Exploring issues in international context (4): Globalization

Chapter 8. Globalization and implications for education p. 283

Definition: Globalization has "become the central issue of our time" and "will define the world our children inherit." Globalization results in the increasing interdependence and integration of countries as the result of the worldwide movement of ideas, capital, labor, and goods and is "a set of process that tend to de-territorialize important economic, social, and cultural practices from their traditional boundaries in nation-states."

I. Globalization as paradox rather than paradigm

• Local-global dichotomy
  
  • The lack of attention to issues of social justice (wealth distribution, access and opportunity, cultural identity, and universal human rights and cultural rights)
  • In international projects, the global is actually the knowledge of those from developed nations passed off as priorities onto the Other - the developing nation
  • globalization's forces may incite strong reactions from local communities committed to protecting their particular views and values
    
• Addressing the dichotomy
  
  • Schools are expected to help prepare students to adapt to a global-oriented economy while simultaneously negotiating community values at more local levels
  • Educators are to prepare global citizens (address cultural pluralism)
    

II. Multiple conceptions of globalization

• Globalization as economics
  
  • from a positive outlook: globalization represents a natural and inevitable expansion of the marketplace beyond national borders (economic liberalism; market economy)
    
  • from a critical outlook: the economic aspects of gloablization stress that the anthropomorphic imagery of formulations like that of the World Bank has the rhetorical effect of depicting human actors as beholden to supposedly natural economic forces that are beyond their control rather than as participants in the creation of these forces (ignoring "human agent")
  • Application: A Nation at Risk (rationalized in terms of economic competition)
    
• Globalization as information and communications technologies (p. 291)
  
  • "knowledge economy"
  • ICTs have transformed the rate and the consequences of globalization - changing conception of knowledge and information
    
  • The profusion of IT combines with other forces of globalization to produce a homogenizing effect
  • unequal access - whose knowledge tech exalts and whose may be forgotten
    
• Globalization as sociocultural phenomena
  
  • arising from the acceleration of phenomena such as immigration: the divergence and convergence of perspectives within classrooms that are increasingly multicultural
  • Typical question: how the national and international are reflected in (and shaped by) the local and by the actualities and experiences of people's lives
    
• Globalization as philosophical reassessment
  
  • new moral and ethical imperatives that have emerged (redefinition of citizenship, society
  • Digital divide (new literacies) p. 293
  • Global social justice (universalization of human rights) - injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere
  • Be aware of the market-centric conception of globalization as ideologies are commonly defined in economic terms
    

III. Globalization and its impact on educational issues

• Globalization and purposes of schooling
  
  • The purpose of education: prepare the educated person (predicated on the way in which dominant or powerful members of a society view the world)
  • Education is often considered an instrument to develop human capital (globalization thus treated as a paradigm rather than a paradox)
  • Curriculums should be designed not only to acquaint students with globalizing impetuses but also to help them critique the ways globalization benefits some over others
    
• Globalization and educational access and opportunity
  
  • poverty, digital divide, relocation, "white flight" (economic stratification along urban-suburban lines
  • develop identities as world citizens
    
• Globalization and educational accountability and authority
  
  • The global commercialization of education - homogenizes curriculum & instruction
  • acute pressures related to the accountability movement (inspired by the 1983 A Nation at Risk report) - school choice through market principles (vouchers, charter schools)
  • Resistance (NCLB controversial)
    
• Globalization and teacher professionalism
  
  • two spheres educators inhabit
    
    • Official sphere: dominated by formal authorities directing curriculum, instruction & assessment
    • Unofficial sphere: distinguished by the form the culture of teaching practice assumes
      
  • Reconcile 2 major views
    
    • education for national economic growth
    • education for social transformation toward a more just society
      
  • Philosophical commitments: to promote human dignity, engage students in critical discussion about social challenges, and foster teacher reflection on the kinds of educational practices that develop concern for others at home and abroad
    
    

IV. Developing teachers' comparative perspective taking skills

Exploring issues in international context (3): Applying frameworks

Chapter 7. Applying frameworks to analyze educational issues

1. Hofstede's cross-cultural framework (a psychosociological critique of the purposes of schooling) p. 268

• power distance: the degree to which citizens tolerate social inequalities and can be described as a situation in whcih those with less power accept the power imbalances and view them as a normal part of society
  
• uncertainty avoidance: the degree to which a cultural group tends to become nervous about unpredictable and complex situations and tries to avoid them through the maintenance of strict behavior codes and faith in absolute truth
  
• social principledness: a strong inclination on the part of a culture to acquiesce, without question, to authority, thereby accepting the society's conventional values and norms
• locus of control: a set of generalized beliefs or expectancies about how positive and negative reinforcements are obtained
  

