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The Wiley Handbook of Global Educational Reform examines educational reform from a global perspective. Comprised of approximately 25 original and specially commissioned essays, which together interrogate educational reform from a critical global and transnational perspective, this volume explores a range of topics and themes that fully investigate global convergences in educational reform policies, ideologies, and practices. The Handbook probes the history, ideology, organization, and institutional foundations of global educational reform movements; actors, institutions, and agendas; and local, national, and global education reform trends. It further examines the "new managerialism" in global educational reform, including the standardization of national systems of educational governance, curriculum, teaching, and learning through the rise of new systems of privatization, accountability, audit, big-data, learning analytics, biometrics, and new technology-driven adaptive learning models. Finally, it takes on the subjective and intersubjective experiential dimensions of the new educational reforms and alternative paths for educational reform tied to the ethical imperative to reimagine education for human flourishing, justice, and equality. * An authoritative, definitive volume and the first global take on a subject that is grabbing headlines as well as preoccupying policy makers, scholars, and teachers around the world * Edited by distinguished leaders in the field * Features contributions from an illustrious list of experts and scholars The Wiley Handbook of Global Educational Reform will be of great interest to scholars and graduate students of education throughout the world as well as the policy makers who can institute change.
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Cover
Introduction: Toward a Transformational Agenda for Global Education Reform
Global Education Reform: Trends, Ideology, and Crisis
A Transformational Agenda for Global Education Reform
References
1 Capitalism and Global Education Reform
Introduction
Schools Are Failures and Teachers Are to Blame
Dominant Discourses
Who Are the Purveyors?
What Is Being Sold: Privatization
What’s Wrong with Capitalism?
What to Do?
Acknowledgments
References
2 The Business Sector in Global Education Reform: The Case of the Global Business Coalition for Education
Introduction
Business Participation in Global Education Reform
Conceptualizing the Role of Business in Education in Contexts of Humanitarian Crisis
The Global Business Coalition for Education (GBC‐E)
GBC‐E Participation in the Syrian Refugee Crisis
Conclusion
References
3 Venture Philanthropy and Education Policy‐Making: Charity, Profit, and the So‐Called “Democratic State”
Introduction
From the Rear Guard to the Frontline: A New Role for Philanthropy
New/Effective/Impact/Strategic/Engaged/Venture Philanthropy
Change in the Nature of Investments: Both For‐Profit and Not‐For‐Profit
Back to the Future…
References
Annexes
4 Nodes, Pipelines, and Policy Mobility: The Assembling of an Education Shadow State in India
Introduction
Network Ethnography
Pipelines, Conduits, and Nodes
Thought Leadership
Technology in the Classroom
Discussion
References
5 Reframing Teachers’ Work for Global Competitiveness*: New Global Hierarchies in the Governing of Education
Introduction
Methods and Data
Bringing Teachers into View as Policy Problem and Solution
The TALIS Program: A Brief Introduction
The TALIS ensemble
Tensions and Contradictions in the TALIS Program
The TALIS Model of Development and its Wider Politics
References
6 School Principals in Neoliberal Times: A Case of Luxury Leadership?
Introduction
Luxury Leadership: An Elite Project
Luxury Leadership: An Elite Practice
Luxury Leadership: Dynamic and Contextually Located
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
References
7 The Expansion of Private Schooling in Latin America: Multiple Manifestations and Trajectories of a Global Education Reform Movement
Introduction
Conceptual Framework and Methodology
Main Results: Different Trajectories toward Education Privatization in Latin America
Conclusion
References
Appendix A Evolution of Enrollment in Private Institutions by Country: Primary and Secondary Education
Appendix B Primary Studies Included in the Revision
8 Global Education Policies and Taken‐For‐Granted Rationalities: Do the Poor Respond to Policy Incentives in the Same Way?
Introduction: The Globalization of Demand‐Side Education Policies for Poverty Reduction
Instrumental Rationality and Theory of Change in Demand‐Side Interventions
What Is the Rationality of the Poor? Three Alternatives to Instrumental Rationality
Policy Implications
References
9 The Politics of Educational Change in the Middle East and North Africa: Nation‐Building, Postcolonial Reconstruction, Destabilized States, Societal Disintegration, and the Dispossessed
Introduction
General Educational Trends in the Middle East and North Africa
Sub‐Regional Conditions
Conclusion
References
10 Profiting from the Poor: The Emergence of Multinational Edu‐Businesses in Hyderabad, India
1
Introduction
Examining the North‐South Impact of the Global Education Industry
The Emergence of the Global Education Industry in India
Conclusion: For‐Profit Education Undermines the Right to Education
References
11 The Bait‐and‐Switch and Echo Chamber of School Privatization in South Africa
Introduction
An Overview of the Size and Shape of School Privatization
The Echo Chamber
The Adverse Consequences of Privatization
Resistance
References
12 The Violence of Compassion: Education Reform, Race, and Neoliberalism’s Elite Rationale
Introduction
F.A. Hayek and the Defense of Privilege
Neoliberalism’s Racial Fantasies and the Whiteness of Empathy
Epistemology of Elitism: Social Engineering and the New Educational Philanthropy
