What educational planning is about

This editorial introduction to the special issue on planning suggests that much of the early optimism about educational planning has evaporated as a result of the burgeoning costs of higher education and the increasing difficulties graduates are having in finding suitable jobs. It is suggested that the reasons for this disillusion are partly that planners did not take political constraints sufficiently into account, and partly that the education system is far too complex for simplified models to deal with. Instead of treating educational planning as largely an exercise in long-term forecasting, we should be concerned much more with the efficient operation of the system and its orientation in the direction of objectives which are essentially political in nature and which are quite likely to change from one period to the next.     

Against Fragmentation: Critical Education Scholarship in a Time of Crisis

One of the defining characteristics of critical education scholarship is its focus on critical reflection as a means to inform educational scholarship and pedagogical practice. This article presents findings from a conjunctural analysis of the emergent crisis into which the United States and the global North are entering as a means of critically reflecting on educational scholarship. The analysis demonstrates that the emergent crisis is defined by economic, political, and cultural crises that are connected and animated by the neoliberal political project. The article concludes with a call for critical scholarship and pedagogical practice oriented toward synthetic, recontextualizing analysis.     

New scalar politics: implications for education policy

This paper argues that globalisation has implications for research and theory in the social sciences, demanding that the social no longer be seen as homologous with nation, but also linked to postnational or global fields. This situation has theoretical and methodological implications for comparative education specifically focused on education policy, which traditionally has taken the nation-state as the unit of analysis, and also worked with ‘methodological nationalism’. The paper argues that globalisation has witnessed a rescaling of educational politics and policymaking and relocated some political authority to an emergent global education policy field, with implications for the functioning of national political authority and national education policy fields. This rescaling and this reworking of political authority are illustrated through two cases: the first is concerned with the impact of a globalised policy discourse of the ‘knowledge economy’ proselytised by the OECD and its impact in Australian policy developments; the second is concerned explicitly with the constitution of a global education policy field as a commensurate space of equivalence, as evidenced in the OECD’s PISA and educational indicators work and their increasing global coverage. The paper indicatively utilises Bourdieu’s ‘thinking tools’ to understand the emergent global education policy field and suggests these are very useful for doing comparative education policy analysis.     

Performance-based budgeting for continuing and lifelong education services: the Thai higher education perspective

This study presents analyses of panel data from 2007 to 2011 from various authoritative sources of information on public universities in Thailand. The focus is on factors that influence the budgetary decision-making process in providing educational services to the general public under a recently implemented performance-based budgeting system. Results from fixed effect regression models show that student headcount, political influence and economic conditions are not statistically significant variables in the decision-making process, which establish budgetary expenditures for educational services. These findings seem to contradict those in existing literature that have relied on analyses of data from surveys, interviews and questionnaires. This study contributes to the literature by providing quantitative data analysis and providing accurate information that could assist university administrators in preparing their universities’ budgets.     

The international flow of scholars and students: A vehicle for cross-cultural understanding,international co-operation and global development?

This article is a shift away from the narrow socio-psychological focus of student flows towards an examination and analysis of the mutual educational, political and economic advantages and disadvantages to both sending and receiving countries and to global development through educational exchange. The, article within its limited framework goes on to outline the impetus for the origin and development of the international flow of scholars and students in a global context. It then examines the implications and contribution this movement makes towards cross-cultural understanding, international co-operation in higher education and a global development in knowledge. It outlines the educational, cultural and economic advantages and disadvantages that sending and host countries have derived and continue to derive from these flows. However, the benefits seem to outweigh the disadvantages, particularly in the light of the growing new international economic order accompanied by an interdependent world economic system. In spite of this, a number of the developed host countries, mainly for parochial economic and political reasons, have introduced a series of protectionist measures to curtail the number of overseas students coming into their institutions of higher education. This has adversely affected particularly the poorer developing countries and their students. The article also points out that this exchange of scholars and students is a useful marketing mechanism for the developed countries, as students returning home take back with them a considerable amount of knowledge of their host country and this is helpful in a highly competitive world market system.     

