Globalisation: Autonomy of Education under Siege? Shifting Boundaries between Politics, Economy and Education

Abstract

This second issue of the European Educational Research Journal (EERJ) presents contributions to a conference on edcation and globalisation held last year in Frankfurt, Germany. Organised by the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University's Department of Education and sponsored by the Volkswagen-Foundation, the meeting with the title 'Education under Siege: shifting boundaries between politics, economy, and education' was held with the intention to contribute to the ongoing discussion concerning the major implications of 'globalisation' for education on general as well as on country-specific levels.According to a large number of economists, political scientists and cultural theorists 'globalisation' is the central contemporary indication of social change, recently taken up by educational research too (e.g. Burbules & Torres, 2000). At the same time many critics characterise 'globalisation' as just a fashionable discourse conceiving the term as a mere 'plastic word' (Poerksen et al, 1995). Both perceptions agree that there is more free association than precise designation. However, the issue is not a question of nominalistic definition, but depends also on the semantic field 'globalisation' is embedded in. It is comprised of a variety of other key terms such as deregulation, marketorientation, privatisation, competitiveness, efficiency, etc., which marks an intensification or enhancement of social processes and communication.Focussing on the commonly accepted descriptions, one may, moreover, rely on two certainties: First, major social theories are not really taken by surprise by the new developments and date the beginning of globalisation back

Creative teaching and learning: towards a common discourse and practice

“…However, these developments are contested: there are challenges to the domination of adopting one policy for raising standards (Osborn, 2001); policy borrowing is shown as being dissipated by local cultures (Bouzakis and Koustourakis, 2002); the tests that measure success have been shown to incline pedagogies towards instrumentalism (Mitter, 2004) and local autonomy is dissipated as international standardisations are imposed (Amos et al, 2002;Dale and Robertson, 2002). At the same time a new international creativity discourse emerged at the turn of the millennium (Jeffrey and Craft, 2001) that also challenged the dominance of the performativity discourse embedded in the OECD practices.…”

System Transfer, Education, and Development in Mozambique

“…ii For further reading on system transfer, see Steiner-Khamsi (2002a, 2002b; and Amos, Keiner, Proske, and Radtke (2002); Turbin (2001); and, Cossa 2008.…”

Editorial: Education for Sustainable Development in Early Childhood

“…Most crucially perhaps, this should not, as Rogoff (2003) has observed, be considered to constitute any kind of catastrophe or new challenge for humanity. While Amos et al (2002) suggest that the beginnings of globalisation might lay in the 16 th Century, Much more realistically, Rogoff (2003) takes us much further back, referring to other technological innovations such as the introduction of farming from Mesopotamia 10,000 years ago, and the events that followed the domestication of horses in the Ukraine about 5,000 years ago (p. 334). What has especially accelerated these processes in recent times has been the development of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) that have opened up international trade and communication beyond all previous possibilities (Amos et al, 2002):…”