Race, Neoliberal Care, and Global Education Reform
Conclusion
References
13 Uncommon Knowledge: International Schools as Elite Educational Enclosures
Introduction
Global Education Reform: Quality, Competition, and Choice
International Schools
Transnationally Recognized Educational Credentials
Competing Concerns? Commodities and Dispositions
Tiered Elitism and Mobility in Global Education
Malaysia in the Global Education Reform Context: Quality, Choice, and Competition
Educational Enclosures: Discourses of Exclusivity and Privilege
Conclusion
References
14 Startup Schools, Fast Policies, and Full‐Stack Education Companies: Digitizing Education Reform in Silicon Valley
Introduction
Situating Silicon Valley
Fast Startup Networks
Venture PhilTech
Algorithmic Progressivism
Learning Laboratories
Conclusion
References
15 Who Drives the Drivers?: Technology as the Ideology of Global Educational Reform
Introduction
Neoliberal Patterns of Governance
Governmentality as a Powerful Driver of Neoliberalism
Identifying Who Is “Acting” in Textual Patterns of Governance in HE Policy
Who Drives the Drivers? A Post‐Hegemonic Cultural Studies Perspective
Post‐Hegemonic Power and Educational Reform
Conclusion
References
16 Resurgent Behaviorism and the Rise of Neoliberal Schooling
Introduction
Neoliberal Education Policy as Applied Behaviorism
Behaviorism Is Not Dead
The Philosophical and Political Foundations of Behaviorist Thought
Parallels Between Neoliberal and Behaviorist Thought
The Environmental Determinist Logic of the Neoliberal Market
Neoliberalism, Behaviorism and Control for the End of History
Neoliberalism and the Skillsification of Education
The Behaviorist Conception of Skill
Conclusion
References
17 Educating Mathematizable, Self‐Serving, God‐Fearing, Self‐Made Entrepreneurs
Introduction
Official Education Policies and the Conservative, Neocolonial, Neoliberal Intentions Behind Them
Meaning and Purpose of the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
Differentiating Public, Private and Charter Schools
References
18 Putting
Homo Economicus
to the Test: How Neoliberalism Measures the Value of Educational Life
Neoliberalism, Educational Reform, and the Human Capital Imperative
Subjects of Interest, Subjects of Value:
Homo Economicus
and the Global War over Measure
The Techno‐Scientific Production of Educational Life
Rethinking Educational Questions of Value at the Limits of Neoliberal Measurement
References
19 EcoJust STEM Education Mobilized Through Counter‐Hegemonic Globalization
Introduction
Alternatives to Neoliberal Stem Education
Addressing Ecojustice in University‐based Science Teacher Education
Case Studies
Conclusion
References
20 When the Idea of a Second Grade Education for the Marginalized Becomes the Dominant Discourse: Context, Policy, and Practice of Neoliberal Capitalism
Introduction
The Dangers of Affordable Private Schools (APS)
The Difficult Times: Inequality and the Impossibility of Quality Education for All
The Logic of Reproduction in Education
Commodifying Education in a Situation of Inequality
The Altered Educational Institutions Under Neoliberalism
Amidst Poverty, How Would One Buy Education?
Social Justice, Democracy and Neoliberalism
Conclusion
References
21 Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship Education: An Ethics for Capital or the Other?
Introduction
FLE and EE: Remaking the World and Others
The FLE and EE Public Pedagogy, Levinas, and Ethics
An FLE for Capital
An EE for Capital
An Ethics Against the Other
A Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship for the Other
References
22 The Socially Just School: Transforming Young Lives
Introduction
There Were Alternatives, It’s Just That We Were Muzzled!
The Neoliberal School
Why Neoliberalism Is Destined Not to Work in Schools
What Do We Mean by the Term Socially Just Education?
What Is the Socially Just School? Where Is It Coming from? Who Does It Exist for?
Conclusion
References
23 Beyond Neoliberalism: Educating for a Just Sustainable Future
Introduction
The False Premises and Pernicious Outcomes of Neoliberalism: Market Fundamentalism, and the Inability to Think Beyond Individual Preferences and the Short Term
How Neoliberalism Has Failed the Environment
Understanding and Responding to Our Current Crises
Rethinking Education
Conclusion
References
24 When Schools Become Dead Zones of the Imagination: A Critical Pedagogy Manifesto
Introduction
References
Index
End User License Agreement
Chapter 03
Table 3.1 Omidyar Network’s investment portfolio in education
Table 3.2 LGT Venture Fund’s investment portfolio in education
Chapter 05
Table 5.1 Main features of the TALIS program
Chapter 07
Table 7.1 Summary of results
Table A.1 Percentage of enrollment in private institutions by regions: primary education. Selected countries, 1990, 2000, 2014.
Table A.2 Percentage of enrollment in private institutions by regions: secondary education. Selected countries, 1999, 2007, 2014
Table A.3 Distribution of primary studies by country or geographical area.
Chapter 15
Table 15.1 Keywords and how often they appeared in the corpus
Chapter 20
Table 20.1 Growing privatization of Higher Education in India
Chapter 03
Figure 3.1 Sources of capital in philanthropic investment.
Figure 3.2 Bridge International Academies in LGT Venture Philanthropy (2009) and LGT Impact Ventures (2016).
Chapter 04
Figure 4.1 A global/local education policy network.
Figure 4.2
Figure 4.3
Chapter 07
Figure 7.1 Percentage of enrollment in private institutions by regions – primary education, 1990–2014.
Figure 7.2 Percentage of enrollment in private institutions by regions – secondary education, 1998–2014.
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1 Pearson/PALF: Hyderabad edu‐solutions networks.
Chapter 19
Figure 19.1 Schema for promoting student‐led RiNA projects.
Figure 19.2 Model for research‐informed and negotiated actions on socio‐scientific problems
.
