtain field-
specific knowledge quickly and efficiently and ascertain its commercial
potential.
In the knowledge economy, knowing facts and theories is thus less impor-
tant than an understanding of the world of social relations and the networks
through which knowledge is converted into innovation and commercially
viable products. The principles of flexibility and dynamism demand skills of
finding out the relevant information and using it commercially. These skills
are considered more important than formal, codified, structured and explicit
knowledge. Against these assumptions, the new growth theorists such as
Foray and Lundvall (1996) suggest that a nation’s capacity to take advantage
of the knowledge economy depends on how quickly it can become a ‘learning
economy’. Learning, Foray and Lundvall argue, should not only involve the
ability to use new technologies in accessing knowledge, but should also mean
using technology to better communicate with other people about ways of
improving productivity. They maintain that in the knowledge economy,
individuals, corporations and nations will create wealth in proportion to their
capacity to learn and share innovation. If this is so, learning must be continu-
ous and not restricted to formal schooling.

Lifelong learning
The contemporary notion of lifelong learning is thus linked to various claims
about the knowledge economy, located as they are within the neoliberal
imaginary of globalization. Yet the idea of lifelong learning is not new. It
first emerged during the 18th century, and was associated with a range of
concepts such as individualism, social equality and social progress, as well as
social processes such as industrialization, secularization, urbanization and
rationalization. It expressed a particular image of the social world and a way
 Education policy and the allocation of values 83
of thinking about it. The idea of developing reason featured prominently in
this image. It was believed that human progress was only possible through
the application of reason and science, and that this required not only formal
schooling, but also education that was ongoing, shaping the ways in which
people thought about and lived their daily lives. Knowledge was thus consid-
ered crucial for both individual advancement and social progress. In the 19th
century, industrialization required workers to be trained in the new technol-
ogies of work, with the expectation that further changes would require a
disposition for lifelong education. To meet this demand, Mechanics’ Insti-
tutes were set up by various industrialists, first in Scotland and then through-
out the world, to provide adult education, particularly in technical subjects.
The industrialists ultimately benefited from having more knowledgeable and
skilled employees (Candy and Laurent 1994).
Inspired by the ideas of the French Enlightenment in particular, the notion
of ‘lifelong self-education’ was central to Thomas Jefferson’s political theory.
As early as 1776, Jefferson proposed a Bill for the More General Diffusion of
Knowledge, which sought to establish public libraries throughout America so
that the general population could develop knowledge and skills he considered
necessary, not only for a republican society but also for the general pursuit of
happiness (Boyd 1950). According to Tozer and his colleagues (2002), most
American educational theorists since Jefferson have agreed that a fundamen-
tal purpose of education is to prepare the student for lifelong learning. John
Dewey (1916), for example, viewed lifelong education as a key component in
his instrumentalist theory of democracy. One of Dewey’s British contempo-
raries, Yeaxlee (1929: 28) saw education as inseparable from life itself, and
argued that for life to be vivid, strong and creative, it demanded ‘constant
reflection upon experience, so that action may be guided by wisdom, and
service be the other aspect of self-expression, while work and leisure are
blended in perfect exercise of body, mind and spirit, personality attaining
completion in society’.
In the 1960s the notion of lifelong education proliferated as educators sought
a new vision for a more democratic and socially just society. Initiatives in
workers’ education, informal education, radical education, adult education,
community education and the like involved attempts to transform education
away from formal rigid and authoritarian traditions to more informal approaches
that highlighted the importance of experiential and informal learning. Accord-
ing to Raymond Williams (1989), adult education was crucial for an ‘organi-
cally grounded struggle’ towards a genuine democracy and a socialist vision of
society. Without lifelong education, he argued, resources of hope and struggle
could not be sustained. In the United States, a similar progressive tradition in
community education developed around a distinctive set of educational values
and historical social purpose. In South America, a parallel tradition inspired by
Paulo Freire (1972) viewed lifelong learning as a way of mounting a popular
struggle against exploitative capitalism. Freire believed that education should
not involve one person acting on another. The idea of lifelong learning also
84 Globalizing education policy
found favour among feminist, civil rights and other social movements. In the
1970s, education policy experts even at organizations such as the OECD saw
lifelong education, viewed as recurrent education, as a way of keeping educa-
tional expenditure down and yet still expanding educational access to meet the
increasing and changing human resource needs of an economy hit by inflation-
ary pressures and decline in productivity.
As diverse as these approaches to lifelong learning were, each was based on
the assumption that if education were to serve broader social purposes, it
needed to be continuing. The current policy notion of lifelong learning con-
tinues this tradition, but is evidently located within the neoliberal imaginary
of globalization. It celebrates the values of social efficiency and the ability of
individuals and countries to compete in the global knowledge economy.
Effectively it re-articulates older, more liberal humanist constructions of life-
long learning. Promoted vigorously by international organizations, it does
not simply imply the importance of learning new knowledge and gaining
new skills on an ongoing basis. Rather, it is located within a broader dis-
course of economic competitiveness. As Field and Leicester (2000: xvii) point
out, this discourse has arisen primarily from changes in the economy, includ-
ing such developments as ‘the rapid diffusion of information and communica-
tion technologies, the constant application of science and technology, and the
globalization in trade of goods and services’. This observation mirrors the
OECD’s contention (1996) that the ‘increased pace of globalization and tech-
nological change, the changing nature of work and the labour market, and the
ageing of populations are among the forces emphasizing the need for continu-
ing upgrading of work and life skills throughout life’. These developments,
the OECD suggests, have made constant investment in education necessary
for individuals and nations alike.
While the current policy notion of lifelong learning is highly varied and
diffuse, some of its key features nonetheless stand out (Evans 2003). First, the
idea of lifelong learning stresses the need to acquire and update all kinds of
abilities, interests, knowledge and qualifications from the preschool years to
post-retirement. Second, it places emphasis on all forms of learning, includ-
ing formal learning such as a degree course followed at university, and non-
formal learning such as vocational skills acquired at the workplace. Third, it
shifts the focus of learning from ‘knowing that’ to ‘knowing how’, giving rise
to new conceptions of the ways in which learning is defined, arranged, valued,
utilized and promoted. Fourth, it stresses the benefits of informal learning
such as intergenerational learning, for example where parents learn to use the
new information and technologies through their children, or where learning
takes place in informal settings such as work or leisure. Fifth, it holds indi-
viduals responsible for their own education, viewing it as an economic invest-
ment. Sixth, it prescribes a system-wide network of ‘learning pathways’
extending from early childhood through to all stages of adulthood in both
formal and informal educational settings, fulfilling social and economic objec-
tives simultaneously by providing long-term benefits for the individual, the
 Education policy and the allocation of values 85
enterprise, the economy and society more generally. And finally, it promotes
the development of knowledge and competencies that enable each citizen to
adapt to the knowledge-based society and actively participate in all spheres of
social and economic life, increasingly shaped by globalization.
Each of these shifts is arguably informed by an underlying focus on social
efficiency, within the broader discourse of which even the values of demo-
cratic equity and social mobility are now incorporated. For example, it has
been argued by the OECD that a focus on efficiency can in fact lead to greater
equality and opportunities for social mobility. Without the ability to perform
effectively in the global labour market, the OECD suggests, the potential of
workers for social mobility is severely reduced. Nor is the concern for equity
overlooked by the advocates of lifelong learning. As the OECD (1996)
suggests:

A new focus for education and training policies is needed now, to develop capaci-
ties to realize the potential of the ‘global information economy’ and to contribute
to employment, culture, democracy and, above all, social cohesion. Such policies
will need to support the transition to ‘learning societies’ in which equal opportu-
nities are available to all, access is open, and all individuals are encouraged and
motivated to learn, in formal education as well as throughout life.

Ultimately, the dominant ideas of both knowledge economy and lifelong

learning are predicated on the assumptions of social efficiency, viewed largely
in terms of economic efficiency. Indeed, economic efficiency now appears to
be regarded almost as a ‘metavalue’, subsuming within its scope aspirations
such as social equality, mobility and even social cohesion.
The idea of lifelong learning has thus been rethought, broadened and
linked to the production of ‘self-responsibilizing’ individuals (Rose 1999).
According to UNESCO (2006: 13), not only must learning ‘adapt to changes
in the nature of work, but it must also constitute a continuous process of
forming whole human beings – their knowledge and aptitudes, as well as the
critical faculty and the ability to act’. Lifelong learning should thus be pro-
moted through a system-wide network of ‘learning pathways’, extending from
early childhood through to all stages of adulthood in both formal and infor-
mal educational settings, fulfilling ‘social and economic objectives simultane-
ously by providing long-term benefits for the individual, the enterprise, the
economy and the society more generally’ (OECD 1996). In both of these
accounts, social mobility becomes a functional outcome of economic effi-
ciency, and the egalitarian impulse is largely collapsed, becoming subordinate
to the overriding goal of developing human resources needed for the changing
global economy.
This neoliberal notion of lifelong learning assumes education to be a private
good, providing benefits to the individual consumer. As a private good, edu-
cation is viewed as a commodity that can provide an individual advantage
over others. At the same time, however, education becomes something that
86 Globalizing education policy
can be used to differentiate people in terms of their economic value. In this
way, education is more geared towards fulfilling the needs of the market than
those of communities. Educational systems that do not meet explicit func-
tional economic goals are dismissed as inefficient and ineffective. Indeed,
popular media and corporations propagate this largely ideological assump-
tion, calling for reforms designed not only to produce workers who are self-
directed, self-capitalizing and self-sufficient learners, but also to hold teachers
and educational bureaucracies more accountable (Edwards 1997).
What this discussion suggests is that the current discourse of lifelong learn-
ing is motivated more by a political agenda of social control (see Coffield 1999)
than with social transformation through education. It is based on an assump-
tion that human societies are necessarily competitive, and that social efficiency
can only be achieved through a reliance on market principles. However, such a
view intensifies the divide between valuable and non-valuable people and places.
It assumes a moral economy in which people are believed to be motivated
largely by self-interest, with little capacity for forms of altruism and coopera-
tion other than those linked to self-capitalization, as a way of maximizing return
on capital. Education itself is assumed to be a form of capital, exchanged in the
marketplace largely for personal benefit. Lifelong learning is thus considered
necessary not as a way of creating an informed and self-reflexive community,
but as an investment with which individuals, corporations and nations can
maximize their economic advantage.

Privatization and the politics of choice

Linked to this emphasis on the market are the ideas of privatization and choice
in education. In recent years, both have been promoted as major panaceas for
the challenges facing education in the era of globalization. Proposals for
reform by governments and corporations alike have emphasized the efficien-
cies that can be obtained from the transfer of services provided by the public
sector to a range of private-sector interests, and by giving greater choice to
the educational consumer. Yet these notions are highly ideological, located
within the neoliberal imaginary of globalization.
As a construct, the idea of privatization emerged in the 1970s as an attempt
by a number of western countries such as the United States to separate deci-
sion-making in the areas of public policy from the execution of service provi-
sion. Three decades later it has become globally pervasive, increasingly
assumed to be the only way to ensure that public services, including educa-
tion, are delivered efficiently and effectively (Ball and Youdell 2008). It has
come to symbolize a new way of looking at public institutions and the role of
the state in managing the affairs of its citizens. Under this broad philosophi-
cal orientation, many possible activities are construed as privatization,
ranging from selling state-owned enterprises to contracting out public serv-
ices to private contractors, be they individuals or corporations. According to
Bray (1996), privatization of education takes at least three forms: transferring
 Education policy and the allocation of values 87
ownership of public institutions, shifting sectoral balance without redesig-
nating existing institutions, and increasing government funding and support
for private institutions. Bray might have added to this list, contracting out
functions and services. Indeed, contracting out and enterprise sales may
perhaps be the most influential modalities of privatization in the contempo-
rary public sector. We can thus see why Ball (2007) speaks of ‘privatizations’
to capture these various meanings and practices.
Just as privatization appears in several forms, so do the reasons govern-
ments give in favour of privatization. Most of the reasons are couched in eco-
nomic terms. It is argued that privatization leads to cost-effective delivery of
public services, and that it enhances the productivity of government agencies.
Governments also suggest that the power of private property rights, market
forces and competition brings out the best in public-sector employees. Thus,
when the public sector is forced to compete against private contractors, service
delivery is necessarily more efficient; when public institutions are thrust into
market environments, they become much more organizationally agile and
innovative, with greater commitment to reform. Economic arguments in
favour of privatization also view it as necessary for growth, for meeting
increasing levels of demand for particular services, including higher educa-
tion. Such arguments necessarily assume the welfare state to be a thing of the
past, withering away, no longer capable of meeting the requirements of both
society and individuals, who are increasingly interested in managing their
own affairs and do not trust the state to look after them.
Many of these arguments have become commonplace, even if most cannot
be substantiated with any hard data. So, for example, that private contractors
are more efficient and cost-effective in delivering services without compro-
mising on quality is a contention that has repeatedly been shown to be both
groundless and perhaps even unverifiable (Boyer and Drache 1996); yet this
does not seem to stop advocates of privatization from asserting it in a mantra-
like manner. The fact is that economic arguments on their own cannot justify
privatization. To try to do so is to grossly underestimate the political nature
of the privatization agenda, and also to misunderstand the role of ideology in
promoting it. In the end, the political context in which privatization is pro-
moted is inherently ideological. It is based on an almost ontological assump-
tion that the private sector is intrinsically more productive and efficient than
the public sector.
Such an assumption is based on a philosophical conception of society as
constituted by self-maximizing individuals with the free capacity to choose,
as well as a conception of government as necessarily inimical to individual
interests. Accordingly, public institutions are regarded as distant and unre-
sponsive organs of government which pose serious threats to individual prop-
erty rights, initiatives and freedom. According to this neoliberal view,
individual freedom is not the only value that is endangered by government
institutions; justice is as well. Justice, it is assumed, is compromised because
of the perennial desire of governments to redistribute wealth that is never
88 Globalizing education policy
theirs and to seek to control human affairs that are best left to individual dis-
cretion. While neoliberalism accepts that some redistribution and control
may be necessary, it suggests that the Keynesian welfare state exceeded its
democratic authority and is no longer relevant to contemporary economic and
social life, especially under the cultural conditions of globalization. Of course,
the global financial crisis of 2008 has once again opened public and political
discussions about these claims.
Freedom, justice and efficiency are thus key ingredients underpinning neo-
liberal ideology, which have increasingly been redefined in the self-image of
that perspective. These social concepts, developed with particular meanings
and significance within social democratic traditions, have been systematically
re-articulated. Within the neoliberal discourse, the idea of freedom, for
example, has become tied to a negative view of freedom as ‘freedom from’,
rather than a positive view of freedom as ‘freedom to’ in terms, for example,
articulated by Amartya Sen (1999), who has defined freedom in terms of the
capabilities that people have to exercise choices and live decent lives, free
from poverty and exploitation.
Similarly, the idea of justice has been reduced to property rights, rather
than being inclusive of personal rights (Bowles and Gintis 1985). A property
right vests in individuals the power to enter into social relationships on the
basis and extent of their property, while personal rights are based on simple
membership in their social collectivity. Personal rights involve equal treat-
ment of citizens, the capacity to enjoy autonomy, equal access to participation
in decision-making in social institutions, and reciprocity in relations of power
and authority. The neoliberal view of justice, on the other hand, is located in
the processes of acquisition and production rather than in the need to build
community and social lives that are characterized by human dignity for all.
Such a conception of freedom necessarily privileges the ruling capitalist class,
which is able to access property rights within a system of asymmetrical power
relations and labour exploitation (Apple 2001).
The neoliberal construction of efficiency, as we have already noted, is
equally problematic because it cannot be interpreted neutrally, as neoliberal
theorists often do, without reference to the more fundamental moral and
political criteria against which it might be measured. Nothing is efficient in
its own right. In an organizational setting, efficiency drives always involve
control over people, achieved through either sanctions or hegemonic compli-
ance. What this brief discussion shows, then, is that to embrace the interpre-
tation of the concepts of freedom, justice and efficiency in neoliberal terms is
to accept a certain preferred mode of existence, to become drawn into proc-
esses of governmentality described by Foucault (1991).
Philosophical assumptions relating to this preferred mode of existence
underpin most theories of privatization. Chief among these are public choice
theory, agency theory, the theory of transaction cost analysis, the new public
management theory, and property rights theory. Each of these theories
assumes the key rationale for privatization to be the need to increase economic
 Education policy and the allocation of values 89
efficiency through better organizational performance and control, as a means
of increasing the well-being of citizens. Public choice theory is based on the
fundamental notion that self-interest dominates human behaviour and that
human beings are essentially ‘rational utility maximizers’; that individuals
can express their personal preferences much more effectively through market
exchanges than, say, through political participation; and that the role of gov-
ernment should therefore be restricted to establishing high-level policy objec-
tives rather than delivering the services per se. Agency theory views the
delivery of services through an organization as a series of contracts which, if
optimally established and operated, can generate significant levels of effi-
ciency. The theory of transaction cost analysis suggests that organizational
costs of transacting business can be minimized and made more efficient
through vertical integration, best achieved through the privatization of all
functions of an organization, except those that are regarded as absolutely
central to organizational mission.
The idea of new public management (Lane 2000) shares its assumptions
with theories of agency and transactional cost analysis, and applies them to
the public sector. It emphasizes a range of concepts that have become com-
monplace in higher education around the world. Collectively these concepts
amount to what Waters (1995) refers to as ‘organizational ecumenism’, a
single idealization of appropriate organizational behaviour. These concepts
include generic management skills; quantified performance targets; devolu-
tion; the separation of policy, commercial and non-commercial functions; the
use of private-sector practices such as corporate plans and flexible labour prac-
tices; ‘just-in-time’ inventory; monetary incentives; cost-cutting; and above
all the privatization of the so-called non-core functions and services. It thus
emphasizes a preference for private ownership and prescribes, wherever pos-
sible, the use of contracting out and competition/contestability in the provi-
sion of public services.
Aligned to these concepts is the theory of property rights, which argues
that private ownership of the assets of an organization results in superior prof-
itability and effectiveness. In each of these theories, the emphasis on the prin-
ciples of efficiency, effectiveness, productivity and profitability is paramount.
These theories moreover assume that these principles are generic and apply
equally to all kinds of organization, be they commercial or service-oriented,
private or public. As organizations increasingly work in the international
sphere, these theories seek to universalize these principles, eschewing those
organizational practices that are situated within local and national cultural
traditions.
However, what these theories mask is a range of philosophical assump-
tions about how society and its institutions are best organized. Insofar as
these theories provide empirical justification for their various claims about
efficiency and productivity, they do so within a self-referential framework
in which its principles are assumed to be self-evidently good, even when
they might conflict with other equally important goals. Public agencies like
90 Globalizing education policy
schools and universities have multiple and complex goals; yet these theories
focus only on a narrow range of goals, making it difficult if not impossible
to measure the justificatory claims that are made by their proponents. For
unlike commercial businesses, performance in the public sector cannot be
aggregated up to a single valid measurement of an agency’s effectiveness.
Yet most advocates of privatization try to do precisely this, often treating
efficiency as a foundational principle, an end in its own right. In so doing,
they clearly show how ideologically driven arguments in favour of privati-
zation really are. Since no one can really object to efficiency and profitabil-
ity, the neoliberal emphasis on these principles appears self-evident, and
hence highly persuasive. Yet it is only when they are juxtaposed with other
equally worthy service-related goals that they become contestable. And
insofar as these contests are obscured by a narrowly defined language of
freedom and justice, as we have already noted, the emphasis on efficiency
and effectiveness obscures the powerful elite capitalist interests that privati-
zation serves. The idea of privatization thus functions as an ideology.
The idea of choice may be viewed as a form of privatization and is similarly
beset with a range of contradictions. As a policy construct, it emerged in the
1970s and quickly became a central policy prescription of the New Right and
libertarian alike. The idea that parents should be able to choose which school
their children attend appealed not only to the libertarians, with their ideo-
logical commitment to the market, but also to those social conservatives who
promoted the family values agenda. In the UK, the Education Reform Act of
1988 embodied a highly regulated version of the school choice (Whitty et al.
1998), allowing parents to choose among government-run schools. In the
USA, the ideology of choice has given rise to a range of policy initiatives
including vouchers, charter schools, magnet schools and even home school-
ing. Other countries too have followed the lead from the United States and
the United Kingdom, albeit in a highly regulated fashion (Forsey et al. 2008;
Chakrabarti and Peterson 2009).
According to Brighouse (2003), the generic case for school choice is made
on a number of grounds, many of which are derived from the highly contro-
versial economic theories of Milton and Rose Friedman (1990). First, choice is
a fundamental right that parents have over their children, and therefore any
interference by the state in its exercise is illegitimate. Second, it is argued
that the standard bureaucratic model of education alienates parents from their
school, potentially creating a disjuncture between their values and those of
state-mandated school practices. Third, it is suggested the costs of schooling
can be driven down by choice, and that private schools can provide education
at a much lower per-pupil cost than public schools. This is a variant on the
efficiency argument that is central to the neoliberal belief that the state provi-
sions are necessarily inefficient and perhaps even ineffective. Fourth, it is
argued that choice is more likely to produce greater diversity of schools, and
educational entrepreneurs experiment and innovate in an effort to meet the
diversity of educational needs within the market. Finally, it is believed that
 Education policy and the allocation of values 91
there is something fundamentally inequitable about a system that effectively
gives parental choice to the wealthy, thus depriving the poor from being able
to enjoy diversity of provisions.
What must be clear from this account of the diverse reasons for school
choice is that these arguments address each of the five values that Stone (2001)
identifies as basic to all public policies, namely equity, efficiency, security,
liberty and community. Whatever the merits of these arguments, however, it
is also clear that values of efficiency and liberty are dominant, while issues
relating to the role of education in building and sustaining community are
sidelined. Equity considerations are also expressed in a way that appears dis-
ingenuous, since equity is already framed in market terms. The poor do not
have the capacity to pay for private education. The idea that inequity can be
eliminated without extending choice to all, by depriving the wealthy of
choice, is not even entertained by these arguments, which are based on liber-
alism that assumes that ‘individual persons are the sole intrinsic objects of
moral concern’ (Brighouse 2003: 5). But these arguments for school choice
are neoliberal in the sense that they are opposed to state intervention in peo-
ple’s lives in favour of market principles with which to organize social life.
They are thus located within a neoliberal social imaginary that drives policy-
makers into assuming the limits of community formations.

Conclusion
In this chapter we have discussed some of the ways in which, under the condi-
tions of globalization, educational values have been interpreted through a
neoliberal imaginary and how this, in recent years, has reconfigured the dis-
cursive terrain within which educational policy is developed, articulated and
enacted in countries around the world. We have argued that this imaginary
has redefined educational values in largely economic terms, linked to the con-
cerns of social efficiency. It has emphasized the importance of market dynam-
ics in the organization of education around a view of education as a private
good. It has linked the purposes of education to the requirements of the global
economy. However, there is nothing inevitable or necessary about locating
globalization within this imaginary. It is indeed possible to understand the
facts of global interconnectivity and interdependence in radically different
ways, with implications for rethinking educational values that do not simply
call for a return to some romanticized past, but require us to engage with
transformations brought about by recent developments in information and
communications technology in ways that do not prioritize the economic over
all other human concerns.
While there is no sign that the neoliberal imaginary of globalization is in
decline, it is becoming abundantly clear that it has given rise to a range of
contradictions that can no longer be ignored. For example, the promotion of
the value of efficiency over other values has left many educators, schools and
educational systems feeling disenfranchised, especially when they are expected
92 Globalizing education policy
to conform to unrealistic accountability regimes and deliver outcomes for
which they have not been adequately funded or resourced. Their professional-
ism has been sapped of any real meaning, as they are required to become effi-
cient and effective in contexts that are much more culturally, economically
and politically complex than many governments and IGOs often assume. At
the same time, the policy shift towards privatization has compromised the
goals of access and equality and has widened inequalities not only across
nations, but also within the same communities. It has made the goals of
gender and racial equity more difficult to realize. Indeed, while hegemonic
neoliberal globalization has greatly benefited some countries and groups of
people, it has had disastrous consequences for others, whose economic pros-
pects have declined and whose cultural traditions have become eroded.
5 Curriculum, pedagogy and
evaluation

Introduction
In his highly influential paper ‘On the classification and framing of educa-
tional knowledge’, Basil Bernstein (1971) referred to curriculum, pedagogy
and evaluation as the three message systems of schooling. He used the notion
of ‘message system’ to name those aspects of schooling which have the great-
est socialization impact and which link schools and their message systems to
the broader culture and the reproduction of that culture and associated social
system. He observed that ‘How a society selects, classifies, distributes, trans-
mits and evaluates the educational knowledge it considers to be public,
reflects both the distribution of power and principles of social control’ (ibid.:
47). The selective tradition of the curriculum, then, is linked to broader issues
of social power. Relatedly, Bernstein (2004: 196) viewed pedagogy as a ‘cul-
tural relay’, suggesting it is a ‘uniquely human device for both the production
and reproduction of culture’. For Bernstein, the idea of evaluation included
strategies of monitoring and assessing performance. He regarded these three
message systems as inextricably linked, with changes in one affecting shifts in
the other two.
Traditionally, issues relating to curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation have
not been a major focus in education policy studies. Education policy studies
and curriculum studies have usually been considered as separate arenas of
theory and practice. Education policy studies have tended to focus on almost
all aspects of educational processes except those relating to curriculum, peda-
gogy and evaluation. Policy studies have thus, for example, addressed issues of
funding and equity, but have not usually linked them to their effects on prac-
tices of curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation. The fields of curriculum and
education policy have thus been considered as separate, located in different
academic and organizational spaces. Indeed, at times in the realpolitik of edu-
cation policy there have been real tensions between the statutory authorities
that oversee curriculum and examinations and departments of education that
focus more on policy and staffing matters. This separation has served to side-
line issues of curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation in policy discussions and
in the development of education policy studies. Yet it is these three message
94 Globalizing education policy
systems which frame the core of teachers’ work, which inform their logics of
practice. Perhaps it is for this reason that teachers are often unaware of policies
that have implications for their work. Further, we would suggest that the
achievement of some policy goals in education requires that the policy has
some impact within the message systems.
In this chapter we want to explore the politics of the three message systems
within the broader framework of education policies, showing how they are
inextricably linked, and how for policies to be effective they must engage
more directly with issues of practice. We want to suggest that in the context
of globalization, education policy reform is now intimately linked to the ways
in which curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation are being reframed. But as we
have already noted, globalization is a contested notion, and it is in the framing
of these message systems that competing interpretations of globalization
become evident. Indeed, as we have already noted, reforms with respect to
curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation are now increasingly presented in terms
of a discourse of the challenges and opportunities precipitated by globaliza-
tion. A key challenge is couched in terms of the role of the message systems
for preparing students for participation in a global economy, thus enhancing
national competitiveness. This has implications for reimagining the nation,
and the role of the message systems in transforming identity and citizenship
and promoting social cohesion.
This focus on global competitiveness of nations has extended the scope of
Bernstein’s message systems, which now include a major concern for testing
and accountability. Increasingly, systems of education around the world have
begun to steer their systems using standardized testing regimes, both national
and international. Indeed, it could be argued that testing now constitutes a
fourth message system, through which central policymakers seek to steer local
practice through various demands and structures of accountability. Indeed,
testing has become a central element in policy regimes. Such testing could be
seen as a reductive version of the potentially broader evaluation message
system.
In what follows, we discuss a range of examples of how both within nation-
states and across them, there have been intense policy debates about how best
to reframe curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation around the requirements of
testing. Testing itself is centred on an assumption that globalization demands
new forms of skill, knowledge and dispositions, as well as better, more effi-
cient and effective systems to be achieved through more robust and coordi-
nated regimes of accountability. In line with the overarching argument of
this book, these systems of accountability can also now be seen to have a
global element to them.

Interpreting global imperatives

To demonstrate the policy significance of curriculum it might be useful to
consider moves towards national curriculum in England and Australia. The
 Curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation 95
Education Reform Act (1988) of the Thatcher government in the UK saw the
creation of national curriculum in schooling in England for the first time.
Until that point much more authority and power had been situated at the
local authority level (and with various examination boards), the site also of
most progressive anti-racist and equal employment opportunity legislation.
Thatcher and subsequent UK governments have continued to strengthen the
hand of the national government in education policy in England vis-à-vis
local authorities. The Thatcherite move for a national curriculum was ideo-
logically driven; at one level it was about what her New Right ideology saw
as defeating the ‘producer’ or ‘provider capture’ of teachers of the institution
of schooling, their perceived political stance and similarly in respect of the
local authorities; at another level this was about the production of national
citizens of particular kinds, ones looking more to the glories of the past than
the future perhaps – what has been referred to as a ‘curriculum of the dead’
and linked to the New Right political project of cultural restoration and new
individualism (Ball 1994). These rationales and policy intentions can be con-
trasted with those of the subsequent New Labour government, who see
national curricula as ensuring the types of skill and human capital necessary
to the post-industrial economy and the competitiveness within the global
economy of the national one.
The situation in Australia has been that schooling, according to the Con-
stitution, has been the responsibility of the states rather than the national
government in the complex federalism of Australian education policy (Lingard
2000). Curriculum and assessment policies and practices have thus been
determined within state jurisdictions. However, the Hawke and Keating
federal Labor governments (1983–1996) sought to create a national curricu-
lum justified on a number of grounds, including the need for a national focus
on schooling to produce the requisite human capital thought necessary for
national economic competitiveness, as well as efficiency arguments and a
(spurious?) argument about the interests of students who were mobile across
state borders. The result, though, of this version of federalism in schooling
was the creation of National Curriculum Statements and Profiles. This was
almost a lowest common denominator agreement or perhaps an agreement at
a broad level of abstraction. Schooling and curricula were still, by and large,
controlled at the state level.
Across the early stages of the conservative Howard government elected in
late 1996, which was at least in its early period more federalist in orientation
than the preceding Labor governments, the commitment to a national cur-
riculum weakened somewhat. In its latter stages, however, the Howard gov-
ernment (1996–2007) once again raised the question of the need for a national
curriculum, for a uniform national system of assessment or examination and
for national standardized testing. This move had economic and more overtly
ideological motivations to do with the select tradition of school curricula,
particularly in history, linked to the broader culture wars, and the teaching of
literacy (Snyder 2008). This received, by and large, bipartisan support from
96 Globalizing education policy
the then Labor opposition, or at least the call for a national curriculum did, if
not so much the ideological drive. Central to Labor’s electoral platform in the
late 2007 federal election was a so-called ‘education revolution’, which can be
compared with Tony Blair’s 1997 election policy mantra of ‘Education, Edu-
cation, Education’, and a key component part of this was a Labor commit-
ment to a national curriculum for schools, at least in English, Maths, Science
and History in the first instance. We would make the point, though, that the
federal/state political structure in Australia will mean that a national curricu-
lum will always be mediated to some extent by federal structures and state
interests. This mediation can be contrasted with the possibilities for national
developments in respect of the message systems in a unitary form of govern-
ment, such as in New Zealand.
We mention these two national curriculum examples to make the point,
which is the rationale for this book-length study of contemporary educa-
tion policy, that globalization has affected education policies of all types.
Curricula are no exception. Indeed, curriculum reform has been linked to
the reconstitution of education as a central arm of national economic
policy, as well as being central to the imagined community the nation
wishes to construct through schooling. Both are responses in their own
ways to the perceived pressures of globalization. The former is concerned
with the development of what are perceived to be the skills and disposi-
tions thought necessary to the so-called knowledge economy and globali-
zation; the latter is concerned with constructing the imagined community
which is the nation in the context of the heightened flows of migrants and
resulting multi-ethnic nature of national community. This has dented the
(always erroneous) assumption of the homology between nation and eth-
nicity. Further, all nations on the globe are attempting to improve both
the quantity and quality of their human capital. This of necessity involves
a focus on curricula and, as we will discuss later, a focus on assessment and
testing and new accountabilities as part of the emergent ‘audit culture’
(Power 1997). In particular, the focus on curricula is often about how to
cater for a broader senior schooling cohort than has historically been the
case and how to balance academic curricula and more vocationally ori-
ented education. In some nations there has also been a focus on early
childhood education in an attempt to challenge the social class/educa-
tional success nexus. This is also linked to the project of enhancing the
totality of the nation’s human capital and ensuring greater retention in
the long term to the end of secondary schooling and higher participation
rates in university education.
The Scottish curriculum reform A Curriculum for Excellence, published in
November 2004, is exactly about that policy pressure, on what has been the
academic focus of curricula in Scotland, delivered in comprehensive secondary
schools. The desired outcomes from schooling according to A Curriculum for
Excellence are the production of ‘successful learners’, ‘confident individuals’,
‘responsible citizens’ and ‘effective contributors’, which frame the design of
 Curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation 97
the curriculum for ages 3–18 years (Scottish Executive Education Depart-
ment 2007).
In Queensland, Australia, the creation of the Queensland Studies Author-
ity, which deals with curricula, assessment and testing across the school career
from preschool to the end of secondary schooling and tertiary entrance, had as
one rationale the need for a so-called ‘seamless curriculum’ across the compul-
sory years of schooling and the related need for complementarities with post-
compulsory curricula. The policy desire was to see all students complete 12
years of schooling or its equivalent. This Authority replaced two other statu-
tory authorities that had dealt with P–10 curricula and upper secondary cur-
ricula respectively.
The Brown Labour government in the UK is committed to increasing the
school leaving age to 18 years by 2015 and seeing 50 per cent of the relevant
age cohort attending university. This policy commitment has pushed matters
of upper secondary curricula, examinations and qualifications to the forefront
of policy concerns. These considerations have precipitated some defence of the
more traditional A-level academic curricula, as well as a range of challenges to
it. Further, apparently improved student performance over time on this and
the GCSE examinations has seen some calls to make the exams more difficult,
a clear articulation of the sorting and selection functions of schooling and a
concern for ‘standards’.
The final point to be made at this stage about globalization and curricula is
that while the pressures on curriculum reform might be similar throughout
the globe, the reforms which result always have a vernacular character as they
build incrementally on what has gone before within specific educational
systems. As Taylor et al. (1997: 16) have argued in respect of incremental
relations in policy development, we can argue similarly about curriculum
change: ‘There is always a prior history of significant events, a particular ideo-
logical climate, a social and economic context.’
This vernacular reform of curricula set against globalized policy dis-
courses is very evident when one considers moves in the ASEAN countries
collectively to develop a post-national approach to curricula and pedago-
gies aimed at enhancing regional economic activity and creating a postna-
tional or regional identity (Koh 2007, 2008). Political structures also
mediate curriculum reform possibilities, with the various moves to a
national curriculum in Australia and the mediation by federalism and
state interests being a good case in point. The same is the case in the
federal political structure of the USA, but Bush’s No Child Left Behind
reforms have also affected curricula and pedagogies in US schools (Hursh
2008), which are, as in Australia, under the jurisdiction of the states.
Hursh (ibid.) argues that in those states without mandated curricula, the
testing necessitated by the federal No Child Left Behind legislation has
constructed a de facto curriculum. One could go further back in US edu-
cation policy history and trace the effects of the federal report A Nation at
Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education 1983) to see the
98 Globalizing education policy
ways this report as a de facto policy affected education policy production
in the states and the resultant all-consuming focus on standards and
accountability (Weaver-Hightower 2008: 157).
The fallout in Germany following the poor German performance on the
first PISA in 2000 (Grek 2009) also saw national attempts at school reform
which were mediated by the German federal political structure, where the
states or Länder control schools, and where the Länder had been strengthened
vis-à-vis the national government following the fascism of the Third Reich.
Further, we would note that any proposed changes to high-status curriculum
fields always come up against vested interests of various kinds and always
provoke resistance to change. Bernstein (2001a: 368) also suggests that alter-
native knowledges and pedagogical practices are more likely to be taken up in
low-status institutions than in high-status ones.
As education has been reconstituted as central to the economic competi-
tiveness of nations in the context of a global economy, many educational
systems have instituted high-stakes, standardized testing to try to drive up
educational standards. This has been the case in England, particularly as
developed by New Labour governments after 1997, which utilized league
tables of performance and other data sets for school improvement agendas
more than for parental choice reasons as part of a quasi-market in schooling.
A commitment to markets and parental choice was the rationale for the intro-
duction of league tables of performance for earlier Conservative governments
of Thatcher and Major from 1979 until 1997. The use of performance data for
enhancing the educational outcomes of all students has been taken a step
further by the trial in England of Making Good Progress (Department for Edu-
cation and Skills 2006), which attempts to utilize data on the individual per-
formance of students to reframe classroom practices geared to improvement.
The instigation of such testing regimes has usually been resisted by teach-
ers and their representative bodies, such as teacher unions and professional
associations, because of the perceived negative (that is, narrowing and reduc-
tive) effects of such testing on both curriculum and pedagogy, as well as on
teacher professionalism, which is reconstituted by these reforms. In the
strongest policy mechanisms of this kind, such as in England with Standard-
ised Attainment Tests (SATs) at Key Stages 1, 2 and 3 (primary schooling)
and in the standardized testing which dominates schooling in most states of
the USA, and strengthened by the demands of the federal Act No Child Left
Behind (Hursh 2008), we see almost a transfer of educational authority from
the professional teacher to the standardized tests and those who construct
them. Apple (2001) actually sees this new class of technicians involved in
such test construction as beneficiaries of such policy regimes. The point we
would make is about the contrasting dispositions and logics of practice of test
creators and classroom teachers.
At another level, such testing can be seen to be central to the new account-
abilities which are part of what Power (1997) called the ‘audit society’, which
in turn is part of new public management which now sees central policy steer
 Curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation 99
at a distance. This new public management approach sees overarching goals
set at the centre, with the site of practice being accountable for the achieve-
ment of these goals measured against performance indicators, standardized
test results and the like. The audit culture has manifested in particular ways
in education systems, linked to accountabilities and summative assessment.
Teachers appear to be more comfortable with formative assessment, which
they see as potentially enhancing student learning – what has been called
assessment for learning.
It is this set of developments which can be encapsulated in the idea of
‘policy as numbers’ (Rose 1999), which sees outcome data of various kinds
becoming central to policy developments within education systems. A good
case in point is Queensland, where school students have performed badly on
the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and
where consequently the government instigated a policy review seeking rec-
ommendations to overcome this situation. One recommendation of the
Interim Report of that review was that Queensland students be made more
test-literate.
Given our concern with globalization and education in this book, we would
also note here that this policy as numbers approach has a global manifestation
in, for example, the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assess-
ment (PISA), which seeks to constitute the globe as a commensurate space of
measurement of performance of students at the end of compulsory schooling
on literacy, science and maths. PISA’s international comparative measures of
‘quality’ and ‘equity’ in the national performance of students have taken on
strong policy salience within national systems and are on the radar of educa-
tion ministers in participating countries. Fifty-seven countries participated in
PISA in 2006; that is, almost as many non-OECD member countries (27)
participated as member countries (30), with a real expansion of participating
countries projected for the next round of PISA in 2009.
When Bernstein spoke of the three message systems of schooling, he made
the additional point about the symbiotic relationships between the three
systems. We have added testing to these message systems, and would make
the same point about testing: that is, that it also sits in a symbiotic relation-
ship to the other three message systems. What this means in effect is that
changes in one message system, often assessment and testing, or curricula,
have effects on the others. This is well exemplified by the case of high-stakes
standardized testing at state level in the USA, which has been shown to lead
to ‘defensive pedagogies’ (McNeil 2000). Delpit (2006: xiii), writing in the
new edition of her influential study of educational disadvantage in the USA,
Other People’s Children, comments in the following way on changes in US
schooling brought on by President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act:

Since the publication of Other People’s Children, the country’s educational system
has become caught in the vice of the No Child Left Behind Act, which mandates
more standardized testing of children than the country has ever seen, with more
100 Globalizing education policy
and more urban school districts adopting ‘teacher proof’ curricula to address low
test scores. Along with school consultants whose sole purpose is to police teach-
ers’ adherence to scripted lessons, mandated classroom management strategies,
and strict instructional timelines that ignore the natural rhythms of teaching
and learning.

