Globalization and education: Critical perspectives

This book brings together an outstanding group of international authors to discuss the topic of how globalization is affecting educational policy in nation-states around the world. The authors have quite different views of "globalization." For some of these authors, the term refers to the emergence of supranational institutions whose decisions shape and constrain the policy options for any particular nationstate; for others, it means the overwhelming impact of global economic processes, including processes of production, consumption, trade, capital flow, and monetary interdependence; for still others, it denotes the rise of neoliberalism as a hegemonic policy discourse; for some it primarily means the emergence of new global cultural forms, media, and technologies of communication, all of which shape the relations of affiliation, identity, and interaction within and across local cultural settings; and for still others, "globalization" is primarily a perceived set of changes, a construction used by state policymakers to inspire support for and suppress opposition to changes because "greater forces" (global competition, responses to IMF or World Bank demands, obligations to regional alliances, and so on) leave the nation-state "no choice" but to play by a set of global rules not of its own making. Of course, each of the authors cites the complex interplay of these various factors with different weights and in different relations.