Cover
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The Wiley Handbooks in Education offer a capacious and comprehensive overview of higher education in a global context. These state‐of‐the‐art volumes offer a magisterial overview of every sector, sub‐field and facet of the discipline‐from reform and foundations to K‐12 learning and literacy. The Handbooks also engage with topics and themes dominating today's educational agenda‐mentoring, technology, adult and continuing education, college access, race and educational attainment. Showcasing the very best scholarship that the discipline has to offer, The Wiley Handbooks in Education will set the intellectual agenda for scholars, students, researchers for years to come.
The Wiley Handbook of Global Educational Reformby Kenneth J. Saltman (Editor) and Alexander J. Means (Editor)
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Chris Arthur is a teacher in the Toronto District School Board, Canada. His research interests include philosophy and sociology of education, political economy, ethics, and critical policy analysis. Dr. Arthur’s work appears in a number of education journals and his book, Financial Literacy Education: Neoliberalism, the Consumer and the Citizen (2012), is published by Sense Publishers.
Stephen J. Ball is Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology of Education at the University College London, Institute of Education, UK. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2006; and is also Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and Society of Educational Studies, and a Laureate of Kappa Delta Phi; he has honorary doctorates from the Universities of Turku (Finland), and Leicester. He is co‐founder and Managing Editor of the Journal of Education Policy. His main areas of interest are in sociologically informed education policy analysis and the relationships between education, education policy, and social class. He has written 20 books and had published over 140 journal articles. Recent books: Edu.Net (Routledge, 2017) and Foucault as Educator (Springer, 2017).
Larry Bencze is an Associate Professor in Science Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada, where he teaches in the graduate studies program. In addition to his PhD from the Universityof Toronto, 1995 and BEd from Queen’s University in 1977 in education, he holds a BSc from Queen’s University in 1974 and an MSc Queen’s University in 1977 in biology. Prior to his work as a professor, he worked as a teacher of science in elementary and secondary schools and as a science education consultant in Ontario, Canada. His teaching and research emphasize the history, philosophy, and sociology of science and technology, along with student‐led research‐informed and negotiated socio‐political actions to address personal, social, and environmental harms associated with fields of science and technology. He has recently edited (or co‐edited) two books about activism and is co‐editor of the open‐source, non‐refereed, journal on activism at: goo.gl/cvO2TA.
Xavier Bonal is Professor of Sociology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, and Special Professor of Education and International Development at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is the director of the research group, Globalisation, Education and Social Policies (GEPS) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and Coordinator of the GLOBED Project, an Erasmus Mundus Master on Education Policies for Global Development. He has been member of the EU Network of Experts in Social Sciences and Education (NESSE) and is member of the Editorial Board of several international journals of education policies and educational development. Professor Bonal has published widely in national and international journals and is the author of several books on the sociology of education, education policy and globalization, education and development. He has worked as a consultant for international organizations, such as UNESCO, UNICEF, the European Commission, and the Council of Europe. Between 2006 and 2010, he was Deputy Ombudsman for Children’s Rights at the Office of the Catalan Ombudsman.
Lyn Carter is a science educator at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, Australia, where she also teaches in the higher degrees programs.The overall aim of her research seeks new articulations of science education valuing cultural diversity, ecological sustainability, and social justice in a globalized world. More specifically, she specializes in science educational policy and curriculum studies, with a particular emphasis on the effects and consequences of globalization and neoliberalism as it reshapes science education for the twenty‐first century. All of these areas are reflected in the titles of her manuscripts published extensively in prominent international science education journals including JRST, RISE, Science Education and CSSE as well as many book chapters.
Steven J. Courtney is a Lecturer in Management and Leadership in the Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, UK. His work critically explores school leaders’ identities and agency in the context of regimes of power, and how these interplay with education policy. Dr Courtney was awarded the AERA Division A 2016 Outstanding Dissertation Award, the BELMAS Thesis Award 2016, and the BERA Doctoral Thesis Award 2016 for his doctoral research, which focused on the relationship between the structural reform of education and school leaders’ identity construction and practice.
Noah De Lissovoy is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies in Education at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. His research centers on emancipatory approaches to education policy, curriculum, and cultural studies, with a special focus on the intersecting effects of race, class, and capital. He is the author of Power, Crisis, and Education for Liberation (Palgrave), Education and Emancipation in the Neoliberal Era (Palgrave), and co‐author (with Alexander Means and Kenneth Saltman) of Toward a New Common School Movement (Paradigm). His work has appeared in many journals, including Harvard Educational Review, Curriculum Inquiry, Critical Sociology, Discourse, and Educational Philosophy and Theory.
Clara Fontdevila holds a degree in Sociology from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology of the same university, with a thesis research project on the settlement of the post‐2015 global education agenda through network analysis. She has collaborated with Education International on different investigations, including a research project on the role of the World Bank in the global promotion of teacher reforms, and a study on the political economy of education privatization. Previously, she also participated in the 2012 evaluation report of the Global and Regional Civil Society Education Funds (CSEF), supported by the Global Partnership of Education. Her areas of interest are private‐sector engagement in education policy, education and international development, and the global governance of education.
Mark J. Garrison holds both a BA and an MA in Sociology and a PhD in the Social Foundations of Education, with a concentration in the Sociology of Education. Since 1995, he has worked in various higher education institutions, serving in a variety of research, administrative, and faculty roles. He is currently Professor of Education Policy & Research in the Educational Leadership Doctoral Program at D’Youville College, Buffalo, New York. Mark is a recognized education policy analyst and public intellectual focusing on the political, sociological, and philosophical significance of education policy. His scholarship has won him national acclaim, including the 2011 American Education Studies Association Critic’s Choice Award and the 2010 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for his book, A Measure of Failure: The Political Origins of Standardized Testing (SUNY Press, 2009).
Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University,Toronto, Canada. His most recent books are America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth (Monthly Review Press, 2013) and Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education (Haymarket Press, 2014).
Helen M. Gunter is Professor of Educational Policy and Sarah Fielden Professor of Education in the Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, UK, and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. She co‐edits the Journal of Educational Administration and History. Her work focuses on the politics of education policy and knowledge production in the field of school leadership. Her most recent books are: An Intellectual History of School Leadership Practice and Research (Bloomsbury, 2016) and with Colin Mills, Consultants and Consultancy: The Case of Education (Springer, 2017).
David Hall is Professor of Education at the Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, UK. His research has focused upon education professionals and their experiences of and responses to large‐scale reforms intended to transform their practices. This research has been funded by organizations including the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the Department for Education and the EU, and his work has been published in a range of international journals and books. David is the Founding Head of the Manchester Institute of Education.
Sarah Hayes has taught across Sociology, Education and Computing at Aston University and University of Worcester, UK. Sarah is interested in ways that the role of humans and their academic labor are frequently diminished within educational policy language. Through her teaching and research, Sarah is exploring forms of resistance, via creative approaches toward restoring the presence of human bodies and emotion. Sarah recently became a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, co‐edited a Special Issue of Knowledge Cultures, was commissioned by the UK Quality Assurance Agency to write a literature review on MOOCs and Quality, achieved a SEDA/Jisc Institutional Change Leader Award for student partnership, and has published articles through European Political Science, Open Review of Educational Research, Libri, and Springer.
David Hursh is Professor in the Warner Graduate School of Education at the University of Rochester, USA. His primary area of research and political activism focuses on neoliberalism, the politics of high‐stakes testing and the corporate reform movement. A second area of research is environmental health and sustainability. His research has resulted in numerous publications and presentations across the globe, including six books and one hundred journal articles and book chapters. His two most recent single‐authored books are The End of Public Schools: The Corporate Reform Agenda to Privatize Education (2016) and High‐Stakes Testing and the Decline of Teaching and Learning: The Real Crisis in Education (2008). He is associate editor for the Americas for the Journal of Education Policy and editor of the section on current issues and debates for the journal Policy Futures in Education.
Marcea Ingersoll is an Assistant Professor in the School of Education at St. Thomas University, New Brunswick, Canada. She has been a teacher and learner alongside colleagues, students, and pre‐service teachers in Canada, Malaysia, and Morocco. Emerging from her experiences as an international teacher and a teacher‐educator, her scholarly work explores pedagogical practices and identity around the globe.
Petar Jandrić is an educator, researcher, and activist. He is Professor and Director of BSc (Informatics) program at the Zagreb University of Applied Sciences, and Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. Petar has worked at the Croatian Academic and Research Network, the University of Edinburgh, Glasgow School of Art, and the University of East London. He has published three books, several dozens of scholarly articles and chapters, and numerous popular articles. Petar’s books have been published in Croatian, English, Ukrainian, Spanish, and Serbian. He regularly participates in national and international educational projects and policy initiatives. His background is in physics, education, and information science, and his research interests are situated at the post‐disciplinary intersections between technologies, pedagogies. and society.
Alice Jowett is the Education Policy Manager at The ONE Campaign. Prior to joining ONE, Alice worked as an International Visiting Scholar at the University of Redlands, California. Alice holds a PhD in Global Development and Education from the University of Leeds, UK. Her practical and scholarly work over the past decade has focused particularly on lifelong learning and agency, with an emphasis on South and South‐East Asia.
Sangeeta Kamat is Professor of International Education at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA. Her work focuses on globalization, education, and inequality. She is currently working on a book on “Globalization, Higher Education and Uneven Development,” based on research in the Andhra and Telangana region. She is also working on issues of inclusion, equity, and excellence in higher education in collaboration with Pune University and on “Right to Education, Right to the City.” Dr. Kamat received her PhD in Comparative and International Education from the University of Pittsburgh.
Steven J. Klees is Professor of International Education Policy at the University of Maryland, USA. He completed his PhD at Stanford University and has taught at Cornell University, Stanford University, Florida State University, and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil. He was a Fulbright Scholar on two occasions at the Federal University of Bahia in Brazil. Professor Klees’ work examines the political economy of education and development with specific research interests in globalization, neoliberalism, and education; the role of aid agencies; education, human rights, and social justice; the education of disadvantaged populations; the role of class, gender, and race in reproducing and challenging educational and social inequality; and alternative approaches to education and development. He is the co‐editor of the book, The World Bank and Education: Critiques and Alternatives (Sense, 2012). He is the former president of the Comparative and International Education Society.
Ravi Kumar teaches at the Department of Sociology, South Asian University, Delhi, India. His works include Neoliberalism, Critical Pedagogy and Education (ed. Routledge, 2016); Contemporary Readings in Marxism: A Critical Introduction (ed. Aakar Books, 2016); Education, State and Market: Anatomy of Neoliberal Impact (ed. Aakar Books, 2014); Social Movements: Transformative Shifts and Turning Points (co‐ed. Routledge, 2014); Education and the Reproduction of Capital: Neoliberal Knowledge and Counterstrategies (ed. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Global Neoliberalism and Education and its Consequences (co‐ed. Routledge, 2009). He co‐edits the book series on Social Movements, Dissent and Transformative Action (Routledge); Conversations on/for South Asia (Aakar Books); and Sociology/Anthropology Across Borders (Primus Books). His area of research includes the political economy of identity politics, social movements, the neoliberal impact on education and processes, and the politics of knowledge production. He is an Associate Editor of the journal, Society and Culture in South Asia.