On this very same point David Hursh (2008) has written a book-length study
of the symbiotic relationship in the USA between this reality of high-stakes
testing and what he calls ‘the decline of teaching and learning’.
In England (and in respect of schooling we need to disaggregate the UK
into its constituent parts – Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England),
as already noted, the New Labour government has attempted to drive up
school quality and achieve school improvement through a very strong
emphasis on Standardised Attainment Tests (SATs) and student perform-
ance on GSCE and A-level public examinations and the publication of related
league tables of performance and target-setting for schools. The Improving
Schools Programme (ISP) is one such national strategy in England that seeks
to use data for whole-school improvement. Making Good Progress is yet
another of these developments with an individual student performance focus.
These ‘policy as numbers’ moves have affected pedagogies, thinning them
out and reducing curriculum content to that which is valorized in tests and
examinations – a manifestation of the symbiotic relationship between the
message systems.
Hartley (2003) and Ranson (2003) have clearly demonstrated how in
England the ‘secret garden’ of the curriculum is secret no more, and how the
reductive effects of testing and the related policy regime, including account-
ability measures, ensure that schools cannot achieve the policy goals of pro-
ducing creative thinkers and entrepreneurial dispositions linked to the
perceived human capital demands of a globalized knowledge economy. Edu-
cational policymakers in Singapore have likewise become aware of the reduc-
tive effects of a testing and performance-driven schooling system on the
production of independent, creative thinkers (Koh 2004).
In research one of us conducted in Queensland, Australia on teacher class-
room pedagogies (Lingard et al. 2001; Lingard, Hayes, Mills and Christie
2003; Hayes et al. 2006; Lingard 2007), we found that there was not enough
intellectual demand in the pedagogies we observed in about 1000 classroom
lessons to have the desired learning effects for all students, and especially
for students from disadvantaged backgrounds lacking the requisite cultural
capital. We hypothesized a number of reasons for this, including the amount
of curriculum content coverage demanded by syllabus documents, a crowded
curriculum, class sizes, and the emphasis on support and care in early policy
documents rather than on intellectual demand. Allan Luke, a co-researcher
on that project, has commented regarding this lack of intellectual demand
in the pedagogies observed: ‘the testing, basic skills, and accountability
push had encouraged narrowing of the curriculum’ and was also affiliated
 Curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation 101
with the finding of a ‘shaving off of higher order and critical thinking and a
lowering of cognitive demand and intellectual depth’ (Luke 2006: 123).
This is a very good exemplification of the symbiotic relationship between
the message systems.
Another example relates to the differential implementation of the ‘Assess-
ment is for Learning’ (AiFL) policy in contemporary Scottish education policy.
This is a policy about formative assessment as central to good pedagogy and
good student learning, which conceives of the multiple purposes of assess-
ment (both formative and summative) as including assessment as, of and for
learning. This policy, based on the academic research and theorizing of Black
and colleagues (2003) about formative assessment, has been taken up enthusi-
astically in many Scottish primary schools, but not so profoundly in junior
and senior secondary schooling, where public exams focused on summative
assessment still hold much stronger sway. Indeed, AiFL is constructed as a
policy for the 5–14 age group, but ought to have relevance for all of
schooling.
Further evidence of the symbiotic relationships between assessment policy
and curricula and pedagogical effects can be found in the situation in England
with GCSEs, where the government has constituted the percentage (more
than one-third) of students achieving five A–C grades on this examination as
the Gold Standard for measuring school quality. Schools have been set targets
for getting more than a third of their students to achieve this Gold Standard.
Gillborn and Youdell (2000) have shown how this policy frame has had triage
effects, with schools and teachers focusing their concerns on those students
just below this threshold with the potential to achieve it, and neglecting
others without this potential. Lipman (2004) in her study of educational
‘reform’ in Chicago, demonstrated similar triage effects in respect of stand-
ardized testing and the focus on ‘bubble kids’, those close to achieving stand-
ards and required proficiency levels.
Since the early 1970s the Queensland school system has had no public
examinations. Rather, at the senior levels at the end of secondary schooling,
students participate in school-based, teacher-moderated assessment during
the last two years of schooling, which includes all schools, both govern-
ment and non-government, and which further moderates teacher assess-
ment via a standardized Core Skills Test based on common curriculum
elements across all senior curricula. These moderated and aggregated
student results are used to determine tertiary entrance scores. When the
Howard government made moves towards a national curriculum, one of
their targets was this Queensland approach to assessment. This Queensland
approach has produced very assessment-literate senior teachers in Queens-
land (Lingard et al. 2006), with the nature of the Core Skills Test also
having a positive impact upon pedagogies through its emphasis on higher-
order outcomes. Often, in contrast, standardized tests are used to measure
minimum standards, with resultant negative impact upon pedagogies and
the breadth of the curriculum.
102 Globalizing education policy
Up to this point we have talked mainly about curriculum, assessment and
testing, rather than directly about pedagogy. This is because educational
systems have tended not to have policies about pedagogies. For example, in
Scotland there is a statutory authority responsible for examinations and quali-
fications, the Scottish Qualifications Authority, and another responsible for
curricula, called Teaching and Learning Scotland. However, there are no
explicit policy discourses about pedagogy. This is the norm across educational
systems, rather than the exception. Pedagogy has thus been the domain of
teacher professional autonomy, while teacher identities have been constructed
largely around teaching children for primary teachers and teaching subjects
for secondary teachers. Pedagogies are central to teacher professional practices
and yet have not been a central aspect of their identities (Lingard 2009). How
one imparts knowledge framed by a mandated curriculum and testing and
assessment regimes was the space of teacher professional autonomy. Policy
about pedagogies was usually not explicit, but rather implicit in curricula
and assessment and testing. A very good example here is the Literacy Hour in
England introduced by the Blair government in an attempt to improve liter-
acy standards through the imposition of allotted time and a particular
approach to literacy teaching. This policy enumerated what teachers had to
do in the space of the literacy hour each day. As such, there was an at least
implied pedagogy in the literacy hour policy, but one always subject to some
pedagogical recontextualizing by classroom teachers (see Marsh 2007).
In New South Wales, Australia, the state department has a recommended
policy for schools on quality pedagogy, a model developed out of the Queens-
land productive pedagogies research referred to earlier (Lingard et al. 2001;
Lingard, Hayes, Mills and Christie 2003; Lingard 2008). In our view there
are some potential dangers in mandating policy about pedagogies. Such man-
dating tends to dissociate pedagogies from epistemological and knowledge
concerns and deny teacher professional mediation of policy (Lingard and Mills
2007: 236). We need to recognize the significance of pedagogies (and assess-
ment practices) to what teachers can achieve with students, but any research-
based or policy models of pedagogy attempt to universalize a model. There
are competing logics between policy production and the characteristics of
pedagogical practices. As Coburn and Stein (2006: 42) note, teacher practice
is ‘always local, situated, emergent, and linked with prior practice’. In con-
trast, and as Bourdieu (1998b: 59) has argued, central to the capitals pos-
sessed by the state and the broader field of power is the ‘monopoly of the
universal’, that is, policy assumes and demands universal applicability. In
Bourdieu’s terms there is a clash between competing and different logics of
practice of the policy-producing state and teacher pedagogical practice (see
also Hardy and Lingard 2008 and Rawolle and Lingard 2008). It is thus our
view that because of these different logics of practice, eventually some techni-
zation of practice will probably result from pedagogies being a policy focus
(Alexander 2004). This technization is often read by teachers as potential
deprofessionalization.
 Curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation 103
It seems to us that in respect of improving pedagogical practices, some
level of trust of teachers and their professionalism is needed within a support-
ive professional development framework and the creation of teacher profes-
sional learning communities within schools. This demands investment in
teacher professional development. However, a lack of trust has been central to
relationships with professional practices in health and education policy, for
example, in England. It might also be important for the ‘pedagogizing’ of
teacher identities, so that teachers begin to articulate their specific profes-
sional expertise as pedagogical (Lingard 2009).
Throughout this book we have emphasized the point that education policy
in the context of globalization has become a focus of economic policy. We
might call this the economization of education policy. While we are dealing
largely with school curricula and the other message systems of schooling in
this chapter, education policy and these matters are significant in all sectors of
education, including higher education. We would make a related point that
many policies in specific public policy domains other than education, for
example health, social welfare and the law, have become quite educational in
orientation as well. Bernstein (2001a, 2001b) wrote of the ‘totally pedago-
gised society’ to refer to the ways in which pedagogy has salience across a
range of public policies, across the society and across professional and policy
practices. Indeed, Bernstein (2001b: 377) claimed that ‘the State is moving to
ensure that there’s no space or time which is not pedagogised’. In a sense this
is linked to talk of the knowledge economy and also linked to the neoliberal
subject as responsible for his/her continuing education, conceived as an invest-
ment in the self, across the life-cycle. This is lifelong learning in its neoliberal
guise, rather than a more humanist or social democratic one. There are open-
ings here for education policy studies, as well as for curriculum studies. There
is also an important opening for pedagogical considerations in contemporary
social theory (Lingard et al. 2008a).
In Chapter 3 on analysing education policy we argued that globalization
demanded that education policy analysis be deparochialized (Appadurai
2001). The totally pedagogized society means that education policy studies
need to be deparochialized in another way – beyond the ‘traditional’ insti-
tutions of education. This picks up on what Young (1996) called the de-
differentiation of educational institutions. Education policy studies might
be concerned, for example, with pedagogies associated with the ‘health pro-
moting school’ being produced by health departments or with one’s con-
sumer rights as part of economic policy and so on.
In the remainder of this chapter we consider specific examples of the ways
in which globalization has affected curricula, assessment and testing policies.
The first case study is of a curriculum reform which was trialled in a number
of Queensland schools across Years 1–9, which had a research base and which
was an attempt to reconceptualize curriculum and align it with assessment
and pedagogies in the context of globalization. The subsequent section deals
with two curriculum examples from the Global South and demonstrates how
104 Globalizing education policy
the positioning of these two Global South nations, Pakistan and St Lucia,
frame policy development and possibilities for curriculum, at least discur-
sively, with implications for the character of curriculum and the implementa-
tion of curriculum policy. In the conclusion to the chapter we will return
briefly to a consideration of the distinctions between the fields of education
policy studies and curriculum studies and what this means for considering the
message systems as policies.

The New Basics and productive pedagogies

We have already mentioned the productive pedagogies research in Queens-
land, Australia (Lingard et al. 2001; Lingard, Hayes, Mills and Christie 2003;
Hayes et al. 2006) which created a model of effective pedagogies and docu-
mented the actual pedagogies utilized in about 250 classrooms and in about
1000 lessons across the state in both government primary and secondary
schools. The model of pedagogies developed, derived from the US work by
Newmann and his colleagues (1996) on ‘authentic pedagogy’, a wide range of
critical pedagogy literature from the sociology of education, and from statisti-
cal analysis of maps of actual classroom pedagogies. The statistical analysis
revealed a multidimensional model of ‘productive pedagogies’ consisting of
four dimensions, namely intellectual demand, connectedness, supportiveness,
and working with and valuing difference. The research found very supportive
and caring classrooms with not enough intellectual demand and connected-
ness in the pedagogies and with very little working with and valuing differ-
ence. On the latter, we need to recognize that the bureaucratic structures of
schooling have tended to encourage a pedagogy of sameness, rather than ped-
agogies of difference (Trifonas 2003; Lingard 2007). Writing about the USA,
Dimitriadis and McCarthy (2001) have suggested that even in the present
time of multiplicity of identities, pedagogies have tended to tame and regu-
late as a response.
Earlier in this chapter we also suggested a number of hypotheses regarding
why this lack of intellectual demand exists. We will return to these in consid-
ering the New Basics reform in Queensland. We would note, though, that
the caring character of pedagogies documented in the study was very impor-
tant and perhaps indicative of the social worker role that many teachers must
adopt today in their professional practices. In some schools, particularly those
located in very disadvantaged communities, often those adversely affected by
the fallout from neoliberal globalization, such a teacher role is central to sup-
porting young people and in some cases is responsible for holding school and
broader communities together.
The Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (QSRLS; Lingard et al.
2001), which developed the concept of productive pedagogies, has been influ-
ential in a number of educational systems and research communities, includ-
ing New South Wales, Australia, where it forms the basis of that system’s
quality pedagogy model; and in Singapore, where a large research project is
 Curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation 105
being conducted to further develop models of pedagogies which make a dif-
ference (Luke and Hogan 2006).
We would also make the point that the QSRLS argued on the basis of its
evidence that of all the school-based factors, it was teacher pedagogies and
assessment practices which made the greatest difference to student learning
outcomes, while at the same time recognizing the significance of student
socio-economic background to successful school learning. There are some sig-
nificant policy insights to be drawn here.
Governments would prefer to see teachers and schools and their practices as
being the sole solution to a whole range of social problems, including improv-
ing the quality of outcomes and the issue of equality of educational opportu-
nity. However, as Bernstein observed a long time ago, education cannot
compensate for society. In a somewhat similar vein, Ladson-Billings (2006),
writing about the so-called ‘achievement gap’ between white and black stu-
dents in the USA, has rejected that concept and spoken instead of an ‘educa-
tional debt’, consisting of an historical debt, an economic debt, a socio-political
debt and a moral debt. This means that schooling alone, including pedago-
gies and curriculum reform, cannot address the ‘educational debt’. In effect,
what both Bernstein and Ladson-Billings are saying is that an unequal society
will usually have unequal provision of schooling and thus not be able to offer
equality of educational opportunity for all.
The PISA results have confirmed that it is those societies that are more
equal in income, wealth and other economic ways – that is, that have small
Gini coefficients of inequality – that provide real equality of educational
opportunity and where the social class/school success nexus is weak (Green et
al. 2006). In Australia, the Rudd Labor government has recognized that more
educational equality is dependent upon quality teacher practices and less soci-
etal inequality, and demands positively-discriminating funding for ‘disad-
vantaged schools’. The broad political and policy question is how to convert
that research recognition into education policies which have the desired
effects. The matter of policy learning is an interesting one in this respect. In
respect of education it is clear that redistributive policies are required in the
broadest public policy sense and also specifically within education.
The QSRLS also had influence in Queensland. The state department of
education, now called Education Queensland, took up the model of pedago-
gies and committed to its implementation across the systems through profes-
sional development work and the like. It has currently commissioned
subsequent research to ascertain the outcomes of that commitment to produc-
tive pedagogies on classroom practices and, by implication, on student learn-
ing outcomes. We would make the point, though, that such ‘implementation’
needs to work with teachers through professional development and the crea-
tion of teacher professional learning communities in schools. Further, the uti-
lization of a research-based model of pedagogies in classrooms still requires
professional mediation and the adaptation of the model to the specificities of
the classroom. This is yet another manifestation of the competing logics
106 Globalizing education policy
between systemic policy and research on the one hand, and professional prac-
tices on the other – a clash between the claim to the universal and the specifi-
cities of practice.
The QSRLS had another significant policy effect in Queensland. Profes-
sor Allan Luke, a member of the QSRLS research team, was seconded to
Education Queensland for the period 1999–2000 as Deputy Director-
General with responsibility for strategic thinking about the future of
schooling in the context of globalization and the findings of the QSRLS.
The outcome of Luke’s time as Deputy Director-General was the creation
of a New Basics curriculum trial (2000–2004) in more than 50 Queens-
land government schools across Years 1–9. This project argued the need
for alignment between curricula, pedagogies and assessment practices –
the QSRLS had starkly demonstrated the lack of alignment between the
three and the need to reconceptualize curricula in relation to the pressures
of globalization, while rejecting a high-stakes testing and accountability
regime as the way to achieve better quality and more equitable outcomes.
An early Education Queensland booklet on the New Basics stated on this
point (Education Queensland 2000: 3):

At its heart, then, the New Basics Project is about renewing our work as educa-
tors, getting back to the basics of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, with a
clear focus on improving student outcomes through increasing the intellectual
rigour of their work. It isn’t a simplistic paint-by-numbers system, and it doesn’t
buy into the argument that lots of tests or lots of outcomes will solve the complex
problems we face. Instead it is based on a commitment to teachers’ professional-
ism. It recognizes their capacity for intellectual decision-making and their com-
mitment to their students.

This is an important statement, representing the reconceptualist character of

the New Basics. In the introduction to this chapter we noted how standard-
ized testing relocates professional authority away from teachers to the creators
of standardized tests. In the Queensland system with the New Basics trial
there was, in contrast, the important recognition that teacher professionalism
and professional skills were central to strengthening the intellectual rigour of
classroom practices, which the QSRLS had shown was necessary for achieving
high-quality student outcomes for all.
The New Basics worked on the assumption that the crowded curriculum
was an important factor in the lack of intellectual demand in pedagogies and
that more assessment-literate teachers were necessary to achieving better out-
comes for all students. As such, the New Basics curriculum frame sought to
reduce the remit of the curriculum, to ‘unclutter’ the curriculum as it were,
and worked with the productive pedagogies and with what was termed a Rich
Tasks approach to assessment practices. The New Basics also required the
incorporation of new technologies into students’ collaborative work across the
New Basics and Rich Tasks.
 Curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation 107
Earlier in this book, mention was made of the mediatization of education
policy. It is interesting to note here that the title of this curriculum reform
trial, the ‘New Basics’, was derived from market research which demonstrated
that the title New Basics appealed to a broad cross-section of the community
– from progressives, who liked the notion of ‘new’, to conservatives, who liked
the concept of ‘basics’. This offers some important insights into educational
change processes today and the significance of the semiotics of policy state-
ments and naming. We would also note how the context of the New Basics
reform, constructed in its own documentation, was replete with the descrip-
tor ‘new’. Indeed, this documentation spoke of ‘new student identities’, ‘new
workplaces’, ‘new technologies’, ‘new times’, ‘new citizenship’, ‘new knowl-
edges’ and ‘new epistemologies’ as part of the globalized context of the reform
and the need for it. This proliferation of ‘new’ is an example of what Fair-
clough (1992) has referred to as ‘overwording’.
A booklet for teachers in those schools participating in the trial described
the New Basics in the following way:

The New Basics are futures-oriented categories for organizing curriculum. Essen-
tially they are a way of managing the enormous increase in information that is
now available as a result of globalization and the rapid change in the economic,
social and cultural dimensions of our existence.

The New Basics are clusters of essential practices that students need if they
are to flourish in ‘new times’. Apart from globalization, contributors to these
new times include a shift towards local service-based economies, new and
constantly changing technologies, complex transformations in cultural and
social relationships, fluid demographics and a sense of uncertainty about the
future (Education Queensland 2000: 1).
The clusters of essential practices were represented by the following cur-
riculum organizers: life pathways and social futures; multiliteracies and com-
munications media; active citizenship; and environment and technologies.
Each of these transdisciplinary categories was framed by a question: respec-
tively these were: ‘Who am I and where am I going?’; ‘How do I make sense
of and communicate with the world?’; ‘What are my rights and responsibili-
ties in communities, cultures, and economies?’; and ‘How do I describe,
analyse and shape the world around me?’.
We can see in this descriptor of New Basics and the essential practices,
globalization as the constructed context of the reform. Globalization is con-
structed as both context and rationale for the reform. We also get the sense of
the uncertainty of the present and the future, and implicitly some notion of
the dispositions needed to be acquired through schooling to cope with this
insecurity (and risk) – dispositions geared to change, to working with differ-
ences of multiple kinds (including forms of literacy), and working with and
across the local and the global. We can also see that considering curricula, as
with policy, as the authoritative allocation of values, is a useful thing to do,
108 Globalizing education policy
while recognizing that globalization has challenged the meaning of this
conceptualization.
The QSRLS had demonstrated the need for more assessment-literate teach-
ers, and that teachers of the senior years in the secondary school, because of
more than 30 years of teacher ownership of school-based, teacher-moderated
assessment, as opposed to a system of external examinations, were more assess-
ment-literate than other junior secondary and primary teachers. The New
Basics trial recognized this and developed a suite of transdisciplinary tasks in
three-year spans across Years 1–9. There were a small number of Rich Tasks
for each cycle (Years 1–3, 4–7, 8–9), which were developed by assessment
experts, and each of which required knowledge and skills from at least two
clusters of the curriculum organizers. Research about the implementation and
achievements of the New Basics reform, including the Rich Tasks, showed
how important shared teacher moderation in a learning community was to
the enhancement of teacher assessment skills.
The New Basics trial has been completed and evaluated. The points to note
here, perhaps, are that it linked to a government-funded research project;
involved close relationships between education researchers and policymaking;
and was a reform based clearly in respect for teacher professionalism and rec-
ognition of the changes in school curricula, pedagogies and assessment prac-
tices thought necessary to achieving the quality outcomes now demanded of
schooling systems, given the competitive pressures of globalization. The New
Basics schools were supported throughout the reform by quarantined funding
support and critical friends. It is interesting as well to recognize that the New
Basics left untouched the senior years, where curricula remained based around
subject disciplines and where the sorting and selection processes of schooling
continued to affect the provision of schooling. In that respect it is interesting
that the QSRLS showed some primary schools which seemed to break the
social class/quality of pedagogies/achievement nexus, whereas this was not the
case in respect of secondary schooling.
Some important lessons from the New Basics trial include the signifi-
cance of attempting to align the three message systems of curriculum, peda-
gogy and assessment through building teacher capacities and through
recognizing that such change requires the development of teacher profes-
sional learning communities of various kinds and that this capacity build-
ing takes time. There is very often a mismatch between political time frames
for policy trials and the time required to institutionalize effective change.
Politics and effective educational change are situated within different tem-
poralities, a reality often ignored by political expectations about education
policy and reform. Targeted funding support is necessary to achieve change
of the kind envisioned by the New Basics, as is continuing political com-
mitment at both the political and bureaucratic levels. It is interesting to
note that while curriculum in the Queensland education system is under
the jurisdiction of the Queensland Studies Authority, a statutory authority
with some independence from government, the New Basics reform was
 Curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation 109
under the jurisdiction of Education Queensland, and trialled at the same
time as the Authority was implementing a new P–10 curriculum con-
structed around Key Learning Areas (KLAs). It is also worth noting that
some schools which were not formally part of the New Basics actually uti-
lized the New Basics approach to curriculum organization.
In relation to the argument of this book, though, the interesting thing
about the New Basics reform was that its rationale was linked to the per-
ceived changes wrought by globalization, socially, politically, culturally
and economically, and its attempt to reconceptualize curriculum and assess-
ment practices that would produce workers/citizens for this changed world.
While the New Basics reform continues to have effects in schools, this
policy reform moment seems to have passed, with the government unable
to commit to the funding levels necessary to roll out the reform across the
entire system.This situation is likely to be exacerbated by recent policy
development in Australia at the national level, promoting a national cur-
riculum and new forms of national testing, including NAPLAN. The global
financial crisis also makes it less likely that in the foreseeable future govern-
ments will commit to the funding necessary to productive implementation
of a reform of the message systems such as the New Basics in Queensland.
Furthermore, and in line with the argument of this chapter that testing has
become a central policy steering mechanism in education systems, the
Queensland government’s policy attempt to enhance student performance
on NAPLAN, the national literacy and numeracy tests, and other global
test measures such as PISA, probably means the approach to reforms such as
the Rich Tasks through the enhancement of teacher knowledge and profes-
sionalism is a thing of the past or at least not core to contemporary educa-
tion reform.

Two cases from the Global South

The previous case study and other examples of curriculum policy used to
this point have been from nations of the Global North. In this section we
consider in contrast some aspects of curriculum policy in two nations of
the Global South, namely Pakistan and St Lucia, a tiny Caribbean island
nation. Our concern is with globalization as the context of these policies.
Here we acknowledge Tikly’s (2001) point that we need to consider the
specificities of the ways particular nations are located in relation to global
pressures and policy framings. In this respect, nations of the Global North
are positioned very differently from those of the Global South. As Tikly
states (ibid.: 152):

It has been a shortcoming of much of the existing literature on globalization and

education that the specific contexts to which the theory is assumed to be applica-
ble have not been specified. It is problematic to assume that there is one superior
vantage point from which global forces can best be understood.
110 Globalizing education policy
First we will consider the curriculum aspects of Education in Pakistan – A
White Paper, which was initially released under the then Musharraf govern-
ment in December 2006 and subsequently fine-tuned and redistributed in
February 2007 (Aly 2007b). (See Lingard and Ali (2009) for a fuller analysis
of the White Paper.) Despite the change of government following the February
2008 election, it seems that the White Paper still has considerable policy sali-
ence, as it is the basis of the Draft Education Policy posted on the new gov-
ernment’s website in May 2008 (ibid.).
The first thing we ought to say about the White Paper is that it is written
in English, a signifier of the colonial past and perhaps of the global present
of Pakistan, despite Urdu being the lingua franca and national language.
This means that the White Paper was probably not accessible by many
teachers who would ultimately be responsible for implementation of the
policy. Since the creation of the nation in 1947 on partition from India,
policy implementation has been an ongoing issue in Pakistani education
– a common problem in nations of the Global South whose broad policy
frames are often set by donor agencies such as the World Bank, with
implications for implementation. Indeed, it has been observed that given
the massive task of providing primary education for all, including girls,
and staffing schools with qualified and committed teachers, education
policy in Pakistan has been a continuous exercise of target revision (Ali
2006). The current political turmoil in Pakistan, under the Presidency of
Zardari, has made concerns with educational provision and quality even
more problematic and has probably widened the quality gap between
public and private provision.
Since the creation of Pakistan in 1947, Islam has been an important tool
for unifying the nation across ethnic and language groups. Pakistan’s first
Constitution, created in 1956, declared Pakistan an Islamic Republic.
Schooling and specifically curricula have been important in relation to Islam
and constituting national citizens. The White Paper is significant in relation
to these matters, as it creates the context of the reforms envisaged and also
creates a history of education, as well as an imagined and desired future
(Lingard and Ali 2009). In Chapter 1 we mentioned how policies often con-
struct the problems to which they are putative solutions; the same is the
case with context. As Seddon (1994: 6) notes, context can ‘be worked up as
a slogan or more concrete narrative which is used to construct a story of the
past, present and future’. This is the case with the White Paper, as will be
demonstrated, with implications for broad policy framings of curriculum in
respect of a secular/Islamic binary. It is also significant in respect of these
matters that the Musharraf military coup of 1999 resulted in the ending of
international aid assistance to Pakistan, with real implications for govern-
mental spending on social policy, including education. However, after Sep-
tember 11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Musharraf government
aligned with the USA and Bush’s so-called ‘war on terror’. This resulted in
the recommencement of western aid to the country. For example, the US
 Curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation 111
aid agency USAID committed $100 million for education development in
Pakistan between 2002 and 2007 (Kronstadt 2004).
In terms of Islam, President Musharraf articulated an ‘enlightened modera-
tion’ to depict Pakistan as a moderate, tolerant and modern nation and Islam
as fully compatible with modernity, science and economic development.
Musharraf’s enlightened moderation actually worked with a fundamentalist/
moderate binary in relation to Islam, speaking back to the west an Orientalist
construction of Islam and rearticulating a construction dominant in the west
following September 11 (Appadurai 2006). This enlightened moderation
appealed to moderates inside Pakistan and also to western nations, especially
the USA and the UK, and to international donor agencies. The initial pages
of the White Paper distance the Pakistani government from dogmatic and fun-
damentalist ideologies, which it is suggested have been the cause of a lack of
research and questioning minds in Pakistan. Previous education policy is seen
to be implicated in this situation. Indeed, an argument can be sustained that
the White Paper, whose first pages clearly articulated an enlightened modera-
tion, had as its prime implied readership the west and donor agencies. This is
an example of Tikly’s point about the significance of specific location of any
given nation in relation to the various aspects of globalization; here, the stra-
tegic significance of Pakistan to US interests and US aid to Pakistani
interests.
The issue of Islam is dealt with in the White Paper specifically in relation to
the framing of school curricula. Indeed, because of the centrality of Islam
to identity in Pakistan, each education policy has had to address this matter,
either explicitly or at least implicitly. As background, the White Paper con-
structs an historical analysis of education policies since 1947 in relation to
Islam. This is an example of the policy constructing its own context, its own
historical provenance. The basic conclusion that can be drawn from a reading
of the historical matrix in the White Paper is that the overarching objective of
education policy in Pakistan relates to ‘Islamic-ness’. The matrix ‘demon-
strates’ that after 1979 the process of Islamization of schooling became a
strong goal of education policy, and also explicitly framed curricula and
teacher training. Against this backdrop, the White Paper argues the pressing
need to ‘free ourselves of dogmas and to chart a path where the entire citi-
zenry of Pakistan will be prompted, through a sensible education system, to
realize personal and collective goals of individual and social empowerment’
(Aly 2007b: 3).
The ideological context constructed by the White Paper then suggests
that hitherto Islamic ideology has been central to education policy in Paki-
stan and that Islamization of schooling has restricted development. This
Islamic ideology has been treated as dogma, which has constructed a nega-
tive external image of Pakistan and limited modernization because of the
apparent incompatibility between fundamentalist Islam and science and
modernity. In contrast, the White Paper conceives of (moderate) Islam as
compatible with modernity. Enlightened moderation is to frame school
112 Globalizing education policy
policies and curriculum ‘through a sensible education system’, with more
secular schooling and religious education being regarded more as the
responsibility of the family.
Other manifestations of the specific global positioning of Pakistan as a
nation of the Global South are also evident in the White Paper. For example,
globalized education policy discourses frame its structure and headings, such
as ‘Governance and Management’, ‘Quality’, ‘Equity’ and ‘Access to Educa-
tion’. Chapter 11 is entitled ‘Linkages with Principal Social Issues’ and links
education and schooling to matters of population growth, health, democracy
and the environment, all of which are closely linked to the UN Millennium
Development Goals. Further, the broader Washington and post-Washington
‘global’ consensus of markets, devolution, privatization and good governance,
which has driven aid policies, can be found throughout the White Paper and
can be seen as the global policy context constructed by it (see Robertson et al.
2007 for discussion of the Washington and post-Washington consensus).
Next we will consider briefly the Education Sector Development Plan:
2000–2005 and Beyond in the small Caribbean island nation of St Lucia
(Lingard and Jn Pierre 2006), again to demonstrate Tikly’s point about
the significance of global positioning, and we would add history, to global
policy effects and resistances at specific national locations. This Plan is
framed by the globalized policy discourse of lifelong learning rearticu-
lated as individual responsibility for self-development across the life-cycle
and framed by a human capital rationale. Central to education policy
development in a small nation such as St Lucia, one with strong post-
colonial aspirations, has been a reliance in both funding and policy terms
on donor agencies. As future Prime Minister Kenny Anthony (1990: 13)
commented in 1990, ‘education in St Lucia has always suffered from
undercapitalization. Reliance is usually placed on foreign aid to provide
capital expenditure to satisfy the needs for infrastructure.’ This has placed
the nation in a mendicant position in relation to such agencies, which has
limited the capacity for autonomous policy development at the national
level which would take account of the specific educational and curricu-
lum needs of St Lucia and its cultural history and current post-colonial
aspirations.
‘Conditionalities’ associated with aid have real policy effects, including in
the curriculum. On this very point Jules, Permanent Secretary of Education
involved in the development of the Plan, noted: ‘The differential of power
within the international arena gives to the multilaterals that power of defini-
tion and selection to determine whose knowledge is worth incorporation into
best practice and the new common sense’ (Jules 2006: 16). Donor agencies
and the global positioning of nations such as St Lucia have had real policy
effects. We would also note the significance of St Lucia’s membership of
regional coalitions, CARICOM (Caribbean Common Market) and OECS
(Organization of Eastern Caribbean States), both of which seek to establish a
regional identity and a larger market and economic entity amongst small
 Curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation 113
Caribbean nations and both of which are responses to and manifestations of
globalization.
Policymakers and educators in the Caribbean, then, have been concerned
that education policy development has largely been a series of responses to
international demands, with little consideration given to implementation and
local conditions and post-colonial aspirations. Indeed, each new policy framed
by donor agencies appears to arrive before the previous one has been imple-
mented. The Plan tried to work against this situation by involving very broad
consultation in its development, quite easy to do in a very small nation of
approximately 160,000 people. The World Bank in fact praised St Lucia for
this process of policy development, which also ensured better understanding
of the policy in terms of subsequent implementation. Further, with the policy
covering all education sectors and being in place for ten years, the Ministry
was seeking to mediate future donor agency policy effects. The hope was that
new donor policy requirements would be incorporated into the overarching
policy framework articulated in the Plan and thus the St Lucian Ministry
would retain some autonomy in policy development and not simply be con-
tinually responding to policies and policy ideas which had their gestation
elsewhere. Thus, despite the mendicant position of St Lucia vis-à-vis donor
agencies, there was still some sophisticated resistance evident in the framing
of the Education Sector Development Plan, which sought to mediate the effects of
donor agencies and globalized policy discourses. This resulted in what we can
see as the vernacular globalization of the Plan and translation as a two-way
process central to the post-colonial situation (Young 2003: 142). This politi-
cal and policy mediation can also be seen as an attempt at strengthening
‘national capital’ in Bourdieu’s (2003) terms, thus enhancing the policy capac-
ity of the nation vis-à-vis that of donor agencies. The consultation process, the
cross-sector coverage and the ten-year time frame of the Plan were central ele-
ments of this strategy to enhance the mediating capacity of educational poli-
cymakers in St Lucia through the strengthening of national capital (Lingard
and Jn Pierre 2006).
However, colonial residues are still evident in St Lucia schooling and edu-
cation policy in the hegemony of English as the language of instruction in the
schools and the neglect, indeed denial of kweyol, the national language in
schooling. Such residues are also evident in the neglect of indigenous knowl-
edges in the school curriculum which, particularly at the secondary level,
remains very academic in orientation and dominated by public examinations,
manifesting the continuing effects of colonialism. This is evidence of what
Gregory (2004: 9) has called ‘the colonial present’ set against post-colonial
aspirations. Further, as a rearticulation of globalized policy discourses, the
Plan emphasized human capital development and global economic competi-
tiveness to the neglect of other forms of capital, such as social and cultural
capitals, at a time in St Lucia of increasing influence of US popular culture
and culture industries and a policy desire to build national and regional iden-
tities through schooling.
114 Globalizing education policy
Tikly’s observation, noted earlier, that the positioning of a nation in geo-
political terms in relation to globalization is central to understanding the
effects of globalization, is confirmed by the considerations of education and
curriculum policy in Pakistan and St Lucia. So too is the broader policy point
that history, including colonial history, is central to understanding contem-
porary policies, as well as understanding contemporary globalization and its
effects in education and curriculum policy within specific nations. However,
global pressures of various sorts are resisted and mediated in varying ways,
resulting in vernacular globalization.