Communist education as modernisation strategy? The swings of the globalisation pendulum in Eastern Europe (1947–1989)

This article engages with the influence of Soviet educational models and Western European contacts, mediated by historical institutional and cultural legacies in producing specifically Eastern educational variants. A first level of analysis will identify the reasons behind the emergence of these variations. A second and higher level of analysis will question the use of global models in the modernisation processes. The Soviet influence in education is conceptualised as initially both an imperialist force and a voluntary borrowing, followed by internationalisation with local adaptation. It cannot be conceived of as a coherent model. In fact, Soviet education was transformed over time and incorporated both Western and elitist elements. Nevertheless, a historical and comparative analysis indicates that, while not divergent on educational grounds, the Soviet and the Western European educational patterns at times intermingled. These countries looked increasingly to the West in search of models and to reposition themselves in the global arena.     

Education in the twenty‐first century: Conflict,reconstruction and reconciliation1

This paper is an attempt to map out an emerging, and increasingly important field of study concerning the relationship between education and conflict. The field has two main parameters. The first involves the variety of contexts within which education systems are required to operate. Distinctions are drawn between education that is provided within relatively peaceful and stable environments; during times of violent conflict; as part of reconstruction following conflict or political transition; and as part of longer term peace and reconciliation processes. Educational priorities and concerns may be quite different depending on each of these circumstances. The second parameter concerns different levels of action within an education system. These include the political and policy environment, administrative and structural features and various aspects of educational practice. The paper argues that actions through various ‘entry points’ at each of these levels carry the potential to exacerbate or ameliorate conflict and suggests that a systemic analysis of investments in education systems from a conflict perspective should be a routine part of educational planning.     

To nail a pudding: metaphorical analysis of the social studies education discourse community on globalization

Despite the abundance of studies on globalization in educational research, globalization is often approached as a monolithic and standardized concept. Focusing on the social studies education in the USA, this study explores how the various metaphors through which globalization is framed embrace particular perspectives on how to conceive and educate about globalization. Specifically, this study discusses seven conceptual metaphors: the global as a place, time, container, spectacle, person, threat, and as a force of nature. In doing so, it illustrates how globalization is predominately rendered as an inclusive structure, a disembedded process, and as a permanent threat. The different metaphors, this paper argues, fulfill a twofold role. First, they define a domain of their own, the global domain, creating a distinctive global viewpoint on human agency and social change. Second, these metaphors also release a political imagination structured around particular expectations of what exactly the global means and does.     

中苏论战与中国社会主义思想政治教育体系的形成

1956年到1966年中苏两党围绕“什么是马克思主义、怎样对待马克思主义”和“什么是社会主义、怎样建设社会主义”进行的论战,是中国社会主义思想政治教育体系形成和发展的重要因素.它对中国社会主义思想政治教育主导地位的确立、教育任务的提出、教育方针的制定与教育方法的完善产生了重要影响.     

The flat world and education: how America’s commitment to equity will determine our future

This paper uses Margaret Archer’s morphogenetic approach to analyze the emergence of civil society within global educational governance. The purpose is to understand the intersection of historical structures with global actors and spaces that have accompanied the globalization of education. Based on findings from a study on the impact in Cambodia of the Civil Society Education Fund – sponsored by the Global Campaign for Education – we first identify the relevant sociocultural, political-economic, and governance structures within which the politics of education is embedded in Cambodia. Then, we detail the relational processes through which Cambodian civil society has been able to join and, in so doing, modify the structures of education governance. The value of the morphogenetic approach is its treatment of time – that is, the way that it temporarily separates structure and agency in order to make possible an analysis of the dynamics of global education governance. While this approach is not new, we suggest that a morphogenetic approach can help in understanding the ways actors come together to create the processes and co-constitute the spaces through which existing educational structures and policies are made and remade across time.     