Ralph Levinson is Reader in Education at University College London, Institute of Education, UK. As well as supervising doctoral students, he teaches on Masters courses and has many years experience teaching pre‐service practitioners. Before working in higher education, he taught for 12 years in state schools in London. His research interests include socio‐political education, chemistry education, and creativity in science teaching. He is a Principal Investigator in two European Union projects dealing with politically contentious issues in science education.
Ruth McGinity is a Lecturer in Educational Leadership and Policy at the Manchester Institute of Education, UK. Her main research interest is the relationship between localized policy enactment and national and international educational reform processes. She uses socially critical theories in order to illuminate ways in which power works in and between such relationships and the associated inequities that emerge as a result of social, political, and economic relations.
Alexander J. Means is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Foundations, University of Hawai’i at Manoa. His research examines educational policy and governance in relation to political economy and social change. He is the author of Learning to Save the Future: Rethinking Education and Work in the Era of Digital Capitalism (Routledge, 2018), Schooling in the Age of Austerity: Urban Education and the Struggle for Democratic Life (Palgrave, 2013), and Toward a New Common School Movement (with Noah De Lissovoy and Kenneth Saltman, Routledge, 2015).
Francine Menashy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Leadership in Education at the University of Massachusetts Boston, USA. Her research focuses on international aid to education, global education policy, and non‐state engagement in educational funding and policy‐making. Francine’s projects have been funded by such sources as the Open Society Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and Education International. She was selected as a 2013 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow and received the 2015 George Z. Bereday Award from the Comparative and International Education Society. Francine holds a PhD from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto.
Mauro Moschetti is an Associate Professor and PhD candidate in the Department of Systematic and Social Pedagogy of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. He has been an assistant researcher and Professor in the Department of Administration of the Universidad de San Andrés and at the School of Government of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has worked in R&D&I projects for the Ministry of Science, Technology and Productive Innovation in Argentina, and has collaborated with Education International, UNESCO, and the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS). His main areas of interest are education policy analysis, education privatization policies, school choice, and segregation.
Antonio Olmedo is Reader in Education Policy Sociology at the University of Bristol and Honorary Reader at UCL Institute of Education, UK. His research rests within the fields of education policy analysis and the sociology of education, with a specific focus on the role of the private sector in education; neoliberal policies and the creation of quasi‐markets; and global networks, international organizations, policy advocacy, philanthropy and edu‐businesses. He has recently completed a research project funded by the British Academy, entitled “Philanthropy, Business and Education: Market‐Based Solutions to Educational Problems in Developing Countries.” He is currently developing a research project on philanthrocapitalism and the role of edu‐businesses in global education policy funded by Education International.
Chantal Pouliot is Full Professor of Science Education at Laval University in Quebec (Canada). Her research focuses on the teaching and learning of sociotechnical controversies and the documentation of ongoing environmental controversies. Her latest book is entitled: Quand les citoyen.ne.s soulèvent la poussière [When citizen raise dust] (Carte blanche).
Susan Lee Robertson is Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Cambridge, UK. Prior to this, Susan has held academic posts in New Zealand and Australia. Susan has published widely on transformations of the state, education, and teachers’ work in the context of changing world orders. Her recent books include Global Regionalisms and Higher Education, and Public Private Partnerships in Education. Susan is also the founding editor of the journal, Globalisation, Societies and Education.
Kenneth J. Saltman is Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, USA. His research examines the political economy and cultural politics of public school privatization. He is the author and editor of numerous books on educational policy and politics, including Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools; The Gift of Education: Public Education and Venture Philanthropy; The Edison Schools; Education as Enforcement: The Militarization and Corporatization of Schools; The Failure of Corporate School Reform; The Politics of Education: A Critical Introduction; and Toward a New Common School Movement (with Noah De Lissovoy and Alexander J. Means).
Eugenie A. Samier is a Reader in the School of Education at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Her research concentrates on administrative philosophy and theory, interdisciplinary foundations of administration, theories and models of educational leadership, and comparative educational administration. She has been a visitor to Humboldt University of Berlin, the University of Tartu, Estonia, and Oxford Brookes University and has been a guest lecturer at universities in the USA, Germany, Estonia, Russia, Norway, Lithuania, Finland, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE. Her publications are on organizational culture and values, the New Public Management, ethics, the role of history and biography in educational administration, the role of humanities, aesthetics and literary analysis, Weberian foundations of administrative theory, comparative administration and Islamic educational administration and leadership in a number of international book collections and many leading journals in the field. She is the editor of seven book collections with Routledge on ethics, aesthetics, politics, emotions, trust and betrayal, ideologies, and maladministration in educational administration, and the author of Secrecy and Tradecraft in Educational Administration (Routledge, 2014). She also worked as a management consultant to the public sector for a number of years on a broad variety of projects, including legislation development, organizational reviews, board development, and government department restructuring and redesign.
Gardner Seawright is a doctoral candidate in the Education, Culture, and Society Department at the University of Utah, USA. where he studies the way that normative power structures are articulated within the everyday lives of students and teachers. Deploying critical, colonial, gender and race theory as a point of departure, Gardner engages the relationality and phenomenology of social hierarchies to illustrate how hierarchies unfold within quotidian, often overlooked, aspects of teaching and learning.
Graham B. Slater is Marriner S. Eccles Fellow in Political Economy at the University of Utah, USA. His research has appeared in the Journal of Education Policy, Educational Studies, Policy Futures in Education, and The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies. He recently co‐edited Educational Commons in Theory and Practice: Global Pedagogy and Politics (Palgrave Macmillan).