Conclusion
In this chapter we have argued that globalization has given rise to a new dis-
course of education policy, with serious implications for rethinking the three
message systems described by Bernstein. However, we have noted that this
discourse has been enacted differently around the world, resulting in a wide
variety of policy prescriptions. Indeed, these prescriptions have been vigor-
ously debated along different political axes within the nation-state. Yet the
pressures for change have emerged not only from within national systems, but
also from international sources, most notably IGOs. This has particularly
been the case in respect of nations of the Global South. There is clearly now a
globally converging discourse about how education policies should reshape
curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation. So, for example, in England and Aus-
tralia the political authority to determine and manage the curriculum has
steadily moved from local/state to the national level. Such a transfer of politi-
cal authority has been justified in terms of efforts to ensure better articulation
between education and economic policies in order to achieve national com-
petitiveness within the global economy. This emphasis is located within a
neoliberal imaginary based more on the values of the market and system effi-
ciency than on goals of democratic equality and community.
The focus on human capital formation for greater competitiveness has
created a demand for more robust regimes of testing. Within nation-states,
testing has increasingly reshaped notions of worthwhile knowledge as well as
pedagogical practices and has affected teacher professionalism. But beyond
testing at the national level, international comparisons have also become
important. In policy terms, comparative performance on testing regimes such
as PISA has even become a surrogate measure for determining the quality and
effectiveness of national educational systems. Indeed, it is no longer possible
to understand education policy without an appreciation of the central role
that testing and accountability regimes now play in policy development and
evaluation. Testing has also become the key instrument with which policy-
makers steer practices at the school level. We have also shown how the other
message systems of curriculum and pedagogy have been affected not only by
what are seen to be global imperatives, but also by history. On the latter, the
history of colonialism continues to affect these message systems in the nations
 Curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation 115
of the Global South, as illustrated in our examples drawn from Pakistan and
St Lucia. Policy as numbers in the nations of the Global South has been mani-
fest as indicators of achievement of the UN’s Millenium Development Goals,
which we deal with in more detail in Chapter 7.
In the nations of the Global North the emphasis on testing has become
central to the development of new regimes of accountability, giving rise to
new forms of educational governance that no longer assume traditional rule-
bound bureaucratic processes, but direct individuals towards particular policy
priorities and practices. If policy is the ‘authoritative allocation of values’,
testing plays a major role in reallocating particular values. Given the central-
ity of the message systems to systemic governance, particularly new forms of
testing, we have argued that education policy studies needs to think about
these message systems as policies. We think this chapter has demonstrated
the veracity of that claim. In the next chapter we discuss these issues in rela-
tion to new ways of thinking about educational governance.
6 From government to governance

Introduction
In the previous two chapters we explored some of the ways in which globali-
zation is transforming the conceptualization of educational values, and the
manner in which the three message systems of education – curriculum, peda-
gogy and evaluation – are now reconfigured in line with the changing concep-
tions of those values. Around the world, education is increasingly seen in
terms of human capital formation, implying the development of educational
policies that seek to prepare students for new kinds of work and labour rela-
tions. In this way, educational policies are driven more by the values of the
market and system efficiency than by cultural and community values such as
justice and democracy. In order to make educational systems more efficient
and effective, policymakers have become more concerned with testing than
ever before. Through various regimes of testing, both national and interna-
tional, they have sought to steer educational practices relating to curriculum,
pedagogy and evaluation towards the values of the market.
Increasingly, efficiency has become a kind of metavalue within the frame-
work of which other more ethical and cultural purposes of education are now
interpreted. Efficiency is usually taken to mean achieving the best possible
outcomes with a given level of funding. Often this is reframed as ‘doing more
with less’, with policies often seeking so-called ‘efficiency dividends’. The
related notion of effectiveness is usually conceived as achieving the allocated
set of objectives within given time frames. In this chapter we will argue that
this emphasis on efficiency and effectiveness has given rise to a particular con-
ception of accountability, as well as a new way of thinking about educational
governance.
There is now much rhetorical talk, especially in the developing countries
and within international development agencies, about ‘good governance’.
This talk is often concerned with such issues as transparency of decision-
making processes, forms of devolution, technologies of measuring educa-
tional performance, the development of appropriate performance indicators,
international benchmarking, new standardized testing regimes, mechanisms
of quality assurance, rigorous accountability systems, multiple sources of
 From government to governance 117
educational funding, effective uses of public resources, public/private part-
nerships and so on. Even this short list shows how each of these concerns is
couched in terms of a focus on efficiency, defined mostly in terms of the
extent to which educational systems are responsive to the perceived labour
market needs of the global economy. Such a policy discourse highlights tech-
nical concerns – issues of means – that often mask real political debates about
educational ends. But beyond this preoccupation with the technical, this dis-
course also points to a new way of thinking about educational governance.
What is clear is that, just as globalization has transformed the discursive
terms in which issues of educational policies linked to curriculum, peda-
gogy and evaluation are now considered, so too has it shifted the ways in
which issues of educational governance are addressed. The neoliberal imagi-
nary of globalization has led to a new way of thinking about how schools,
technical colleges, universities and educational systems should be governed.
This view of educational governance shows remarkable signs of convergence
around an education policy discourse proselytized by a range of interna-
tional organizations including the OECD, the World Bank and UNESCO,
and embraced readily by national systems in the Global North and the
Global South alike.
In this chapter we will argue that under the conditions of globalization
there has been a notable shift in the ways in which education is now governed.
This shift involves a move from government to governance. This suggests
that national governments are no longer the only source of policy authority,
but that the interests of a whole range of policy actors, both national and
international, have now become enmeshed in policy processes. This is the
overlay of Westphalian and post-Westphalian realities which we have written
about throughout this book. The bureaucratic administrative state also has
been replaced by polycentric arrangements involving both public and private
interests. In managing social relations, the state no longer simply relies on
rules and their hierarchical impositions, but seeks also the production of self-
regulating individuals. Ideologies now play a greater role, for example, in
relation to the ideas of individual choice and markets. In this way, the proc-
esses of the allocation of values and the structure of state authority are trans-
formed. However, this shift to governance is not uniform around the world
but is negotiated locally, as these processes are mediated by local histories,
cultures and politics.

From government to governance

The concept of governance is derived from the recent literature in political
science, where it is now usually taken to indicate a change in the structures
and modus operandi of government (Roseneau 1997). This change occurred
around the time of the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the
hegemony of neoliberal capitalism on a global scale, a shift sponsored in the
first instance politically by Thatcher in the UK and Reagan in the USA and
118 Globalizing education policy
later supported by governments around the world, including Deng Xiaop-
ing in China. Government is usually taken to refer to the political party,
parties or political coalitions that control state structures (the public service)
and state practices (e.g. introducing legislation, law making, policymaking,
creating regulations and appointments to the judiciary) within any given
nation at any given time. Government in this sense could be seen to func-
tion within a nation-state and within the bureaucratic structures of the
public sector.
Governance signifies changes in this form of government linked to the
effects of globalization. These changes are related to the application of new
public management across the public sector, including across the state’s
administrative structures and practices, resulting in what is often referred
to as ‘the new managerial state’ (Clarke and Newman 1997). Here we see
the ecumenical move of private-sector structures and practices inside state
structures (Waters 1995), all facilitated by the flows associated with what
Thrift (2005: 6) calls the ‘cultural circuit’ of capitalism, where business
schools, management consultants and management gurus, along with inter-
national organizations, proselytize management and leadership practices of
a particular kind across both private and public sectors which have become
more alike and more intertwined. These changes are also linked to the
‘freeing up’ to some extent of the market vis-à-vis the state and the incorpo-
ration of market and private-sector relations inside state structures. The
latter has seen the emergence of, for example, a global higher education
market (Marginson 2007), and the creation of quasi-markets in schooling
systems across the globe (Apple 2001; Ball 2008).
There is a global element to the move from government to governance as
well, intimately related to the new scalar politics of globalization (Brenner
2004; Robertson et al. 2006a, 2006b; Dale 2006). The new scalar politics,
what Brenner (2004) calls the ‘rescaling of statehood’, has not seen the decline
of the nation-state as predicted by some post-national theorists such as Strange
(1996), but now works differently in the context of neoliberal globalization.
As Roger Dale (2006: 27) has put it, ‘It seems to be widely accepted that
states have at the very least ceded some of their discretion or even sovereignty
to supranational organizations, albeit the better to pursue their national inter-
ests’. To supranational institutions such as the EU, which Dale is talking
about, we would add the plethora of other governmental and non-govern-
mental organizations which now exist beyond nations, but which have real
effects within nations. It is this new post-Westphalian politics which has
been the backdrop to the move from government, thought of as functioning
within national borders, to governance, acknowledging effects from beyond
national borders and the involvement of agencies other than public ones.
Education policy and the education state have not remained unaffected by
these changes in state structures and practices and the new scalar politics. It is
those changes which have been ‘most economically rendered in the concep-
tion of a shift from “government” to “governance”’ (Dale 2006: 27). It is these
 From government to governance 119
matters of educational governance as a subset of the move from government
to governance which are the focus of this chapter.
One aspect of the new managerial state associated with the transition
from government to governance is the new public management. This has
been layered into the structures and practices of the older bureaucratic state
structures. This new public management (NPM) sometimes also called ‘cor-
porate managerialism’, has been a structural and practice response to the
new flows of globalization and the related speeding up of policy change and
indeed the centrality of a discourse of change in contemporary policy
regimes (Clarke and Newman 1997). The older bureaucratic structures and
practices were deemed to be too slow, indeed sclerotic, in the face of the
‘needs’, ‘requirements’ and ‘demands’ of what could now be seen as transna-
tional (rather than multinational) corporations and global capitalism
(Yeatman 1998). The OECD has been one international organization that
has been central to sponsoring this view of the older state structures and
practices. It has argued (OECD 1995: 7) that bureaucratic state structures
were ‘highly centralized, rule-bound and inflexible’ and stressed ‘process
rather than results’.
This critique implicitly suggests some of the positives seen to be associated
with the new public management (Lynn 2006). NPM’s focus is on results or,
in ‘management speak’, its focus is on outputs and performance, rather than
inputs and processes. Further, these were to be achieved efficiently: that is, at
the lowest possible cost. Efficiency has also been accompanied by the dis-
course of effectiveness, which is here taken to mean achievement of goals and
objectives. This has witnessed a new way of steering policy implementation
and outcomes through the establishment of objectives and creation of indica-
tors of performance in relation to objectives. This has seen a flattening of state
structures and new relationships between the ‘centre’ and the ‘periphery’
within state structures.
Such restructuring or ‘cultural re-engineering’ (Ball 2008: 47) has recon-
stituted the character of the relationship between education departments,
which establish policy goals and create related accountability regimes, and
schools, which now have to focus on achieving these policy goals and meeting
the required accountability demands. In policy cycle terms, this is a new type
of relationship between the context of policy text production and the context
of policy practice or implementation. This involves steering at a distance via
performance measures (including testing) as a new form of outcomes account-
ability, as part of the stress on outcomes rather than processes or inputs of the
new public management. With this change, more tasks are devolved to the
practice site, but we should not see this as deregulation, but rather as a form
of ‘reregulation’ (Ball 2008: 43) or what du Gay (1996) has called ‘controlled
decontrol’, constituted through the performative culture of testing, league
tables, benchmarking, performance indicators and the like. This structure
and modus operandi are based in many ways on a low-trust culture and,
implicitly, surveillance. As Clarke et al. (2000: 6) note, state structures are
120 Globalizing education policy
now ‘viewed as chains of low-trust relationships, linked by contracts or con-
tractual type processes’.
The idea of new public management shares its assumptions with theories of
agency and transactional cost analysis, and applies them to the public sector.
It emphasizes a range of concepts that have become commonplace in educa-
tional governance around the world. Collectively these concepts amount to
what Waters (1995) refers to as ‘organizational ecumenism’, that is, a single
idealization of appropriate organizational behaviour. These concepts include
generic management skills; quantified performance targets; devolution; the
separation of policy, commercial and non-commercial functions; the use of
private-sector practices such as corporate plans and flexible labour practices;
just-in-time inventory; monetary incentives; cost-cutting; and above all the
privatization of the so-called non-core functions and services. New public
management thus emphasizes a preference for private ownership and pre-
scribes, wherever possible, the use of contracting out and competition or con-
testability in the provision of public services.
Central to the new form of governance and the new public management
are attempts to decentralize educational management systems, even if there
is considerable variance in the ways in which the notion of decentralization
is conceptualized. The term ‘decentralization’ is used differently in different
nations, revealing their distinctive organizational histories. It is often used
interchangeably with the idea of devolution. The OECD, in its 1995 report,
Governance in Transition: Public Management Reforms in OECD Countries, uses
the term devolution as ‘a catch-all term for the granting of greater decision-
making authority and autonomy’ under specific conditions (OECD 1995:
157). It used ‘devolution’ as a single term to avoid confusion over its
meanings.
However, it is possible to define three different modes of decentraliza-
tion: democratic devolution, functional decentralization and fiscal decen-
tralization. These variations are useful because they suggest that ideas about
governance cannot be divorced from assumptions about the educational
purposes they often embody. They also clearly demonstrate the contested
terrain of all the concepts that underpin the new form of governance. The
idea of democratic devolution, for example, is more in line with democratic
equality than are notions of functional and fiscal decentralization, which are
institutionalized to achieve greater social efficiency.
The enhancement of democratic participation, local control and commu-
nity decision-making are major characteristics of devolution. This form of
governance typically involves major power shifts in control from the central
ministerial level down to local community levels, promoting the aims of
democracy, equality and the public good. When decentralization of govern-
ance is viewed in functional terms, local institutions are not given the auton-
omy to govern, seeking to realize their own priorities, independent of the
dictates of the central government. Rather, functional decentralization
involves the transfer of specific functions of the central government to the
 From government to governance 121
local or regional level, framed today by objectives and indicators of success
established by the policy centre.
Advocated in the name of social efficiency, functional decentralization is
often linked to technologies of accountability and transparency as a part of the
larger notion of public management or good governance. Local agencies are
theoretically given increased flexibility to manage their affairs, but these
nonetheless have to conform to the performance goals and targets set by the
central government. Sometimes these goals and targets are linked to fiscal
shifts within patterns of governance changes. Fiscal decentralization typifies
the transfer of monies and control over funding sources to local institutions.
To achieve greater social efficiency, the central government no longer collects
and distributes funding, but allows local institutions to generate their finan-
cial resources, though not relinquishing control over how these funds are
spent. The use of locally generated funds is nonetheless audited, not only to
ensure transparency but also to ensure that funds are used for purposes speci-
fied by central authorities, and utilized to realize performance targets.
This pressure to decentralize has come from a wide variety of sources, but
is legitimated most profoundly by international policy organizations such as
the OECD, UNESCO, and APEC as part of a broader agenda of multilateral-
ism in education and the Washington consensus. Nations are increasingly
seeking to cooperate with organizations such as the OECD, APEC, APEID
(Asia Pacific Program of Educational Innovation for Development) and
APPEAL (Asia Pacific Program of Education for All) to align educational
policies with each other. But the agendas of these organizations are increas-
ingly converging around similar understanding of the forms of educational
governance required for a globalizing world. As an example, from 2000 the
attention of APEC’s Educational Ministries was placed on quality assurance
and accountability as a means of monitoring education. The EU has a similar
focus (Grek et al. 2009). In APEC’s Joint Statement from the third APEC
Education Ministerial Meeting in 2004, the top priorities included balancing
local-site autonomy with national goals. The focus is placed on greater school-
based management and autonomy, while also emphasizing increased stand-
ards of accountability to meet national goals and enhance international
cooperation, international benchmarking and quality assurance systems.

The politics of performance

The performance targets associated with the new public management have
effects on professionalism, reframing professional practices and in some
ways distorting them. Thus professionalism has been reconstituted by these
changes, which have been manifest in specific ways in educational systems
and in schools around the world (Gewirtz et al. 2009). The moves in educa-
tion are part of the displacement of older-style bureau professionalism by
the new forms of governance and new policy technologies (Gewirtz 2002:
2–3). These changes have in turn reconstituted the roles of school principals
122 Globalizing education policy
and teachers. School heads have become new managers, and are expected to
implement policies set elsewhere and have their schools achieve according
to various league tables of performance and sets of performance indicators.
In outlining the effects of the new public management in education, Gewirtz
(ibid.: 32) says:

The new management discourse in education emphasizes the instrumental pur-

poses of schooling – raising standards and performance as measured by examina-
tion results, levels of attendance and school leaver destinations – and frequently
articulated within a lexicon of enterprise, excellence, quality and effectiveness.

It should be noted here that Gewirtz is talking about the English schooling
system. However, such pressures are playing out in educational systems across
the globe, but always in ways that are mediated by local politics. In consider-
ing the specificities of any national educational system we must therefore
always also recognize the effects of globalization from below.
We can name the new state structures associated with the move to govern-
ance as ‘post-bureaucratic’. However, here ‘post’ does not simply mean ‘after’;
rather, we would see it more as building upon, developing out of, in tension
with, the bureaucratic structures and practices that preceded it. Thus, the
state remains bureaucratic, with many of the features of classical bureaucracy
foreshadowed some time ago now by Max Weber; what we have are new
hybrid mixes of bureaucratic and NPM structures and relationships.
The emphasis on outcomes and performance within the new public man-
agement has seen the proliferation of performance indicators and various
league tables of performance measures across the last two decades or so in all
public-sector departments. This phenomenon has been called ‘policy as
numbers’ (Rose 1999; Ozga and Lingard 2007) and is also linked to a culture
of performativity (Lyotard 1984; Ball 2008). The OECD (1995: 8) sees the
NPM as being central to ‘developing a performance-oriented culture’. One
important element, then, of the new form of governance is the construction
and use of comparative performance and outcome measures. As Ball (2006:
144) points out, who controls these fields of judgement becomes crucial, and
such fields become sites of contestation.
This governance through comparison has occurred within systems and
within nations, but also internationally, indeed almost globally. The
concept of governance was actually used in political science in the early
1990s in relation to ‘global governance’ to depict the significance of a
wide range of intergovernmental and non-governmental international
organizations in the governance of nations in the post-Cold War period
(Roseneau 2005). Additionally, part of the steering at a distance of new
state structures is achieved through constraints related to the emphases on
performance and performance measures. These constraints now work at a
number of multilayered levels from the global through the international
to the regional, national and subnational.
 From government to governance 123
Regionally we can think about the educational indicators which have been
central to the construction of a new supranational European education space
(Dale 2006; Lawn 2006). Indeed, even the creation of statistical categories
and agreement upon them, as has occurred with the alignment of educational
statistics of the OECD, Eurostat (the statistical arm of the EU) and UNESCO,
have policy effects in nations. It has been demonstrated how this action had
policy effects in the net-benefactor nations of the EU as part of a broader
policy convergence in education driven by a policy as numbers approach by
supranational (EU) and international (OECD) agencies and by reports from
both types of agency (Lawn and Lingard 2002). These effects worked through
what has been called a ‘magistrature of influence’ operating above these
nations, and have ensured some policy convergence as a result of this form of
global governance, which was also part of the move from government to gov-
ernance within these particular nations.
With the globalization of the economy and the apparent reduction of the
economic sovereignty of nations, particularly in policy terms with the hegem-
ony of neoliberalism, international comparative measures of performance have
become a global aspect of the new governance. Mundy (2007: 348) calls this
‘standard-setting multilateralism’. This mode of governance reconceptualizes
education policy in economic terms, as involving the production of the human
capital, in quantity and quality terms, thought necessary to ensure the global
competitiveness of the putative national economy. As Brown et al. (1997:
7–8) state: ‘Indeed the competitive advantage of nations is frequently rede-
fined in terms of the quality of national education and training systems judged
according to international standards.’
Such education quality measures have become surrogates for the strength
of the national economy. Nations still control their education and training
systems, even though they are now framed very often by globalized educa-
tional policy discourses; there is a global dimension to the move to govern-
ance. The nation-building and citizenship formation functions of national
education systems are very much linked to ‘the structuration of the West-
phalian world order – that is, world order as a society of states’ (Mundy
2007: 346). Because of this level of national mediation, education policy-
making, unlike economic policymaking where free-trade ideology has made
national economies more porous, is still seen as largely a national task, yet
standard-setting multilateralism has helped reorder national policies in
education.
Nóvoa and Yariv-Mashal (2003) have written very insightfully about
the global character of this new form of governance through comparison.
They talk about how the ‘national eye’ today governs in conjunction with
the ‘global eye’, noting that ‘the attention to global benchmarks and indi-
cators serves to promote national policies in a field (education), that is
imagined as a place where national sovereignty can still be exercised’
(ibid.: 426). The metaphor of the eye here is significant, as Barthes (1979:
9) has noted, ‘The eye is reason, evidence, empiricism, verisimilitude –
124 Globalizing education policy
everything which serves to control, coordinate, to imitate.’ Benchmarks,
indicators and the like make the nation, and indeed the globe, legible for
governing (Scott 1998).
This interplay of the global and the national is most evident in the observa-
tion of Rodney Paige (2003), George W. Bush’s first federal secretary of edu-
cation, in his response to an OECD report on educational performance:

The report documents how little we receive in return for our national invest-
ment. This report also reminds us that we are battling two achievement gaps.
One is between those being served well by our system and those being left
behind. The other is between the US and many of our higher achieving friends
around the world. By closing the first gap, we will close the second.
(Paige, quoted in Hursh 2008: 84)

It is this emphasis on global comparison that explains the growing impor-

tance that national systems attach to international student assessment pro-
grammes such as the OECD’s Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA), established in the late 1990s, to measure the literacy,
numeracy, science literacy and sometimes problem-solving capacities of stu-
dents at the end of compulsory schooling (aged about 15 years) and the Trends
in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS) of the International Asso-
ciation for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA).
The OECD’s educational indicators, published annually now as Educa-
tion at a Glance, measuring and describing relationships between system
inputs and system achievements or outcomes (Henry et al. 2001), have
also become part of what we might see as an emergent global education
policy field. With UNESCO and the World Bank, the OECD is develop-
ing global educational indicators which apply to the developing nations
of the Global South. This is yet another example of global governance
through comparison and of the globalization of the policy as numbers
approach linked to new forms of accountability, what Nóvoa and Yariv-
Mashal (2003: 427) call ‘the politics of mutual accountability’. This poli-
tics of mutual accountability is a central element of the transition from
government to governance and an important component of global govern-
ance in education.
Such mutual accountability on a global scale, along with the performa-
tive policy as numbers form of accountability at national level, are part of
what Power (1997) has called the ‘audit culture’. This audit culture is
closely aligned with the new public management, its emphases on efficiency
and effectiveness (‘value for money’) and the associated shifts in regulatory
styles in the work of the state (ibid.: 42). The rise of quality assurance and a
quality assurance industry and market has also catalysed the audit culture.
The audit culture is central to the new form of governance. There is also a
connection with the rise of managers and the discourse of managers and
management in the public sector. In that, as Power (ibid.: 67) demonstrates,
 From government to governance 125
‘the audit explosion represents a decision to shift evaluative cultures away
from social scientific towards managerial knowledge bases’.
This cultural shift has also been accompanied by a ‘rebalancing’ of the rela-
tionships between the state and the market. The older Keynesian settlement
of states intervening in and against the fallout of the market to protect the
‘national economy’ and ‘national citizens’ was replaced by a post-Keynesian
settlement which gave priority to the market and individual choices over the
state and collective concerns to do with the common good, which had been
the focus of state structures and policies in western nations in various forms
from the end of the Second World War through until the end of the Cold
War and the politics pursued by Thatcher and Reagan. In giving priority to
the market and its freeing up, privatization has become a key policy element
of governance.
As we have already noted, the idea of privatization refers to the transfer of
services provided by the public sector to a range of private-sector interests. As
a political construct it represents an attempt to separate decision-making in
the areas of public policy from the execution of service provision. And it has
come to symbolize a new way of looking at public institutions and the role of
the state in managing the affairs of its citizens.
Contracting out and enterprise sales may perhaps be the most influential
modalities of privatization in the contemporary public sector. Stephen Ball’s
(2007) exhaustive mapping of private-sector participation in public-sector
education in the UK demonstrates the multiple meanings of privatization in
education, as well as the huge changes which have occurred in the move away
from the earlier Keynesian settlement. He talks of first-order privatizations to
refer to the enhanced private presence in relation to ‘ownership, organization
forms, financial relations, etc’ and their second-order effects in terms of citi-
zenship, democracy and governance. Additionally he speaks of ‘commerciali-
zation’ in education where schools are involved in commercial advertising and
consumerism.
Drawing on Hatcher (2000), Ball makes a distinction between exogenous
and endogenous privatization. He states:

‘Where the former involves private companies entering education to take over
directly responsibilities, services or programmes, the latter refers to changes in
the behavior of public sector organizations themselves, where they act as though
they were businesses, both in relation to clients and workers, and in dealings
with other public sector organizations’ (Ball 2007: 14).

Endogenous privatization involves the construction of quasi-markets in educa-

tion and students and parents as consumers rather than as citizens with demo-
cratic rights and freedom. Here, freedom becomes reconstituted as consumer
choice in education (Apple 2001). Underpinning such marketization and priva-
tization is the neoliberal, possessive, self-interested individual, a central element
of the neoliberal social imaginary, which we have written about in Chapter 4.
126 Globalizing education policy
From hierarchies to networks
The move from government to governance is also accompanied by a move
from hierarchy to network, from classical hierarchical vertical bureaucratic
relationships to more horizontal networked relationships. Castells (2000:
458) argues that there is some decentralizing of power associated with the
networked society, nationally and globally, and that today ‘function and
power’ are ‘organized in the space of flows’. Appadurai (2006) has similarly
spoken of the emergence globally of cellular politics as distinct from older-
style vertebrate politics, which operated at the national level. This is a dis-
tinction somewhat akin to that described in the move from hierarchy to
network, from government to governance. Appadurai (ibid.: 25) argues in
respect of vertebrate politics:

The modern system of nation-states is the most marked case of vertebrate struc-
ture, for though nations thrive on their stories of difference and singularity, the
system of nation-states works only because of its underlying assumption of an
international order, guaranteed by a variety of norms.

In the context of globalization, Appadurai sees the new cellular politics

emerging alongside these vertebrate structures in what we would see as a
hybrid interplay of Westphalian and post-Westphalian structures and prac-
tices. These new networked or cellular relationships in the context of neolib-
eralism and privatizations in the public sector, including education, involve
both public- and private-sector players and those located both within nations
and globally.
Rhodes (1997) draws a distinction between policy communities and policy
networks. Policy communities, he argues, are more coherent and structured
than policy networks, and surround any given policy field and usually consist
of policymakers, professionals, interest groups and so on. Networks are more
loosely coupled arrangements. (See Hudson and Lowe (2004 Ch. 8) for a
useful, brief coverage of the policy network literature.) We would make the
point here, though, that today in the context of globalization, both policy
communities and policy networks have been stretched out globally and now
also include private-sector participants. These extended communities and
networks are part of the new governance. Rhodes (1997: 15), one of the earli-
est writers about governance in political science, says that it refers to ‘a new
process of governing’. While also acknowledging that governance refers, inter
alia, to ‘the minimal state; corporate governance; and the new public man-
agement’, Rhodes actually defines governance in terms of networked relation-
ships. He notes, ‘governance refers to self-organizing, interorganizational networks
characterized by interdependence, resource exchange, rules of the game and
significant autonomy from the state’ (ibid.).
The global context of the move to governance is also related to the move
from a Westphalian to a post-Westphalian mode of international relations,
 From government to governance 127
which we outlined in Chapter 2, with the latter referring to new post-national
global spaces and relations. It is the emergence of the post-Westphalian
reality, which initially provoked talk of ‘governance without government’ on
a global scale (Roseneau and Czempiel 1992). The Commission on Global
Governance (1995: 2) of the UN defined this global take on governance in the
following manner: ‘primarily as intergovernmental relationships, but it must
now be understood as also involving nongovernmental organizations, citizens’
movements, multinational corporations, and the global capital market. Inter-
acting with these are the global mass media.’ Again, though, we see the con-
temporary world as manifesting a complex hybrid mixture of both Westphalian
and post-Westphalian politics.
This move from government to governance has been manifested in the
emergence of a globalized post-Keynesian policy consensus. Related has been
the emergence of a more polycentric state (Ball 2007) and new education
policy production rules, along with what Ball (2008: 41–54) calls new policy
technologies. Policy technologies, he suggests, ‘involve the calculated deploy-
ment of forms of organization and procedures, and disciplines or bodies of
knowledge, to organize human forces and capabilities into functioning
systems’ (ibid.: 41). He sees the market and privatizations, new public-sector
management, and the plethora of outcomes and performance measures associ-
ated with performativity, as these new technologies of governance.
In considering the emergence of a European education policy space, Dale
(2006: 33) argues that new governance activities might include funding,
ownership, provision and regulation, and that there are now a number of
institutions of coordination within educational governance, including the
state, the market, the community and households. In considering the ‘pluri-
scalar governance of education’, Dale layers in three scales of governance in
education, namely the subnational, the national and the supranational. We
would suggest there is also, potentially at least, a regional layer. It is these
matters that force us to talk of new forms of educational governance. We
would make the strong point, however, that all of these matters require
empirical verification in considering how they are played out in any given
educational system at any time.
In this section we have documented various features that constitute the
new form of educational governance. These features include the new public
management, privatizations, marketization, and networked and cellular
politics, all linked to the new scalar and post-Westphalian politics associ-
ated with globalization. This new form of governance does not simply
negate what has gone before, but rather builds on what has gone before in
specific and hybrid ways. A range of international organizations have played
important roles as ‘institutionalizing mechanisms’ (McNeeley and Cha
1994) of this new form of governance, including the OECD in relation to
the nations of the Global North and the World Bank, and IMF and UNESCO
in relation to the nations of the Global South. In what follows we consider
some aspects of the new form of educational governance in a little more
128 Globalizing education policy
detail. We look at the changing role of international organizations and the
emergence of a global commensurate space of measurement linked to ‘mul-
tilateral standard setting’ and processes of ‘mutual accountability’. We con-
clude by considering how this new form of governance helps to constitute
new educational subjects and new consumer citizens through the processes
of what Foucault would call ‘governmentality’. For Foucault, government-
ality as a concept deals with the ‘conduct of conduct’ and emphasizes the
ways in which the new neoliberal subjects become self-governing. As such,
it is an effect of governance.

New forms of governance: the role of the OECD

We have argued up to this point that a range of international organizations
have been important in the new forms of governance in education. For the
rich countries of the world, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) has been an important component of this global level
of governance. Other agencies such as the World Bank and UNESCO and the
aid programmes of developed nations have played a central role in the new
form of educational governance in the nations of the Global South (Mundy
2007; Jones 2007; Jones and Coleman 2005). Globalization, as we will argue,
has also changed the role of the OECD.
Established in 1961 out of the Organization for European Economic
Cooperation (OEEC) and funded under the Marshall Plan by the USA for
the economic reconstruction of post-war Europe, the OECD has variously
and simultaneously been described as a think tank, a geographic entity, an
organizational structure, a policymaking forum, a network of policymakers,
researchers and consultants, and a sphere of influence (Henry et al. 2001: 1).
In formal terms, the OECD views itself as an intergovernmental organiza-
tion of 30 of the world’s most developed countries, which produce two-
thirds of the world’s goods and services, and which are committed to the
principles of a market economy and a pluralistic democracy (OECD 1997),
with a commitment to human rights being a new, more recent requirement
for membership.
Although primarily an economic organization, since its inception the
OECD has emphasized the role education must play in both economic and
social development. Within the organization, however, there has been much
debate about the ways in which economic and educational policies might be
related. In the 1970s and 1980s in particular, the European countries sought
to ‘tone down’ the dominant US versions of market liberalism within the
OECD, with their own distinctive social democratic agendas, refusing to
view education and social policies as secondary to, or instruments of, eco-
nomic policies. Haas (1990: 159) has suggested that the OECD could best
be viewed as ‘a rather incoherent compromise between the United States
and the European members’, especially with respect to the role education
plays in the total polity.
 From government to governance 129
Indeed, as Papadopoulos (1994: 11) points out, in the OECD’s original
charter there was no independent structural location for education, though
there was always an ‘inferred role’, derived from early human capital for-
mulations of links between economic productivity and educational invest-
ment. In the early days those links were conceived somewhat narrowly in
terms of boosting scientific and technological personnel capacity and, by
extension, of improved and expanded science and mathematics education
in schools.
It was not until 1968 that the Centre for Research and Innovation (CERI)
was established within the OECD, partly as a result of a growing recognition
within the organization of the ‘qualitative’ aspects of economic growth – ‘as
an instrument for creating better conditions of life’ – and, along with that, a
more comprehensive view of education’s multiple purposes. By 1970, the
organization recognized a fuller range of objectives of education – a less ‘econ-
omistic’ view of education policy, as Papadopoulos (1994: 122) puts it, ena-
bling it to attach equal importance to education’s social and cultural purposes.
For most of the 1970s and 1980s, then, the dominance of economic concerns
within the OECD was tempered by the recognition of the social dimensions
and purposes of economic growth and development.
This is not to deny the existence of ideological tensions within the OECD.
Any analysis of the debates until the mid-1990s, both within the organiza-
tion’s committees and its secretariat, reveals an ideological cleavage between
social-democratic and neoliberal policy stances. These tensions, however, were
resolved in the way the OECD worked: without any prescriptive mandate, it
operated through processes that involved its ‘traditions of transparency: of
providing explanations and justifications for policy, and of engaging in criti-
cal self-appraisal’ (OECD 1998: 102). As Martens et al. (2004: 15) point out,
the OECD does not have any legally binding mandate over its members, nor
does it have the financial resources at its disposal to encourage policy adop-
tion. It thus seeks to exert influence through the processes of ‘mutual exami-
nation by governments, multilateral surveillance and peer pressure to conform
or reform’.
Papadopoulos (1994) provides a convincing historical account of how, until
the early 1990s, the OECD’s educational work could be characterized as
involving a struggle between its concerns for promoting economic efficiency
and growth, on the one hand, and education’s broader social purposes on the
other. However, since the mid-1990s this tension is no longer so evident, we
argue, as education is once again increasingly viewed in instrumental terms,
as a handmaiden to the organization’s primary interest in economic matters.
With a greater focus on the changed context in which education now works,
and armed with new discourses of globalization and the knowledge economy,
the economic efficiency perspective now dominates the OECD’s educational
work – which is now increasingly more technical and data-driven – and has
replaced the earlier normative debates about the multiple purposes of
education.
130 Globalizing education policy
The OECD acknowledges as well that the way it works and the manner in
which it relates to its members have changed (OECD 1996a: 15):

OECD has evolved greatly in the globalizing world economy. It has been
‘globalizing’ itself, notably through new Members and dialogue activities ...
Further, analysing the many facets of the process of globalization, and their
policy implications, has become the central theme in OECD’s work, as the
challenges and opportunities of globalization have become a high priority of
policy-makers in OECD countries.