Neoliberalism, globalization, and creative educational destruction in Taiwan

In this article, the authors argue that educational technology is chiefly and increasingly being used as a tool for the privatization of education and the commodification of people by way of top down evaluative structures put in place by governments in collusion with neoliberal interests. This analysis began as a study that sought to illuminate the reasons why teachers in Taiwanese technical colleges have been reluctant to integrate educational technologies for actual instruction. However, what the authors actually found was that teachers in Taiwan are experiencing a forced obsession with top down evaluations and these evaluations are locking teachers in what may be called an amplifying causal loop. By looking up the proverbial food chain of the top–down evaluations, the authors found socio-political and economic forces at work that were less Taiwanese and more global in scope and character and less about teachers and classrooms and more about the rise of educational administration for neoliberal advancement. This article argues that a collusion between neoliberal interests, an obsession with evaluation, and the uninterrogated implementation of educational technologies are giving rise to processes that are wreaking havoc on the Taiwanese education system and similar processes are at work throughout the world.     

Middlemen and midwives of reform: the in-between worlds of Albanian educational policy-makers and professionals

Based on a vertical case study in post-communist Albania, this article examines how three local experts become ‘in-betweens’ who strategically mediate processes of social change. For example, they negotiate constructions of time and place, East and West, policy and practice, state and society. As they localise global educational models, the ‘in-betweens’ concurrently engage in re-making cultural meaning. This analysis thus enhances our understanding of the cultural complexity of international educational policy transfer and localisation.     

Education decentralization in Argentina: a ‘global-local conditions of possibility’ approach to state,market, and society change

This research examined the international origins, national intentions, and local interpretations and actions of the most recent education decentralization movement in Argentina. As a mixed-method, multi-level study, the research was framed with the understanding that current reforms like education decentralization must be approached as contemporaneously constituted policies but historically constructed processes. Using historical methods and archival analysis, this research traced the patterns and pressures of the international policy environment in which policies like privatization, deregulation and decentralization have gained much attention. It reviewed Argentina's recent current educational decentralization laws in light of these global trends as well as their national and subnational context. Employing technical, political, and narrative methods of policy analysis, this research examined the degree of correspondence between the laws' international origins and national intentions and the actors' local interpretations and actions of them. Drawing from the ‘analytic narratives’ that resulted from this study, the bulk of this article compares actors' interpretations, re-actions, and en-actions of education decentralization in three provinces of Argentina. By assessing the relationship between the provinces' political, economic, and cultural contexts and the actors' interpretations and actions of education decentralization, the research concludes that both material capacities and symbolic identities affect the outcomes of education decentralization.     

Mobilisieren und Optimieren

Looking at the conflictual constitution of educational systems by equality and excellence, this paper examines the discursive formation of two political rationalities in the contemporary German educational system that are directly opposed. While early childhood and primary education discourses are dominated by a terminology of equity, tertiary education institutions such as universities are described with a terminology of excellence that has become a reference point for political interventions and institutional reform processes.Taking up the theoretical position of hegemony-theory, governmentality studies and system theory, the paper analyzes the rules of justification these hegemonic discourses refer to by employing a discourse analysis of strategic, conceptional, and institutional texts of the German education policy discourse between 2003 and 2010. The paper puts forth the thesis that mobilizing and optimizing represent the common principles of equality and excellence as rationalities of the maximal mobilization of educational ressources.     

论教育全球化

教育全球化是指世界范围内的理念、发展进程和机构影响当地教育的政策与实践。在教育全球化过程中,国际组织、跨国教育公司以及新信息交流技术发挥重要的推动作用。目前,人力资本理论和消费主义是主导全球的教育理念。这导致了教育的首要目标是促进经济发展;教育思想的讨论大都指向了人力资本开发、为提高工作技能而进行终身学习以及经济发展;全球教育商业、营利性教育机构、全球教育测评项目、影子教育产业得以迅猛发展。作者认为,不应把对经济增长和收入增长的贡献度作为学校的评估标准,而应将学校对社会发展的贡献程度作为评估学校的标准,重点考察学校对人类幸福和永恒生活作出哪些贡献。

Abstract：

Globalization of education refers to the worldwide discussions,processes,and institutions affecting local educational practices and policies.There are international organizations that directly and indirectly influence national school systems.There are multinational education corporations and schools.Government and professionals engage in global discussions about school policies.Today,the dominant educational ideology is human capital economics and consumerism.Human capital economics defines the primary goal of education to be economic growth.Educational discourses around the world often refer to human capital,lifelong learning for improving job skills,and economic development.Consequently,there is a burgeoning global market for global education business,for-profit education,global testing services,as well as shadow education.The author proposes that school policies should be evaluated on their contribution to the social conditions that provide the conditions for human happiness and longevity rather than being judged by their contribution to economic growth and income.     