2. Harvey & Knight's framework for examining educational policy discourse (a critique of educational access and opportunity) - five notions of quality (normative vision), p. 269-272

• Exceptionality: the more traditional view whereby quality is seen as distinctive and exceeding a set of germane standards that are, by definition, "unattainable by most people" (implication: many schools will not attain educational quality)
  
• Consistency: focus on producing a predictable defect-free result, doing so as a matter of routine and reaching this goal on the first attempt as often as possible (criticism: intangible educational results; does not fit well with the idea of discovery learning)
• Fitness for purpose: emphasizes the end point more completely by considering how a process or service suits specific aims (ambiguities in definition of customer)
• Value for money: educational effectiveness must be maintained but with greater efficiency (evidence of returns on investment)
  
• Transformation: the most consequential benefits for students derive from the enhancement of their skills and from their empowerment through participation in self-evaluation and instructional evaluation as well (quality viewed in terms of change).
  

3. Frank's framework for examining accountability-authority relationships

• Policy effectiveness: the feasibility of a policy or program (government support, political voice; financial concerns; implementation time; parents and business community)
  
• Theoretical adequacy: the evidence for a compelling linkage between the targeted or desired outcomes and the strategies the proposal envisions for accomplishing them
  
• Empirical validity: the evidence that pairs a program's assertion with its strategies (assessing a policy)
• The missing element - ethical merit
  

4. Thomas's political framework (a critique of teacher professionalism) - symbiotics of ed-pol: education is influenced by politics in at least three ways

• the support provided to schools
• the content and procedures allowed in schools
• the latitude of social and political action permitted the people who inhabit school
  

Exploring issues in international context (2): Theory

Chapter 2. Theory in Comparative Education

I. Modernist theories (influenced by Enlightenment rationalism; the theories favor predictability and logical sequencing of events, and view human conditions as manageable and perfectible)

1. Structural-functionalism (a consensus perspective; sees stability as natural and desirable; characteristics: unitary, coherent, stable; purpose: maintain equilibrium, p. 37)
   
   • Modernization theory
     
     • View: human nature as variable, malleable, and therefore subject to refinement - role of education within societies seeking to modernize
     • Value: the industrialized West as most desirable model
     • A chain of functional steps: modern institutions - modern values - modern behaviors - economic development
     • Criticism: 1. the ideological and cultural biases; 2. individual level - society-wide change?
     • Application: litracy, readiness, "lifelong learners"
       
   • Human capital formation theory
     
     • capitalist progress: traditional society - transitional stage - take off phase - drive to maturity - high mass consumption
     • View: "the improvement of the human workforces as a form of capital investment" (Fagerlind & Saha, 1989, p. 18) - economic liberalism
       
     • Critique: ignore or underplay cultural origins and meanings; measurability; diploma disease
     • Application: "Yet in the United States at least, the notion of investment in education is often treated with skepticism. It can be seen as inconsistent, therefore, that investment in education is routinely heralded as an essential prescription for developing nations seeking U.S. foreign aid and assistance while at the same time the remedy of educational investment is regularly discredited on the American domestic home front.
       
2. Marxism (a conflict perspective; skeptical of the means by which the status quo is maintained)
   
   • Dependency theory
     
     • Definitions: examines relationships (social, cultural, political, and economic) between privileged core and exploited periphery countries, exploring also exploitative relations that result within peripheral nations; education reinforces the dependent condition of less developed societies or of the poor within a nation
     • Assumptions
       
       • Links underdevelopment of region/society to development in another region/society
       • Sees creation of dependent relationship: Progress in "core" nations is related to underdevelopment of "peripheral" nations
       • Favors consideration of external factors
       • Sees rich nations dominating poor nations
       • Sees elites of poor nations dominating poor nations
       • Views elites, therefore, as obstacles to real development
       • Questions the capacity of "modernization" to promote autonomous national development
     • Application: compensatory education (e.g., Head Start) for the disadvantaged
       
   • Liberation theory
     
     • Definition: drastic, radical change in the structure of society is necessary for just conditions to take root. Broader changes in the socioeconomic, political, and cultural world order are similarly required for equitable and just conditions to emerge; education can be used to help the oppressed of a society become aware of their condition to push for social change
     • Assumptions
       
       • Sees members of underdeveloped societies as oppressed by powerholders in their own societies
       • Equates liberation with development
       • Views development more in terms of justice than in terms of wealth
       • Sees literacy as essential for economic development
         
     • Application: reject a "banking" approach to teaching (Freire)
       