The OECD now asserts – perhaps accurately – that ‘a broad consensus exists
on many aspects of the policy requirement for a globalizing world economy’.
In this way, the OECD has made considerable use of the idea of globalization
in both redefining its policy programme and in reconceptualizing its relation-
ship to member countries, often prescribing the manner in which they should
interpret and respond to the pressures of globalization and take the opportu-
nities offered by the global economy. We would also argue that the OECD
itself has been a central agency in establishing this consensus of which it
speaks.
However, in articulating the logic of globalization in this manner, the
OECD appears to ‘reify’ the economic relations it regards as ‘globalizing’,
treating them as if they were self-evident and inevitable. This has the effect of
masking some of the normative assumptions underlying its conception of
globalization, treating them as if they were beyond political debate. It
associates globalization with technological revolutions in transport,
communications and data processing, but only explores their economic
implications, and not the cultural transformations to which they have also
given rise.
Insofar as the OECD (1995) considers the political aspects of the global
economy, characterized as informational, networked, knowledge-based, post-
industrial and service-oriented, it suggests a radically revised view of the roles
and responsibilities of the state. It assumes that the old centralized bureau-
cratic state structures were too slow and sclerotic and ‘out of sync’ with the
emergent needs of transnational as opposed to national capital and corpora-
tions (Yeatman 1998b). It therefore calls for a minimalist state, with a greater
reliance on the market. It argues for new devolved forms of governance that
are more compatible with the so-called ‘demands of the global economy’.
A problem with this account is that it views globalization in terms of
an objective, inexorable set of social processes. This focus on description,
however, overlooks the fact that globalization is also a subjective phe-
nomenon which involves actual human agents interpreting the conditions
of interconnectivity. Nor does it permit the possibility that it may be a
deliberate, ideological project of economic liberalization that directs
people towards more intense market forces (see Bourdieu 2003), and that
it is based on a politics of meaning that seeks to steer them towards a
 From government to governance 131
certain taken-for-grantedness about the ways in which the global economy
operates and the manner in which culture, crises, resources and power
formations are filtered through its universal logic. It thus ‘ontologizes’
the processes it describes, seeking to create subjects who view policy
options through the conceptual prism of an assumed logic.
Given this representation, the OECD no longer seems to entertain the
broader philosophical debates about the purposes of education, but locates
them instead within its presumed normative commitment to globalization’s
ideological forms, articulated in terms of a neoliberal logic of markets (Rizvi
2007). This depoliticization of educational issues leads the organization to
reconceptualize its policy work in mostly technical terms, concerned with
questions of how best to understand the so-called imperatives of globaliza-
tion; how education can be a more efficient instrument of economic develop-
ment; how greater accountability of educational systems can be ensured; and
how education should develop social subjects who view the world as an inter-
connected space in which informational networks play a crucial role in sus-
taining market activity.
Indeed, within this neoliberal economic logic the OECD now accords
greater importance to education than ever before. So much so that in 2002 it
established a separate Directorate for Education, something it had resisted for
most of its history. In establishing the Directorate, the secretary-general of
the OECD (2002) stressed that ‘education is a priority for OECD Member
countries, and the OECD is playing an increasingly important role in this
field. Society’s most important investment is in the education of its people.’
This observation is clearly based on the OECD’s interpretation of the require-
ments of the global economy, in which knowledge is assumed to be a key
ingredient and in which innovation and commercialization of knowledge are
considered major drivers of economic development.
Given these normative convictions it is not surprising, then, that much of
the educational policy deliberations at the OECD are concerned with techni-
cal issues, as is evident in its work programme for 2005–2006, which sug-
gests that internationally comparable statistics and indicators must underpin
the educational work of the OECD, and that the ultimate outputs of its policy
recommendations must be designed to increase both the quality and the
equity of education systems. Listed as major concerns are issues of equity in
access and outcomes, quality, choice, public and private financing, and indi-
vidual and social returns to investment in learning. Underpinning this list is
the conviction that education is a major factor in contributing to human
capital formation and economic growth, and that policy research in education
should therefore be directed to this end.
With this conviction firmly in place and in the context of globalization,
the OECD’s mode of working has undergone substantial shifts. According to
Papodopoulos (1994: 14), the OECD’s general approach to education between
1960 and 1990 was based on international cooperation, which involved its
education committee identifying problems around which such cooperation
132 Globalizing education policy
was felt to be useful. Country educational policy reviews were conducted on a
voluntary basis, and followed ‘a sui generis pattern in terms of their methods of
investigation, coverage and periodicity’. The secretariat in turn brought to
the education committee newly emerging policy concerns around which it
was authorized to conduct thematic reviews. And although these reviews
made recommendations, there was no mechanism for ensuring that they were
implemented, beyond encouragement and advice.
In more recent years, however, while the OECD has retained this general
rhetoric of international cooperation, the balance between the political work
of the education committee and the technical tasks performed by the secre-
tariat has shifted. With a greater agreement over the organization’s ideologi-
cal position, the debates within the committee are no longer as intense, and
are replaced by the setting of work priorities and a consideration of the admin-
istrative issues of coordination and monitoring. The OECD now devotes more
resources to the collection of comparative performance data in education than
it has ever done before.
More recently, the OECD’s outreach and impact have been greatly extended
through its work with ‘non-member economies’ and through the global rec-
ognition of the technical expertise it has acquired in comparative performance
assessment. Its Directorate for Education, for example, has developed a Unit
for Co-operation with Non-member Economies (NME), the terminology used
by the OECD to refer to non-member countries. The Directorate’s interest in
NMEs is based on the view that in the context of a global integration of eco-
nomic activity it is no longer possible to understand the economic competi-
tiveness of its own members without focusing also on comparative issues and
monitoring the challenges posed to them by transitional economies, espe-
cially those that are now achieving higher levels of economic growth.
The OECD’s perspective on globalization has also led it to develop formal
links with a number of other international organizations, with the expressed
purpose of helping to bring the OECD’s institutional and policy expertise
and technical know-how to NMEs. It has worked, for example, with the
World Bank and UNESCO on the development of a World Education Indica-
tors (WEI) project. WEI is a joint initiative of these organizations designed
to provide a set of comparative educational data about transitional and devel-
oping economies. The OECD’s role in the project has been to provide techni-
cal advice based on its long history of work with performance indicators. But
as Rutkowski (2007) points out, this role is grounded in the OECD’s neolib-
eral precepts, and it is difficult to separate the OECD’s technical expertise
from its normative assumptions about the role education must play in the
development of the global economy.
These normative assumptions now constitute a global ideology that both
informs the OECD’s policy work in education and has become central to its
multilateral relations with NMEs and international organizations alike. This
has occurred within the broader context of the changes in the ways in which
nation-states now relate to and work with each other. As we have noted
 From government to governance 133
throughout this chapter and indeed throughout this book, the traditional
concept of the nation-state as a fundamental unit of world order, a unitary
phenomenon characterized by its relative homogeneity with a set of singular
purposes, has been replaced by a fragmented policy arena permeated by tran-
snational networks as well as by domestic agencies and forces. This is the new
governance and post-Westphalian reality.
This multilateral cooperation does not occur in a politically neutral space,
but in a space that is characterized by asymmetrical relations of power. The
flows of information and policy ideas are skewed towards the most powerful
countries and their political interests. However, as facilitators of information
flows and policy dialogue, international organizations have acquired greater
power and influence than ever before. In the past, the OECD viewed itself as
a forum for open dialogue with its members, but it is now clear that it has
increasingly become a policy actor in its own right (Rizvi and Lingard 2006,
2009). The OECD has become a policy actor in its own right in the context of
globalization, as both a response to and articulation of neoliberal globaliza-
tion. Through both the construction of its agenda for policy dialogue and its
technical statistical work, it displays a marked preference for certain policy
priorities. Through all of its work the OECD is part of and helped constitute
the new form of global governance in education, as well as within nations.
Additionally, it has contributed to the construction of a global commensurate
space of educational measurement, particularly through PISA and its indica-
tors, which we consider in the next section.

Pressures towards commensurability

An important component part of the new educational governance on a
global scale has been the construction of a commensurate space of educa-
tional measurement globally. The OECD has been very important in the
construction of this space, through its indicators work and through its Pro-
gramme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Indeed, in the context
of globalization, the OECD has established a niche for itself amongst inter-
national organizations as a repository of international expertise in respect of
comparative measures of the quality of educational systems. As noted
already, the OECD’s indicators and PISA are founded on a fundamental
assumption that the international competitiveness of national economies is
based on ‘the quality of national education and training systems judged
according to international standards’ (Brown et al. 1997: 7–8). The OECD
has been very successful in representing PISA as the most accurate and
legitimate measure of comparative international educational performance.
PISA demonstrates the important role that OECD now plays as a policy
actor and mediator of knowledge, with an increasing capacity to shape
policy priorities in education, not only among its member nations but
among other non-member nations as well.
134 Globalizing education policy
UNESCO and the World Bank have drawn heavily on the OECD’s exper-
tise in developing the World Education Indicators for the education systems
of the transitional and developing economies. The OECD has also worked
closely with the European Commission in developing technical infrastructure
for the collection and analysis of data of various kinds, including indicators,
and has provided technical advice to numerous national systems. This exper-
tise privileges what might be referred to as ‘a numbers approach’ to policy
work, which sidelines the broader philosophical discussions of educational
purposes, focusing instead on an input/output approach, attempting to offer
policy insights about the efficiency and effectiveness and equity and quality of
national educational systems.
The effectiveness of national education systems is now increasingly meas-
ured against the performance data provided by PISA. Its results are taken very
seriously by participating nations as a measure of the effectiveness of their
education systems and the quality of their current and potential human capital
(Simola 2005; Grek 2009). An example of this is the apparent education
policy panic in Germany following their poor results in the first PISA of
2000. The outstanding performance of Finnish students on all PISA measures
to date, on the other hand, has made Finland something of a laboratory for
educators looking to improve their systems. In 2006, 27 non-member nations
also participated in PISA, with more nations being pulled into this global
field of comparison or global education policy field. The categories around
which PISA is constructed have seldom been the subject of political debate, as
comparative performance and relative rankings have assumed centre stage.
PISA was developed in the 1990s and was based on the 1999 OECD report,
Measuring Student Knowledge and Skills – A New Framework for Assessment. It is
conducted every three years to examine the applied knowledge and skills of
students at the end of compulsory schooling at age 15. Thus its tests are not
based on national curricula; rather, they are constructed in a purpose-built
way by a contracted consortium of expert agencies with the support of techni-
cal advisory committees. A lot of sophisticated test development is done to
ensure as far as possible culture-fair testing and accurate translation. In this
way, PISA creates its own data, rather than drawing national data into a space
of international comparison. PISA regards as crucially important its claim to
comparability and a commensurate space of international comparison – a
space of uniform measurement, or what Desrosieres (1998) refers to as a ‘space
of equivalence’. Our argument here is that PISA contributes to the constitu-
tion of a global space of equivalence as a part of the new form of educational
governance.
As the histories of national statistical systems have shown (Desrosieres
1998; Porter 1995), within the national framework there was always greater
concern about the creation of a national commensurable space of measure-
ment than about validity, more about issues of reliability and comparison
than about ontology. The same is the case with PISA. It too claims to have
created a global commensurable space of measurement of the effectiveness of
 From government to governance 135
schooling systems in terms of the capacities of students at the end of compul-
sory schooling in the ‘application of knowledge to real-life challenges’. Its
architects suggests that PISA is constructed in a policy-relevant way and is
concerned to ascertain the dispositions of students at the end of compulsory
schooling for lifelong learning. As a consequence, while there might still be
some technical debates about the nature of the tests, most of the national and
international media and political responses to PISA results are about the
league tables of performance and comparative national positioning. In this
way, the technical is favoured over the political, and the popular social imagi-
nary of the knowledge economy is sustained. As Rose (1999) has argued,
policy as numbers tends to do this – the power of numbers is such that they
‘render invisible and hence incontestable – the complex array of judgments
and decisions that go into a measurement, a scale, a number’ (ibid.: 208).
While PISA deals with literacy, mathematics, science and sometimes
problem solving, it also requires students to complete a questionnaire about
themselves, their backgrounds and study habits, while background data on
the school in terms of resources, size and the organization of the curriculum
are also collected. This allows for the generation of some very useful correla-
tional policy data between variables such as socio-economic background and
performance, which has helped reignite equity debates both within the OECD
members and elsewhere. However, as Berliner (2007) points out, PISA’s tech-
nical focus means that its own analysis of equity matters is located within a
very narrow definition of equity in education, as formal access to educational
institutions. It eschews the broader political issues about educational justice,
both within and across nations.
As noted, we suggest that PISA has contributed to the constituting of a
global commensurate space of measurement of educational performance,
which is an important element of the new form of educational governance.
Here we will draw upon histories of statistics which demonstrate the politi-
cal, technical and cognitive work necessary to the emergence of both the
nation and national statistics and their overlap with each other (Porter 1995;
Desrosieres 1998). To use Scott’s (1998) analysis of a state optic for governing
– national statistics made the nation legible. We make the analogy with the
significance of indicators and data to the construction of the globe as a legible,
governable policy space.
A number of histories of statistics demonstrate the intimate and interwo-
ven relationships between the development of state administrative struc-
tures, what Bruno Latour (1987) calls a ‘centre of calculation’ – and the
development of standardization, methodologies, technologies and related
cognitive schemes of statistics and scientific thinking (Hacking 1975, 1990;
Porter 1995; Desrosieres 1998). Concerning statistics, Desrosieres (ibid.: 8)
notes, ‘As the etymology of the word shows, statistics is connected with the
construction of the state, with its unification and administration.’ He goes
on to show how statistics combine the authority of the state with the author-
ity of the scientific world. Indeed, he and Porter (1995) both demonstrate
136 Globalizing education policy
the necessity of the modern state and statistics to each other. The nation
constituted as a ‘space of equivalence’ is necessary to the construction of
statistics (Desrosieres 1998), but also statistics and numbers which elide
the local are equally important to the construction of the nation. This con-
stitution of a single space of equivalence is an affirmation of Porter’s (1995:
ix) observation that ‘quantification is a technology of distance’. Porter (ibid.:
37) observes that ‘the concept of society was itself in part a statistical con-
struct’. While this involved technical advances, it also reflected political
and administrative work as well. As Desrosieres (1998: 9) argues, ‘Creating
a political space involves and makes possible the creation of a space of
common measurement, within which things may be compared, because the
categories and encoding procedures are identical.’
While the focus up to this point has been on the historical constitution of
national statistical systems and their relationships to the nation conceived as
a space of equivalence, an analogy can be made with the collection of data,
statistical information, and in education, performance data and educational
indicators, to the construction or fabrication of a global space of measurement
as a space of equivalence, a commensurate space of comparative performance.
Such data, while not all of a piece, is central to the project of making the
globe legible, central to the global aspect of educational governance. While
the creation of national systems of statistical collection eradicated localized
systems of measurement, the emergence of the globe as a commensurable
space of measurement has not obliterated national data collection systems, but
is now an aspect of the governance of education, globally and within nations.
OECD statistical work, including indicators and PISA, can be seen to be
contributing to the constitution of an emergent global education policy
field. We might also have considered the indicators work of the EU and the
constitution of the EU as a commensurate space of equivalence (Grek et al.
2009). We can see at play here social-spatial networks of the national, inter-
national (between nations), transnational (passing through nations) and
global (Mann 2000). There is as well a complex interplay between these
layers of the new scalar politics with brokering occurring at the national
level (Grek et al. 2009).

Conclusion
We have outlined those changes in the structures and practices, policy ori-
entations and policy production rules associated with the move from gov-
ernment to governance. This transition is taken to pick up on the now more
polycentric state with private-sector involvements and principles, for
example markets, operating inside the state structures and framing its poli-
cies and policy practices. There is also a global layer to this transition. A
large number of intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations
existing above the nation now have policy effects inside nations and national
education systems. This is the new scalar politics, which is central to the
 From government to governance 137
new forms of educational governance. As Held and McGrew (2005: 11)
argue, ‘the contemporary era has witnessed layers of governance spreading
within and across political boundaries’, transforming state sovereignty into
a shared exercise of power. Furthermore, with the emergence of new pat-
terns of political interconnectedness, ‘the scope of policy choices available
to individual governments and the effectiveness of many traditional policy
instruments tends to decline’ (ibid.: 13).
We dealt with the OECD as a case study and demonstrated how the OECD
itself has been affected by globalization, taking on more of a policy actor role,
while also articulating a particular neoliberal version of globalization and the
need for reculturing and re-engineering the state through new public man-
agement and market orientations. We also demonstrated how the OECD has
been a central agency in the development of multilateral standard setting in
education through our discussion of PISA and educational indicators. We
could have spent time looking in some detail at the effects of other such inter-
national organizations, and we would stress that they are not all of a piece, for
example the World Bank. This would have demonstrated the emergence of
the Washington and post-Washington consensus which neatly dovetails with
the agendas we have outlined in our discussion of the move from government
to governance. The World Bank and a range of other intergovernmental
organizations have their effects in the nations of the Global South and of
course there are asymmetrical power relations between such agencies and
these nations. Our point here, however, is that this is all part of the new scalar
politics, central to the move from government to governance and the emer-
gent new forms of educational governance across the globe. With our discus-
sion of multilateral standard setting in the indicators work and PISA of the
OECD, we also showed the emergence of a global education policy field which
is now a part of educational governance.
Of course there are still governments within nations, which putatively
control policy agendas. The extent of this autonomy or sovereignty is affected
by the amount of national capital possessed by a given nation. However, what
we have also demonstrated in this chapter is how there are now effects coming
from the new scalar politics and effects derived from the involvement of new
private-sector policy players, resulting in the more polycentric or hollowed-
out state at national levels.
We want in this conclusion to briefly touch on another concept related to
the move from government to governance, namely ‘governmentality’.
Foucault (1991) used this concept to refer to the production of self-governing
individuals, that is, individuals who act in particular ways as they are posi-
tioned by dominant political and policy discourses. Governmentality today is
an effect of the form of governance we have been describing and analysing.
Underpinning the new forms of governance in the context of neoliberal glo-
balization is a possessive, self-interested individual. The discourses and poli-
cies which constitute and emanate from the new form of educational
governance seek to create this new individual. Rose (1999) has argued that
138 Globalizing education policy
this is the new ‘self-capitalizing’ individual, one who has to continually
invest in his or her own education, professional development and lifelong
learning so as to actively and productively participate in the globalized
economy and labour market. In some education systems there have actually
been attempts to constitute individuals with more entrepreneurial disposi-
tions, so as to better meet the perceived demands of fast globalized capital-
ism and this more individualistic and competitive world. The cultural
circuits of globalized capitalism also produce concepts such as the ‘knowl-
edge economy’, proselytized by international agencies such as the OECD,
which also help to discursively create that of which they speak. The new gov-
ernance and its effects through governmentality are based on a philosophical
conception of society as constituted by self-maximizing individuals, as well
as a conception of government as necessarily inimical to individual interests
and a vibrant economy and society.
The new form of educational governance, through the policy technolo-
gies we have written about in this chapter, also seeks to produce new
players within education. Here we can see the new educational manager as
an effect of the new forms of governance. Further, and as we have noted,
we can see the reconstitution of the role of the school principal or head as
one who seeks to maximize the educational performance of students in the
school set against performance targets, thus eliding and weakening other
educational purposes, as we demonstrated in chapter 4. This also has
effects on teachers in the move away from bureau professionalism. In
respect of the production of new teacher subjects, Stephen Ball (2006:
145) has observed, ‘the policy technologies of education reform are not
simply vehicles for the technical and structural change of organizations
but also mechanisms for reforming teachers (scholars and researchers) and
for changing what it means to be a teacher, the technologies of reform
produce new kinds of teacher subjects’. It is this self-governing that
results, which is captured by the Foucauldian concept of governmentality,
and which in turn can be seen to be an effect of the new forms of educa-
tional governance.
Ball (2006) actually talks about the debilitating impact of the new
forms of governance and governmentality effects when he suggests that
the performative, performance-oriented culture in English school reform
actually frays the very soul of the teacher, who feels that the situation
inhibits the achievement of authentic practice. In some manifestations,
the culture of performativity provokes individual and organizational fab-
rications (ibid.), as both need to be seen to perform within the new audit
culture. Here, fabrication is used in its dual meaning of creating and fal-
sifying; the latter aspect can result in goal displacement, with individuals
and organizational units spending more time on self-representation than
actually working at achieving their ‘real’ goals. Such fabrications, as Ball
(ibid.: 153) notes, are ‘both resistance and capitulation’. There is, of
course, resistance of various kinds and at various levels to the new forms
 From government to governance 139
of governance we have outlined in this chapter. These are matters we will
discuss further in the concluding chapter of this book, when we look at
globalization from below and a range of anti-globalization movements
which seek to imagine other globalizations.
7 Equity policies in education

Introduction
At least since the 1950s, most educational systems around the world have
been concerned with issues of equality. They have used public policy as an
instrument to ensure greater participation in education in an attempt to
reduce levels of social stratification. Their commitment to equality in educa-
tion has been based on the principles of both economic efficiency and social
justice. They have regarded a better-educated population as necessarily good
for the economic development of a nation while, on social justice grounds,
they have viewed education as a basic human right, and essential for social
cohesion. A commitment to these principles has led governments, often with
the assistance of international development agencies, to invest heavily in edu-
cation and develop programmes to enhance educational participation. And
indeed they can claim major success in reducing levels of illiteracy, increasing
access to educational institutions and, to some extent, achieving greater equal-
ity of social outcomes. Such progress, however, has been uneven both within
and across nations and across social groups, particularly in relation to indige-
nous populations and low socio-economic groups.
The extent to which the contemporary processes of globalization have insti-
tutionalized, or perhaps even extended, this unevenness is a subject of heated
debate among economists and sociologists alike. The principal division is
between those who argue that neoliberal policies associated with globaliza-
tion have created a more unequal and impoverished world and those who
suggest that they have created unprecedented levels of economic growth that
has enabled wealth to be spread and poverty reduced. In this chapter we will
review this debate. We will argue that while globalization has in fact reduced
some aspects of structurally imposed impediments to social equality, it has
also reinforced and even extended social hierarchies. We will consider three
major policy initiatives – the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), gender
equity policies in education and programmes designed to address the ‘digital
divide’ – and argue that each of these is based on a narrow conception of edu-
cational justice, conceptualized largely as access to institutions, sidelining
broader issues of treatment and outcomes.
 Equity policies in education 141
Such an approach is necessarily narrow because it does not consider the
dynamics of educational experiences and their social and economic outcomes,
as well as the historical conditions that produce inequalities. While a com-
mitment to formal access to educational institutions is clearly necessary, it is
not enough to achieve educational justice. Since comparative international
data shows a weaker correlation between socio-economic disadvantage on
educational outcomes in those societies with low Gini Coefficients of inequal-
ity (Green et al. 2006), a different conception of educational justice is clearly
warranted, one that places greater emphasis on the social and economic condi-
tions under which learning takes place, on pedagogical quality, and on the
redistribution of resources. This means that a commitment to social justice in
education requires both broader reforms in social and economic policy, and
reforms in education policy and professional practice. Formal access to school-
ing does not always translate into effective equity outcomes. Indeed, simple
access can be counterproductive, setting up expectations which, if not real-
ized, have the potential to create considerable social alienation among those
who have invested time and effort in education without the promised
rewards.
The era of globalization has underlined the fact that equality is a relational
matter. Global economic integration means that international trade, for
example, benefits some countries at the expense of others (Buckman 2004). It
also has differential effects on income, culture, society and the environment.
According to Scholte (2000: 260), globalization involves ‘stratified access to
global space’. He shows how global communication is concentrated amongst
professional and propertied classes of the North; how, while there are increased
opportunities for women, these are often on lower terms and conditions than
men; and how global money and credit are disproportionately available to the
already privileged. Nation-states have traditionally been called upon to
redress these inequalities but, as we have already noted, in the context of glo-
balization their power has declined significantly. What this means is that
claims for justice now need to be couched in global terms, directed at the
transnational networks and institutions where much of the power now resides.
If this is so, we suggest that the very concept of justice now needs to be glo-
balized, articulated in terms that do not assume that the responsibilities for
justice lie exclusively within the nation-state.

Globalization and inequalities

There is nothing new about social inequality. Stratification by class, gender,
country, race and the like pre-dates the contemporary period of globalization.
The question then is, ‘How has globalization altered forms of social differen-
tiation in the contemporary era?’ In what ways and in what respect have the
spread of transnational links, a global informational economy, globalization
of cultures and the ideology of neoliberalism in respect of markets and the
economy created new and distinctive patterns of exclusion? To what extent
142 Globalizing education policy
has globalization created new threats to human security? And in relation to
education in particular, in what respects has neoliberal globalization created
new patterns of unequal social outcomes, both within and across national
spaces?
As noted earlier in this book, international organizations such as the World
Bank and the OECD, and to a lesser extent UNESCO, have been vocal and
vigorous proponents of neoliberal globalization. They argue that globaliza-
tion of trade, for example, is not only good for international business, it is also
a good way to empower the poor. On the other hand, the critics of globaliza-
tion maintain that neoliberalism only enriches the global elite at the expense
of ordinary workers and poorer countries and that it also eliminates the capac-
ity of national governments to respond effectively to social inequalities. To a
large extent this debate is driven by ‘the old partisanship of the push and pull
distributing versus market advocating politics’ (Ray 2007: 141). Central to
this debate are issues of measurement of globalization’s effects. Depending on
which measures of globalization as well as of inequality within and between
nations are used, one gets the results one wants regarding the extent and
effects of globalization. In this debate, even the interpretation of the available
empirical evidence on inequalities and their underlying causal relations is fil-
tered through ideological prisms.
So, for example, the advocates of neoliberal globalization argue that inte-
gration into the global economy increases economic activity and raises living
standards, enhancing the capacity of national governments to invest more in
education and other areas of social policy. Martin Wolfe (2005), for example,
argues that over the past few decades standards of living across the globe have
been increasing, and that while there are disparities in national economic per-
formance within the Global South, these have been declining, and are due not
to globalization but to national policies and domestic factors. Similarly,
Dollar and Kraay (2005) contend that globalization has narrowed the gap
between the rich and the poor and has contributed to the erosion of absolute
poverty. Legrain (2002) claims that in 2000 global per capita income was
four times greater than in 1950. Wei and Wu (2002) point to a decline in
inequality in Chinese cities that are more open to globalization. The World
Bank claims that the percentage of people living below $1 per day halved
between 1980 and 2000, with extreme poverty falling from 28 to 21 per cent,
despite population growth during this period.
The critics of neoliberal globalization (for example Pieterse 2004), on the
other hand, contest these figures, and argue that poverty calculations by the
World Bank involve both misleading definitions and misguided interpreta-
tions of evidence. The Bank’s $1 per day calculation, for example, does not
factor in inflation in the United States, and when this is allowed, the interna-
tional poverty line in fact increases by 19.6 per cent. Pieterse (ibid.) objects
moreover to this technical focus on poverty, which he argues depoliticizes the
debate, shifting it away from more serious issues of inequality which call into
question the more fundamental relations of power and class. A decrease in
 Equity policies in education 143
absolute poverty, he maintains, is perfectly possible alongside an increase in
relative inequalities. A focus on inequalities rather than absolute poverty also
underlines a widening gap in wealth in almost all countries in recent decades.
What this suggests is the importance of examining relativities rather than
absolute measures.
And this is precisely what the United Nations Development Program
(UNDP) did in its report on the patterns of global inequalities, produced in
1999. The UNDP report was totally unequivocal in its conclusion that ine-
qualities within and between countries through the 1980s and 1990s had
increased. More than 80 countries, it reported, had per capita income in 1999
that was lower than it was in 1980. Even in countries that had reported spec-
tacular rates of growth, it maintained, inequality had been rising. In China,
for example, disparities were widening between the export-orientated regions
of the coast and the interior. In India, wage and labour inequalities across the
urban and rural divide had become even more extensive, and there was a sub-
stantial movement of farmers and rural workers from rural to urban areas in
search of work. Similarly, the rich OECD countries such as Sweden, the
United States and the United Kingdom had also experienced big increases in
inequality.
The UNDP Report also pointed out that the income gap between the fifth
of the people living in the richest countries and the fifth in the poorest coun-
tries was 74 to 1 in 1997, up from 60 to 1 in 1990 and 30 to 1 in 1960. In
1999, while the bottom fifth of the world’s people living in the poorest
income countries had just 1 to 2 per cent of the world’s GDP, world export
markets, foreign direct investment and telephone lines, the top fifth had 86,
82, 68 and 74 per cent respectively. In 1999, the OECD countries with just
19 per cent of the world’s population had 71 per cent of the global trade in
goods and services and 85 per cent of the world’s research and development
expenditures. In the decade since the UNDP Report was published, while
some countries in Asia such as China and India and the so-called Asian ‘tiger’
economies have witnessed significant improvement on these indicators, for
the bottom 100 countries things have got markedly worse, with a clear trend
towards concentration of income, resources and wealth among people, corpo-
rations and countries. It is highly likely that in the current global economic
crisis, inequalities both within and across nations and groups have become
much worse.
Of course, it should be noted that while these trends are not the inevita-
ble consequences of global economic integration, the ideology of neoliberal
globalization has clearly served to legitimize them. Global inequalities, of
course, pre-date globalization, but contemporary global processes have
arguably acted to maintain and perhaps even institutionalize social stratifi-
cation at both national and global levels. As Stiglitz (2002: 214) argues,
globalization itself cannot be held responsible for inequalities, but its
current form, and the ideologies and institutions to which it has given rise,
certainly can. Stiglitz has shown how the structural adjustment schemes
144 Globalizing education policy
under the International Monetary Fund (IMF), for example, have generated
falling incomes and growing poverty in many areas of the world. The serious
imbalances in global trading regimes, including those negotiated at the
World Trade Organization (WTO), have seriously disadvantaged countries
of the Global South, as they have permitted richer countries and regional
blocks such as the European Union (EU) to maintain subsidies, while
exploiting the cheap labour found in poorer countries. Liberalization has
driven costs down, while the rhetoric of flexibility has produced outcomes
that mostly benefit the large transnational corporations at the expense of
working people in developed and developing countries alike. As a result,
the poor in both rich and poor countries have experienced a real reduction
in living standards (Perron 2004).
The 1999 UNDP Report also suggests that, at an experiential level, glo-
balization is creating new threats to human security. As a result of shrinking
time and space, porous borders and integration of economic activities, the
patterns of daily life and economic exchange and cultural traditions are dis-
rupted. We have witnessed, for example, disruptions caused to local commu-
nities around the world by crises in the global financial system, such as the
one experienced in Asia in 1997 and the one that in 2008 and 2009 has been
driven by the collapse of the American housing market and major investment
banks in the United States. Globalization has created conditions of economic
volatility and financial insecurity, in threatening the pension plans of almost
everyone. It has also led to job and income insecurity, as it has become possi-
ble for transnational corporations to relocate sites of production and move
jobs to places where they can find cheaper labour.
While the increased mobility of people and cultural exchange have
opened people’s lives to a greater diversity of lifestyles and traditions, the
opportunities of such mobility and exchange are not equally distributed. As
Bauman (1998) has noted, mobility/immobility has become another dimen-
sion of inequality, with the most disadvantaged groups either becoming
immobile or forced to move (e.g. political refugees). Nor are the cultural
traditions of communities equally respected within the global space, which
has enabled a range of exploitative practices to flourish. Under contempo-
rary capitalism, ‘organic class formation is no longer tied to territory and
the political jurisdiction of the nation-states’ (Robinson and Harris 2000:
12). It is linked instead to the work of TNCs committed to ‘growth at any
cost’ and to the increasing mobility of financial capital, the global market-
ing of key brands and the globalization of product development. Those who
work in key positions within transnational corporations have become just as
mobile as the flows of capital and cultural products, resulting in the emer-
gence of a global class. Global elites have of course always existed, but in
recent decades their numbers have grown significantly and they have
acquired a distinctive ‘cosmopolitan consciousness’ (Calhoun 2001) –
hybridized cultural tastes that have often set them apart from those who
remain tied to particular localities and are unable to travel.
 Equity policies in education 145
Linked to this pattern of inequality are considerations of the informa-
tional economy. Manual Castells (2000) has written extensively on the
relationship between globalization of communication and the new pat-
terns of social inequality to which it has given rise. He examines the links
between what he calls the new ‘informational capitalism’ and growing
inequality, poverty, social exclusion and ‘immiseration’ on a world scale.
He insists that the global division of labour has created distinctive pat-
terns of exclusion and marginalization that cut across national boundaries.
This division transcends the old core–periphery division (Wallerstein
1978); all nations are now being divided by the forces of globalization
into communities of winners and losers. Castells uses the term ‘Fourth
World’ to refer to those communities whose labour has been individual-
ized, who are over-exploited, who are excluded from the benefits of global
processes and who, as a result, are socially excluded. Social exclusion, he
argues, is a process, not a condition. Who is included or excluded, he sug-
gests, varies over time, depending on education, demographic characteris-
tics, social prejudices and public policies. He notes moreover that

‘… the process of social exclusion in a network society concerns both people and
territories. So that, under certain conditions, entire countries, regions, cities and
neighborhoods become excluded, embracing in this exclusion, most, or all, of
their populations’ (Castells 2000).

This process induces an extremely uneven social geography which depends to

a large extent on the value that particular individuals or communities are able
to offer in the global networks of wealth accumulation, information and
power. In this way, globalization has created new patterns of social inequality
around an emerging logic of social exclusion.

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

In the past two decades the concept of ‘social exclusion’ has become central in
policy discussions about the ways in which it might be possible to tackle the
problems of educational inequality. It is believed that education is essential
for achieving social inclusion. The European Commission (2008), for example,
views social inclusion as a ‘social right’ to a certain basic standard of living
and to participation in the major institutions of the society, which enables
social and occupational opportunities to be realized. The policy idea of ‘social
inclusion’, as used widely in Europe and now increasingly in other parts of the
world, represents a form of affirmative action designed to change the condi-
tions that might lead to the alienation or disenfranchisement of certain people
within a society. It is thus linked to the considerations of social class and
living standards and how these might affect access to various educational
opportunities. In a more programmatic manner, social inclusion is a strategy
to combat social exclusion, but in ways that are not redistributive and thus do
146 Globalizing education policy
not seek to make reparations or amends for past wrongs, as is the case with
Affirmative Action policies developed in the 1970s. Rather it is a coordinated
response to the very complex set of factors that produce institutional and
individual marginalization.
Levitas (1998) has argued that social inclusion originated in French social
policy, but that both in continental Europe and in the UK it has been a
highly contested concept, with three competing meanings operating in social
policy. She distinguishes between a critical social policy and redistributionist
approach with a focus on eradicating poverty; a moral underclass discourse
which focuses on ‘criminally-inclined, unemployable young men’ and ‘sexu-
ally and socially irresponsible single mothers’ (ibid.: 7–8); and a social inte-
grationist discourse which emphasizes inclusion as simply inclusion in paid
work. As Levitas (ibid.: 8) argues, these three competing discourses of social
inclusion differ in how they represent the relationship between inclusion/
exclusion and inequality more generally and have manifested in varying ways
in social policy in the UK, sometimes as the dominant approach and some-
times as a pastiche of the competing constructions.
In the context of education, the term ‘social inclusion’ first appeared in
the mid-1980s in relation to policies concerning the education of students
with special needs. Advocates of inclusion policies believed that students
with special needs should be educated in regular classrooms, alongside all
other students. Sometimes this policy was known as ‘mainstreaming’. In
the 1990s, however, this concept was extended and now means something
like equality of access to education generally. It forms the basis of the World
Declaration on Education For All (EFA), proposed by the United Nations
Development Program (UNDP) together with a number of other interna-
tional organizations. The Declaration represents an internationally agreed
set of education goals for realizing the aim of meeting the learning needs of
all students by 2015. First forged in 1990 in Jomtien, Thailand, and then
reiterated in 2000 in Dakar in Senegal, EFA is based on the Universal Dec-
laration of Human Rights, which states that ‘everyone has the right to edu-
cation’ (Article 26).
EFA has now been reformulated in a language of inclusion, which suggests
that everyone should be given a chance to learn and benefit from basic education
– not as an accident of circumstance, nor as a privilege, but as a right. EFA
maintains that an education must lead to wider options for individuals and
communities. In the words of the European Union’s Delors Report (1996), edu-
cation enables us to know, to do, to live together, and to be. This includes learning to
live in a society and work together towards sustainable human development,
respecting the diversity of human experience and circumstance and recognizing
the stake that future generations have in our planet. The Declaration is accom-
panied by a set of targets – performance indicators used to measure the extent to
which national systems of education are realizing EFA goals with the help of aid
agencies, civil society and non-governmental organizations, and communities,
as well as teachers and parents.
 Equity policies in education 147
In 2000, EFA goals were given a boost with the release of another global
statement, the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). MDGs are
broader than EFA goals, recognizing the close links between issues of educa-
tional opportunities and social and economic conditions under which educa-
tion takes place. The architects of MDGs note, for example, that universal
primary education is not possible without measures to tackle extreme poverty
and the spread of HIV/AIDS, and without efforts to promote gender equality.
In this way, MDGs represent not only a set of eight development goals,
together with 21 quantifiable targets adopted by 189 nations and signed by
147 heads of state and governments during the UN Millennium Summit in
September 2000, but also a comprehensive statement relating to the ways in
which issues of social inequality might be tackled in an era of globalization.
The eight MDGs require all countries, by 2015, to:

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
Goal 5: Improve maternal health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development

