The conservative response to the 2011 Chilean student movement: neoliberal education and media

This paper focuses on the relationship between the media and educational policies in the context of the ‘neoliberal newspeak’, which has characterized the current circulation of ideas in cultural production. Using framing theory, this article presents a critical discourse analysis on the editorials published about the 2011 student movement by El Mercurio, the most influential newspaper in Chile. El Mercurio is more than a newspaper. It is an institution; an institution that supports conservative ideas. El Mercurio framed the public discussion about educational policies and defended neoliberal education based on three discourses: the neoliberal system is absolute, public education is valued less than private and education is a technical issue, not political. By invoking this rhetoric strategy, these discourses attempted to maintain the neoliberal education system in Chile, which in turn rejected the social struggles of the student movement.     

英语的全球化与语言的多样性

伴随全球化进程，英语已成了当今世界的主导性语言，并在全球范围传播和普及。英语的全球化给世界语言多样性的生态样式带来了极大的破坏。因此，及时采取措施对策，反对英语的霸权，保护世界语言多样性的生存样式已是刻不容缓。     

Cultural diversity and the imagined community of the global academy

Transnational academic mobility and the ongoing push towards “internationalization” together raise challenges for the cultural climate of today's universities. This paper explores these issues from the perspective of supervisors of research degrees in an Australian university in which “internationalization” and “academic mobility” apply to supervisors as much as to students. The concepts of the imagined community and cosmopolitanism are employed to interpret a series of one-on-one and group interviews conducted with international academic staff, conversations which reported surprisingly untroubled negotiation of cultural difference. Using the insights provided by the concepts of “imagined community” and “cosmopolitanism”, we investigate the mechanisms mobilized by these supervisors in apparently backgrounding cultural diversity in the workplace, and consider the implications of the academic subjectivities they perform.     

Undoing diversity: knowledge and neoliberal discourses in colleges of education

In this article we analyze discourses of ‘diversity’ in colleges of education in Chile. We contend that the use of discourses of diversity, as reproducing the separation between mainstream subjectivities and those uncontained by the category of normal, is one of the ways universities align themselves with the rules of a democratic society, based on ideas of multicultural understandings and tolerant communities proliferated by inter-governmental institutions such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and others. Our interest is to question the marginalization of cultural politics through the intensification of these discourses. At the same time, we explore the relations between the advancement of neutral discourses of difference and the value-free practices expressed in neoliberal educational agendas. We use discourse analysis to read interviews with future teachers. We understand students’ narratives as perpetuating normative ways of thinking and legitimating those knowledges promoted by institutional curricula.     

Rhythmic movement as a tacit enactment goal mobilizes the emergence of mathematical structures

This article concerns the purpose, function, and mechanisms of students’ rhythmic behaviors as they solve embodied-interaction problems, specifically problems that require assimilating quantitative information structures embedded into the environment. Analyzing multimodal data of one student tackling a bimanual interaction design for proportion, we observed the (1) evolution of coordinated movements with stable temporal–spatial qualities; (2) breakdown of this proto-rhythmic form when it failed to generalize across the problem space; (3) utilization of available resources to obtain greater specificity by way of measuring spatial spans of movements; (4) determination of an arithmetic pattern governing the sequence of spatial spans; and (5) creation of a meta-rhythmic form that reconciles continuous movement with the arithmetic pattern. The latter reconciliation selectively retired, modified, and recombined features of her previous form. Rhythmic enactment, even where it is not functionally imperative, appears to constitute a tacit adaptation goal. Its breakdown reveals latent phenomenal properties of the environment, creating opportunities for quantitative reasoning, ultimately supporting the learning of curricular content.     

The political economy of higher education in the era of neoliberal globalization: Latin America in comparative perspective