II. Postmodernist and poststructuralist theories (deny rationalist explanations; question the possibility of "master narratives" or encompassing theoretical arguments; focus on otherwise marginalized alternative perspectives; reject predictability as goal for theory)

1. Feminist theories
2. Critical theories
3. Ecological theories
4. Deconstruction
5. Particularist perspectives derived from cultural viewpoints
6. Adaptations of "post-"thought

Summary: Postmodernists do hold that the curriculum should not be viewed as discrete subjects and disciplines, but instead should include issues of power, history, personal and group identities, and social criticism leading to collective action

Exploring issues in international context (1)

Kubow, P. K., & Fossum, P. R. (2007). Comparative education: Exploring issues in international context (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall.

1. Comparative education

• Concerns
  
  • Egalitarian concern for educational quality and the opening of opportunity for more and more students
  • Economic concern for equipping students with appropriate workplace competencies and skills
  • Civic concern for educating citizens who can participate effectively in public life in increasingly pluralistic environments
  • General humanistic concern for developing the whole person through a process of lifelong education
    
• Four premises (p. 4)
  
  • educational issues rather than educational systems become the centerpiece for critical study
  • the central issues are seen as educational dilemmas rather than educational problems
    
  • these issues are examined cross-culturally in order to broaden and deepen understanding of the issues and, in turn, to enable personal improvements of educational practice
  • the text uses analytic frameworks
    
• "Technology and mass communication are challenging the notion of national boundaries, changing economic relationships, fostering greater interdependence, and challenging citizens to reconsider their loyalties and identities" (p. 4)
• Four issues
  
  • What are the purpose of schooling?
  • What is equitable education," and who decides? (ed access & opportunity)
  • What is the appropriate balance between education authority and accountability?
  • What factors reinforce or hinder teacher professionalism?
    
• Rationale: to broaden one's perspective and sharpen one's focus; understanding in light of differing cultural, social, and political contexts (p. 5)
  
• Definition: comparative ed draws on multiple disciplines (e.g., sociology, political science, psychology, and anthropology) to examine education in developed and developing countries. Comparative inquiry often leads to an examination of the role that education plays in individual and national development. It also encourages us to question our educational systems and to examine how societal values influence our attitudes toward how we educate.
  
• Benefits: "Comparative thinking and international perspective taking are essential for citizens in a diverse, global society" (p. 6).
  
  • "Comparative education and the critical perspective taking that comparative inquiry affords can prompt deeper examination of the tensions among society, development, and education and the role that citizens, either directly or indirectly, play in the educative process."
  • Cultivate a political (ideological) awareness
  • Comparative ed is a field that draws on a variety of disciplines to better understand the complexity of particular educational phenomena; thus serves as a device to mediate the relationships among the ed. foundations (e.g., history, philosophy, and sociology)
  • comparative thinking is an essential skill and develops one's ability to think deeply and comparatively about the political, economic, social, and cultural landscape affecting education, as well as education's influence on that landscape
    
• Emphasis: from method (1960s-1970s) to content (the late 1970s) (e.g., school outcomes and the school/society relationships) - Michael Apple' (1978) critical inquiry devoted greater attention to the internal workings of schools by examining curriculum and pedagogy for ways in which processes maintain inequities and hide particular interests; 1980s-1990s, inquiry into the nation-state, social movements, conceptions of equity, educational control, and centralization-decentralization tendencies
  
• The instrumentalization orientation (p. 14) - devaluing practitioners' input and the dynamics of teaching (researcher specialization & practitioner marginalization)
  
  • Control orientation: predictability & instructional replicability instead of context-laden classroom solutions
    
  • Externality: recommendations for classroom practice are outputs of a scientific process that rely on specialized expertise, controlled settings, and the consequent exclusion of practitioners
  • Fragmentation: Effectiveness is defined externally and in advance of the contexts practitioners encounter. Challenges of practice therefore tend to be construed as failures of practitioners' execution of prescriptions
    
• Habermas (1971) three human interests
  
  • Technical (control oriented)
  • Practical (emphasizes understanding)
  • Emancipatory (social critique and self-analysis)
    
• A practical approach (a multidisciplinary field of inquiry) p. 19
  
  • Anthropological: the concept of culture
  • Sociological: the concept of group affiliation and subcultures
  • Political science: the concept of power, control, and influence
  • Philosophical: the philosophical commitment the school and the society it serves (e.g., developing democratic values)
  • Economic: concepts such as class, market, and human resources
  • Historical: interpreting past events
  • Psychological: the mind-sets and values people hold individually and as a society
    