UNDP argues that these goals ‘recognize explicitly the interdependence

between growth, poverty reduction and sustainable development’ and the role
that basic primary education must play in realizing all other development
objectives.
In a more explicit manner even than EFA, MDGs are based on time-bound
and measurable targets accompanied by indicators for monitoring progress.
While they recognize the importance of global partnerships, the ultimate
responsibility for the implementation of these goals lies with national gov-
ernments, even as the world’s leading development institutions such as the
World Bank are asked to play a major role. The aid programmes of many
nations of the Global North are now also focused on the MDGs. To achieve
these goals, international organizations are accordingly helping countries to
improve their national capacity in both policy development and evaluation. A
Millennium Project has been set up, for example, to provide a comprehensive
set of services to support national development strategies such as the technical
and financial assistance required in diagnostics and investment planning, and
in strengthening national capacity for the effective development and evalua-
tion of programmes. In the area of education, the UNESCO headquarters in
Paris collects data from each country to monitor its progress towards each of
the goals, producing annual reports that are widely used to consider ways of
moving forward. The MDGs have thus had profound effects in the develop-
ment of education policies in the nations of the Global South, which have
148 Globalizing education policy
often been expressed in terms of the extent to which the MDGs are met.
Policy is couched in terms of responses to MDG indicators – another example
of the contemporary focus on policy outcomes as opposed to inputs.
With only a few years to go before 2015, the progress towards meeting
the MDGs has been mixed, with some significant advances together with
important setbacks. The goal of cutting in half the proportion of people
in the developing world living on less than $1 a day by 2015 is unlikely
to be reached, with the severe economic downturn in 2008–2009 likely to
further retard any progress, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. The UNDP
reports that many countries were close to achieving universal primary
enrolment, with the number of children of primary school age who were
out of school falling from 103 million in 1999 to 73 million in 2006,
despite an overall increase in the number of children in this age group. In
sub-Saharan Africa, however, the net enrolment ratio has only recently
reached 71 per cent. Around 38 million children of primary school age in
this region are still out of school. In Southern Asia the enrolment ratio
has climbed to 90 per cent, yet more than 18 million children of primary
school age are not enrolled. In Western and Central Africa, girls in par-
ticular fail to enrol and stay in school. The same is the case, for example,
in Pakistan. Drought, food shortages, armed conflict, poverty, lack of
birth registration, child labour, and HIV and AIDS additionally contrib-
ute to low school enrolment and high dropout rates for both boys and
girls in many parts of the world.
Now EFA and MDGs are certainly important initiatives in working
towards social and educational equality, which while they are constructed
globally are nonetheless expected to be realized within national frame-
works. Their architects thus continue to view equality not in terms of
global relations but in terms that focus exclusively within the nation-
state. In this way they are unable to address issues of global inequalities
across national boundaries. We do not know, therefore, the extent to
which they might contribute to reducing the relativities across nation-
states, or whether indeed any progress is being made towards closing the
gap between rich and poor countries. This suggests that the notion of
justice underlying EFA and MDGs is largely framed within Westphalian
assumptions. The comparative figures produced by international organi-
zations are based mostly on the numerical data supplied to them by
national governments. But these figures fail to address issues of authentic-
ity and comparability. Further, in some ways policy for these nations
becomes continual adjustment of targets with a focus on quantity rather
than quality (Ali 2006).
Beyond their nation-centric approach, the emphasis EFA and MDGs
place on access to primary education is based both on an ethical commit-
ment to human rights and on certain economic calculations, which suggests
that one of the main reasons for supporting the goal of equality in education
is the production of human capital needed for national development. There
 Equity policies in education 149
is certainly a great deal of creditable evidence to suggest that an investment
in primary education provides enormous positive public as well as private
benefits. Primary education is assumed to have the power to benefit com-
munities in both economic and social realms. This has led most developing
countries from Pakistan to Peru to focus most of their educational resources
on primary education, neglecting to a large extent post-primary education.
Yet countries must not only concentrate on primary education, but must
also allocate extra resources in secondary and tertiary education if they want
to maximize the possibilities of development, especially in economies that
are increasingly becoming knowledge-intensive.
Both the OECD and UNESCO have argued that, to compete successfully in
the new global economy, investment in all levels of education (human capital)
is necessary for developing countries. Yet the policy emphasis by EFA and
MDGs on universal access to primary education may be counterproductive; for
in the context of limited resources and the neoliberal ideological push towards
privatization, it may have led many developing countries to simply abandon
support for post-primary education, leaving it to individual students and their
families to foot the bill for higher education. However, since effective participa-
tion in the global economy requires a higher level of education, the policy
emphasis on primary education may serve only to reproduce existing patterns of
global inequalities. A multifaceted policy approach to education policy is clearly
required to address social and economic inequalities.
Without good teachers who have adequate training and professional atti-
tudes, access can never be a complete measure of equality. An externally
determined and imposed curriculum, detached from local traditions and
political conditions, can also endanger local cultures, as we have shown in
chapter 5 in relation to Pakistan and St Lucia in the Caribbean. As dis-
cussed above, global pressures have led to universal measurements, which in
turn can lead to generic prescriptions of what is to be taught and how. At
the level of primary education in particular, some autonomy for local
communities to determine their own curriculum seems highly desirable.
However, the global trend towards greater system efficiency undermines
this educational objective. What is clear is that an education appropriate to
the community in which it takes place requires a more complex view of
equality than that which is suggested by EFA and MDGs. Education at all
levels has a whole range of purposes, not simply producing efficient workers
for the changing global economy. As Amartya Sen (1999) suggests, devel-
opment’s goals and means should be about enhancing the freedoms people
enjoy. This is surely true as well, we would argue, about education for
development. If this is so, education policies designed to tackle various pat-
terns of inequality need to be reconciled with the broader cultural concerns
of education in addition to addressing issues of economic stratification.
They must recognize a variety of other ways in which marginalization and
social exclusion are experienced, so that education for development enhances
the freedoms which flow from being literate and numerate.
150 Globalizing education policy
Gender equity in education
Gender equity in education is an important policy priority in both EFA and
MDG declarations. It is now widely agreed that without gender equality no
society can claim to be socially just. It should be noted, however, that no
country in the world has achieved complete gender equity; and that as a
concept it is interpreted differently across religious, political and cultural tra-
ditions. Not surprisingly, therefore, policy requirements and outcomes around
issues of gender equity work differently across the nations of the Global North
and those of the Global South (Unterhalter 2007), with boys becoming the
focus of much gender policy in the former and girls’ access to schooling
remaining the dominant gender issue in education policy in the latter. There
is therefore considerable variance in the approaches to educational policies
designed to promote gender equity.
Before considering in some more detail the issue of gender and girls’ access
to schooling in the Global South, we will turn briefly to a discussion of the
way in which gender policies in education have developed and been contested
in the nations of the Global North. While we will be generalizing here, we
need to recognize that such debates are played out in vernacular ways in any
given national education system, given the nature of the gender order within
that society, the standing of feminist politics and the extent of the backlash
against gains made for women in education and career terms from the impact
of the women’s movement on public policy. In most developed western
nations, as already suggested, the gender policy focus has turned from girls to
boys, particularly from the early 1990s (Lingard et al. 2009). This ‘what about
the boys?’ policy focus followed more feminist-inspired policy interventions
from the 1970s, which amongst other things sought to widen girls’ subject
choices and improve their educational outcomes. This policy focus appeared
to have had some success, particularly for middle-class girls, who now chal-
lenge boys for the top academic outcomes at the end of secondary schooling
and who now attend university in greater numbers than boys, albeit still
largely in gender-segmented courses (Arnott et al. 1999).
However, despite the focus shifting from girls to boys, girls’ improved
educational attainment does not convert into equal career opportunities and
equal earnings with males, even when females have comparable levels of edu-
cation. Child rearing still has a much greater impact on females’ careers and
wage-earning capacity than on males’. The academic debate about boys’ edu-
cation and the turn to boys in gender policy have also challenged the essen-
tializing of the category of boys and argue instead that policy should focus on
the most disadvantaged girls and most disadvantaged boys (Lingard and
Douglas 1999). The most nuanced of these considerations asks, ‘Which boys
and which girls?’ and the evidence demonstrates that middle-class boys are
still doing well at school and in careers and that middle-class girls are like-
wise doing well. It is poor girls and poor boys who do not benefit from school-
ing in the same ways as their more privileged counterparts. There are also
 Equity policies in education 151
racialized aspects to this equation, so that in Australia indigenous boys (and
girls) do not do very well at all, while the same is true for African-American
boys in the USA and Afro-Caribbean boys in the UK.
In contrast to this changing pattern of gender policy in the nations of the
Global North has been the situation within the nations of the Global South
where gender policy in education still requires a focus on girls. This has been
a question even of access to full primary education, a topic addressed by EFA
and the MDGs. The situation is changing a little, however, with some emer-
gent focus on boys’ issues in developing nations. This is most evident in the
report commissioned by the Commonwealth Institute on boys’ education (Jha
and Kelleher 2006), which seems to suggest that the ‘What about the boys?’
policy discourse in the nations of the Global North has travelled to some
nations of the Global South and been taken up as a policy issue there. Globali-
zation in its multiple forms and manifestations has also affected the gender
order and gender politics within and across nations, as Faludi (2007) has
observed in her account of the impact of 9/11 on masculinities, femininities
and gender politics in the USA, with some regression towards John Wayne-
type masculinities and nurturant femininities.
It needs to be acknowledged that within countries of the Global South, as
elsewhere, huge strides have been taken in improving the gender gap since
the early 1990s. For example, as illustrated by the United Nations Statistical
Division (2004), in most regions of the world the ratio of girls to boys in
primary education demonstrates that participation of girls is increasing, with
large gains in Northern Africa and Eastern and Southern Asia. Despite popular
misconceptions about Muslim societies, enrolment ratios in South and West
Asian countries have also increased significantly, even though they still rank
as having the lowest gender parity in the world (Aguilar 2004). While it is
true that great gains have been made in gender parity in primary education,
with many countries achieving a gender parity index close to 100 per cent,
the participation of girls in secondary and tertiary education remains gener-
ally lower in most developing countries. In countries with very large popula-
tions such as China and India, girls have very poor participation rates in
secondary education. Women’s participation in tertiary education has also
grown in the past two decades, in both developed and developing countries,
but at a much lower rate in the countries of the South.
Indeed, as already noted, in some developed countries women’s higher edu-
cation participation is greater than that for men. However, if gains are to be
made in genuine equality for girls in developing nations, access is not suffi-
cient; there must also be a more equal distribution of gender among fields of
study and employment. While women are well represented in the fields of
education, social sciences and humanities, and even health services, their par-
ticipation in the fields of the natural sciences and engineering is still far from
approaching gender parity. With growing importance attached to these fields
within the global economy, associated with technological innovation and
technical expertise, this inequality is more significant than it might at first
152 Globalizing education policy
appear, for it suggests that the growing access of women to tertiary education
is in areas that do not enjoy similar high economic rewards, social status and
prestige.
In recent years, IGOs such as the OECD, the World Bank and UNESCO
have repeatedly emphasized the importance of gender equity in education, at
all levels of education (Unterhalter 2007). The arguments they have advanced
for greater access, however, are both interesting and revealing. Though the
ideological stances of these three organizations differ, they all seem to use
similar arguments in support of gender equity in education, viewing its sig-
nificance largely in terms of market efficiency. According to the World Bank,
‘research has also shown that women and girls work harder than men, are
more likely to invest their earning in their children, and are major producers
as well as consumers’. UNESCO states: ‘Educating girls yields the highest
return in economic terms.’ Finally, the OECD urges that ‘Investing in women
(with respect to education, health, family planning, access to land, etc.) not
only directly reduces poverty, but also leads to higher productivity and a more
efficient use of resources.’ Of the three, the World Bank takes the strongest
position in relating gender equity to economic consumerism and efficiency.
The instrumentalist logic of this argument is arguably gender-biased, which
views women simply as a means to certain economic ends rather than as people
who participate in education for a huge variety of reasons, not only economic
but also social and cultural.
What is evident is that, given the stated benefits of greater gender equity
to economic expansion and capital accumulation, the global push for the edu-
cation of women is not simply a product of altruism or a moral conviction.
Rather, gender equity appears to be a calculated and efficient strategy to
provide corporations with a cheaper source of labour for both local and tran-
snational companies. The neoliberal imaginary presupposes greater cost effi-
ciencies in educating women. Other benefits are also cited, but these too are
embedded within the same imaginary. For example, the World Bank states
that girls’ education is a top-ranked social investment, in that their education
reduces child mortality, raises per capita income at a greater rate than invest-
ment in men, and reduces total fertility rates. This economic efficiency is
achieved, however, only because educated women continue to receive lower
pay, tend to work longer hours than their male counterparts, and remain
responsible for family welfare.
An analysis of gender equity in education would not be complete without
reference to the significant pressures that many NGOs, the global women’s
movement and powerful women have placed on governments and interna-
tional organizations to improve gender equity (Bulbeck 1998). The growing
mobility of people and information associated with globalization have been
major catalysts for mounting awareness concerning issues of gender equality
in education. With very few exceptions, governments around the world have
had to react to the growing demands for gender equity. This demand has
been the loudest in South Asia. The World Development Report 2009 places
 Equity policies in education 153
South Asia amongst the worst regions in the world when it comes to women’s
rights. Comparative indicators for literacy, health, economic activities, work
burden, empowerment and political participation show South Asia to be
lagging far behind the rest of the world. Oxfam (2008), a UK-based develop-
ment organization, states that in South Asia, ‘research shows that despite
three decades of activism by women’s groups all over the world, and the issue
of violence against women gaining attention in global policy debates as a
health and human rights issue, the social crisis is growing’.
This is so because policies relating to gender equity in education remain
tied to the neoliberal imaginary that views equity largely in instrumental
economic terms. What is clear, however, is that gender equity beyond access
requires a more systematic focus on the social processes that perpetuate gender
inequalities, as well as demanding a broader conception of the purposes of
education. While a view of education based on the principles of the market
and system efficiency demands better utilization of the human resources that
women represent, a stronger view of equity seeks a social transformation
through which gender relations are reconfigured. This latter view highlights
the importance of not only access and social inclusion, but also the need to
rethink the terms of that inclusion. It envisages societies that are potentially
economically, politically and socially transformed in gender terms. This
requires changes not only to the ways education is administered, but changes
also to curriculum and pedagogy, especially in the context of the knowledge
economy, with its potential to reshape patterns of both economic and social
relations.

The digital divide

In a knowledge economy, educational opportunities are shaped by access to
technology. The capacity to use information technology has become funda-
mental to equity policies, for issues related to the ‘digital divide’ are now
inextricably linked to the global flows of information and communication.
The idea of the ‘digital divide’ is now commonly used to characterize global
inequalities. The initiatives taken for overcoming the ‘digital divide’ are now
considered fundamental to educational reform. Although the term ‘digital
divide’ is a little over ten years old, it has quickly become part of a new global
slogan system – so much so that it now masks, more than it elucidates, the
nature of the stratifications between those who are and those who are not elec-
tronically networked. However, it does point to something significant in the
ways in which social and economic development have become highly depend-
ent on a country’s capacity to participate in the new informational economy.
This new economy, as Manual Castells (2000) among others has pointed
out, is characterized largely by science and technology, a shift from material
production to information processing, the emergence and expansion of new
forms of networked industrial organizations and the rise of socio-economic
globalization. Castells argues that economic productivity is now linked to the
154 Globalizing education policy
quality of information and its management in the processes of production,
consumption, distribution and trade. This is so because there has been a shift
from material production to information processing industries such as health-
care, banking, software, biotechnology, media and of course education, and
because global trade now involves global circuits of knowledge exchange and
data processing.
If participation in these information-rich industries has become fundamen-
tal to economic development, the idea of a ‘digital divide’ can be viewed as a
major source of underdevelopment. But how? Given the complexity of ‘infor-
mationalism’, as Castells calls it, the digital divide cannot simply refer to the
uneven distribution of technology hardware across communities. Rather, it is
a much more complicated and multidimensional phenomenon that incorpo-
rates a whole range of factors, from access to computers to the manner in
which knowledge is now produced and distributed. Pippa Norris (2001) has
suggested, for example, that the idea of a ‘digital divide’ actually refers to
three distinct divides. First, the global digital divide refers to the unequal
Internet access between industrialized and developing societies. Secondly,
Norris talks of a ‘social divide’, which refers to the divide between informa-
tion rich and poor in each nation. And finally, and more significantly, she
introduces the idea of a ‘democratic divide’ to signify the differences between
those who do and do not use the enormous and growing resources of the
Internet to engage, mobilize and participate in public life.
But even this corrective does not fully capture the complexities surround-
ing the idea of a ‘digital divide’. With the size of the online community dou-
bling every year (van Dijk 2005), it is now clear that the Internet is
transforming the way people live, work and play. Few now doubt that digital
technologies are transforming the flow of capital, goods and services within
global spaces. Such technologies have become not only an important element
of economic activity but also a ubiquitous source of information. The poten-
tial impact of the Internet on the developing countries is hard to assess. On
the one hand, some argue that digital technologies provide countries of the
South opportunities to ‘leapfrog’ various stages of economic and social devel-
opment, while others maintain that the information economy fundamentally
favours the already information-rich societies. Voices of developing countries
on the Internet are almost entirely absent. As Ferguson (2006) notes, in the
neoliberal world order sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, has been pushed
further into what he calls the ‘global shadows’, inextricably linked to the
global economy yet in ways that marginalize its voices.
The Internet age thus has the potential to extend the disparities between
the post-industrial economies at the core of the global economic system and
developing societies at the periphery. The richer economies are able to use
digital technologies to boost productivity, while the poorer societies are left
in a position to play ‘catch-up’, which they can seldom do due to the fast-
changing nature of the digital technologies and costs involved. National
systems of education and international organizations are fully aware that the
 Equity policies in education 155
always shifting nature of the new technologies has the potential to reinforce
existing patterns of stratification in the new economy. Indeed, the network
society may be creating parallel communications systems: one for those with
income, education and connectivity and the other for those without connec-
tion and without the plentiful information needed to thrive in the global
economy. If this is so, the problem of the digital divide is linked to the struc-
tural exclusion of poorer nations from the knowledge economy, where know-
how and information replace land and capital as the basic drivers of economic
growth and productivity. This suggests the need to understand the digital
divide in relational terms, rather than in terms of a deficit – of either equip-
ment or skills.
The idea of a ‘digital divide’ is often discussed as an issue of access to
technology hardware and Internet connectivity, as well as of know-how.
Many of the policy intiatives in the developing countries to overcome the
digital divide have centred on the provision of computers and connectivity.
But this is a problem that can easily be resolved by higher levels of invest-
ment and the availability of inexpensive computers. The MIT Media Lab’s
much-publicized $100 computer, now referred to as XO-1, will soon be a
reality (Negroponte 1996), as might the ways to solve the problems of
broadband. But this will not close the digital divide, because even if every-
one throughout the developing countries were given a free computer, they
might not be able to use it. There would remain the problem of literacy and
technical skills required to access the information and services available on
the Internet. As Warschauer (2003) argues, discussions about the digital
divide must now shift from gaps to be overcome by providing equipment,
to challenges facing the effective integration of technology into communi-
ties, institutions (including education) and societies. What is more impor-
tant, he suggests, is not so much the physical availability of computers and
the Internet, but rather people’s ability to make use of those technologies to
engage in meaningful social practices.
Policymakers in the developing countries have often reiterated the impor-
tance of higher education both in overcoming the digital divide and in
taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the new technologies.
Indeed, if the failure to access and utilize the new technology implied an
even greater marginalization from the world economy, the developing
nations, it is argued, have no other option than to invest in forms of higher
education that are efficient and effective, and to develop competencies and
skills appropriate to successful participation in the new knowledge economy.
In this respect, programmes based on the new technologies are viewed
favourably, as a way of meeting the fast-growing demand for higher educa-
tion in the developing countries, especially in a context of the inability of
governments to allocate the resources that would be required to build and
develop university campuses. It is maintained that the new technologies
have the potential to increase efficiency in the provision and quality of
higher education through more flexible forms of delivery, and to support
156 Globalizing education policy
initiatives that use these technologies to ‘scale up’ the delivery of online
programmes, so long as new policies were also developed to coordinate the
accreditation, recognition and quality assurance of online programmes,
especially when these are offered across national borders.
The main problem with these policy initiatives, however, is that they con-
tinue to view educational equity largely in terms of access, and do not attend
to the fact that the current global system of knowledge is decidedly skewed
towards the west. Much of the content on the Internet is produced in the
developed countries, where English is the dominant language. As Castells
(2000) has pointed out, the developed countries are able to leverage the oppor-
tunities offered by the information economy to further reinforce their eco-
nomic power. He has argued that while the faultlines of marginality might
not necessarily follow the current divide between North and South, it is dif-
ficult to see societies where education is grossly underfunded, and where there
is far too much reliance on knowledge products imported from abroad, closing
the gap between these societies and the richer countries already at the core of
the information revolution.
What this analysis suggests is a different approach to thinking about how
the new technologies might contribute to reducing levels of global inequali-
ties, one that encourages integration of global and local knowledge traditions.
If the digital divide is to be challenged in a more serious fashion, such an
approach would seek to draw upon the enormous reservoir of knowledge avail-
able on the Internet, some of which is free as a result of such democratic ini-
tiatives as Open Source and Creative Commons (Peters and Britez 2008), but
would seek to develop in students a capacity to critically interrogate them for
their local relevance and utility. There is a huge gap at the moment in the
appropriateness of online content for marginalized populations of the world,
which threatens to reproduce and perhaps even greatly increase economic and
social disparities. While much support and advice can clearly be provided by
international organizations, the problems of the digital divide, so stated,
cannot ultimately be solved by anyone but local communities themselves.
Access to technologies may in fact be a necessary condition for achieving
greater equity in education; it certainly is not sufficient.

Equity policies and educational justice

In the discussion above, we have shown how each of the three policy efforts by
international organizations and national governments to achieve greater
equality of opportunities is informed by a very narrow definition of equity.
This definition focuses largely on issues of access to educational opportunities.
MDGs are directly aimed at providing universal primary education, while
gender equity policies in education focus on increasing levels of participation
of girls in education. Policies designed to tackle the digital divide mostly
involve efforts to provide technology to disadvantaged communities, so that
they too can participate in the networked knowledge economy. But none of
 Equity policies in education 157
these policies addresses the broader historical and political contexts that
produce disadvantage in the first place, and none looks seriously at the condi-
tions under which access is provided and might succeed. These policies focus
mostly on quantitative indicators, dovetailing easily with the policy by
numbers approach that we have suggested has become globally dominant
over the past two decades. These assume that access alone is enough to produce
educational justice. In this way, they work with a very weak definition of the
concept of justice.
Justice is a highly complex idea which does not admit any universal defini-
tion. While, as an ideal, it may be universally applicable and aspired to, its
expressions vary across different cultural and national traditions. Indeed, its
meaning is historically constituted and is a site of conflicting and divergent
political endeavours. It does not refer to a single set of primary or basic goods,
conceivable across all moral and material domains. Having said this, it needs
to be acknowledged, however, that injustice does have a material reality that
is readily recognized by those who experience it. Those who are hungry or
poor, or homeless, do not need abstract philosophical discussions in order to
realize that they are subjected to marginalization, discrimination and oppres-
sion. The idea of injustice thus points to something real and tangible, and
represents a moral blight on communities that do not attempt to do their best
to mitigate its worst effects.
In the political realm, however, social justice is an essentially contested
notion, and the search for its realization arises from the meeting of a par-
ticular kind of authority with political aspirations and activism located in
particular historical circumstances. In the past few decades, for example,
policy thinking around the notion of social justice in most western coun-
tries has revolved around three distinct philosophical traditions: liberal-
humanism, market-individualism and social democratic. A liberal-humanist
notion of social justice, associated most notably with the ideas of John
Rawls (1972), conceptualizes social justice in terms of fairness, implying
principles of individual freedom, as well as the idea that the state has a
major responsibility in creating policies and programmes directed towards
removing barriers arising from unequal power relations that prevent access,
equity and participation.
Market-individualism, on the other hand, invokes not so much the idea of
fairness as what people deserve (Nozick 1974). It suggests that the state has
no right to distribute the private goods that people have produced through
their own efforts. Highlighting the importance of the market in economic
and social exchange, this tradition of thinking rejects redistributive notions,
and suggests that it is unjust for the state to transfer property owned by indi-
viduals without their consent. Social democratic notions of justice (Walzer
1983), in contrast, reject both liberal-humanism and market-individualism,
and stress the importance of social relationships and the needs people have
within a community. The social democratic conception views ‘need’ as a
primary rather than a residual category. In this way, its interpretation of needs
158 Globalizing education policy
is different from charity-based arguments about the ‘needy’, which are per-
fectly compatible with both the fairness and desert principles.
It is important to note, then, that market-individualism and social democ-
racy rest on very different understandings of the nature of the relationship
between justice and the market. In the former, the market is seen as crucial in
facilitating social exchange and the exercise of individual choice, while the
social democratic view suggests that the idea of justice is not entirely compat-
ible with markets unless they are controlled (regulated) in a sufficiently rigor-
ous manner. The former view is based on an assumption about ‘property
rights’ that individuals possess and are able to exchange in the market. In
contrast, the social democratic perspective emphasizes ‘person rights’, involv-
ing equal treatment of citizens, freedom of expression and movement, equal
access to participation in decision-making, and reciprocity in relations of
power and authority. The achievement of person rights within the social
democratic definition requires that the state intervene in and against the
market to ensure an acceptable level of equality/inequality thought necessary
to protect person rights.
A comparative analysis of educational justice shows how different countries
have emphasized different aspects of these traditions. In Scandinavian coun-
tries, for example, social democratic principles, until recently at least, have
been dominant, and exercised in terms of Keynesian principles. The state has
sought to provide equality of educational opportunities for all through various
redistributive programmes. In the post-colonial developing world, the project
of nation-building has necessarily required a commitment to the principles of
social democracy, designed to increase levels of literacy and educational par-
ticipation. The United States, in contrast, has leaned more toward market-
individualism, encapsulated in education most notably in policies of choice
and accountability, especially since the so-called Reagan economic revolu-
tion, and the hegemony of neoliberalism.
Since the late 1980s market-individualism has become increasingly hegem-
onic in educational policy development around the world. This seemingly
global convergence toward neoliberal thinking in education has occurred within
a broader discourse about the changing nature of the global economy, which is
characterized as ‘knowledge-based’ and which is assumed to require greater
levels of education and training than ever before. In this way, the idea of educa-
tional justice based on market-individualism is consistent with a focus in edu-
cational policies on access to educational provisions. Since the purposes of
education are now increasingly conceived in human capital terms, encouraging
individuals, organizations and even nations to consider investment in education
largely in economic terms, access has been thought to benefit both individuals,
who can sell their skills in the market, and corporations, who need those skills
in a knowledge-based economy. Moreover, since access can be measured in par-
ticipation and retention rates and so on, the broader cultural and political issues
of educational justice are sidelined. The characteristics of new public manage-
ment of individual choice, quasi-markets and system accountability are thus
 Equity policies in education 159
able to claim a commitment to educational justice without having to deal with
the criticism that market-individualism reproduces and perhaps even extends
patterns of educational inequalities.
We have argued that globalization has transformed the ways in which edu-
cational policies, often couched in a language of reform, have been developed
and enacted. But we have also maintained that the effects of globalization on
different groups and communities have varied greatly, creating considerable
disparities around the world, with some communities benefiting enormously
from globalization, while others have encountered major disruptions to their
economic and cultural lives. The discursive terrain within which educational
priorities are now set is increasingly informed by a range of neoliberal pre-
cepts that have undermined, in various ways, stronger social democratic
claims to educational justice.
At the same time, moreover, globalization has weakened the authority of
the state in promoting stronger redistributive policies and programmes. Tra-
ditional ways of thinking about justice in education assumed a strong role for
the state in bringing about greater equality of access, opportunities and out-
comes. It was the state to which the claims for greater redistribution of
resources were addressed. And it was the state that was expected to develop
programmes designed to ensure conditions that reflected desert or fairness
principles. In an era of globalization, however, the state’s policy choices have
become somewhat restricted, with an increasing preference for a minimalist
state, concerned to promote the instrumental values of competition, economic
efficiency and choice, underpinned by an individualistic rather than collectiv-
ist philosophy. National policy mechanisms have become increasingly inter-
connected. A new logic of networks has demanded state restructuring. Yet
not all countries have restructured the state in the same way, highlighting the
importance of looking at issues of education justice from international per-
spectives, in terms that are not only comparative but also relational.
The state is, however, not the only site of struggle over social justice. Con-
temporary social movements, often working at the global level, have under-
scored a new politics of difference around issues not only of class, but also of
gender, ethnicity, race, disability, sexuality and religion, as well as their
complex articulations with each other. As Nancy Fraser (1997) has pointed
out, the struggle for recognition is fast becoming the paradigmatic form of
political conflict, and therefore heterogeneity and pluralism must now become
the norms against which the demands for justice are articulated. In this way,
group identity has supplanted class conflict as the chief medium of political
mobilization. Of course, material injustices have not disappeared, but are now
linked to the demands for recognition of difference, and for representation in
the institutions of local and national, as well as global, decision-making.
What this suggests is that the distributive paradigm, as Young (1990)
calls it, that informed the three major traditions of thinking about social
justice is no longer sufficient to capture the complexities of global intercon-
nectivity and interdependence on the one hand and of contemporary identity
160 Globalizing education policy
politics on the other. The distributive paradigm was concerned with the
morally proper distribution of benefits and burdens among all members of a
society. While this logic clearly applies to the distribution of material goods
such as wealth and income, it is inadequate for moral concerns such as respect,
recognition, rights, opportunities and power, because injustice can also be
rooted in social patterns of representation, interpretation and communica-
tion. In this way, while concerns of distribution upon which most equity
policies in education are couched in terms of access are important, so too are
issues of identity, difference and cultural recognition and exploitation.
These issues are highly relevant to the concerns of educational justice
because it is in education that students learn to develop their sense of self-
worth and acceptable modes of social communication. Of course, these cul-
tural facts are interpreted differently in different communities, and therefore
require an understanding not only of difference, but also of relationalities that
link considerations of justice in one place to others. The emphasis on relation-
alities points to the importance of cosmopolitan sensibilities needed to nego-
tiate differences that are now resulting from the increased volume and
intensity of cultural interactions produced by the global flows of people, ideas
and technologies. This has led to demands for a new ethics of globalization
(Singer 2002), in which claims to educational justice are addressed not only
to nation-states, but also to an emerging global community. In this commu-
nity, issues of identity and culture play a central role, requiring a robust set of
political principles for an interdependent world (Parekh 2008). It is upon
these principles that a new policy framework for educational equity might be
developed.
8 Mobility and policy dilemmas

Introduction
We have noted throughout this book that the concept of globalization is asso-
ciated with increasing levels of mobility, not only of capital and finance,
images, information and ideologies, but also of people. Never before in history
have there been more people moving across national boundaries. People are
moving for a whole host of reasons: for migration; as refugees; for trade and
business; for employment opportunities; as tourists; to attend international
conventions and conference; and for education. There are more international
migrants – both documented and undocumented – than ever before, even
more than after the Second World War when a large number of displaced
people sought residence and safer havens around the world. Despite declining
instances of major wars, political conflict and famines, there are now more
people registered as refugees with the United Nations than at any other time
in history (Marfleet 2005). With the globalization of economic activity and
trade, business executives are constantly on the move, as are those workers
employed by transnational corporations. Many people no longer hesitate, as
they once did, to take employment opportunities abroad. Waters (1995: 154)
has noted that international tourism, measured in terms of arrivals from
another country, expanded 17-fold between 1950 and 1990; these numbers
are likely to have doubled since then. International conferences and conven-
tions have become commonplace, despite enhanced possibilities of communi-
cation online. And the number of international students is now more than 2.2
million, up from just 300,000 in 1970, and is expected to more than double
by 2020 (Open Doors 2007).
This unprecedented level of people mobility has major implications for
the ways in which global economic and political systems work. But, in a
manner that is equally significant, the movement of people is transforming
our social institutions, cultural practices and even our sense of identity and
belongingness. Global mobility has transformed our cities, creating urban
conglomerates at the intersection of global flows of finance and capital
(Sassen 1991). It is in these global cities that most international migrants
settle. These shifts have raised major issues of security, sustainability and
162 Globalizing education policy
adaptation to the processes of globalization. They have also made cities
more culturally diverse, where people live across multiple time horizons,
creating conditions not only for risk and vulnerability, but also for opportu-
nities. As the sociologist John Urry (2000) has pointed out, these changes
have led to multiple new cross-national, cross-cultural flows and networks
that define the global world of the 21st century: ‘the diverse mobilities of
peoples, objects, images, information and wastes; and ... the complex inter-
dependencies between, and social consequences of, these diverse mobilities’
(ibid.: 1). Another theorist, Nicholas Papastergiadis (2000), suggests these
transformations require new ways of thinking about movement, and new
ways of accounting for migration, for the traditional push-pull and struc-
tural theories; of distinctions between economic and forced migration; and
of representations based on classic South–North flows, which are no longer
adequate.
In this chapter we explore the various ways in which the global mobility of
people is transforming not only the demographic composition of our commu-
nities, but also the ways in which we live our lives and the challenges we face.
We will consider how individuals and institutions have taken advantage of
the opportunities created by increasing levels of mobility, and how states have
developed public policies designed to manage the cultural shifts associated
with globalization. We will examine how greater mobility of people has edu-
cation policy implications; how education policy has interpreted cultural
diversity and responded to its challenges; how higher education systems in
particular have sought to benefit from the desire of people to become trans-
nationally mobile; how the changing demography of campuses in particular
and global dynamics more generally have led to demands for the internation-
alization of education; how, in a related fashion, English has become a global
language. The social consequences of increased mobility have not of course
been even across all communities. The mobility of skilled people from devel-
oping to developed countries, for example, has reinforced global inequalities,
expressed most clearly in the idea of a ‘brain drain’. In the final part of this
chapter we will examine the concept of ‘brain drain’ and suggest why, in
policy terms, it needs to be rethought in an era of globalization.