John Smyth is Visiting Professor of Education and Social Justice, University of Huddersfield, UK. He is Emeritus Research Professor of Education, Federation University Australia, Emeritus Professor, Flinders University, author/editor of 35 books, a former Senior Fulbright Research Scholar, the recipient of several awards from the American Educational Research Association, and an elected Fellow of the Academy for Social Science in Australia. He is series editor for the Palgrave Critical University Studies. Among his most recent books are Critical Educational Research: A Conversation with the Research of John Smyth (with Down, McInerney & Hatttam, Peter Lang, 2014); The Socially Just School: Making Space for Youth to Speak Back (with Down & McInerney, Springer, 2014); Becoming Educated: Young People’s Narratives of Disadvantage, Class, Place and Identity (with McInerney, Peter Lang, 2014); Living on the Edge: Rethinking Poverty, Class and Schooling (with Wrigley, Peter Lang, 2013). Current books in press include: The Toxic University: Zombie Leadership, Academic Rockstars, and Neoliberal Ideology (Palgrave Macmillan); (with Simmons, Palgrave Macmillan) Education and Working Class Youth: Untangling the Politics of Inclusion; (with Down & Robinson, Springer) Rethinking School to Work Transitions: Young People Have Something to Say. His research interests include policy sociology, policy ethnography, social justice, social class, and the sociology of education.
Tore Bernt Sørensen is doctoral researcher at the Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, United Kingdom. His project concerns the mechanisms, outcomes, and contexts in the global educational policy field, focusing on the political construction of the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). Tore graduated as a teacher in Aarhus, Denmark, in 2000. In 2001–2004 he taught young migrants and refugees, and 2004–2009 he worked with professional development for school teachers at University College UCC in Copenhagen and contributed to R&D projects on language‐across‐the‐curriculum and intercultural education. Tore completed a MA in Educational Sociology at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University. His MA dissertation, “The bias of markets: A comparative study of the market form and identity politics in English and Danish compulsory education” was published in 2011. Before starting as doctoral researcher in Bristol in 2013, Tore worked in the Analysis and Studies Unit of the European Commission's Directorate‐General for Education and Culture in Brussels, Belgium.
Carol Anne Spreen is a Professor of International Education at New York University, USA, and the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. Her scholarship and policy work focus on issues of school quality and education reform. For the last 20 years she has worked on issues of poverty, inequality, and human rights in education both domestically and internationally, and equity‐based reforms in the US, Southern Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Her current research focuses on teachers’ lives and work, the impact of privatization and standardized testing on public education. Dr. Spreen received her PhD in Comparative and International Education from Teachers College, Columbia University.
Shelina Thawer is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Education, University College London. Her thesis is on “The Role of Business in Higher Education Policy in India.” Her academic interests include global education policy and forms of its mobilization; the participation of business in policy formulation and higher education provision and delivery in lower‐ and middle income countries; and concerns of equity and access to higher education by vulnerable communities in the emerging economies.
Jurjo Torres‐Santomé is Full Professor of Curriculum, Instruction and School Organization, Chair of the Department of Pedagogy, Curriculum and Instruction at the University of A Coruña, Spain, and Coordinator of the Research in Educational Innovation Group, at the same university. He is author of books such as El curriculum oculto (1991); Globalización e interdisciplinariedad: el curriculum integrado (1994); Un currículo optimista frente a la desmemoria y el fatalismo (2001); Educación en tiempos de Neoliberalismo (2001); La desmotivación del profesorado (2006); La justicia curricular (2011); Políticas educativas y construcción de personalidades neoliberales y neocolonialistas (2017, in press), and Globalisms and Power (co‐editor with João M. Paraskeva, 2012).
Salim Vally is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg, South Africa, and Director of the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation and a Visiting Professor at the Nelson Mandela University, South Africa.
Antoni Verger is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. A former post‐doctoral fellow at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (University of Amsterdam), Dr. Verger’s research analyses the relationship between global governance institutions and education policy. He has specialized in the study of public‐private partnerships, quasi‐market mechanisms and accountability policies in education, and has published extensively on these themes. Currently, he is coordinating the research project REFORMED – Reforming Schools Globally: A Multiscalar Analysis of Autonomy and Accountability Policies in the Education Sector (ERC StG, 2016–2021).
Matthew Weinstein coordinates the Secondary Science Education Program at the University of Washington‐Tacoma. He is the author of Robot World: Education, Popular Culture, Science and more recently (with Dr. Nidaa Makki) of Bodies Out of Control: Rethinking Science Texts. His work draws on anthropology, cultural studies and political economy to analyze science education in and out of schools as forms of contested public culture. His recent work has analyzed the politics of human subjects, the nationalist discourse of the anthrax attacks of 2001, and the framing of disease and illness in school textbooks. His current research explores the history and culture of the street medics movement.
Ben Williamson is Lecturer in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Stirling, UK, where he focuses on digital technologies and data systems in the governance of education. This work has involved researching the use of digital “big data” analytics and visualization from policy‐making to pedagogic practice, tracing the development of new “psycho‐informatic” techniques of mood‐monitoring to support “social‐emotional learning,” and examining how brain‐based technologies inspired by neuroscience are designed as cognitive enhancement techniques for use in educational settings. He has also researched how education is being reimagined by Silicon Valley tech‐entrepreneurs and venture philanthropists and in the future visions of “smart cities.” Recent research articles have appeared in Journal of Education Policy, Big Data and Society, and Information, Communication and Society, and he is the author of Big Data in Education: The Digital Future of Learning, Policy and Practice.
