Professional reading update - Globalisation and education

There is now a substantial literature on globalisation and education, and here are some of the works on this topic available from the QTU library. As one of theauthors, Apple, states in the introductory chapter of his text: "Education cannot be understood without recognising that nearly all educational policies and practices are strongly influenced by an increasingly integrated international economy."

Balancing Change and Tradition in Global Education Reform (Second Edition)

Iris C. Rotberg (Ed.)
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education.

If one had to choose just one source to provide an overview of how globalisation has played out in education around the globe, this would be a good choice. It provides summaries of educational reforms in 16 different countries, including a chapter on Australia by Allan Luke. The book was originally published in 2004 and the 2010 edition provides a separate follow-up section after each chapter, which considers developments post-2004. The authors of the various chapters vary in the degree to which they provide descriptive versus analytical accounts of educational development and the degree to which they relate their analyses to a particular theoretical orientation.

Global Crises, Social Justice, and Education

Michael Apple (Ed.)
New York: Routledge (2010).

Apple and his colleagues provide case study examinations of far fewer locations than in the Rotberg text, but Apple explains in his introductory chapter that this is intentional, allowing the authors more space for critical evaluation and, significantly, to explore how educators might intervene to resist and create alternatives to the exploitative and anti-democratic features of globalisation. The result is a more coherent (and controversial) exposition and analysis of globalisation in education. Studies of the USA, Japan, Israel/Palestine and Mexico are bookended by essays about the nature of globalisation and how mobilisation in the interests of social justice might proceed.

Industrial Relations in Education: Transforming the School Workforce

Bob Carter, Howard Stevenson, & Rowena Passy
New York: Routledge (2009).

This book examines the effects of the neo-liberalism and "new managerialism" on the work of teachers in England under the "New Labour" government (from the late 1990s through the early years of this century). Of particular interest is the book's examination of the strategies employed by the various English teacher unions – there are six – in response to the educational reforms pursued by Labour. Most of these unions pursued a strategy of rapprochement – described as a strategy that "goes with the grain of the new educational agenda ... [with] no fundamental attempt to challenge the direction of policy ... but rather a preparedness to discuss the details and form of their application". The exception was the largest union, the NUT, which adopted a strategy of resistance, refusing to participate in a social partnership with Labour. The authors also identify a third possible strategy, renewal, which would entail a strong focus on workplace action and participatory forms of union organisation. In the authors' account, neither rapprochement nor resistance worked particularly well, and nor is there any indication that any of the unions are moving to adopt a strategy of renewal.

John McCollow
Research Officer