Policy responses to cultural diversity

Cultural diversity has always characterized human societies. But in a glo-
balizing society issues of diversity have become more complex. We have
become increasingly aware of our interconnectivity and interdependence,
and yet confront conditions in which differences are exploited, as commu-
nities increasingly define their identities against the encroaching forces of
globalization and against each other. Touraine (2000) argues that although
at one level we desire diversity and mobility, we feel nonetheless that our
cultural distinctiveness is increasingly under attack by homogenized mass
culture. Never before in human history have the issues of identity politics
 Mobility and policy dilemmas 163
and intercultural relations been as important in policy debates as they are
today.
Most nation-states now confront a dilemma of how to develop public poli-
cies which acknowledge the importance of cultural diversity and at the same
time acknowledge that in a globalizing world our problems and their solu-
tions are interconnected and transcend national boundaries, but to recognize
that we inevitably interpret the world from a particular position, and that
most of us wish to remain attached to cultural norms we find comfortable. If
this is so, a new policy understanding of cultural identity and intercultural
relations is needed, that is, ‘a new analytical optic which makes visible the
increasing intensity and scope of circular flows of persons, goods, information
and symbols’ (Cagler 2001: 607) on the one hand, and which addresses our
anxieties about these flows on the other.
These questions are of course not entirely new. Nation-states have strug-
gled for a long time with issues of how best to interpret diversity and to con-
struct simultaneously a moral universe in which policies operate with a
relatively stable understanding of interculturality that works across the binary
of global and local attachments. Over the past three decades, and more spe-
cifically in the post-9/11 era, these questions have clearly become more com-
plicated and urgent. New patterns of mobility have contributed to a sense of
urgency, as have the anxieties about security. In such a context, traditional
institutions appear to have also lost their capacity to cope with the new
modalities of cultural difference and social complexity. As we move rapidly
from imagining nation-states as being constituted by unitary cultures to
spaces that are characterized by significant levels of cultural diversity and
exchange, public policy struggles to define ways of both celebrating these
new conditions and keeping them in check.
From the public policy point of view, it has been through the discourse of
multiculturalism that many countries have sought to deal with these issues.
Multiculturalism suggests that all citizens, no matter what their cultural back-
ground, should be able to contribute to a nation’s cultural and economic devel-
opment; and that it is the role of the state and its institutions, such as schools
and universities, to create conditions necessary for all citizens to be able to
utilize their skills and talents, and thus be able to contribute to national devel-
opment. The policy discourse of multiculturalism, developed during the 1970s,
has not been without its problems, however. It is just as well to remember that
in countries like Canada, Australia and the UK, multiculturalism emerged as a
compromise formation designed to pacify increasingly volatile ethnic commu-
nities and their supporters on the one hand and to allay the fears of the domi-
nant cultural groups, alarmed by the changing demography of their cities, on
the other. It turned out partly to be a strategy for managing inter-group rela-
tions and accommodating the interests of the ethnic middle class (Rizvi 1985).
At the same time, multiculturalism provided ethnic communities with sym-
bolic resources around which they could organize themselves politically, utiliz-
ing a politics of difference (Young 1990).
164 Globalizing education policy
As a policy construct, the idea of multiculturalism remains highly
contested. This should not surprise anyone because, like other politically con-
tested ideas such as equality, democracy and autonomy, it is a term that does
not admit any clear-cut definition. There are a number of competing dis-
courses of multiculturalism. Each definition seeks a new accommodation
between competing values, and is resisted by dominant groups unprepared to
give up their power and privileges on the one hand, and by the minority com-
munities suspicious of compromise rhetoric on the other. The debates sur-
rounding the educational implications of cultural diversity are located within
this contested political terrain, either as part of a social movement, as is the
case in the United States, or as a state-sponsored policy, as has been the case
in Australia and Canada.
Despite opposition to its various formulations, multiculturalism has
proved, yet, to be a fairly flexible and dynamic concept, able to accommodate
changing economic, political and cultural conditions. For example, multicul-
turalism has been able to work simultaneously with a politics of redistribu-
tion, embodied in its emphasis on access and equity, and a politics of
recognition, expressed in its support for the right of migrant communities to
maintain their cultural traditions. It has even been able to work with the neo-
liberal discourses of economic efficiency and market rationalism. It is assumed,
for instance, that skills of intercultural communication are essential for global
trade in services in particular. The idea of ‘productive diversity’ (Cope and
Kalantzis 2002), for example, seeks to promote this understanding, linking
to the requirements of the knowledge economy.
Flexible though the notion of multiculturalism clearly has been, we want
to argue that it has remained trapped within a set of nation-centric assump-
tions. It continues to address issues of cultural diversity within a national
framework. It thus appears divorced from the processes of cultural globaliza-
tion that are increasingly affecting the ways in which many people think
about their identity, their sense of belonging and the cultural spaces they
inhabit. If multiculturalism is to survive as a useful policy concept, it cannot
remain tied exclusively to the agenda for managing inter-ethnic relations
within the nation-state. For it to be useful in dealing with the transnational
and transcultural spaces that have become central to our understanding of
cosmopolitan futures, multiculturalism needs to interpret the local and the
national within the wider global context. It has to deal, for example, with the
diasporic spaces that enable many people to now belong simultaneously to
more than one country, and to interpret their sense of identity with respect to
economic, social and political relations that span national boundaries (Cohen
and Kennedy 2007).
Globalization has encouraged new ‘deterritorialized’ ways of thinking
about cultural identities (Tomlinson 2000), defined in terms of a set of
closed cultural boundaries expressed in language, arts and cultural tradi-
tions, bracketed as homogenized entities frozen outside history and con-
temporary interactive cultural relations, located within particular national
 Mobility and policy dilemmas 165
spaces. Within a nation, the relationship between ethnic communities and
their originating cultures can no longer be treated as a clear-cut one. In the
global context, the interaction between the cultural identities of individu-
als and their originating homes is much more complex than that captured
by notions of nostalgia, of collective memory and of desire for singular
attachment (Ahmed et al. 2003).
Far too often, multiculturalism embraces a notion of culture that is inher-
ently naturalistic and anthropological, conceptualized as a ‘way of life’. Not
surprisingly, therefore, in public policies this focus on ‘way of life’ is reduced
to cultural forms made most visible in language, habits and customs, and
iconic objects. This reduction both appeals, and lends itself, to cultural essen-
tialism. By ignoring and obscuring its historical and political construction,
multiculturalism thus reifies culture and accords it an autonomous status.
This essentialism implies that society is fundamentally constituted by an
uninterrupted accord between diverse cultural traditions and that, as a con-
sensual social site, it can accommodate differences in an impartial manner.
However, as a number of critics (for example Papastergiadis 2000) have
pointed out, this pluralism ignores the workings of power and privilege. It
presupposes harmony and agreement as natural states within which differ-
ences can coexist without disturbing the prevailing structural norms.
The main problem with this view of intercultural relations is that it inter-
prets difference in terms of negotiations among culturally diverse groups
against a backdrop of presumed homogeneity. In doing this, it does not
acknowledge that identities are forged in histories based on differentially con-
stituted relations of power; that is, knowledges, subjectivities and social prac-
tices, including practices of cultural negotiation, are established within
asymmetrical and often incommensurate cultural spaces. This is even more
evident in the global context than in a national one. Identity is thus a dynamic
relational concept, established by symbolic markings in relation to others. It
is therefore a construct, maintained and developed in response to changing
social and material conditions. It does not therefore so much frame intercul-
tural relations, but is framed by them.
This brief discussion reveals the complexities inherent in theorizing the
relationship between identity and cultural difference. As Jamaican-born
English cultural theorist Stuart Hall has argued, identity needs to be under-
stood in terms of a politics of location, positionality and enunciation – not
so much as a process of discovery of lost ‘roots’, but as a construction of a
‘new’ or ‘emergent’ form of understanding of ourselves, linked to both con-
temporary social relations and prevailing relations of power. While most of
us clearly want to honour many of the overt aspects of our traditions and
history, Hall (1996: 15) suggests that we also need to understand the lan-
guages, which we have not been taught to speak. We need to understand
and revalue the traditions and inheritances of cultural expressions in new
and creative ways because the context of interculturality in which they are
expressed is continually changing.
166 Globalizing education policy
If this is so, societies must accept their cultural condition to be a necessar-
ily complex and ‘hybrid’ one – and not as something that can be neatly pack-
aged as a collection of ethnicities, for purposes either of administrative
convenience or of hegemonic control. The idea of hybridity, with its connota-
tions of mixture and fusion, applies unequivocally to this context, as a space
in which we must learn to manage cultural uncertainties as we imagine and
project both the national and the global condition. If hybridity is a basic
characteristic of cultural globalization, we cannot know cultures in their pris-
tine and authentic form. Instead, our focus must shift to the ways in which
cultural forms become separated from existing practices and recombine with
new forms, in new practices in their local contexts set against global forces. In
a world in which flows of information, media symbols and images, and politi-
cal and cultural ideas are constant and relentless, new cultural formations are
deeply affected. In a world increasingly constituted by flows of finance, tech-
nology and people, through tourism, education and migration, hybridization
has become a condition of social existence and not something that can be
regarded as exceptional.
Policymakers, then, need to reconsider the ways in which the idea of inter-
cultural relations ought to be interpreted and worked with. Such relations are
now best explored as complex and inherently unstable products of a range of
historical narratives and the contemporary experiences of the cultural econo-
mies of globalization. Such cultural economies are increasingly restructuring
our established ways of looking and working across cultures, even if some
policymakers and institutions appear reluctant to recognize this. And such is
the pace of cultural change that the politics of looking and working across cul-
tural differences involves inherent fluidity, indeterminacy and open-endedness.
Many educators have of course long understood this, as they work with the
complexities of identity that defy the packaging of people into neat and conven-
ient stereotypes, especially now in the age of globalization.
Recent theorists of globalization of culture use the notion of ‘deterritoriali-
zation’ (Tomlinson 2000) to suggest that localities where we live our every-
day lives have become implicated in broader global relations. Néstor García
Canclini (1998), for example, refers to ‘the loss of the “natural” relation of
culture to geographical and social territories’. Similarly, Tomlinson suggests
a ‘weakening or dissolution of the connection between everyday lived culture
and territorial location’. Tomlinson argues that increased global mobilities
are deterritorializing forces that have the effect of reshaping both the material
conditions of people’s existence and their perspectives on the world. He insists
that this has led to ‘the gradual and constant alterations in the cognitive maps
of people, in their loyalties and in their frames of social and cultural reference’
(Tomlinson 2000: 34). Global mobilities have enabled people to express cul-
tural diversity as dynamic and creative, but they have also led to the homog-
enization of cultural practices and contributed to some people becoming
dislodged from their communities, removed from their social links and obli-
gations. Either way, Tomlinson argues that deterritorialization has been a
 Mobility and policy dilemmas 167
powerful transformative agency in an era in which borders and boundaries are
quickly eroding and becoming more porous.
If this is so, should we not assume that the world will gradually become
standardized through technological, cultural and commercial synchronitiza-
tion? Emanating perhaps from the United States? Our view is, that to assume
that cultural globalization is simply another form of Americanization or
Westernization is to misread the complex processes involved. It is to assume,
for example, that the West, however it is now characterized, remains unaf-
fected by the processes of economic, political and cultural globalization. If our
argument has any merit, the local is always transformed as a result of engage-
ment with others, but this transformation is never uniform across cultural
sites; globalization produces new hybrid formations that are highly context-
specific and localized. As Pieterse (2005: 87) puts it, the cultural uniformity
and standardization argument:

overlooks the counter-currents – the impact that the non-Western cultures have
been making on the Western cultural practices. It downplays the ambivalence of
the globalizing momentum and ignores the role of local reception of Western
cultures, for example, the indigenization of Western elements.

It overlooks the fact that different parts of the same community may relate
differently to the same social processes.
If the response to global pressures is characterized by much variability, it is
hard to ignore the conclusion that interculturality is always political; and it
underlines the processes of fuzziness, cut-and-mix and criss-cross and crosso-
vers of cultural identity, which have often been referred to as the processes of
cultural hybridization. But hybridization is never neutral; it involves a poli-
tics in which issues of economic and cultural power are central. As Shohat and
Stam (1994) have argued, ‘A celebration of syncretism and hybridity per se, if
not articulated with the issues of hegemony and neo-colonial power relations,
always runs the risk of appearing to sanctify the fait accompli of colonial vio-
lence.’ As a theoretical idea, hybridity is indeed a useful antidote to cultural
essentialism, but cannot in itself provide the answers to the difficult questions
of how hybridity takes place, the form it takes in a particular context, the
consequences it has for particular sections of the community, and when and
how particular hybrid formations are progressive or regressive.
These political questions of hybridity need to be placed within the broader
politics of how globalization is helping to reshape people’s sense of them-
selves and others. As we have suggested, through accumulation strategies,
mobility and modern mass media, people are no longer linked just to one
place, but through their transnational connections and imagination may iden-
tify with a number of locations. Globalization has engendered complex, shift-
ing and fragmented subjectivities that are at once local, yet also global. This
demands new kinds of social organization that are deterritorialized, flexible
and mobile. At the same time, globalization has resulted in the proliferation
168 Globalizing education policy
of new commodity markets which promote new lifestyles and create consum-
ers whose cultural identities are defined by their association with products
rather than with their obligations to particular communities.
A new education policy agenda needs to take account of these changing
conditions. But here too we confront a number of dilemmas. While we might
support initiatives that recognize shifting and hybrid cultural practices, we
cannot afford to simply valorize difference and hybridity, allowing such prac-
tices to be shaped by transnational cultural markets, media and capital. In
recent years neoliberal states have indeed celebrated the emergence of global
markets in the production, consumption and distribution of cultural diver-
sity, consistent with the imperatives of what has been referred to as ‘globali-
zation from above’. But nor has the state been able to overlook the realities of
other practices of globalization, ‘globalization from below’, which involve the
criss-crossing transnational circuits of communication, the contested prac-
tices of place-making, the resistance of power differentials and the making of
new identities with their corresponding fields of difference.

Academic mobility
Nowhere have the issues of cultural diversity been more seriously addressed
than in universities. They have become centres of struggle over identity and
cultural meaning, as they deal with issues arising from the changing demo-
graphy on their campuses. They have also had to meet the challenges of glo-
balization and the knowledge economy, and prepare students for workplaces
that are increasingly transnational and transcultural. At the same time, they
have viewed the global mobility of people as a new opportunity. Over the
past two decades, higher education systems around the world have thus
worked vigorously to develop policies that promote academic mobility, with
the support of both governments and international organizations.
Of course, there has always been international mobility of students and
researchers in search of new knowledge and training, where this is not
available within the nation. Higher education was only available to very
talented students in countries of the South if they went abroad. The coun-
tries of the North, on the other hand, provided scholarships to assist stu-
dents from poorer countries, as part of programmes of overseas aid and in
line with the responsibilities they felt they had to help in the nation-
building projects of the newly independent countries of the developing
world. An example of such a commitment was the Colombo Plan, devel-
oped in the 1950s. Designed primarily as a foreign aid programme, it
highlighted the commitment of the developed countries within the British
Commonwealth to ameliorate economic distress in Asia and help create
local elites needed to develop the social, administrative and economic
infrastructure of the developing countries in Asia (Oakman 2005). It was
also linked to the strategic interests of the developed countries within the
broader politics of the Cold War. Within this geopolitical context a large
 Mobility and policy dilemmas 169
number of students were educated in the former USSR, while programmes
like the Colombo Plan provided financial aid to students in developing
countries around the world to attend First World universities.
However, the educational rationale underlying international education was
largely concerned with the development of skills, attitudes and knowledge so
that, upon their return, graduates could make a robust contribution to
national development. The purposes of international education were thus
defined in terms of the need to increase intercultural knowledge and to
enhance the level of international cooperation. In this way equal weight was
given to the economic, political and cultural purposes of education. Even as
late as the 1980s, IGOs such as the OECD and UNESCO sought to define the
complex idea of internationalization by seeking to reconcile its commercial
and economic concerns with issues of cultural diversity and interpersonal
dimensions of global relations (Marginson and McBurnie 2004). It was sug-
gested that internationalization was important to the development of univer-
sities because changes represented by globalization demanded it. For
individuals, on the other hand, international education was motivated not
only by emerging labour market opportunities, but also by considerations of
personal and social development.
Over the past two decades there has emerged, however, a contrasting dis-
course of academic mobility, which involves viewing international education
more as a matter of global trade than as overseas aid. The discourse of interna-
tionalization of education has thus shifted, with the introduction of a set of
market principles to guide its practices. Education is now increasingly viewed
as ‘an export industry’, driven by a growing demand for international educa-
tion, most notably in the fast-developing economies of Asia. This has enabled
countries such as the UK and Australia to set themselves up as major suppli-
ers. According to Marginson and McBurnie (2004), the growing demand for
international education is simultaneously ‘a cause, consequence and symptom
of globalization’. It responds to the need of industries at the cutting edge of
the knowledge economy, such as ICT, financial management, science and
engineering, in which the demand for globally mobile labour is growing at a
rapid rate. Since most governments are unable to meet this need through
public funds, a global market in education has emerged. Those developed
countries that have strong traditions of higher education have been a major
beneficiary of this development. In the developed countries, universities have
seen student moblity as a major source of revenue to replace the declining
levels of public funds. Indeed, universities in Australia and the UK have now
become highly dependent on income generated from international students,
and have developed complex marketing structures to sustain this source of
revenue. Countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, India and Japan are now
seeking to follow their example, and have developed a range of policy initia-
tives to enter this lucrative market.
Data on student flows in and out of the Asia-Pacific countries for education
shows spectacular patterns of growth (Marginson 2006). Universities in the
170 Globalizing education policy
USA, Australia and the UK are the main providers of education for globally
mobile students, while India and China are emerging as main source coun-
tries from where students go abroad for their higher education. Indeed, the
English-speaking countries are the beneficiaries of almost 80 per cent of the
world’s globally mobile students (Guruz 2008). In contrast, very few Austral-
ian, American and British students enrol in universities in the developing
world. The flow is thus largely one-directional (Marginson 2006), confirming
a pattern in the global knowledge distribution that appears to have a lan-
guage: English.
The reasons for student demand for international education in the Asia-
Pacific region vary considerably, and include lack of opportunities for higher
education in their own countries; particular national policies, such as affirma-
tive action policies in Malaysia, which favour Bumiputras and force many
ethnic Chinese students to seek higher education abroad (Rizvi 2000); and
perceptions concerning the changing patterns of opportunities within the
globally changing labour market. It is assumed, for example, that those with
good English and international experience have a better chance of getting
well-paying jobs, especially in transnational corporations. There is also a
growing interest in cosmopolitan experiences, together with a sense that in a
globally networked world, those with intercultural skills and an international
outlook are better equipped to benefit from the global knowledge-based
economy. And finally, strong economic growth in both China and India over
the past decades has created a strong middle class for whom international
education has become a status marker and an object of desire.
Around such sentiments, there has emerged a powerful new discourse of
internationalization which seeks to redefine the ways in which universities
need to engage with the ‘imperatives’ of globalization. This discourse points
to the commercial opportunities offered by the increasing movement of
people, capital and ideas. It encourages a new kind of knowledge about inter-
national relations and programmes based on a neoliberal imaginary of the
global economy, which is assumed to be knowledge-based and requires
increased levels of intercultural communication. Alongside, a new adminis-
trative technology of global marketing of education and recruitment has
emerged (Sidhu 2005). As with other industries, this technology has its own
rules of operation based on expertise that incorporates knowledge of market
segments and specificities, as well as promotional language about the distinc-
tive benefits of internationalization. Within universities that attract a large of
number of international students, it involves the creation of highly special-
ized structures and functions responsible for international operations; for
example, well developed advertising and marketing programmes conducted
not only through the media, but also through educational expos and market-
orientated conferences at which education is bought and sold.
In promoting these discourses and practices, governments and IGOs play
an important role. To manage global flows of students, many governments
have developed policies for regulating cross-border mobility of students, and
 Mobility and policy dilemmas 171
have established programmes designed to encourage international linkages,
cooperation and trade. In the so-called exporter nations such as Australia and
the UK, the main policy objective has been to sustain the flow of income
derived from international student fees, through not only targeted advertis-
ing, but also a national system of quality assurance, and even developing
immigration programmes designed to favour international graduates in par-
ticular fields of labour shortage. In contrast, the so-called importer countries
have developed policies that have involved monitoring cross-border trade in
education, in an attempt to protect consumers of international education.
There has emerged also a complex web of bilateral and multilateral regional
arrangements between countries that encourage academic mobility. An
example of such an arrangement is the Bologna Process, which involves a
commitment by ministers responsible for higher education from European
countries, which now number 46, to reform their higher education systems in
order to ‘harmonize’ their structures in an effort to both encourage and facili-
tate academic mobility.
Despite these arrangements, international trade in education continues to
be surrounded by a great deal of policy confusion, concerning not only issues
of capacity, volume, commitment, balance, orientation and quality of inter-
national programmes, but also issues relating to the rules by which educa-
tional trade should be conducted. At the global level, many governments have
insisted on the need of an international agreement governing commercially-
driven academic mobility. It is upon this insistence that the General Agree-
ment on Trade in Services (GATS) within the World Trade Organization
(WTO) is based. GATS is designed to specify a range of conditions under
which global trade in education is to be pursued. These conditions include
such matters as transparency of rules; liberalization of markets; elimination of
practices acting as barriers to trade and student mobility; and the develop-
ment of rules for resolving disputes. Now while in one sense these rules appear
perfectly sensible, from another perspective they serve a more ideological
function, of institutionalizing a particular way of looking at international
education, defined in terms of the efficiency of global markets in education
rather than in terms of international education’s more general political, social
and cultural purposes.
The main assumption underlying GATS is that education is a commodified
service, in which trade is not only possible but desirable. In terms of this neolib-
eral imaginary, it is assumed that trade in education should not be subject to
national restrictions. Jane Knight (2002) has called this phenomenon ‘trade
creep’ in higher education, driven by an increased emphasis on the market
economy and the liberalization of rules governing trade in both goods and serv-
ices. Of course, in an era of globalization, this emphasis is enmeshed with other
market-orientated trends in higher education. Knight (ibid.) suggests that:

These trends include the growing number of private for-profit entities provid-
ing higher education opportunities domestically and internationally; the use
172 Globalizing education policy
of information and communications technologies (ICTs) for domestic and
cross-border delivery of programs; the increasing costs and tuition fees faced
by students at public and private institutions; and the need for public institu-
tions to seek alternate sources of funding, which sometime means engaging in
for-profit activities or seeking private sector sources of financial support. (p7)

These trends appear well entrenched in higher education systems in most of

the Asian-Pacific countries, raising issues of social efficiency, such as modes of
funding and student support, regulation of private and public cross-border
providers, recognition and transferability of credits and quality assurance,
ahead of some of the traditional concerns of education such as access and
equity. This policy shift has a number of important implications for educa-
tion in the developing countries.
The heavily commercial character of international education, for example,
serves to reproduce global inequalities in education. Under earlier programmes
of international education such as the Colombo Plan, universities in the devel-
oped countries provided access to a large number of students from poorer, less
developed countries. But in a market regime, the number of financially spon-
sored students has dwindled markedly, further widening the skills gap between
the industrialized and industrializing countries and poorer countries, whose
economic prospects have declined further. This again exemplifies the globally
uneven and asymmetrical nature of student flows within the global market of
international education. Marginson (2006) has noted the magnetic attraction of
American higher education, and has argued that the UK, Australia, Canada and
New Zealand sit ‘in the American slipstream, operating on a more entrepre-
neurial basis than American institutions. They gain the referred power as lesser
English-language providers and sites for migration, often in a transitional stage
in passage to the USA.’
This presents a major dilemma for universities in the countries of the South
of how to deal with this global phenomenon of Western dominance, how to
diversify their own student base and provide opportunities to those of their
talented students who are marginalized by commercialization, and what
remedial actions to take to stop the economic and social haemorrhaging
caused by the new global geometry of power, manifest in the dominant
version of the internationalization of higher education.

Internationalization of curriculum
This emphasis on global mobility of students is part of a broader policy dis-
course in education that has emerged around the world. This discourse high-
lights the importance of internationalizing the curriculum as a way of
engaging with the complex processes of globalization. The idea of the ‘inter-
nationalization of curriculum’ has become something of a slogan within
modern corporatized educational systems. One does not have to look far to
find it in the mission statements of most leading universities, from Austria to
 Mobility and policy dilemmas 173
Australia, from the United States to the United Arab Emirates, as well as in
the policy advice of most IGOs. As Olson et al. (2006) for the American
Council on Education, for example, suggest, in the global context it is now
necessary to renovate the curriculum, making it more responsive to the com-
pelling requirements of globalization. Curriculum must now be characterized
by its international content, its engagement with the global circuits of knowl-
edge and communication.
What this suggests is that internationalization is relevant not only to those
students who are globally mobile, but to everyone. In a global economy, cul-
tural understanding and ‘an international outlook’ are important for all, crucial
among students and academics alike. This is so because internationalized cur-
ricula are based on the values of innovation, flexibility, client-centredness and
enterprise culture on the one hand and intercultural understanding and sensi-
tivity on the other. This rhetoric is particularly strident among regional and
intergovernmental organizations such as UNESCO, the OECD and the Euro-
pean Union (EU). The EU, for example, has long highlighted measures to
support student mobility and cooperation between member states and others.
The Union’s ERASMUS, SOCRATES and LEONARDO programmes are based
on the principles of internationalization, as a way of not only supporting struc-
tural cooperation but also promoting curriculum development and the creation
of networks and credit transfer arrangements. In order to internationalize its
curriculum, suggests UNESCO (2002), the university must:

express its knowledge work in a new and changed environment. If the university
is to serve well both scholarship and national needs, if it is to prepare graduates
for this new era, the university is obligated to modernize and to contribute to the
global exchange of knowledge through the movement of people, information,
and ideas.

Now while the appeal of the idea of internationalization of curriculum appears

ubiquitous, its policy effects are less clear. It is not always clear what it means
and how it might represent a new way of prioritizing and organizing learn-
ing. Most of its definitions lack specificity. So, for example, they do not specify
how the notion of an ‘international orientation’ might be interpreted, and
how the efficacy and relevance of international content might be judged. An
inventory of initiatives undertaken to internationalize curriculum appears to
suggest that most initiatives fall under three interrelated categories: facilitat-
ing study abroad and educational exchange to broaden and enrich students’
cultural experiences; learning about other languages and cultures as a way of
developing their skills of intercultural communication; and preparing gradu-
ates to work in the global knowledge economy. Each of these measures is sup-
posed to contribute to the realization of the others.
Administratively, study abroad programs represent a most pragmatic,
quick and achievable way of internationalizing the curriculum. They do not
require any significant structural changes to the existing curriculum, and can
174 Globalizing education policy
always be ‘added on’ as options provided to students within an existing pro-
gramme. Because of their high visibility, moreover, institutions can claim
success, even if the benefits of study abroad programmes cannot be easily
demonstrated. A second way educational systems have sought to internation-
alize the curriculum is by encouraging the teaching of languages and cultures
other than one’s own. The contention here is that learning about other cul-
tures broadens students’ experiences, and is also a means through which inter-
cultural exchange and understanding can be promoted. If the global mobility
of people has made most communities diverse and if the global flow of ideas
and media has made cultural insularity and isolation impossible, then, it is
suggested, university curriculum cannot afford to ignore these cultural
realities.
And finally the development of skills of intercultural competence is con-
sidered key to internationalizing the curriculum, especially in professional
disciplines such as Economics and Business Studies. This focus is based on a
particular interpretation of the requirements of the global economy. In a
knowledge-based and service-orientated economy, it is argued, knowing facts
and theories is less important than an understanding of the world of cultural
and social relations and the networks through which knowledge is converted
into innovation and commercially viable products. This has led to an empha-
sis on developing in students a ‘global competence’ that enables them to
become globally mobile and work in a range of different cultural contexts. It
has also underscored the need to develop qualifications less geared towards the
demands of the national labour market and more towards international
requirements, suggesting curricular frameworks that are globally networked
and fully utilize the possibilities of new information and communication
technologies.
Initiatives around study abroad, intercultural understanding and global
competence clearly hold out considerable potential for internationalizing the
curriculum, even if they are difficult to implement in a coherent and system-
atic institution-wide fashion. They represent attempts to prepare students for
a world in which the nature of work and labour processes and cultural exchange
are constantly changing, as a result not only of shifts in the global knowledge
economy and social relations, but also of rapid advances in information tech-
nologies. Preparing students to negotiate these changes is clearly worthwhile.
However, promising though these initiatives are, their potential cannot be
fully realized without conceptual thinking that is more systematic, address-
ing a range of issues both practical and theoretical about the broader curricu-
lum architecture within which the ideas of study abroad, cultural exchange
and global competence might be located.
The proposition that study abroad programmes promote a more cosmo-
politan outlook among students, leading them to become culturally sensi-
tive is, for example, often asserted but seldom demonstrated. The research
on the outcomes of study abroad programmes is at best limited. Much of it
relates to questions of access to these programmes and to the administrative
 Mobility and policy dilemmas 175
arrangements involved in their implementation. Very little of it examines
the assumptions underlying study abroad programmes. Much of it assumes
that they are intrinsically good, and that global mobility will necessarily
produce a cosmopolitan outlook in everyone alike, regardless of their gender,
race and socio-economic background, or their prior learning. There is very
little examination of study abroad experiences as a curriculum issue. Nor is
there any assessment of the conditions necessary for ensuring their curricu-
lar success, beyond their value as educational tourism.
Beyond issues of administration, there are more serious issues surrounding
study abroad programmes, relating not only to questions of access and educa-
tional experience, but also to issues concerning the development of transna-
tional networks and the global politics of cultural knowledge and
communication. Here, questions of which students go on study abroad pro-
grammes, and where, are crucial. Evidence suggests that much of the study
abroad traffic is within the developed world (Clyne and Rizvi 1998), and that
the universities in the countries of the North generally fail to develop effec-
tive sustainable exchange arrangements with universities in the developing
world. This does little to help students explore broader issues of global ine-
qualities. Despite much talk about global interconnectivity and interdepend-
ence, international contact remains within globally differentiated cultural
communities – the west versus the rest. Insofar as mobility is considered a
major characteristic of the current phase of globalization, the circulation of
students through study abroad programmes appears to reproduce asymmetri-
cal power relations within the world community.
It is within the context of these power relations that the objectives of learn-
ing about other cultures and developing intercultural communication skills
are located. These objectives are based on the recognition that under contem-
porary conditions of mass migration and other forms of mobility, both of
people and ideas, all communities are exposed to the growing flows of cul-
tural meanings and knowledge emanating from other societies. Advances in
information and communication technologies have made it almost impossible
for people to remain isolated, and we ‘now have the means to access rapidly far
greater quantities of cultural meanings of every kind than ever before and
from a multiplicity of sources’ (Cohen and Kennedy 2007: 27). We live in a
world in which our consumerist tastes converge and our cultural traditions
come into contact with others, but in ways that are not always easy to recon-
cile. This demands an approach to the curriculum that helps students to
develop skills of intercultural communication, dialogue and negotiation
through learning about other cultures.
Now while this goal is indeed important, the social imaginary within
which it is located is at best limited. To begin with, it interprets the need to
learn about other cultures largely in instrumental economic terms. Cultural
meanings are thus reduced to the benefits that students are able to accrue
within the global marketplace. In the process, it converts students into eco-
nomic units, with the implication that only those aspects of other cultures
176 Globalizing education policy
that are commercially productive are worthy of attention. This approach to
internationalization has become commonplace in business schools around the
world. But the consequences of this approach are that only the superficial
aspects of a cultural tradition are learnt, making much learning appear patron-
izing, especially to marginalized groups and nations. A further risk associated
with this view is the temptation to assume an inherently naturalistic and
reified view of culture.
If knowledge of, and ability to interact productively with, people from
quite different cultural backgrounds, both within one’s own society and across
the globe, are desirable educational goals, cultural traditions need to be
viewed as dynamic and creative, and cultural relations as always contingent
and historically specific. The focus must be on learning not so much about
cultural traditions, but about the modalities of cultural interactions, how
these are produced across differing political and economic interests, and how
these have differential consequences for different individuals and communi-
ties. The notion of ‘the requirements of the global economy’ itself needs to be
deconstructed, as do the ideological assumptions about the nature of indi-
viduals and societies that are implied by the idea of ‘global competence’. Cru-
cially important here are the questions of competence ‘for what ends’, ‘to do
what’, ‘in whose interests’, ‘with what consequences’ and ‘what cultural
knowledge is most worthwhile’.

Globalization of English
The issues of global academic mobility and research collaborations are inex-
tricably linked to the globalization of English. According to a UNESCO
report (2002), no discussion of internationalization of curriculum is possible
without examining the role that the English language now plays in economic,
political and cultural exchanges. It notes that, facing the challenges of glo-
balization, education systems around the world are paying ‘special attention
to foreign languages, first and foremost it is English’ (ibid.: 47–48). The
report goes on to say that the choice of language in education policy is ‘largely
driven by the demands of the international labour market, in particular in the
field of ICTs and science’. In this way, the rationale for the English language
in education policies is framed almost exclusively in terms of system effi-
ciency and the requirements of the market. This is so because English has not
only become the most common medium for communication in a global world,
but it is also assumed to provide job opportunities, access to higher education
and a broader flow of information in business negotiations. It has become the
primary medium for communication in science and technology.
In Cohen and Kennedy’s (2007: 88) view, the use of English as a world
language ‘has fostered the emergence of a world society’. English has often
been called an international lingua franca. This rise accompanies Anglo-
American hegemony, with the USA dominating mass media and advertising,
shaping consumer tastes and lifestyle aspirations of people, especially the
 Mobility and policy dilemmas 177
young, around the world. As the global economy has grown, so has its reli-
ance on English as a world language. Between 80 and 90 per cent of the
world’s academic papers are written in English. Cohen and Kennedy (ibid.)
have shown that while the number of people speaking English as their first
language rose from 377 million in 1990 to 400 million in 2004, the number
of people who spoke English as their second language rose in the same period
to 600 million, and that number is likely to double by 2050. More people
will still speak Chinese and Hindi, but the use of English is likely to grow at
a much faster rate, and it is likely to remain the most dominant language in
the foreseeable future.
Educational systems around the world have taken note of these trends, and
have shaped their policies to reflect the global dominance of English. In the
countries of the South Pacific, for example, English is the predominant official
medium of instruction, even if few people use it at home. In Polynesia,
although a native language is the medium of instruction in primary educa-
tion, English is generally introduced as a subject early, often in the first or
second year of primary school. In most of Melanesia, English is the sole recog-
nized medium of instruction, and in Fiji, Fijian and Hindi are mediums of
instruction for the first three years, but are subsequently entirely replaced by
English (Lynch and Mugler 2004). This trend is becoming almost universal,
with systems around the world making English as a second language compul-
sory at an increasingly early stage. In Korea, the age at which English is intro-
duced has recently been reduced from 12 to 9 years of age. Similarly in China,
in 2001, the age at which English is offered as a second language was lowered
from 11 to 9 years old (Kaplan and Baldauf 2003: 37). In Malaysia, all maths
and science are taught in English.
It is not only the national systems of education that have promoted English;
international organizations have also been active. At a meeting in 2004, the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Ministers of Education developed
a formal agreement about English in which they encouraged officially offer-
ing the teaching of English as a foreign language starting from the first to
fifth grades. They also emphasized the need to enhance the training pro-
grammes for English teachers in elementary schools, together with revision of
curricula, and teaching materials to be more communicative in approach.
They suggested reducing elementary school class sizes to no more than 35
students and connecting all elementary schools to the Internet by providing
computers in all classrooms. These policy goals were directly linked to that of
improving levels of English, which it was assumed would help in meeting the
challenges of the new era of information technology and the knowledge
economy.
There is thus a clear policy trend toward lowering the age of English
instruction around the world, as well as an increase in those courses for
which English is the medium of instruction, particularly in science, math-
ematics, technology, finance and business. This trend is accompanied by
the development of a huge private industry in the teaching of English,
178 Globalizing education policy
with the emergence of a parallel education system that offers English as
an after-school enrichment activity. Some of these private schools are tiny
one-person enterprises, while others like Sylvan Learning Centres repre-
sent a large multinational corporation. Universities in English-speaking
countries, as well as organizations such as the British Council, have also
benefited financially from the rise of English as a world language, both
recruiting international students eager to learn English and often also
setting up offshore operations, even campuses. This desire to learn English,
especially in fast-developing countries such as Korea, is based on a convic-
tion that English is necessary for success in the global economy, and that
the ability to use English effectively ensures a market advantage.
The local effects of this relentless drive towards English are hard to assess.
There is no indication that the global rise of English has led to any significant
decline in the use of local languages. On the contrary, there is some evidence
to suggest that the world is increasingly becoming multilingual, that stu-
dents can readily learn two or more languages and find it easy to switch usage,
and that multilingualism might even help them to acquire cognitive flexibil-
ity. Indeed, as Crystal (1997) has argued, the desire for a globally common
language and the desire to preserve local languages, and by extension cultural
identities, are not mutually exclusive. He points also to the emergence of a
variety of ‘New Englishes’, as English dialects are transformed by localized
uses. A language, it needs to be recognized, is a dynamic phenomenon that
changes through interaction with other linguistic traditions, producing new
hybridized forms. At the same time, ‘global English’ also appears to be emerg-
ing. This is the product of a range of factors, including the global dominance
of American popular culture, new patterns of communication across national
boundaries, the use of English in academic and business discourses, efforts to
standardize English through various testing regimes such as the International
English Language Testing System (IELTS), and of course language used by
the new technologies.
It also needs to be recognized that as a contemporary phenomenon, the
global rise of English has been driven by British imperialism and the ascen-
sion of the US economy following the Second World War. While it is true
that forms of English have become multiple and hybridized, it is also true
that English is an instrument of global hegemony. This is clearly evident in
the fact that while the rest of the world is becoming multilingual, this trend
is resisted in English-speaking countries, where a decline in second language
learning has been noted. If access to English education is a condition of success
in the global economy, it can also be a source that perpetuates or exacerbates
the economic divide within and across nations. We might ponder, therefore,
a range of questions raised by Alistair Pennycook (2001):

… we need always to consider the larger context of what we are doing, the cul-
tural, political, social and economic implications of language programs. What
might language development in English mean for other languages? What might
 Mobility and policy dilemmas 179
it mean for the representation of culture? What forms of culture and knowledge
may it privilege and what may it deny? What world is opened up by an educa-
tion through English? How might English be a language that allows us to be
more rather than just to have more? (p22)

Brain drain
In this chapter we have noted how increasing levels of global mobility of
people have presented policymakers with a range of opportunities and chal-
lenges. One of these challenges relates to the consequences of mobility of
highly skilled workers across national boundaries. National governments in
developing countries have a deep anxiety about the loss to the more developed
countries of their talented workers, in whom they have invested heavily
through education. Some of these governments have been forced to develop
specific policies and programmes to encourage the return of emigrants. Of
course, this anxiety is not new, and issues around which it revolves date back
to the 1950s when the concept ‘brain drain’ was first coined. But in the era of
globalization these issues now present themselves in new forms. In a global
economy, people understandably aspire to live and work in places which can
provide them with greater financial and other rewards.
This creates a range of dilemmas for policymakers in developed and devel-
oping countries alike. The developed countries seek to attract skilled immi-
grants, on the one hand, but insist on preventing the unfettered movement of
people such as refugees on the other. Equally, while some developing coun-
tries have become increasingly reliant for their economic sustainability on
remittances sent home by emigrants, they find that this cannot be a long-
term solution to their social and economic development. They are attracted to
the so-called ‘diaspora option’ (Meyer and Brown 2003), which seeks to create
networks which enable skilled emigrants to still remain effectively and pro-
ductively connected to their country of origin. But this new network logic
seems trapped within an asymmetrical world economic order, in which the
mobility of people is limited to those who possess expertise needed in the
global economy.
The rate of skilled migration from developing to developed countries has
increased significantly under the conditions of globalization. International
organizations such as the World Bank, the United Nations Development
Program (UNDP), the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Organ-
ization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have noted this
trend with alarm. A report of the World Bank, Constructing Knowledge Societies:
New Challenges for Tertiary Education (2002), for example, has expressed concern
at the rapidly increasingly rates of emigration of knowledge workers from the
developing countries, depriving these nations of the conditions necessary to
sustain their universities. The report suggests the emergence of a global ‘knowl-
edge divide’ which will inevitably delay economic growth in developing coun-
tries. According to a study by the International Monetary Fund (Carrington and
180 Globalizing education policy
Detragiache 1998), the annual rate of skilled emigration, defined as people with
university degrees, from Africa over the past decade is over 30 per cent. Sizable
‘brain drain’ from Mexico, Iran, Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan has also
been reported. The levels of ‘brain drain’ from India and China to OECD coun-
tries via international education have slowed over the past decade, but remain
significant.
The debate among development and migration economists over the impact
of this ‘brain drain’ on economic growth is intense. Various economic models
have been developed to examine the relations between education, emigration
and national productivity. Since education is widely regarded as a major
determinant of long-term economic growth, it has long been argued that the
migration of people with high levels of human capital is detrimental to the
country of emigration. The negative impact of ‘brain drain’ on developing
countries has been stressed in the so-called New Growth literature (for
example Miyagiwa 1991), which emphasizes the cumulative effects of skilled
migration on productivity. According to Wong and Yip (1999), the ‘brain
drain’ not only affects the growth rate of a developing country, but also has a
negative impact on infrastructure, education and income distribution of an
economy.
In contrast, some researchers challenge this view, suggesting that ‘brain
drain’ may in fact be good for the developing economies. Mountford (1997),
for example, argues that the ‘brain drain’ may in fact increase average produc-
tivity and equality in the source economy. He has asserted that temporary
emigration in particular may in fact permanently increase the average level of
productivity of an economy. Another economic model suggests that ‘optimal
brain drain’ can be shown to increase a developing country’s average produc-
tivity, especially if the worker returns after gaining expertise and skills in a
more advanced economy (Johnson and Regets 1998). Research has also indi-
cated that when skilled emigrants send part of their earnings abroad back to
their country of origin, the remittances have ‘GDP multiplier effects’ that
increase national income (Taylor 2006).
Just as the issues relating to the economic impact of ‘brain drain’ are hotly
debated, so is the question of how policymakers should respond. One option
has been to recognize that nothing much can be done about it, and that in the
end the global labour market will prevail. However, most developing coun-
tries have been more proactive in attempts to reverse the ‘brain drain’ with a
range of measures, including restrictive policies aimed at delaying emigration
through various taxation regimes. Various systems of incentives that encour-
age international students to return home, sometimes to lucrative positions in
their own areas of expertise, have been developed. Another strategy has
involved bilateral and multilateral arrangements under which wealthy coun-
tries pledge not to recruit skilled people from developing nations. Other
agreements require international students to work for a certain period of time
in their home country before they can apply to emigrate. Another increas-
ingly popular option involves the construction of ‘diaspora networks’ that
 Mobility and policy dilemmas 181
enable emigrants to make a contribution to economic and social development
at home, no matter where they live.
This diaspora option (Meyer and Brown 2003) is based on a particular
understanding of the relationship between social identities and the nation-
state under the conditions of globalization. The ‘turbulence’ of mobility,
Papastergiadis (2000) argues, has had a range of unpredictable consequences
both for individuals and for nation-states. The commitment of people to the
development of their countries of origin has become destabilized, and can no
longer be taken for granted. If we resist the temptation to theorize globaliza-
tion in an abstract manner, it does not merely refer to the construction of a
global economic space but also to the restructuring and extension of networks
of money, technologies, people and ideas and of their articulations with real
spaces at different scales. The movement of people leads to the emergence of
transnational diasporic networks that are spatially and temporally specific,
and involve socially constructed relations of power and meaning. We can no
longer ignore how social identities are linked to transnational communication
circuits, and if this is so, people are able to think about being affiliated with
more than one place at the same time. The assumption that there is a one-to-
one relation between territoriality and citizenship can no longer be sustained.
Movements of people cannot, moreover, be assumed to involve a zero-sum
game, because nation-states have never been completely homogeneous enti-
ties, and are being reshaped by global processes; the loss of expertise in one
country does not necessarily mean its gain in another.
Against this analysis, the concept of ‘brain drain’ is highly problematic.
The issue is no longer where people are physically located, but what contribu-
tion they are able to make to the social, cultural and economic development
of the (multiple) countries with which they identify. Global mobility of
skilled people is now both a consequence and a necessary stimulus to sustain
the processes of economic and cultural globalization. The increasingly glo-
balized knowledge economy demands circulation of knowledge workers and
brokers (Cao 1996). This is as important for the developed countries as it is
for the developing economies. If this is so, it is suggested by a number of
policy scholars such as Meyer and Brown (2003) that for the developing coun-
tries to benefit from the knowledge economy, the physical location of people
is immaterial so long as the developing economies are able to draw upon their
expertise, regardless of where they live. More important is the need to create
links through which skilled emigrants could remain effectively and produc-
tively connected to their country of origin.
Of course, in many ways the diaspora option is not new. Relationships
between expatriates and their countries of origin have often existed in the
past. In recent years, many of these links have been formalized into such net-
works as Arab Scientists and Technologists Abroad (ASTA) and the Associa-
tion of Latin American Scientists (ALAS). Many of the members of such
networks prefer to speak not of ‘brain drain’ but of ‘brain circulation’, under-
lining the importance they attach to the role of vibrant, virtual and global
182 Globalizing education policy
networks of professionals in imagining and pursuing national development,
consistent with the imperatives of a global knowledge economy. Important as
these developments are, however, a range of problems is associated with such
networks. As Teferra (2004) has pointed out, brain circulation is still charac-
terized by its sporadic, exceptional and limited nature. Most of these net-
works have short lifespans, and fail to become systematic, dense and
productive. Among those of the networks who have not had extensive oppor-
tunities to travel and live abroad, there remains a great deal of resentment
towards those who have; and the attitude of emigrants towards their own
country of origin often appears arrogant and patronizing.
Beyond these social and technical problems, there is a more fundamental
issue: that the space within which brain circulation takes place is not a
neutral one, but is characterized by uneven distributions of opportunities
and asymmetrical flows of power. The notion of brain circulation rests on an
assumption that the new knowledge economy is potentially less exploita-
tive of developing countries than was the old economy. While it is true that
the globally integrated knowledge economy requires the development of
greater transnational collaboration, and mobility among skilled workers, it
is still based on modes of capital ownership and production that are inher-
ently unequal. The substitution of the concept of ‘brain drain’ with that of
‘brain circulation’ does not solve this problem. However, what it does dem-
onstrate is that under the conditions of globalization, the notion of ‘brain
drain’ needs to be reconceptualized in more contemporary terms, because
issues of mobility now present themselves in markedly different ways.
Mobility has the potential to reshape social identities, and requires new
ways of thinking about relations between globally mobile people and their
social obligations to the nation-state.