Zeena Zakharia is Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Education at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her publications examine the interplay of language, conflict, and peacebuilding in education. These interests stem from over two decades of educational research and leadership in war‐affected contexts, most recently in relation to the Syrian crisis. She was a Tueni Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Middle Eastern Studies Postdoctoral Fellow at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Majd Zouda is a PhD candidate in Science Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada. Her doctoral dissertation focuses on STEM programs in secondary schools in Ontario, Canada. Majd holds a BSc in Microbiology and an MSc in Medical Microbiology. Prior to pursuing a PhD degree, she worked as a high‐school science teacher and the head of junior science department in an international school in Damascus, Syria. Recently, she has received the SSHRC doctoral fellowship (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council), and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS) awards for her doctoral research. Majd has been actively involved in publications on socioscientific issues, STEM education, and student activism.
Kenneth J. Saltman and Alexander J. Means
This edited volume examines educational reform from a global perspective. Currently, a number of trends are converging to fundamentally reshape the thinking, policy, and practice of educational development globally. Transnational institutions, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and powerful transnational corporations, such as Pearson, are promoting an interconnected set of global educational reforms that seek to align national systems of education with the demands of transnational capitalism and elite economic and political interests. Foremost, neoliberal rationalities and policy prescriptions that take economic growth, human capital development, and market exchange as the dominant organizing principles of social and institutional affairs have rapidly expanded. This has functioned to promote privatization and standardization across national educational systems and private sector and market‐based models of educational policy. In developing parts of the world, such as in parts of Africa and Asia, private fee‐for‐service educational franchises (many of them owned by transnational corporate actors) are being promoted and replicated, while in wealthy societies like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, public education systems are being defunded, privatized, commercialized, and subject to corporate restructuring, including an emerging trend to transform education through digital technologies.
Global educational reform is inextricably linked to broader economic, political, and cultural conflicts over public policy and struggles over educational value and purpose in an era of rapid global change. The chapters in this volume suggest that the dominance of neoliberal frameworks in public policy over the last three decades has tended to reshape educational systems and values in ways that undermine the idea of education as a public good, and has more generally eroded democratic relationships, institutions, and public spheres that foster cultures of dialogue, critical inquiry, and collaboration necessary for democratic life inside and outside of schools. Education is a vital component in imagining and realizing global futures, precisely at a moment when the future appears ever more precarious due to rising inequality, ecological destruction, weapons proliferation, and reassertion of right‐wing nationalism and authoritarianism. Importantly, situating global education reform in terms of the political and ideological contests animating global educational policy and governance, this volume is concerned with examining educational reform without being “reformist.” That is, we do not see reform of existing institutional arrangements as being the only, or even the central aim of engagement. Rather, this volume situates reform in the service of broad‐based social and democratic transformation. In short, what is at stake in comprehending educational reform today is setting the agenda for educational and social development that serves the interests of civil society and that promotes cultures of intellectuality, self‐governance, and egalitarian and sustainable forms of living and being.
Scholars in international and comparative education now often refer to a global education reform movement to signify a set of clearly identifiable global education reform trends. The Finnish education policy scholar, Pasi Sahlberg (2011) has outlined six features of this movement:
A global trend toward standardization of educational systems and an emphasis of setting prescriptive benchmarks with which to measure educational success and outcomes
. Standardization has gone hand‐in‐hand with the institution of high‐stakes testing and accountability initiatives that have sought to create international, national and regional systems for measuring, comparing, and evaluating educational systems and outcomes.
A global trend toward the teaching of core subjects and basic skills
. International testing comparisons, such as PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS, have encouraged nations to narrow standards and curriculum to math, science, and basic literacy often at the expense of broader forms of liberal arts and progressive forms of curriculum, teaching, and learning.
A global trend toward finding streamlined ways of reaching standardized learning objectives
. With the emphasis on quantifiable and measurable results through testing and accountability, experimental and creative forms of teaching and learning are being sidelined and marginalized. As opposed to problem posing, collaboration, and dialogical forms of knowledge construction in classrooms, teaching is imagined increasingly a scripted and deliverable service for producing standardized and predetermined ends.
A global trend toward transforming education based on corporate managerial models imported from the business sector
. These models are part of broader projects of educational privatization and are driven by market‐based approaches that privilege the maximization of efficiency, profit, and national economic competition as opposed to the goals of full human development and enhancement of democratic social relations.
A global trend toward the adoption of test‐based accountability policies in schools
. The adoption of high‐stakes testing regimes has been closely associated with a drive toward monitoring, rewarding, and punishing teachers and schools, based on student outcomes measured by standardized and prescriptive test‐based performance benchmarks.
These trends form the general outline of a global educational reform movement that has emerged over the last four decades. This reform consensus is being driven by what Stephen J. Ball (2012) has called “policy networks,” new hybrid policy configurations of educational decision‐making within and across the institutional platforms of nation‐states, non‐governmental organizations, philanthropies linked to transnational corporate actors like the Gates and Walton Foundations, private companies claiming to be philanthropies yet building education conglomerates, such as Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Omidyar Network, and the Emerson Collective, supra‐national governance organizations, such as the OECD and the World Bank, transnational business associations and edu‐corporations. Across these spheres and networks of policy actors, global education reform has increasingly coalesced around a set of ideas that situate schooling in the service of economic growth and innovation. The assumptions informing global reform promote private and for‐profit education around the world and they facilitate the rise of corporate monopolies in global education and modes of philanthrocapitalism involved in nearly all aspects of global education from administration, to curriculum, to teaching and learning.