• Comparative education as foundational in education (the tripartite purpose of EdFon is to develop the following perspectives, p. 21)
  
  • Interpretive perspective: focuses on concepts and theories derived from the humanities and social sciences to examine and explain educational phenomena by considering the diverse cultural, philosophical, and historical contexts that affect the meaning and interpretations of that phenomena
  • Normative perspective: helps educators to examine and explain education in relation to differing value orientations and assumptions about schooling
  • Critical perspective: to develop in students the ability to question the contradictions and inconsistencies of educational beliefs, policies, and practices
    
• Problems v. Dilemmas p. 24
  
  • problems: disruptive to society
  • dilemmas: puzzles to be figured out. This term accommodate the fluidity, dyanmism, and uncertainty that characterize a characterize a changing, more global world (suggest an openness to the exploration)
    
• The skill of "comparative perspective taking": the process of performing cross-cultural investigation and then deriving insights from these investigations
  
• The value of comparative ed
  
  • the value-laden nature of educational issues
  • fostering national identity
  • recognize that possibilities for human growth and threats to human survival transcend national boundaries
  • addressing the international knowledge gap
    

Trends in comparative ed.: A critical analysis

Kelly, G. P., Altbach, P. G, & Arnove, R. F. (1982). Trends in comparative ed.: A critical analysis. In P. Altbach, R. Arnove, & G. Kelly (Eds.), Comparative education (pp. 505-533). New York: Macmillan.

Knowledge, the univ., and development (4)

Part IV. Peripheral centers: The newly industrializing countries (NICs)

12. Higher ed, democracy, and development: Implications for newly industrialized countries

• Higher ed in the NICs
• The development of an indigenous scientific system
• Historical patterns and contemporary variations
• The international context of inequality
• Key elements of higher ed development
• Conclusion
  
  • continued growth
  • expanding research role and improving academic quality (changes in values, orientations, and facilities)
  • a more public and instrumental role in society ("open universities")
  • financing cut; examine own needs
  • become increasingly vocal and controversial (call for academic autonomy & freedom)
    

13. Higher ed & scientific development: The promise of newly industrialized countries

• The international knowledge system
• The language issue
• The scientific diaspora
• Foreign training
• The traditional universities
• The research infrastructure
• Research in small scientific communities
• The role of scientific research in newly industrialized nations
• The role of the university
  

Knowledge, the univ., and development (3)

Part III. Exchanges: People & ideas

9. Gigantic peripheries: India & China in the world knowledge system

• The international knowledge system (the people & institutions that create knowledge & the structures that communicate knowledge worldwide): centralized means of production & distribution
  
• The Third World scientific superpowers: India & China
• The brain drain & the Chinese & Indian diasporas
• The future
  

10. The new internationalism: Foreign students & scholars

• Inequalities (the industrialized nations retain control
  
• Foreign study as a phenomenon
  
  • Knowledge transfer: foreign students must make the appropriate "translation"; doctoral dissertations by foreign students are tailored to topics of relevance to them
    
• The foreign study industry: English-language industry
  

11. The foreign students dilemma

• The world balance of students
• The foreign student infrastructure
• Curricular factors and foreign study
  Many curricular issues are important in the curriculum-foreign students relationship: the relevance of a Western academic curriculum for Third World students, the transferability of knowledge, the impact on Western institutions of the presence of large numbers of foreign students, and so forth. P. 167 (no accommodation of courses, textbooks, or content to Third World contexts)
  
• Foreign study and dependency (inequalities) p. 173
  
  • foreign students become acclimated to working in an international language
  • they become part of an international knowledge network
  • they may absorb the culture of the host country as well as its technology knowledge, and this may engender unrealistic attitudes, orientations toward consumer goods, or working styles that make readjustment to their home countries difficult
  • foreign study frequently instills in the student the methodological norms, ideological approaches, and general scientific culture of the host nation
  • foreign study bestows a certain prestige on the individual who has been abroad (leads to better job opportunities and access to power)
  • the location of foreign study may make a difference not only in the outlook and attitudes of an individual but also in professional opportunities
  • specific relationships between industrialized and Third World nations are key determinants of the nature of international student flows and of continuing intellectual and academic relationships among nations
    
• The future of foreign study
  
  • The growth of indigenous academic systems in Third World nations will lessen the need for overseas study
  • Fiscal problems will continue to have a negative impact
  • As incomes rise in the Third World there will be a tendency for families to sponsor foreign study privately
  • Third World countries with foreign exchange problems may curtail foreign study opportunities
  • The balance between undergraduate and graduate students will continue to shift toward a preponderance of graduate students in foreign student populations
  • Less money available for overseas scholarship programs