Conclusion
In this chapter we have shown how globalization has given rise to increas-
ing levels of mobility, not only of capital and finance, images, informa-
tion and ideologies, but also of people. For education policymakers this
has presented both opportunities and challenges. It has led them to con-
sider how global resources can be used to expand educational opportuni-
ties, and how the cosmopolitan possibilities of education might be
realized. But the global mobility of people has also created a range of
policy dilemmas: how to deal with the cultural diversity that mobility has
enhanced; how to encourage academic flows without exploiting them;
how to internationalize the curriculum; how to develop language policies
that are respectful of all linguistic and cultural traditions; and how to
support international mobility of skilled people without leaving poorer
countries bereft of the talent and expertise they need to ensure sustainable
development. Sadly, many of the policy solutions to these dilemmas
remain trapped within the neoliberal social imaginary that has either
 Mobility and policy dilemmas 183
reproduced or even extended existing patterns of global inequalities and
eliminated any potential that education might have for socially just social
transformation. In the concluding chapter we will examine some of the
ways in which various communities and social movements are resisting
this imaginary in order to forge alternatives to hegemonic neoliberal
globalization.
9 Imagining other globalizations

Introduction
We have demonstrated throughout this book that a particular social imagi-
nary of globalization, namely neoliberalism, has underpinned education
policy shifts around the world over the last two decades. It is this imaginary
that has been at the base of a global trend toward policy convergence in
education. This has been evident in both policy means and policy ends, but
always in ways that are mediated by politics, history and culture at national
and local levels. Policy processes, we have argued, work differently across
the Global North/Global South divide, in vernacular ways at local and
national levels. We have suggested, however, that these processes are located
within a global architecture of political relations that not only involves
national governments, but also IGOs, transnational corporations and NGOs.
Policies are developed, enacted and evaluated in various global networks
from where their authority is now partly derived. In this sense, neoliberal
policy preferences in education are articulated at the intersection of local,
national, regional and global spaces.
Underpinning the neoliberal view of education is a particular conception of
the individual, which education is expected to help produce. Nikolas Rose
(1999: 160–161) has brilliantly captured this conception in relation to the
new or emergent education policy paradigm:

Education is no longer confined to ‘schooling’, with its specialized institutional

sites and discrete biographical locus. The disciplinary individualization and nor-
malization of the school sought to install, once and for all, the capacities and com-
petencies for social citizenship. But a new set of educational obligations are
emerging that are not confined in space and time in the same ways. The new
citizen is required to engage in a ceaseless work of training and retraining, skilling
and reskilling, enhancement of credentials and preparation for a life of incessant
job seeking: life is to become a continuous economic capitalization of the self.

It is the self-responsibilizing, self-capitalizing individual that is the desired

product of neoliberal education policy reforms. The notion of a self-governing
 Imagining other globalizations 185
individual also underpins Foucault’s (1991) conception of governmentality,
an effect of government and governance. This emphasis on self-capitalizing
required across the entire life-cycle replaces the older, more liberal humanist
and social democratic constructions of education which were underpinned by
education’s multiple purposes. The best economic outcomes for a nation are
now deemed to flow from the production of individuals pursuing their self-
interest. This is a conception of human beings as at base individual economic
beings, an account that fails to recognize the collective social and cultural
aspects of human behaviour. This has led to a greater focus on the market as
the site where education policy is best negotiated. The state’s role in policy
development has been reduced to ensuring that markets work efficiently and
enhance the choices of ‘citizen-consumers’.
However, as we have argued, this perspective on education has had major
social consequences, benefiting some individuals and communities while further
marginalizing the poor and the socially disadvantaged. This is so because the
neoliberal social imaginary upon which this policy framework generally is
based, has rejected the need for redistributive policies, extensive social protec-
tion and measures to ensure equality of educational opportunity. Until the
Thatcher and Reagan regimes in the1980s, the Keynesian settlement in most
liberal democracies had meant that education was a principal means for ensur-
ing social justice, meritocracy and social cohesion. In that settlement the state,
through public policy, intervened against the market in providing ‘social pro-
tection’ for vulnerable citizens and equality of opportunity for all. Neoliberal-
ism views education differently, placing a greater focus on market efficiency and
individual liberty. The values of community and social justice are now replaced
by the principles of the market economy and citizen-consumer choice, not only
in the west but elsewhere as well. Even in China and Vietnam, where Commu-
nist Parties rule, the idea of a ‘socialist market economy’ has become dominant,
framed by a vernacular version of neoliberalism.
In Chapter 4 we argued that all public policies embody the values of effi-
ciency, equity, community, liberty and security, but that the way in which
these values are assembled and allocated varies across time and across national
policy regimes. Much depends not only on how these values are politically
mediated by particular national traditions, but also on how they are discur-
sively formed within particular social imaginaries. As we have demonstrated
throughout this book, in the contemporary world the dominant social imagi-
nary has been neoliberalism, even as its hegemony is being challenged by the
global financial crisis. In a country like India, for example, education policy
was until recently informed by a mix of Gandhian post-colonial sentiments
and initiatives designed to modernize and industrialize the nation, in a strictly
planned manner with Soviet-style five-year plans (Pathak 2006). Education
policy was thus located within a national imaginary about India’s economic
and social development. In more recent decades India too has embraced a neo-
liberal imaginary, with the values of market efficiency becoming dominant as
issues of equity and community have been sidelined. A commitment to the
186 Globalizing education policy
notion of equity has not been entirely abandoned, but its meaning has been
re-articulated as simply access to society’s institutions, the responsibility for
which lies largely with individuals themselves.
Stephen Klees (2008: 1) has documented a range of policy initiatives in edu-
cation consistent with the neoliberal focus ‘on the efficiency of a free-market
system and the associated role of the public sector’ supported by the World
Bank and other international organizations. These initiatives include: cost-
recovery and user pays principles; the introduction of school fees even at primary
schools; an emphasis on primary education on the assumption that economic
returns are greater there than from investment in secondary and tertiary educa-
tion; putting a budget cap on public funding of education; encouragement of
privatization policies and voucher schemes; the introduction of performance
management and budgeting schemes; output-based calculations for providing
support to education; merit pay for teachers and educational administrators;
greater freedom of choice for parents; standardized tests to facilitate this choice
within and across national systems; various other performance contracting
schemes; and decentralization of education delivery against a set of nationally
agreed goals and curriculum expectations.
Almost all of these policy initiatives rest on market efficiency. Signifi-
cantly, around the world, education has become central to the production of
the requisite human capital needed to achieve the maximum competitive-
ness within the global economy for individuals and nations alike. The dom-
inant values underpinning education policy have been individualistic and
economistic in character. Governments, international organizations and
transnational corporations have promoted this view of education, using a
symbolic and magisterial rhetoric that suggests that there is no alternative
to neoliberal market principles. Ideological notions such as ‘global impera-
tives’ and ‘demands of the global economy’, which discursively position
contemporary rationales for education policy, are based on this neoliberal
imaginary of globalization. There is, however, nothing inevitable about this
imaginary of globalization ‘from above’, especially when its negative social
consequences are becoming all too clear. Neoliberalism has clearly benefited
some individuals and communities, where others have been left struggling
in its wake. Since the financial crisis beginning in late 2007, first in the
United States and then across the entire globe, its contradictions have
become abundantly clear. As we have noted throughout this book, it has
created a global architecture of economic and political relations that is not
only largely undemocratic, but which has also polarized global wealth. It
has enabled transnational corporations to acquire unprecedented, and argu-
ably unregulated, amounts of power, and has also reduced collective opposi-
tion such as that of the trade union movement.
As Buckman (2004: 28) points out, ‘globalization from above’ has created a
‘casino economy’ in which ‘there are few barriers to unhindered global transfer
of money’, disproportionately affecting poorer countries, which were not set up
to be able to handle huge inflows of money. It is now becoming abundantly
 Imagining other globalizations 187
clear how the relatively unfettered global circulation of finance has created enor-
mous problems of governance. It has enabled corrupt politicians in the Global
South to take advantage of the new opportunities created by large capital
inflows, while it has enhanced the capacity of transnational corporations to
operate across borders without many restrictions. Although TNCs have been
able to bring new technology, new employment and foreign exchange to the
developing countries, they have also ‘crowded out’ existing business in many
countries and at the same time have brought little technology transfer and
know-how. Predictably, their ever-increasing economic clout has given them
growing policy influence that they have not been reluctant to wield. They have
been able to steer policy priorities, not only of national governments but also of
key international financial institutions, namely the International Monetary
Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. Each of these insti-
tutions has thus pursued a similar set of policy objectives based on the princi-
ples of a market economy and free trade.
The effects of these objectives on poorer countries in particular have been
evident for quite some time, but over the past decade various scholars and
social movements have recognized that the neoliberal imaginary of globaliza-
tion is in the long run economically, politically and environmentally unsus-
tainable – economically because of the social inequalities and economic
instability it produces, politically because of its undemocratic character, and
environmentally because it assumes that the world’s exploitable resources are
inexhaustible. They have suggested various alternatives, some designed to
‘tame’ the excesses of neoliberal globalization while others are based on a radi-
cally different conception of the ways in which human societies might relate
to each other. In this concluding chapter we will briefly describe some of
these alternatives, characterized as ‘globalization from below’ – involving
responses and resistance to ‘globalization from above’. It should be noted,
however, that those struggling politically for ‘globalization from below’ do
not deny that the new information and communication technologies have
altered our sense of time and space, but insist that globalization can be imag-
ined differently, in ways which are more socially progressive, which do not
destroy individual and community lives but put the values of community and
social justice ahead of market efficiency and individual self-interest. These
social movements view human beings as more than just economic beings con-
cerned only with their own interests.

Taming globalization
Critics of the global political and economic systems, as they have emerged
over the past two decades, occupy a wide spectrum of positions. Towards
the end of the 1990s a number of theorists and political leaders acknowl-
edged that neoliberalism undermined community life, created conditions
that perpetuated social inequalities, and increased the possibilities of social
instability. Even the investor and currency speculator George Soros (2008),
188 Globalizing education policy
who has benefited greatly from financial flows across national boundaries
and the globalization of the economy, warned that market fundamentalism
had the potential of ‘undoing’ capitalism itself. He argued that the current
system of financial speculation undermined healthy economic development.
As a fallabilist in the tradition of Karl Popper (1949), Soros denies the
assumption that markets always correct themselves without any govern-
ment intervention in financial affairs, and insists that for capitalism to work
for everyone it requires an appropriate mix of social and educational policies
designed to promote and sustain ‘open societies’. A contradiction, however,
seems to lie at the heart of Soros’s politics, for on the one hand he has been
an active participant in the global currency flows, while on the other he has
invested heavily in social and educational projects throughout the world,
most notably in former Soviet states.
A similar contradiction characterizes the work of the economist Jeffery
Sachs. As one of the leading architects of the Millennium Development Goals,
Sachs became famous in the mid-1980s when as an economic advisor to the
Bolivian government he proposed a plan, later known as ‘shock therapy‘, to
drastically cut inflation by liberalizing the Bolivian market, ending govern-
ment subsidies, eliminating quotas and linking the Bolivian economy to the
US dollar. In more recent years Sachs has addressed issues of economic devel-
opment, health policy, environmental sustainability and, in particular,
poverty alleviation within the developing world. In his book The End of
Poverty, Sachs (2005) argues that African countries are not poor because their
governance is poor, but that their governance is poor because of high levels of
poverty. He believes that extreme global poverty can be alleviated with rela-
tively modest increases in carefully targeted aid from richer countries. Sachs
suggests, for example, that improved supply of seeds, irrigation and fertilizer
could lead to greater crop yields, thus significantly increasing the income of
subsistence farmers and thereby reducing poverty.
While he has been a consistent critic of the IMF and its policies, as well as
international bankers, for what he sees as their ineffective investment strate-
gies, Sachs has been reluctant to view the structure of the capitalist global
economy itself as a major cause of extreme poverty and social inequalities. In
this way, both his analysis of the problems and his proposals to solve them
remain trapped within the neoliberal imaginary. As Holmstrom and Smith
(2000) point out, Sachs appears to assume that low levels of investment and
poor strategic investment decisions are the only problems facing poorer coun-
tries, and that abandoning state planning, freeing up prices, promoting
private competition with state-owned industry and selling off state industry
as fast as possible, would inevitably create conditions for economic prosperity.
In her book The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein
(2007) contests the narrative Sachs presents of the Bolivian ‘success’ resulting
from his ‘shock therapy’. She argues that neoliberal reforms pushed by Sachs
were neither democratically agreed upon nor achieved without violent state
repression, and left the majority of Bolivians in far worse circumstances. What
 Imagining other globalizations 189
is clear is that Sachs’s policy proposals seem to rely upon the very principles of
the global economy that arguably exacerbated the problems of global ine-
qualities in the first place.
In a manner not dissimilar to Sachs, Joseph Stiglitz (2002) has documented
many of the discontents of globalization. Like Sachs, he too puts much of the
blame for growing levels of social inequalities in the developing world on the
IMF and the structural adjustment schemes it promoted in the 1980s and
1990s. For Stiglitz, globalization has the potential to bring enormous benefits
to both the developing and the developed countries. Stiglitz (2007: 4) argues
that ‘the problem is not with globalization itself but in the way in which glo-
balization has been managed’. His theoretical argument rests on the belief
that markets are never complete or perfect, and that if this is so, the invisible
hand of the so-called free markets cannot be expected to work perfectly either,
especially in the developing countries, where the information needed to make
sound economic decisions is often both lacking and mediated by corrupt poli-
ticians. He maintains that IMF policies have been disastrous because they
have ignored the implications of incomplete information, inadequate markets
and unworkable institutions that often exist, especially in developing coun-
tries. The IMF, Stiglitz suggests, has often called for policies in the develop-
ing countries that conform to the abstract principles of neoliberal economics,
but do not always make sense in the specific material conditions that prevail
there. In this way, he believes markets need to be steered if they are to produce
beneficial social outcomes.
For Stiglitz (2007), this implies the need to democratize globalization. He
maintains that neoliberal globalization has produced a ‘democratic deficit’
created by the fact that the international organizations which have been
entrusted to write the rules for managing the global economy mostly reflect
the interests of the rich within the advanced industrial countries. It is possi-
ble, he argues, for governments to temper the excesses of the global economy
by developing more democratic political institutions, both within and across
nation-states. At the global level, he insists, the IMF, the World Bank and
the World Trade Organization have to be reformed to make them more rep-
resentative, with increased transparency and openness. The developing coun-
tries need to be given a greater voice and the ability to participate meaningfully
in decision-making, with an effective system of accountability and enforce-
ment of the international rule of law. At the national level, Stiglitz believes
that governments have a major role to play in shaping market behaviour,
with well-chosen policy interventions. In a Keynesian tradition, he insists
that governments can fight recessions by using expansionary monetary and
fiscal policies to create demand for goods and services. They can regulate
banks and other financial institutions to prevent exploitative practices, and
use tax policy to steer investment into more productive industries, so that
they can mature to the point at which they can survive foreign competition.
And governments can use a variety of policy instruments ranging from job
creation to human resource development to welfare assistance.
190 Globalizing education policy
In his effort to tame the excesses of globalization, Stiglitz does not however
abandon the underpinning neoliberal emphasis on the individual. He does
not suggest going back to Keynesian economics entirely. In this way, his
views are consistent with theorists like Giddens (1998) who propose a ‘third
way’, a term used to describe a variety of political approaches to governance
that embrace a mix of market and state interventionist philosophies. Both
Stiglitz and Giddens support the notion of public-private partnerships, and
their world view thus represents a centrist or centre-left synthesis of capital-
ism and socialism, or of market liberalism and democratic socialism. But
while Stiglitz mostly speaks of a new global economic and political architec-
ture, the idea of a ‘third way‘ involves a mixture of Fabian Socialism, Keyne-
sian economics, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and even Harold
Macmillan’s One Nation Conservatism. It retains some of the principles of
market-individualism but gives equal weight to the values of social cohesion
and community building. It suggests a particular way national governments
might work with both the opportunities and the challenges of globalization
by engaging with the global economy, but retaining a sense of national iden-
tity and its distinctive interests. In a third way approach, social and educa-
tional policies are not simply derived from economic policies but play an
equally important role in the development of society that is both economi-
cally productive and socially inclusive.
The most notable political figure to have embraced a third way was Tony
Blair in the United Kingdom. But the Clinton administration in the United
States also accepted it as a way of transcending the binary between market
liberalism and democratic socialism, and also containing some of the excesses
of the market. The current Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, in the
wake of the global financial crisis, has clearly articulated a third way position
as well, which he refers to as ‘social democratic’. Rudd (2009: 25) has noted,
‘social democrats maintain robust support for the market economy but posit
that markets can only work in a mixed economy, with a role for the state as
regulator and as a funder and provider of public goods’. Both Clinton and
Blair saw a role for the state in social investment, but when under political
pressure, left markets to run rampant. At the same time, they stressed techno-
logical development, education and competitive mechanisms to pursue eco-
nomic progress and governmental objectives. In their own way, each sought
to protect the modern welfare state through reforms that preserved its eco-
nomic integrity. However, economic and social inequalities continued to
grow within the USA and the UK under third way regimes, not least because
they represented a nation-centric approach in an era in which major economic
exchange largely took place in a globalizing space.
Both Blair and Clinton promoted free trade and the globalization of eco-
nomic activity, little realizing how these undermined national policy initia-
tives. It was under their regimes that the global financial system that has
given rise to the current global financial crisis was established, and was
given unprecedented latitude to make money. The principles of ‘trickle
 Imagining other globalizations 191
down’ economics they often decried to their political constituencies were
actually left intact. The large public investments they made in education
were geared to support privatization regimes, which were often accompa-
nied by structures of educational accountability designed more to enable
individuals to make school choices and reassure the markets, than to develop
critical cosmopolitan individuals and self-governing communities with a
commitment to equality of educational opportunity.
What is clear, then, is that these efforts to tame globalization do not suffi-
ciently address the contradictions of neoliberal globalization. This is so
because while they do not deny the importance of state policy interventions,
they remain trapped within the neoliberal social imaginary. They recognize
that the state has an important role to play in the development of social and
educational policies, but view these policies largely in terms of the contribu-
tion they (and the self-capitalizing, entrepreneurial individuals they produce)
are able to make to enhance the competitiveness of nations (and individuals)
within the global economy. They view strong state structures more in terms
of ensuring successful participation of individuals and communities in open
markets, than in terms of the development of democratic institutions and
practices. Even their support of equity and social cohesion policies is designed
more to ensure the social conditions necessary for capital accumulation, than
to create communities marked by their commitment to social justice. They
are committed to negotiating regimes of international free trade more favour-
able to them than to the principles of fair trade that might benefit the devel-
oping countries. It is the realization of these contradictions that has led
various radical scholars and social movements to insist that the main problem
with neoliberal globalization is not only its excesses, but the core ideas embed-
ded within its imaginary. What is needed, they argue, are more radical alter-
natives which conceptualize human beings as social beings with collective
and common good concerns, to a discussion of which we now turn.

Radical alternatives
Over the past decade there has emerged a strong anti-globalization move-
ment that contests the basic tenets of neoliberalism. At the same time,
however, anti-globalization does not represent a coherent worked-out alterna-
tive, but a diversity of views focusing variously on political, economic, envi-
ronmental and cultural consequences of ‘globalization from above’. As a
movement, anti-globalization is a collection of many different associations
and individuals, some of whom belong to non-government organizations
(NGOs) working outside the state, while others are members of alternative
political parties, such as the Greens, who work within the state system. As a
social movement, anti-globalization activists see themselves initially in terms
of a politics of resistance, and only then as policy actors. Various gatherings of
anti-globalization activists at events such as the meetings of the World Trade
Organization (WTO) and G7 are designed largely as a site for protest against
192 Globalizing education policy
the rules of neoliberal economic and political globalization. The meetings of
WTO in Seattle in 1999 and Cancún in 2003 were targeted for protest, for
example, because it was there that the emerging rules of global trade were
being negotiated. In contrast, the hugely popular World Social Forum (WSF)
and regional social forums bring together activists to discuss and formulate
policy alternatives and strategize ways of protesting free-market economic
and political orthodoxies. Some of these activists work for NGOs, which
operate in highly localized settings to challenge not only neoliberal state poli-
cies but also the exploitative practices of transnational corporations.
Insofar as much of its work occurs outside the state policy arena, the anti-
globalization movement attaches considerable importance to information
sharing. Organizations such as Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen in the USA,
the UK-based New Economic Foundation, the Malaysia-based Third World
Network, the Thailand-based Focus on the Global South, and the New
York-based Foundation of Ethics and Meaning have created excellent inter-
active websites and publish outstanding policy reports. The World Social
Forum, created in 2001 partly in response to the highly successful World
Economic Forum held in Davos every year to promote neoliberal thinking,
views itself as:

… an open meeting place where social movements, networks, NGOs and other
civil society organizations opposed to neoliberalism and a world dominated by
capital or by any form of imperialism come together to pursue their thinking, to
debate ideas democratically, to formulate proposals, share their experiences freely
and network for effective action.

Included among the policy positions articulated at the WSF are the convic-
tions that neoliberalism has created a one-size-fits-all recipe for international
economic management that is brazenly free-market; that it has led to a global
democratic deficit; that its growth-at-all-costs orientation is environmentally
unsustainable; and that it has the potential to destroy long-cherished cultural
traditions.
Anti-globalization activists associated with the WSF have paid particular
attention to the emerging rules of global trade. They have denied the very pos-
sibility of free trade, and have argued instead for trade rules that are fairer to the
developing communities in particular. Oxfam, a British NGO, argues that the
way international trade is currently conducted is highly biased against poor
countries, but that managed well it can help alleviate global poverty. It argues,
for example, that if Africa, South Asia and Latin America were each to increase
their share of world exports by just one per cent, extreme poverty could be
eliminated for some 128 million people. Its Fair Trade campaign launched in
2002 advocated lifting of trade barriers against products of developing coun-
tries by industrialized societies. The main policy tools of the advocates of Fair
Trade is the end of what they refer to as ‘rich-country protectionism’, in the
form of subsidies and import restrictions, and other bilateral and multilateral
 Imagining other globalizations 193
agreements disadvantageous to poorer countries. Equally, it is argued that
developing countries be allowed to use tariffs to protect their local agricultural
industries. In this way, many anti-globalization activists are not opposed to
global trade, but rather insist on rules that protect labour rights and environ-
mental conditions. Greenpeace, for example, advocates trade agreements to
achieve environmental ends.
The main political targets of Fair Trade advocates are the World Trade
Organization and the World Bank. It is argued by the European Greens, for
example, that the WTO negotiations are marked by lack of transparency,
openness and consultation, and that the WTO’s influence has already spread
too far and has often worked against the principles of human rights, labour
standards, cultural diversity and the environment. The World Development
Movement goes as far as to suggest that all of the WTO’s General Agreement
on Trade in Services (GATS) negotiations should be stopped, while grave
concerns remain about the impact of GATS on the poor. In respect of the
World Bank there is an almost universal belief that current Third World debt
levels are unsustainable, and that some portion of this debt, if not all, should
be cancelled. The advocates of Fair Trade also express concern over the lack of
control of capital flows, especially as these are exploited by transnational cor-
porations (TNCs). Instead, they support the introduction of the Tobin Tax on
speculative foreign exchange transactions, which have been a major source of
the current global financial crisis. The Tobin Tax is named after Keynesian
economist James Tobin, who proposed this tax as a means of discouraging
short-term speculative global capital movements, and as a way of raising
money that could be invested in the poorest countries.
One of the main problems with these policy proposals, however, has to do
with their reliance on the potential of global trade in alleviating poverty and
promoting global justice. It is not at all clear that the benefits of freeing up
global trade would be equally distributed. Further, as Buckman (2004: 181)
points out, these policy proposals appeal ‘to values of international fairness
based upon agreed upon global rules’, but this is predicated on a legalistic
assumption that ‘all nations are equal in the eyes of international globaliza-
tion laws’. Furthermore, the terms of international trade rules are too often
determined by power relationships, and it is the powerful that have the great-
est interest in maintaining these relationships of inequalities in trade.
This is a point that has been powerfully made by Walden Bello (2002),
who argues that nothing short of what he refers to as ‘deglobalization’ is
needed. He suggests that the organizations promoting neoliberal economic
globalization – the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and the Group of Seven
– have no real interest in transforming the world’s financial and trade rules.
Various proposals for reform such as those put forward by the Commission on
Global Governance and the US Congress’s Meltzer Commission proposals
have merely tinkered with marginal policy changes. The world, he insists,
needs a radical shift towards a decentralized, pluralistic system of economic
governance, allowing countries to follow development strategies appropriate
194 Globalizing education policy
to their needs and circumstances. This ‘deglobalization’ means radically
reducing the powers and roles of the existing TNC-driven WTO and Bretton
Woods institutions, as well as the formation of new institutions helping to
devolve the greater part of production, trade and economic decision-making
to national and local levels. It is interesting that Barack Obama and Gordon
Brown, in the wake of the global financial crisis, have both called for the crea-
tion of a new, post-Bretton Woods global system of financial regulation to
reflect the global character of the economy today.
Bello’s policy proposals are in line with another element within the broader
anti-globalization movement: localization. The idea of localization has been
powerfully advocated by a whole range of scholars and environmentalists who
argue that globalization has already gone too far and can no longer be tamed,
and that therefore a new approach to economic, cultural and environmental
sustainability is needed. In his highly influential book Going Local, Shuman
(1998) describes the aim of localization as one that:

… does not mean walling off the outside world. It means nurturing locally
owned businesses which use local resources sustainably, employ local workers at
decent wages and serve primarily local customers. It means becoming more self-
sufficient and less dependent on imports. Control moves from the boardrooms of
distant corporations and back to community where it belongs.

According to another localization theorist, Colin Hines (2000: 29), there is an

alternative to corporate neoliberal globalization, but localization policies
‘must be seen as a plausible way to reverse the instability and insecurity that
trade liberalization has wrought upon the world’. He insists on the need to
reclaim control over local economies, to make them as diverse as possible and
to rebuild stability into community life. This does not mean a return to over-
powering state control, but a policy framework that enables people and busi-
nesses to develop patterns of social exchange that are immediate and
reciprocal.
This implies the development of a new overarching economic and political
architecture that enables local initiatives to flourish, not only with respect to
commerce and trade but also in relation to cultural, social and educational
policies. Hines (2000) argues that local control does not guarantee democ-
racy, equality, environmental protection and so on, but makes it more likely.
He lists six main potential advantages of localization: maximum devolution
of political power and democratic accountability; local control of the economy;
protection of the environment; the improvement of social and environmental
conditions; a positive role for local competition; and the development of trade
and aid rules for self-reliance. Hines (ibid.: 37) recognizes that his is a call for
a new imaginary of social life, and that it requires a fundamental ‘mind-
wrench’, but he insists that human society is fast running out of options and
that neoliberal globalization may have run its course. As environmental prob-
lems associated with global production and movement of goods become ever
 Imagining other globalizations 195
more evident, as communities become more fragmented and dysfunctional,
and as the current neoliberal world economic management system breaks
down, localization now becomes at least thinkable, demanding a new set of
rules for the development of human society.
As appealing as some of these sentiments seem, the localization agenda is
also beset with a number of contradictions. For example, it appeals to univer-
sal values of empowerment, democracy and self-sufficiency, but always within
a context of local control. What it does not do is to recognize the importance
of inter-community relations, which in an era of globalization potentially
stretch across the entire world. The idea of localization invariably refers to
specific geographically bounded communities, but there are now competing
definitions of community, along with a whole host of identity categories. The
advocates of localization insist that they are not against internationalization
but opposed to economic globalization, yet do not specify how this distinc-
tion might work with respect to particular policy positions. Their ideas also
appear to lack a theory of the state: that is, some notion of exactly how the
state at the national level might relate to local initiatives and safeguard people
against local economic control becoming a recipe for exploitation. To disman-
tle globalization, furthermore, localization theorists appear to rely on a huge
amount of international cooperation that the world has never witnessed before.
In the end, various elements of the anti-globalization movement engage in a
fair amount of utopian thinking about the desirability of local policy control,
without addressing the need for a more general policy architecture that speci-
fies rules for the conduct of the global networks within which public policy
(including education policy) is now developed and enacted.

Reimagining globalization
To a considerable extent, the globalization genie has been let out of the bottle;
there is thus no turning back to some imagined past when social relations
were highly localized. There is no return from the communication and infor-
mation technologies that have transformed the nature of work, production
processes and economic activity. A return to localized modes of production
may be possible on the edges, but is not likely on a mass scale. Global move-
ments of people have created diasporic networks that have redefined people’s
identities and senses of belonging; it is hard to imagine how they could return
to purely local affiliations. Globalization has changed the ways people and
communities now relate to each other. They (the more privileged) have devel-
oped cosmopolitan tastes for goods and services and for travel. Cultural diver-
sity has now become a permanent feature of global cities in particular.
Globalization has also created new practices of governance, new possibilities
of international cooperation, without which it is impossible to solve global
environmental problems such as climate change and the distribution of water
across local communities and national borders. Nor is it entirely desirable to
abandon those aspects of globalization that have greatly benefited individuals
196 Globalizing education policy
and communities. While many economic nationalists, religious fundamental-
ists and radical environmentalists have rightly stressed various destructive
effects of contemporary neoliberal globalization, they have overlooked that it
has sometimes also helped to improve the material conditions of people, to
reinvigorate rather than undermine cultural heritages, and has offered poten-
tial solutions to our collective environmental problems.
Throughout this book we have argued that the problem is not with glo-
balization itself, but with the particular manner in which global interconnect-
ivity has been interpreted, through the conceptual prism of a neoliberal social
imaginary. We have shown how this imaginary has become globally hegem-
onic, leading to a range of economic policies that have benefited some com-
munities while destroying others. Neoliberal globalization has created new
forms of social stratification, and on the whole has tended to widen gaps in
social chances. These injustices are not, as Scholte (2000: 234) has argued,
‘inherent to globalization, but have mainly flowed from neoliberal approaches
to the new geography’. Central to neoliberalism has been its market funda-
mentalism, the assumption that markets provide the best policy mechanism
for organizing societies, and that their development best flows from an empha-
sis on the values of individual freedom and self-interest and market freedom
and efficiency. Recent policy reforms in education around the world have
mostly assumed the validity of this assumption. Educational policy objectives
have thus become closely tied to economic goals, as the production of indi-
viduals with the knowledge, skills and dispositions that can help them
enhance their own and national competitiveness within the global economy.
In this way, educational values are no longer considered in their own terms,
but have become derivative of neoliberal economic thinking.
Yet in recent years, the contradictions of this economic orthodoxy have
become abundantly clear. The transnational corporations and banks that once
rejected any role for the state are now begging it to rescue them from their
own excesses. They have begged for large sums of public money to keep intact
the financial system upon which they rely. The governments that once rejected
any significant role in regulating their behaviour are now struggling to figure
out how to hold them accountable for the use of public money and to consider
the features of a global system of re-regulation. To prevent a global recession
they are no longer reluctant to inject money into public projects and social
benefits, designed to ensure that the whole global economic edifice of neolib-
eralism does not collapse entirely. John Maynard Keynes, so it seems, is back
in favour. Indeed, the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has gone as far
as to declare the death of neoliberalism (2009: 25): ‘the great neoliberal exper-
iment of the past thirty years has failed’. Explicitly, Rudd (ibid.) has
observed:

With the demise of neo-liberalism, the role of the state has once more been
recognized as fundamental. The state has been the primary actor in responding
to three clear areas of the current crisis: in rescuing the private financial system
 Imagining other globalizations 197
from collapse; in producing direct stimulus to the real economy because of the
collapse in private demand; and in the design of a national and global regulatory
regime in which government has ultimate responsibility to determine and
enforce the rules of the system.