Educational journals and worldwide circulation of pedagogical knowledge: Brazil and Portugal (1921–1935)

This article focuses on the circulation of educational models between Portugal and Brazil (from 1920 to 1935), within a broader context of an intensive international transfer of ‘ways of thinking’ about education. It describes and analyses the results from research on two educational journals, one Portuguese (Revista Escolar) the other from the Brazilian State of Sao Paulo (Education). Central to this text is the notion that educational journals constitute important vehicles for the production and regulation of knowledge as well as for the formation of specialized fields in education. Thus, the article gives particular attention to the selective mobilization of foreign educational models (countries, authors and educational organizations), within a framework of analysis committed to the articulation of the processes of diffusion and reception of educational knowledge. The article presents the characteristics of both journals, in the face of those (geo‐political and intellectual) international references, and compares the relations of affiliation and affinity with foreign models displayed by each journal. The analysis shows: (i) the centrality of authors and organizations associated with the New Education in the promotion of knowledge that proposes to mediate scientific production and pedagogical practice; (ii) the existence of differences regarding the foreign countries that are taken as models for education improvement at a national scale; (iii) the presence of different spaces for the (worldwide) circulation of pedagogical models (the New Education circuit and the Latin‐American circuit); (iv) the scarce referencing of the other ‘who speaks the same language’. Results are discussed by taking into consideration their relationships with the structuration of pedagogicalal discourses and organisations, in both national and international spheres.     

Educational borrowing as negotiation: re‐examining the influence of the American black industrial education model on British colonial education in Africa

This study explores the extent to which American educational ideas made an impact on policy‐making and practice of education in British African colonies between the two World Wars. The analysis re‐examines the apparent ‘borrowing’ of American black industrial education models for application in Africa. It is argued that, while the view that Americans were successful in handling racial conflicts by means of education at home carried strong symbolic meaning in the colonial political arena, the ideas themselves were not new. The paper focuses on the motivations and characteristics of the people involved in this political discourse and in transferring American and other models to Africa. By doing this, the paper draws attention to a more complex network of factors that were involved in the transfer of educational policies to British colonies in Africa.     

The expansion of compulsory education in Turkey: local and world culture dynamics

Drawing on world culture and local culture explanations of educational change, this article aims to understand the dynamics of educational reform in Turkey in 1997 that expanded compulsory primary education from five to eight years. To do so, speeches given by opponents and proponents of the reform in the Turkish parliament were analysed. Imam-Hatip schools, vocational secondary schools for educating religious functionaries, were central to the debate. In support of world culture explanations, both sides of the debate made references to Western educational models and universal values such as democracy and human rights to frame and legitimise their arguments. However, all these arguments were embedded in local cultural and political issues. This article therefore proposes that both world culture and local culture should be considered when analysing national policy changes since local actors can easily appropriate global developments to support their local cultural and political interests.     

Governance and knowledge transformations in educational administration: Greek responses to global policies

This article explores the localisation of the global and European discourse of educational governance in the Greek education system through the changes that have been introduced in the field of education administration since 2009 by the then socialist government. Our research aims to contribute to the critical policy literature on the spreading marketisation and privatisation in the governing of education around the world and in Europe – through the adoption of New Public Management and Educational Leadership models. In developing our theoretical perspective, we use the Foucauldian concepts of governmentality and discourse, and in order to conceptualise power and control relations in the organisation, transmission, acquisition, and evaluation of pedagogical knowledge, we draw on Bernstein's theory of symbolic control. Our study has examined how the field of education administration is governed through power and knowledge transformations. We trace these transformations by analysing systematically the pedagogic discourse through which the global governance discourse is relayed and becomes a ‘regime of truth’ within public policy and practice in Greece. We argue that such changes have significant implications for everyday educational practice and for the kinds of knowledge that are considered legitimate, and they may affect educational professionals' subjectivities in fundamental ways.