During the last two decades, Latin American universities have experienced intense pressure to abandon the main principles established in the 1918 Córdoba Reform (i.e., autonomy and autarchy). While funding for public higher education has declined, they are pressured to relinquish a large portion of institutional autonomy in order to accommodate to market demands and to a new set of control strategies emanating from the state.We argue that current changes in Latin American higher education cannot be examined in isolation from larger political and economic changes in the region, which in turn are related to the dynamics of globalization. After the decline of socialist and welfare-state models, neoliberal regimes have become hegemonic in many parts of the world. In most countries, changes in financial arrangements, coupled with accountability mechanisms, have forced universities to reconsider their social missions, academic priorities and organizational structures. Concerns about equity, accessibility, autonomy or the contribution of higher education to social transformation, which were prevalent during previous decades, have been overshadowed by concerns about excellence, efficiency, expenditures and rates of return. The notion that higher education is primarily a citizens right and a social investment – which has been taken for granted for many decades – is being seriously challenged by a neoliberal agenda that places extreme faith in the market.Though we focus on the international dimension of university change, it is important to note that global trends are promoted, resisted and negotiated differently in each national context and in each individual institution. In the emerging knowledge-based society, the polarization between North and South is expected to increase even further if the scientific and technological gaps are not narrowed. Latin American universities have a crucial role to play in this regard. The paper is organized in two parts. The first describes the context of university change, focusing on issues of globalization and neoliberalism. The second examines the main features of university restructuring in comparative perspective, with a particular focus on Latin America.     

Unconventional sources as a new convention: The shifting paradigm of undergraduate writing

Recent research has remarked upon the widespread use of Internet sources by undergraduate students in support of their written ideas. Results of this research indicate there is a tendency for some students to cite sources whose content meets their expedient needs, while ignoring standards of rigor typically required for academic citation. Despite this tendency, the present study explores whether Web sources which would normally be considered unconventional for academic citation, in fact, offer enriching content. This study isolates the unconventional Web references from three second-language students' research papers for qualitative analysis. Results indicate that although the cavalier use of Web sources by students remains a serious concern, unconventional sites can sometimes be an unusually rich source of information. Such a finding has implications for how students are taught to consider Internet sources. Specifically, it is suggested that sites normally considered unconventional not be summarily dismissed as potential sources of information.     

Youth in a global world: attitudes towards globalization and global citizenship among university students in Hong Kong

Despite the wealth of theoretical literature on globalization and global citizenship, empirical studies on the topic are lacking, especially in the context of pedagogical needs in relation to global citizenship education. In order to address this gap, a study was conducted in Hong Kong to investigate the attitudes of university students towards various dimensions of globalization and global citizenship. The initial results indicate that Hong Kong university students are generally quite aware of globalization's impact on the economy and personal consumption choices and that while there is considerable apathy towards international affairs, there is also a great interest in cross-cultural service learning opportunities that is not being met by the available programmes. Moreover, this study finds almost no association between age, gender, and religion and any of the measured dependent variables on attitudes towards globalization and global citizenship, the only exception being the factor of past intercultural experiences, where a significant difference in measured attitudes was found between respondents who had and respondents who had not participated in such experiences before. Explanations of the findings and the implications of findings for policy and future research are discussed.     

Internationalization as a response to globalization: Radical shifts in university environments

This case study probes recent developments in a number of academic and non-academic aspects of a private research university in response to current globalization trends. Under the name of internationalization, university administrators and external firms are emerging as powerful decision-makers shaping academic content and even academic governance. This is manifested in student recruitment and in the hiring of prestigious professors and researchers to increase university reputation and thus to appeal to more students and secure more research funds. Among disciplines central to economic and technological globalization, such as communication, business, and engineering, patterns of convergence are emerging. Rather than internationalism, internationalization is found to prevail, and internationalization is found to signify predominantly a search for student markets domestically and abroad rather than positioning the university’s knowledge at the service of others in less advantaged parts of the world.     

The responsibilisation of teachers: a neoliberal solution to the problem of inclusion

This paper critically examines competing demands placed on teachers, with reference to recent inclusion policy in England and Australia. The authors draw on Michael Foucault’s analysis of power, neoliberalism(s) and biopolitics to explore the ways in which teachers are ‘responsibilised’ into negotiating and fulfilling demands related to both state-imposed accountability practices and social justice agendas. The economic context and associated ‘politics of austerity’ are taken into account in a critical exploration of how the (biopolitical) management of inclusion in the neoliberal present coincides with diminishing funding for social and educational expertise, with ever-increasing responsibilities being placed on teachers to fill this void. The responsibilisation of teachers in recent legislation and statutory guidance discursively constructs the teacher as a professional who takes responsibility for student and school performance, pastoral care, inclusion and social change. Responsibilisation relies on ‘dividing practices’, obliging some teachers to assess the conformity of colleagues to inclusion policy.     

Designing diversity: globalization,textbooks, and the story of nations

I examine selected history textbooks marketed in the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. My focus is on representations of indigenous peoples and their place in the text. In design, these textbooks tend to balance inclusively the best of a nation's history with the text of progress. But when compared in a global context, indigenous history, past and present, works as a counter‐text that undercuts the dominant myth of progress, troubling the symbolic coherence of this narrative and the imagined unity of national identity. I seek to articulate an appropriate, in global context, a transnational framework of historical representation, which connects indigenous history with worlds beyond the nation.     

Taming cosmopolitanism: the limits of national and neoliberal civic education in two global cities

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes global education policy and curricular documents in Singapore and Hong Kong. Using a discursive approach, we characterize curricular aims through various cosmopolitan perspectives. We posit that although touted as Asian global cities, Singapore and Hong Kong are cases where neoliberal and nation-centric educational agendas have effectively rebranded cosmopolitanism and tamed its transformative potential. To develop this argument, we review theories and critiques of cosmopolitan forms of global citizenship education deemed necessary to prepare young people for complex global social conditions. We discuss cosmopolitan principles on identity, values, and deliberation and draw on critical cosmopolitanism and Asian forms of cosmopolitanism to provide a discursive framework for analyzing curricular intentions in the two cases.     

Cultural diversity is basically a foreign term to me: the challenges of diversity for preservice teacher education

While student populations grow more diverse, the preservice teacher population is becoming more homogeneous, primarily White and middle-class. One challenge for teacher preparation programs arising from the mismatch of teacher and student cultures is to facilitate intercultural sensitivity and learning among prospective teachers. This longitudinal study examines the effectiveness of the approach to diversity issues used in an urban university during the final year of a teacher preparation program. The article examines the effects of the treatment on teacher beliefs in two case studies at the end of the program and also looks at residual effects three years later.     

The promise and peril of the state in neoliberal times: implications for the critical environmental education movement in Brazil

Neoliberal ideology has made an impact on environmental education (EE) policies and practices in Brazil. The EE in Family Agriculture Program, of national scope and administered by the Ministry of the Environment, seeks to promote sustainable development in rural areas, specifically through strategies focused on adult education and non-formal education aimed at small producers (family agriculture). This program reveals profound ideological contradictions between the critical and transformative rhetoric of public policy and the actual program structures and practices administered by the state in a dependent economy, which primarily serve to reinforce a capitalist mode of production marked by high environmental impact and deeply stratified class relations. In the neoliberal era, states intending to protect the environment through critical EE strategies suffer serious limitations due to their role as stewards of a globalized economy based on the supply of raw materials, high-impact land-use, and a cheap labor force.     

Pedagogy as a discipline: emergence,sustainability and professionalisation

In recent years, the emergence of pedagogy in higher education as an increasingly professionalised endeavour has been observed by a number of writers. In this article, I argue that pedagogy is developing the characteristics of a discipline, with its own methodologies, sense of community, and power dynamics. Whilst in principle, I welcome the formation of a discipline of higher education pedagogy, I warn against the danger that pedagogy will become increasingly divorced from the classroom context. I also call for those working in this discipline to develop and promote critical pedagogies that seek to challenge existing ‘safe systems’ (Guilherme & Phipps (2004 Guilherme, M. and Phipps, A. 2004. “Introduction: why languages and intercultural communication are never just neutral”. In Critical pedagogy: political approaches to language and intercultural communication, Edited by: Phipps, A. and Guilherme, M. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.  [Google Scholar]) Critical pedagogy: political approaches to language and intercultural communication (Clevedon, Multilingual Matters)) in order to guard against pedagogy merely being a service unit, serving the whims of government, funding councils and institutions.     

Navigating the neoliberal university: reflecting on teaching practice as a teacher-researcher-trade unionist

Abstract

This article reflects upon the neoliberalisation of higher education and its effects on teaching practice. It is argued that a neoliberal discourse of teaching excellence has the effect of working against, and potentially undermining, the emancipatory potential of higher education. The article reflects upon attempts to navigate disciplinary power in the neoliberal university and considers whether critical, emancipatory praxis is possible or if complicity in, and co-option by, neoliberalism is inevitable. Ultimately, it is concluded that individual teachers have some scope to pursue approaches which counter neoliberal dominance but that this is heavily constrained. A broader, collective, project will therefore be necessary if alternative (critical, emancipatory) visions of teaching and learning in higher education are to successfully challenge neoliberal hegemony and the negative effects of this in the academy.