The global educational reform “common sense” informing these new transnational “policy networks” has been deeply informed by neoliberal ideology and policy prescriptions that reject a prior Keynesian, or social democratic model of political economy and governance, that prevailed in the developed Western nations in the post‐World War II period (Olssen, Codd, & O’Neil, 2004; Saltman, 2007). With the election of Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States in the 1980s, and the subsequent emergence of the Washington Consensus and Francis Fukuyama’s declaration of the “end of history” in the 1990s, neoliberal ideas that were once relegated to obscure conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, economics departments like the Chicago School at the University of Chicago, and elite organizations like the Mont Pèlerin Society, emerged from the ideological sidelines and have since come to dominate mainstream policy‐making institutions (Harvey, 2005; Mirowski, 2013).
Notions of self‐regulating markets, deregulation, privatization, supply‐side growth, the “rolling back” of the public sector, “fiscal consolidation” of the state, individualization of risk, and the primacy of economics over sociality and politics, have broadly informed public policy, state restructuring, and transnational governance over the last four decades, including in education (Peck, 2010; Spring, 2014; Streeck, 2017). In terms of educational purpose, education has increasingly been conceived as a vehicle for human capital and the development of twenty‐first‐century workforce skills, national competitiveness in a global “knowledge” economy, and promotion of entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic contributions to productivity and growth. In terms of educational structure, market‐based strategies such as privatization, business involvement in education, and corporate managerial models have proliferated in order to standardize schooling through accountability, auditing, and testing. Fazal Rizvi and Bob Lingard observe:
With the rejection of ideas associated with Keynesian welfare state, governments increasingly preached a minimalist role for the state in education, with 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 purposes and governance, resulting in policies of corporatization, privatization and commercialization on the one hand, and demand for greater accountability on the other … 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 competitiveness of the national economy. (2009, pp. 2–3)
This drive to reform education systems globally to reflect and serve the imperatives of market expansion, transnational business interests, entrepreneurship, and economic growth is based on a number of key neoliberal thinkers and theoretical assumptions. This includes:
Friedrich von Hayek
(
1945
); capitalism is a superior information processing machine capable of efficient coordination of decentralized spontaneous market activity.
James Buchanan
(
1975
); the public sector is inherently inefficient and corrupt, while the private sector is inherently efficient, virtuous, and subject to market discipline.
Paul Romer
(
1990
); economic growth is the overarching mechanism of social progress fueled by “endogenous” factors of human capitalization and technological innovation.
Gary Becker (
1994
); national competitiveness and prosperity are derived from educational investments that boost human capital and the marginal productivity of labor.
Milton Friedman
(
2009
); markets should be created in traditionally non‐market spheres that enable the proliferation of choice and competition among competing service providers, such as in education.
These thinkers and their ideas have provided the basic ideological scaffolding for the global educational reform movement to privatize education and reorient its purpose to serving human capital ideology and market expansion globally. Importantly, these ideas have to be understood within a broader understanding of the relationship between education and twenty‐first‐century political economy. The neoliberal economization of education is centrally positioned by the global education reform movement as a mechanism to solve various structural crises emerging from the contradictions and negative externalities of global capitalism. First, in terms of global economic performance, the OECD projects that, without major structural reforms, economic growth will decline over the next five decades to 2.7%, with a grinding recessionary rate of 0.54% in OECD nations and 1.86% in non‐OECD nations (OECD, 2014). Second, in terms of inequality, Oxfam International reports that as of 2017, eight human beings now control more wealth than the bottom half of humanity, 3.6 billion people combined, while the global top 1% controls more wealth than the bottom 99% of humanity (Oxfam, 2017). Third, in terms of employment, studies indicate that 50–80% of jobs within “advanced” economies like the United States are at “high risk” of automation over the next two decades in areas like transportation, legal research, and financial consulting (Frey and Osbourne, 2013; Elliot, 2015). The World Bank reports that of the additional one billion young people expected to enter the global labor market by 2026, only 40% are expected to acquire jobs that currently exist, presumably due to the reorganization of labor markets in relation to new technology (World Bank, 2015). Fourth, in terms of the environment, the OECD projects that by 2060, 40% of the world’s population will live in areas of high water scarcity, deaths linked to air pollution will double, biodiversity will decline, while climate change disruptions will rapidly accelerate (OECD, 2014).
The global education reform movement positions education as a means of resolving economic stagnation, inequality, erosion of livelihoods, and ecological rifts. The idea is that through neoliberal prescriptions of privatization, standardization, and human capital, education can translate into endless economic growth and innovation, which will supposedly resolve all other global problems. Global education reform is here narrowly construed as a means to serve capitalism and the interests of elites rather than a means of fostering democratic social relations, the expansion of civil society and intellectuality, and collective responses to global crises rooted deeply in our economic, social, and political systems. At an historical moment when education as a means to address public problems could not be more urgent, dominant strains of education reform around the globe promote schooling in corporate, commercial. and instrumental forms. For instance, despite the pervasive rhetoric of opportunity and uplift, the global reform movement views education as a lucrative source of profit‐making within a stagnant global capitalism facing multiple crises and limits. Collapsing the public and private purposes of schooling, the World Bank’s leading educational development scholar, James Tooley (2009) insists on private fee for service educational development rather than free universal schooling in poor countries. He likens school systems to the fast food industry: McDonald’s is the model. Similarly, Chris Whittle, the CEO of Edison Learning and Avenues, has remarked that he sees a not‐too‐distant future in which a handful of edu‐corporations control global education entirely. He likens this to the construction of branded corporate educational service providers that replace public systems worldwide: