Globalisation, transnational policies and adult education

Globalisation, transnational policies and adult education – This paper examines policy documents produced by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the European Union (EU) in the field of adult education and learning. Both these entities address adult education as an explicit object of policy. This paper investigates how globalisation processes are constructed as policy problems when these transnational political agents propose adult education as a response. The author’s main argument is that while UNESCO presents the provision of adult education as a means for governments worldwide to overcome disadvantages experienced by their own citizenry, the EU institutionalises learning experiences as a means for governments to sustain regional economic growth and political expansion. After reviewing the literature on globalisation to elucidate the theories that inform current understanding of contemporary economic, political, cultural and ecological changes as political problems, she presents the conceptual and methodological framework of her analysis. The author then examines the active role played by UNESCO and the EU in promoting adult education as a policy objective at transnational level, and unpacks the specific problem “representations” that are substantiated by these organisations. She argues that UNESCO and EU processes assign specific values and meanings to globalisation, and that these reflect a limited understanding of the complexity of globalisation. Finally, she considers two of the effects produced by these problem representations.     

Racialized bodies,pliable minds: ethnography on the fringe of transnational education

Through ethnographic research, this paper explores narratives of failure constructed within a private Australian accounting college in China. The accounts provided by teachers and students are problematized in order to address how racialization is enacted through accounts of failure within the research site. Through an interpretive theoretical framework and the methodology of Michael Burawoy, racialization is exposed as a form of justification for the concerns teachers and students faced. Within accounts of failure, racial framing of the body and the acculturated minds of students were simultaneously ascribed negative attributes deemed in contradiction with this form of transnational education. In unpacking how these processes of racialization are tied to the very structure of transnational education itself, this paper addresses how standardized and globalized curricula produce unintended local effects.     

The problem of the present: On simultaneity,synchronisation and transnational education projects

Abstract

The current inclination, at the European level, to fund education in the form of projects radicalises the modern orientation towards the present as the attempt to bind a yet indeterminate future. This article proposes a close re-reading of Niklas Luhmann’s sociological oeuvre in order to problematise the place of the present in modern education. In an effort to sketch out the need for a new educational ecology, it then draws attention to how transnational projects articulate their educational meaning.     

The impact of the GATS on transnational tertiary education: Comparing experiences of New Zealand,Australia, Singapore and Malaysia

This paper examines the impact of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) on transnational higher education in four countries: New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia. The GATS is a multilateral agreement through which WTO members commit to voluntary liberalisation of trade in services, including education. Transnational (or offshore) education refers to education that is delivered by an institution based in one country to students located in a different country. Two of the countries considered, New Zealand and Australia, have made commitments under GATS to allow relatively unrestricted cross-border provision of education in their countries, while the other two countries, Singapore and Malaysia, have made no such commitment. There is currently considerable activity in renegotiating countries’ commitments to GATS as part of the Doha round of WTO negotiations, and simultaneously bilateral free trade agreements are being proposed between countries in the region. In this context, this paper examines the practical impact that GATS has had on these two countries that have made commitments regarding education, and the likely impact that similar commitments by Malaysia and Singapore would have on the tertiary education systems in those major importing countries.     

Civil defence pedagogies and narratives of democracy: disaster education in Germany

‘Disaster education’ is a fledgling area of study in lifelong education. Many countries educate their populations for disasters, to mitigate potential damage and loss of life, as well as contribute to national security. In this paper, which draws on interview data from the German Federal Office for Civil Defence and Disaster Assistance and the Federal Agency for Technical Relief, archival research, analysis of websites and promotional materials as well as relevant academic literature, I examine disaster education and preparedness for national emergencies in Germany. I argue that it is not generally extended to the general public, rather confined to trained experts, decentralised, localised and exclusive. Theorising disaster education as a ‘civil defence pedagogy’, a type of public pedagogy, which contributes to shaping narratives of national identity, I argue that it is unlikely that Germany will develop a more inclusive, universal, formalised nor high-profile campaign in disaster education in the foreseeable future. This, I suggest, is due to narratives of the German democratic nation as secure, federal, peaceful and unified, which originated at the founding of West Germany in 1949, and continue to shape contemporary political narratives.