Not only do left-leaning leaders such as Barack Obama and Gordon Brown
seem to agree with Rudd’s observations, but so do conservatives such as
Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel who, with the Group of 20, are strug-
gling to develop a new set of regulatory rules for the global economy in which
state regulation is no longer a dirty word.
It is premature to assume the death of neoliberalism, however. While in
macro-economic policy some of its key tenets are being rethought, the reach
of its social imaginary runs deep. Over the past two decades the neoliberal
social imaginary, as we have argued, has transformed thinking in almost all
policy arenas, including education. For example, neoliberalism has steered
education policy priorities towards a particular curriculum architecture with
an emphasis on the skills and dispositions needed for participation in the
global knowledge economy, modes of governance that have highlighted the
principles of privatization and choice, and an audit culture that stresses per-
formance contracts and various national and international regimes of testing
and accountability, which have thinned out the purposes, pedagogies and
potential of education.
These policy priorities were largely derived and justified in terms of neolib-
eral economic thinking, but even as the flaws in this mode of thinking become
apparent, governments seem unprepared to reconsider the education policies
that are derived from it. Indeed, the neoliberal social imaginary remains intact
in education policy, with continuing emphasis on national curriculum and
testing regimes as well as on the ideology of school choice and the production
of entrepreneurial individuals. What seems clear is that this neoliberal social
imaginary continues to hold us captive, well after its key assumptions have
been rejected and been seen to have precipitated the global financial crisis,
which is having negative real economy effects worldwide, with consequences
for public policy. The capacity of national governments to fund education
will be challenged because of the economic stimulus packages that have been
instigated to ensure continuing consumer spending and inhibit economic
slowdown and the money expended on stabilizing banks and other financial
institutions.
Yet, just as it is important to rethink economic policy, so must we recon-
sider social and education policies that look beyond the dictates of neolib-
eral globalization, and reimagine another globalization that does not reject
the facts of global interconnectivity and interdependence, but seeks to
interpret them differently, so as to consider the important role education
must play in creating a more environmentally and economically secure,
socially just and democratic global future. In working towards such a future
it is not simply possible to rely upon governments or the wisdom that
198 Globalizing education policy
resides with local communities, but we must rely on a new global network
of networks. In the current financial crisis, attempts are being made to redi-
rect and regulate the markets that have caused so much distress; however,
these reforms do not challenge the deeper social order, and they are located
within the existing framework of capitalist production and bureaucratic
governance. In contrast, radical alternatives, while they challenge the under-
lying neoliberal social imaginary, are based on communitarian logic, which
neither recognizes the facts of global interconnectivity nor allows the pos-
sibility of another form of globalization, delivering greater security, justice
and democracy. They risk the dangers of romantic localism that can easily
degenerate into inward-looking reactionary politics, such as that associated
with various forms of fundamentalism.
Public policies, as we have argued in chapter 4, always involve concern for
human security. In recent years, however, this concern has become narrowly
defined as physical security from the acts of terrorism. But security is about
much more than simply physical security (Peters 2005). In a globally intercon-
nected world, environmental security, for example, requires policies to reduce
ecological destruction, but these policies cannot succeed if they are simply local
or national, no matter how well-intentioned. Problems of ecological degrada-
tion and global warming are global, and require solutions that involve a robust
system of international relations. Similarly, interstate conflict cannot be resolved
bilaterally, and requires an agency such as the United Nations, albeit in a form
that is much more effective. Similarly, economic security of people cannot be
assured without a fundamental restructuring of the global economic system.
The neoliberal economic order, with its emphasis on lightly regulated produc-
tion, finance and trade, has imposed heavy social costs on many communities.
Policy reforms are now needed to ensure that there is not only greater regula-
tion, but also policies that are people-orientated, involving socially useful pro-
grammes and jobs that meet certain environmental and labour standards, and
that protect cultural traditions and yet at the same time promote social cohe-
sion, opportunity and more equality.
The value of equity has also always been important to public policy, but in
recent decades a very weak concept of equity has been promoted, often becom-
ing secondary to the requirements of human resource development for par-
ticipation in the global economy. So, for example, the importance of gender
equality in the Global South has been recognized, but not because it is morally
just, but because it is assumed it will produce greater economic productivity.
A form of globalization that is more gender-sensitive is clearly needed (Unter-
halter 2007), in which women have an equal chance of providing political and
policy leadership. Under neoliberal policies, social inequalities both within
and across nations have increased. This cannot and will not be tolerated by
those who are left behind; redistributive policies are therefore needed to
address the growing divide across the Global North and Global South.
Reforms are also needed to eliminate the neoliberal policy structures that have
resulted in the marginalization and subordination of people of colour, rural
 Imagining other globalizations 199
populations, children and the elderly. A globally humane future is impossible
without the social cohesion and security that can only be produced by a greater
focus on social inequalities and a commitment to more equality, nationally
and globally.
The values of security, equality and social cohesion through public policy
cannot, however, be realized without a new kind of politics – and the govern-
ance structures through which policies are developed, enacted and evaluated.
Nothing short of the democratization of globalization is needed. Despite its
rhetoric of individual freedom, neoliberal globalization has created conditions
in which political power has become concentrated in the hands of a few rich
countries, major transnational corporations and international organizations
such as the OECD and the WTO. Power needs to be devolved, so that nations
and local communities can become genuinely involved in decision-making
processes. While national, regional and transnational agencies have a signifi-
cant role to play in the governance of global relations, ultimate political
authority needs to be as close to local government as possible, with mecha-
nisms for popular consultations on global policies. At the same time, efforts
need to be made to ensure greater transparency of policy processes at all levels,
as well as local representation on global agencies such as the World Bank.
What is clear is that a democratic global civil space is needed to ensure that
substantially greater resources flow to civil social development, and that there
is at least some measure of popular control over such social development.
A number of theorists and activists have shown how these ideas are not
entirely fanciful, but can be realized. Held and McGrew (2002), for example,
have argued convincingly in favour of a case for a cosmopolitan social democ-
racy. They have suggested that such a project can revive some of the tradi-
tional values of social democracy and be (ibid.: 131):

… conceived as a basis for uniting around the promotion of the impartial admin-
istration of law at the international level; greater transparency, accountability
and democracy in global governance; a deeper commitment to social justice in
the pursuit of a more equitable distribution of the world’s resources and human
security; the protection and reinvention of community at diverse levels (from the
local to the global); and the regulation of the global economy through the public
management of financial and trade flows, the provision of global public goods,
and the engagement of leading stakeholders in corporate governance.

Effectively, Held and McGrew insist that it is possible to reimagine the nature
of political community in an era of globalization, so that it is more and not
less democratic, where civic spaces exist for popular participation in policy-
making. This, they argue, requires us to reconsider some of the key terms of
political association such as legitimacy, sovereignty, identity and citizenship
(Archibugi and Held 1995). Democracy, they maintain, can be reconceptual-
ized to include subnational, national and transnational levels of political
organization; and they also maintain that conditions now exist that can make
200 Globalizing education policy
cosmopolitan social democracy not only perfectly plausible, but even
necessary.
Democratic accountability is a fundamental requirement of cosmopolitan
democracy. A whole range of localities are now experimenting with its possi-
bilities, notably in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where a process of democratic delib-
eration and decision-making was developed in the 1990s to ensure what has
been referred to as ‘participatory budgeting’. This meant encouraging ordi-
nary residents to decide how to allocate the municipal or public budget, to
present their demands and priorities for improvement, and to more generally
influence the determination of programmes through discussions and negotia-
tions. This form of democratic accountability involved election of budget del-
egates to represent different communities, as well as facilitation and technical
assistance by public employees, local and higher-level assemblies to deliberate
and vote on spending priorities, and allowing general participation in the
evaluation of programmes. The evidence so far suggests many promising out-
comes, including more equitable public spending, increased satisfaction of
basic needs, greater government transparency and accountability, and
increased levels of participation, especially by the marginalized or poorer resi-
dents of Porto Alegre. Similar experiments have been tried in India and South
Africa, and within the Zapatista movement among the people of Chiapas in
Mexico, which has been fighting to ensure protection of their traditional cul-
tural, political and economic rights, especially in the face of predatory
globalization.
Each of these experiments in democracy illustrates the importance of edu-
cation policy, not only with respect to issues of access and opportunity, alloca-
tion of resources and structures of accountability, but also in relation to the
role that democratic learning must play in developing a new social imaginary
that challenges the neoliberal construction of globalization. The citizenship
functions of formal education, then, need to be located within local, national
and global considerations of the work of citizens today and extended well
beyond constructions of citizens as merely consumers of policy. Porto Alegre,
for example, is not only a democratic forum but also a site of education in
critical participatory citizenship. This gives a broader, democratic meaning to
Bernstein’s (2001a) talk of the ‘totally pedagogised society’, currently framed
by the neoliberal imaginary. If the neoliberal social imaginary of globaliza-
tion is to be challenged, new ways of thinking about global interconnectivity
and interdependence are necessary.
If global poverty is to be ameliorated, as the welfare economist Amartya
Sen has argued, structural rearrangements are not sufficient; the capabilities
of people need to be developed. Sen’s ‘capability approach’ stresses the impor-
tance of real freedom in an assessment of the ways in which people are able to
understand and take advantage of their circumstances, by transforming
resources into valuable activities. It emphasizes functional capabilities, ‘sub-
stantive freedoms’ such as the ability to live to an old age, engage in economic
transactions or participate in political activities. Sen thus understands global
 Imagining other globalizations 201
poverty as capability deprivation, and views education as fundamental to the
development of capabilities with which to exercise practical choices and to
enhance freedom (Walker 2006). There is a rationale for education here as the
enhancement of freedom through the universalizing of capability. For Sen,
the purposes of economic development ought to be the enhancement of
freedom, globally.
The capability approach indicates a promising avenue for exploring an
alternative imaginary of globalization, based not on a singular, individual-
istic and economistic view of human needs, but emphasizing the impor-
tance of not only freedom of choice but also individual heterogeneity and
the multidimensional nature of welfare and welfare needs. An emphasis on
capabilities means that education policies can no longer overlook the impor-
tance of learning new ways of engaging with and responding to global
interconnectivity and interdependence. This might be referred to as the
requirement of ‘cosmopolitan learning’ (Rizvi 2008) and the production of
cosmopolitan citizens focused locally, nationally and globally on achieving
the greater collective good.
If the neoliberal imaginary steers us towards a particular formation of sub-
jective awareness, together with a particular ideological interpretation of
recent changes in the global economy and culture, it cannot be challenged
without a competing imaginary. This competing and new social imaginary
will emphasize cosmopolitan learning that does not ‘ontologize’ market logic
and the self-capitalizing individual, but seeks to work with a different moral
sense of people’s ‘situatedness in the world’, in ways that are both critical and
reflexive. This imaginary would recognize the social and cultural nature of
human behaviour and being, as well as concern for the collective common
good within an environmentally sustainable politics.
If the current global financial crisis has demonstrated quite starkly the
multifarious shortcomings of the neoliberal social imaginary of globalization,
constructing a new imaginary needs to be the focus of contemporary political
explorations, conversations and theorizing. Even in those countries where the
threadbare character of neoliberal globalization has now been acknowledged,
there has however been little thought given to new social policies, including
education policy frameworks, which need to flow from the failure of neoliber-
alism. In Australia, for example, where the Prime Minister has been a vehe-
ment critic of neoliberalism and its abundant failures, education policy is still
conceptualized solely as contributing to economic productivity, with some-
what weaker acknowledgment and recognition of its social justice and social
and cultural purposes. Accountability pressures are also still of the narrow
kind, with reductive effects on pedagogies and purposes of schooling. The
pressing need for a new education policy framework is a challenge to views of
education that are narrowly framed.
We need a new imaginary which recognizes that human beings are social
and cultural beings as well as economic ones, an imaginary that recognizes
the need to think locally, nationally and globally. Such an imaginary suggests
202 Globalizing education policy
the need for the construction of cosmopolitan citizenship that emphasizes col-
lective well-being sutured across local, national and global dimensions. This
implies the need to rethink, for example, the idea of accountability, which
recognizes in all its complexity the broader and democratically progressive
purposes of education. This form of accountability would be not only top-
down and vertical in character, but also bottom-up, as well as horizontal,
linking schools in reciprocally accountable ways to their communities. A new
social imaginary is necessary to frame education policy in the wake of the
egregious failures of neoliberalism. Education policy needs to be globalized
and deparochialized in new ways. This demands that we rethink the mean-
ings of the values of efficiency, equity, community, liberty and security which
have hitherto underpinned all public policies, including education policy,
and also rethink their collective articulation and assemblage.
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Index

academic mobility 162, 168–72, 176 backward mapping 53, 59

accountability 3, 20, 72, 116, 121, 197, Ball, Stephen 5, 6, 8, 12, 20, 21, 42, 51, 58,
200, 202 63, 122, 125, 127, 138
affirmative action policies 76, 145 Barthes, Roland 123–4
agency theory 88, 89, 120 Bauman, Z. 144
aid, international 41, 128 Bello, Walden 193
American Council on Education 173 benchmarking 22
American Educational Research Association Berliner, D. 135
(AERA) 57 Bernstein, Basil 18, 92, 98, 99, 103, 105, 200
Anderson, B. 13 Blair, Tony 60, 62, 96, 190
Anthony, Kenny 112 Bolivia 188
anti-globalization movement 191–5 Bologna Process 171
APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) Bourdieu, Pierre 13, 16, 33, 34, 39, 48, 49,
79, 121, 177 53, 65, 66, 67, 102, 113; notion of fields
APEID (Asia Pacific Program of Educational 61–2, 68
Innovation for Development) 121 boys’ education 150–1
Appadurai, Arjun 14, 17, 35, 36, 37, 38, 48, brain circulation 181–2
64, 65, 79, 126; Modernity at Large 65 brain drain 162, 179–82
APPEAL (Asia Pacific Program of Education Bray, M. 86–7
for All) 121 Brennan, T. 65
Apple, M.W. 98 Brenner, N. 118
Arab Scientists and Technologists Abroad Brighouse, H. 90
(ASTA) 181 Brown, Gordon 194, 197
Asia 27, 81, 143, 144, 148, 152–3, 169–70 Brown, M. 181
assessment: international student 124 see also Brown, P. 123
PISA; see also testing Buckman, G. 186, 193
assessment for learning 99, 101 Burawoy, M. 51
Association of Latin American Scientists Bush, George 97
(ALAS) 181
audit culture 47, 96, 98–9, 124–5, 197 Canclini, Néstor García 166
Auge, M. 66 capability approach 200–1
Australia 49; and curriculum 95–6, 97, 114; capitalism 26, 27, 28, 118
disadvantaged schools programme 11; CARICOM (Caribbean Common Market) 112
education policy 21, 95, 201; see also Carley, M. 10
Queensland Castells, Manuel 26, 66, 126, 145, 153
authority: public policy and state 11–14 Centre for Research and Innovation (CERI)
autonomy 121, 149, 164; of policy 13, 19, 129
20, 39, 67–8, 72, 113; teacher Cerny, P. 17
professional 102 China 21, 143, 151, 170, 177, 180
222 Index
choice 86, 90–1, 197 Dewey, John 74, 83; Democracy and Education
citizenship 18; cosmopolitan 201, 202 74
Clarke, J. 119–20 diasporic networks 179, 180–1, 195
Clinton, Bill 190 Dicken, P. 28, 41
Coburn, C.E. 102 digital divide 140, 153–6
Cohen, R. 32, 176, 177 Dimitriadis, G. 104
Colombo Plan 168–9, 172 distributive paradigm 159–60
‘colonial present’ 69, 113 distributive policies 11
colonialism/imperialism: effect on Dollar, D. 142
curriculum and pedagogy 114–15; and donor agencies 112–13
globalization 25; and research 64–5 Drucker, P. 81
commensurability: pressure towards 133–6 du Gay, P. 119
Commission on Global Governance 127, 193 Durkheim, E. 73–4
community 66, 71, 77–9, 88, 91, 756; Dye, T. 4
imagined 13, 17, 96
comparative international educational Easton, David 7, 11, 36
performance 122–4, 133 economic growth: and education 98, 131,
Connell, Raewyn 48, 64 140, 180, 196
consensus 39, 42 economic policy: focus on education 18, 103,
Considine, M. 7 114
contemporary social theory 47, 65, 103 education: as central to economic
conventions 39, 40, 42 competitiveness and growth of countries
cosmopolitan citizenship 201, 202 98, 131, 140, 180, 196;
cosmopolitan social democracy 199–200 commercialization of 3, 125;
critical discourse analysis (CDA) 3, 60, 62–3 corporatization and marketization of 80;
critical race theory 47, 57 as an ‘export industry’ 169; focus of
Crystal, D. 178 economic policy on 18, 103, 114;
cultural diversity 182, 195; policy responses internationalization of 169; trade in
to 162–8 171–2
cultures: learning about other 174, 175 Education Action Zones (EAZs) 62
curriculum 92, 94–104; in Australia 95–6, Education for All see EFA
97, 114; and Education in Pakistan – education departments: relations with
A White Paper 110–12; in England 94–5, schools 119
97, 114; in Germany 98; impact of Education in Pakistan – A White Paper 110–12
globalization on 96–7; education policy: and the allocation of values
internationalization of 172–5, 176; and 71–92; economization of 18, 103;
New Basics curriculum trial (Queensland) interaction with other policies 18–19; and
106–9; policy significance of 94–6; legislation 21; and market 116;
relationship with assessment and testing mediatization of 62, 107
97–102; Scottish reform 96–7; in United education policy analysis 44–70; analysis of/
States 97–8; vernacular reform of 97 for binary 45–6; conducting of 49;
Curriculum for Excellence, A 96–7 consideration of colonial past and present
69; deparochialization of 103, 202; elite
Dale, Roger 42, 118, 127 studies approach 58–9; and evaluation
decentralization 120–1 studies 59–60; and evidence-based policy
deglobalization 193–4 49–50, 58; globalizing 63–8; and
Delpit, L. 99 implementation studies 53, 58, 59;
democracy 72, 120, 199–200 importance of historical understanding
democratic deficit 189, 192 48, 50, 69; multiple foci of 46; policy
democratic equity 77, 78, 85 ecology approach 59, 69; and policy
democratic socialism 190 sociology 50–2, 57; and policy text
deregulation policies 41 analysis 58, 60–2; positionality of
Desrosieres, A. 135–6 researcher 46–8, 49, 50, 69; and power
deterritorialization 166–7 50; purposes and positionalities 45–50;
 Index 223
questions for 50–6, 54–66; and rational- Focus on the Global South 192
instrumental techniques 52; recognition Foray, D. 82
of relationality of policy developments 69; Foucault, Michel 8, 12, 36, 50, 57, 62, 63,
and reflexivity 48–9, 51, 63, 69; and 88, 128, 137–8, 185
research 57–63; shifts in processes 14–21; Foundation of Ethics and Meaning 192
and space/place distinction 65–6; and Fraser, Nancy 51, 159
trajectory studies approach 58, 59 freedom 87–8
Education Queensland 105, 108–9 Freire, Paulo 83
Education Reform Act (1988) 90, 95 Friedman, Milton and Rose 90
Education Sector Development Plan (St Lucia) Fukuyama, Francis 2
112–13 functional decentralization 120–1
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 57, functionalist sociological tradition: and
60 educational values 73–4
educational justice 141, 156–60
EFA (Education for All) 146–7, 148, 149, Gale, Trevor 51, 57, 62–3
150 GCSEs 97, 101
efficiency: focus on 72, 88, 90, 91, 116, 117, ‘GDP multiplier effects’ 180
119, 124; social 78–9, 84, 85, 86, 91; Gellner, E. 30
value of 76–7; see also market efficiency gender 45–6; and equality/equity 140,
elite studies 58–9 150–3, 156, 198
Elmore, R. 59 General Agreement on Trade in Services
England: and curriculum 94–5, 97, 114; (GATS) 172, 193
education policy 19, 103; Literacy Hour Germany 98, 134
102; and testing 98, 100; use of Gewirtz, S. 62, 122
performance data 20, 100, 101 Giddens, A. 23, 190
English: globalization of 170, 176–9 Gil, D. 53
environmental security 198 Gillborn, D. 101
‘epistemological diffidence’ 48, 64 girls’ education 150–1
‘epistemological innocence’ 48–9, 63–4, 65 global cities 31
‘epistemological openness’ 48, 65 global consciousness 30, 34
equality/equity, educational 72, 76, 77, 91, global imagination 51
140–60, 185–6; and EFA 146–7, 148, Global North/Global South divide 47, 68,
149, 150; gender 140, 150–3, 156, 198; 109, 150–1, 184, 198
and MDGs 147–9; see also inequality global positioning 112, 114
ERASMUS programme 173 globalism 32
ethnography 50–1 globalization, neoliberal 22–43; as an
European Union (EU) 14, 16, 43, 118, 173 ideology 31–3; axes of 51; benefits of 196;
evaluation studies 59–60 centrality of space and place 65, 66; and
evidence-based policy 49–50, 58 colonialism 25; criticism of 142, 186–7,
export processing zones (EPZs) 28 191–5; cultural and political shifts 28–31;
debates about 23–8; of economic activity
Fair Trade campaign 192–3 26–8; of English 170, 176–9; experiencing
Fairclough, N. 38, 60, 61, 62 of differently by different communities 24;
Falk, Richard 36 globalist/sceptic view of 23–4; impact of
Faludi, S. 151 23; impact of on security 144; and
Fergusson, J. 154 improved ICT 26; and inequalities 141–5,
Field, J. 84 187; and national identity 30; need for
fields 61–2, 68 democratization of 189, 199; performative
financial crisis (2008) 23, 88, 186, 194, 198, construction of 33, 65; reimagining
201 195–202; resistance to and taming of
fiscal decentralization 120, 121 187–91; and shift from government to
Fisher, J. 64 governance 17–18, 117–21, 1126, 127;
Fitz, J. 51 social imaginary of 8, 13, 23, 24–5, 33–41,
flexible accumulation 26, 27 42, 67, 75, 79, 84, 86, 91, 117, 182–3,
224 Index
184, 185, 187, 196, 200, 201; and spread ideology: globalization as an 31–3; and
of information 26–7; and the state 28–31; privatization 87
and transformationalists 24; and imagined communities 13, 17, 96
transnational corporations 27–8, 41, 144, IMF (International Monetary Fund) 127,
187, 193, 196 144, 177–80, 189
‘globalization from above’ 36, 65, 67, 168, implementation studies 53, 58, 59
186, 191 Improving Schools Programme (ISP) 100
‘globalization from below’ 36, 65, 67, 122, India 143, 151, 170, 180, 185
139, 168, 187 inequality 185, 188, 190, 198–9; and
governance 116–39; ‘good’ 116–17, commercial character of international
governmentality as effect of 137–8; education 172; and digital divide 153–6;
institutionalising mechanisms of 127; and gender 150–3; and globalization 141–5,
international comparative measures of 187; in mobility 144; see also equality
performance 122–4; international information, global flows of 153–4
organizations important to 127, 128; and intercultural competence: development of
mutual accountability 124–5, 128; and skills in 174, 175
networked relationships 126; and new intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) 4,
public management 118, 119–22, 127; 38, 79, 114
pressures towards commensurability International Association for the Evaluation
133–6; and privatization 125; production of Educational Achievements (IEWA) 124
of new teacher subjects 138; resistance to international education 168–72
138–9, 183; role of OECD 128–33; and International English Language Testing
scalar politics 136–7; shift from System (IELTS) 178
government to 17–18, 117–21, 126, 127 international student assessment
governmentality 128, 137–8, 185 programmes 124 see also PISA
Greenpeace 193 internationalization: of curriculum 172–5,
Gregory, D. 113 176
Gunn, L.A. 4 Internet: and digital divide 154–6
interpretivism 47
Haas, E. 128
habitus 34, 62, 68 Jayasuriya, K. 40, 68
Hall, Stuart 165 Jefferson, Thomas 83
Hartley, D. 100 Journal of Education Policy 57
Harvey, D. 26 justice 87–8; equity policies and educational
Hatcher, R. 125 156–60
Head, B. 49–50
Held, D. 23, 24, 31, 137, 199 Kemmis, S. 53
higher education: and mobility 162, 168–72, Kennedy, P. 32, 176, 177
176; and new technologies 155–6 Kenway, Jane 6, 52
Hines, Colin 194 Key Learning Areas (KLAs) 109
Hirst, P.H. 73 key performance indicators 47
History 48, 50, 69, 114 Keynes, John Maynard 196
Hogan, D. 7 Keynesian economics 2–3, 88, 125, 158,
Hogwood, B.W. 4 185, 189, 190
Holmstrom, N. 188 Klees, Stephen 186
Honan, E. 61 Klein, Naomi: The Shock Doctrine 188
human capital terms: education conceived in Knight, Jane 171
72, 80–1, 116, 158, 186 knowledge economy 16, 81–2, 85, 96, 103,
Hursh, David 97, 100 138
hybridity 166, 167, 168 Kraay, A. 142

ICT (information and communication Labaree, David 77, 78

tecnology) 26, 80–1 Ladson-Billings, G. 105
identity 162–3, 165 Latour, Bruno 135
 Index 225
league tables 98, 100, 122 Mountford, A. 180
‘learning pathways’ 84, 85 multiculturalism 163–5
legislation: and education policy 21 multilingualism 178
legitimacy 11, 12 Mundy, K. 123
Legrain, P. 142 mutual accountability 124–5, 128
Leicester, M. 84
Levitas, R. 146 Nation at Risk, A 97–8
liberal-humanism 157 nation-states 12–14, 13, 21, 27, 29–30,
liberty 76, 77, 91 40–1, 63, 67–8, 114, 118, 133, 141
lifelong learning 82–6, 103, 112 National Assessment Program – Literacy and
Lingard, B. 14, 38, 49, 58 Numeracy (NAPLAN) 99, 109
Lipman, P. 101 national capital 67–8
literacy education 6–7 National Curriculum Statements and Profiles
Literacy Hour 102 95
localization 194–5 national identity: and globalization 30
Luke, Alan 7, 60, 100, 106 National Policy for the Education of Girls in
Lundvall, B. 82 Australian Schools 58–9
neoliberal globalization see globalization,
McBurnie, G. 169 neoliberal
McCarthy, C. 104 neoliberal social imaginary see social
McGrew, A. 23, 24, 31, 137, 199 imaginary of neoliberal globalization
MacIntyre, Alasdair 76 networks 159, 198; diasporic 179, 180–1,
McLaughlin, M. 53, 59 195; of expatriates 181–2; move from
Maguire, M. 58 hierarchies to 126–8; policy 126
Mahony, P. 15 New Basics curriculum trial (Queensland)
Making Good Progress 98, 100 106–9
Mann, M. 68 New Economic Foundation 192
Marginson, S. 169, 172 New Growth literature 180
market-individualism 157, 158, 158–9, 190 New Labour government 95, 98
market/market efficiency: emphasis on 3, 16, new public management 10, 47, 49, 58, 88,
72, 86, 125, 185, 186, 196 89, 98–9, 118, 119–21, 124, 158–9
Martens, K. 129 New South Wales 102, 104
Martinez, C. 67 New Zealand 81
Massey, D. 15, 50, 65 Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) 27
MDGs see Millennium Development Goals Newmann, F.M. 104
mediatization of policy 14, 19, 38, 62, 107 NGOs (non-government organizations) 40,
Meltzer Commission 193 118, 192
Merkel, Angela 197 No Child Left Behind 11, 97, 98, 99–100
Meyer, J.P. 181 Noddings, N. 75
migration 161, 162 Norris, Pippa 154
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Nóvoa, A. 56, 123, 124
115, 140, 147–9, 150, 156, 188
mobility 65, 66, 161–83, 195; academic Obama, Barack 194, 197
162, 168–72, 176; and brain drain 162, OECD (Organization for Economic
179–82; and deterritorialization 166–7; Cooperation and Development) 14, 16,
and globalization of English 176–9; 22, 43, 47, 79, 80, 81, 85, 117, 119, 121,
impact of increased 37; increase in due to 123, 127, 149, 179; advocacy for policies
globalization 30–1, 161, 182; inequalities of deregulation and privatization 38–9;
in 144; and internationalization of and Centre for Research and Innovation
curriculum 172–5, 176; policy responses (CERI) 129; changing of role by
to cultural diversity 162–8; reasons for globalization 128, 129–31, 133, 137; and
people moving 161; social 77, 78, 85; comparative performance assessment
transformation of cities 161–2 131–2; concern with technical issues 131;
Mosquera, G. 64 and cultural diversity issue 169;
226 Index
Directorate of Education 131, 132; place 65, 66
Education at a Glance 18, 1124; formal policy: and authoritative allocation of values
links with other international 4, 7–8, 11, 36, 49, 75, 107–8, 115; and
organizations 132–3; and gender equity in change 5; complications in
education 152; Governance in Transition implementation 19; consequences of
120; greater emphasis on economy and 19–20; definitions 4–8, 11, 44;
markets in education 129, 131; distinction between policy as text and
ideological tensions within 129; issues policy as discourse 8; distributive/
concerned with 131; and lifelong learning redistributive 11; elements to 10; factors
84; Measuring Student Knowledge and Skills affecting implementation of 9;
134; on new public management 122; incremental/rational distinction 9–10;
PISA 18, 56, 98, 99, 109, 114, 124, mediatization of 14, 19, 38, 62, 107; as
133–5, 136, 137; as a policy actor 38, 43, multidimensional and multilayered
133, 137; proponent of neoliberal 14–15; purposes and types of 8–11; and
globalization 142; relations with the state 10–14, 16–17; symbolic/material
‘non-member economies’ 132; on role of distinction 9; viewed as a process 4–5;
education 128, 129; role of in new see also education policy; education policy
governance 128–33; on the state 130; analysis
World Education Indicators 18, 132, policy allocation: processes of 37–41
134, 136 policy archaeology 62, 63
OECS (Organization of Eastern Caribbean policy context 6–7, 15–16
States) 112 ‘policy creation community’ 15
Offe, Claus 10 policy cycle 6, 67, 68
Olson, C. 173 policy ecology 59, 69
Olssen, Mark 57, 63 policy genealogy 62, 63
Organization for Economic Cooperation and policy historiography 62, 63
Development see OECD policy as numbers 20, 47, 99, 100, 115,
Other People’s Children 99 122, 123, 124, 134, 135
overwording 61, 107 policy research 12
Ozga, Jenny 5, 50 policy sociology approach 50–2, 57
policy studies: rationalist approach 1–2
Paige, Rodney 124 policy texts 5–6, 8, 14, 38, 61, 62, 68;
Pakistan 104, 109, 110–12, 149 analysis of 58, 60–2
Papadopoulos, G.S. 129, 131 politics 71, 108; rescaling of 44
Papastergiadis, Nicholas 162, 181 politics of performance 121–8
Passeron, J.C. 53 Popper, Karl 188
Peck, J. 31 Porter, T. 135–6
pedagogization 18–19 Porto Alegre (Brazil) 200; Declaration
pedagogy 20, 92, 102–3; caring character of (2001) 40–1
104; improving practices 103; and New positionality 46–8, 49, 69
Basics curricula trial 106–9; no explicit positivism 47, 57
policies about 102; relationship with post-colonialism 2, 3, 16, 45, 57, 64, 65,
testing 99; research in Queensland 100–1, 112–13, 185
104; and trust 103 Post-Washington Consensus (PWC) 40,
Pennycook, Alistair 178–9 112, 137
performance, politics of 121–8 post-Westphalian model 17, 21, 117, 118,
performativity, culture of 20 126–7, 133
personal rights 88 poverty 188, 200
Peters, M. 57 power 11–12, 50
Peters, R.S. 73 Power, M. 47, 124–5
Pieterse, J.N. 142, 167 pragmatic tradition: and educational values
PISA (Programme for International Student 74–5
Assessment) 98, 99, 105, 109, 114, prescriptive regulation 7
133–5, 137 primary education 148–9
 Index 227
privatization 3, 17, 72, 86–90, 92, 125, 197 Scotland 96–7, 101
professionalism, teacher 92, 98, 103, 106, Scott, J.C. 135
114, 121–2, 138 Scottish Qualifications Authority 102
Programme for International Student Security 77, 144,198
Assessment see PISA self-governing individual, notion of 184–5
property rights 88, 89, 158 Sen, Amartya 88, 149, 200–1
public choice theory 88, 89 Sennett, R. 60
Public Citizen 192 September 11th 77
Shohat, E. 157
qualitative/quantitative methods 51 Shuman, M.: Going Local 194
quality assurance, rise of 124 Singapore 20, 100, 104–5
Queensland 99; assessment in school system Smith, Linda Tuhiwa 48, 64
101; classroom pedagogies 100–1, 104; Smith, M.P. 32
curriculum reform 103; New Basics Smith, R. 188
curriculum trial 106–9 social democratic conception: of justice
Queensland School Reform Longitudinal 157–8
Study (QSRLS) 104–6, 108 social efficiency 78–9, 84, 85, 86, 91
Queensland Smart State policies 60 social exclusion 145
Queensland State Education 60 social imaginary of neoliberal globalization
Queensland Studies Authority 97 8, 13, 23, 24–5, 33–41, 42, 67, 75, 79,
84, 86, 91, 117, 182–3, 184, 187, 185,
Rand Corporation study 59 196, 200, 201
Ranson, S. 20, 100 social inclusion 145–6
rational policies 9–10 social mobility 77, 78, 85
rationalist approach 1–2, 69 social theory 34, 65
Rawls, John 157 socialization 73–4
Rawolle, S. 62 Soros, George 39, 81, 187–8
Ray, Larry: Globalization and Everyday Life 23 South Asia 152–3
Reagan, Ronald 117, 125 South Pacific 177
redistributive policies 11 ‘Southern theory’ 48, 64
reflexivity 48–9, 51, 63, 69 sovereignty 68
reification 44 space 65, 66
Rein, M. 9 spatiality 15, 47
research: and colonialism/imperialism 64–5; special needs 146
deparochialization of 64, 65, 66; and Stam, R. 157
education policy analysis 57–63 Standardised Attainment Tests (SATs) 98,
rhizomes 61 100
Rhodes, R.A.W. 126 state 191, 196–7; and globalization 28–31;
Ritzer, George 27 and OECD 130; and policy 10–14, 16–17;
Rizvi, F. 38, 53 post-bureaucratic 122; relationship with
Robertson, R. 34 market 125; as site of struggle over social
Robertson, S. 14 justice 159; and TNCs 41
Rose, Nikolas 47, 135, 137–8, 184 statistics 135–6
Rudd, Kevin 190, 196 Steger, M. 33
Rutkowski, D. 132 Stein, M.K. 102
Stiglitz, Joseph 143–4, 189–90
Sachs, Jeffrey 188–9; The End of Poverty 188 Stone, Deborah 75–6, 1
Said, Edward 61 Strange, S. 118; The Retreat of the State 29
St Lucia 104, 109, 149; Education Sector structural adjustment schemes 40, 143–4,
Development Plan 112–13 189
Sarkozy, Nicolas 197 study abroad programmes 173–4, 174–5
scalar politics 65, 118, 136–7 Suppes, P. 74–5
Scholte, J.A. 25, 141, 196 Sylvan Learning Centres 178
Schriewer, J. 67 symbolic policies 9
228 Index
tariffs 193 78; and education policy 75–9; and
Taylor, Charles 34, 35 efficiency 76–7, 91–2; embedding of
Taylor, S. 5, 60, 97 within social imaginary 75; and equity
Teaching and Learning Scotland 102 76; functionalist sociological tradition
technology 42 73–4; and liberty 76; negotiation of
Teferra, D. 182 through range of political processes 72;
terrorism 29, 198 and new human capital theory 80–1;
testing 94, 97–102, 106, 109, 114, 115, philosophical traditions 73–5; and policy
116, 197 4, 7–8, 11, 16, 36, 49, 75, 107–8, 115;
Thatcher, Margaret 95, 117, 125 pragmatic tradition 74–5; and security
There Is No Alternative (TINA) 37 77; and social efficiency 78, 79–80, 91;
‘third way’ 190 and social mobility 77, 78
Third World 192, 193 vernacular globalization 65
Thomson, P. 18 vocational training 78
Thrift, N. 38, 118
Tickle, A. 31 ‘war on terrorism’ 29, 110
Tikly, L. 47, 109, 111, 114 Warschauer, M. 155
TNCs (transnational corporations) 27–8, 41, Washington Consensus 39, 121, 137
144, 187, 193, 196 Waters, M. 37, 89, 120
Tobin Tax 193 Weaver-Hightower, M. 59
Tomlinson, J. 30, 166 Weber, M. 11, 13
Touraine, A. 162 Wedel, J.R. 4, 5
Tozer, S. 83 Wei, S-J. 142
trade: and anti-globalization movement Weiss, Carol 45
192–3; in education 171–2 Westphalian framework 13, 17, 117, 123,
trajectory studies 58, 59 126–7, 148, 221
transaction cost analysis 88, 89, 120 Whitehead, A.N. 73
transformationalists: and globalization 24 Williams, Raymond 34, 83
transnational corporations see TNCs Williamson, John 39, 40
Trends in International Maths and Science Wolfe, Martin 142
Study (TIMSS) 124 Wong, K. 180
Wood, E.M. 29–30
UNDP 143, 144, 146, 148, 179 World Bank 14, 16, 22, 39, 43, 47, 79, 113,
UNESCO 16, 39, 43, 47, 79, 85, 117, 121, 117, 127, 128, 132, 134, 137, 142, 152,
123, 127, 128, 132, 134, 142, 149, 152, 179, 189, 193, 199
169, 173, 176 World Development Movement 193
United States 21; curricula and pedagogies World Development Report (2009) 152–3
in schools 97; and ideology of choice 90; World Education Indicators (WEI) 18, 132,
and lifelong learning 83; and market- 134, 136
individualism 158; and testing 98, World Social Forum (WSF) 192
99–100 World Trade Organization (WTO) 28, 144,
Universal Declaration of Human Rights 146 189, 192, 193
universities: and academic mobility 168–72; Wu, Y. 142
and internationalization of curriculum
173–4 Yariv-Mashal, T. 56, 123, 124
Urry, John 65, 162 Yeaxlee, B. 83
USAID 110–11 Yip, C.K. 180
Youdell, D. 101
values 71–92, 185; analytical tradition 73; Young, I.M. 159
and community 77; conflict between 76, Young, M. 103
77; convergence in thinking about
educational 72; democratic equality 77, Zapatista movement 200