Globalizing Education Policy

Citation

Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing Education Policy. Routledge.

Chapter Summary

The book has ten chapters in about 240 pages. Its question, as the publisher puts it, is how globalization has reshaped the terrain on which education policy is made, and how policies on that new, at once local, national, regional and global, terrain can be analysed. The authors hold that global drivers of policy change do not work in the same way in every nation-state, and that the policy terrain is increasingly shaped by neo-liberal ideas that have changed how educational governance is thought about. The first three chapters supply the concepts and the method; the middle chapters apply them to particular policy areas; the last turns to alternatives.

Chapter 1: Introduction

The opening chapter surveys the concepts of education policy and how approaches to them have developed since the 1950s. A review in Orbis Scholae summarises it as tracing a move from nationally centred approaches to a greater variety of theories, and then to the market ideas that frame policy after 1989. It also covers the shift from government to governance, the influence of international comparison such as PISA, and the unintended consequences of policy.

Chapter 2: Perspectives on Globalization

This chapter sets out how globalization is understood and the historical processes that accompany it. It considers how political and cultural traditions and what the authors call social imaginaries filter global pressures, and the role of supranational bodies such as the OECD, World Bank, UNESCO and EU in creating a global policy context.

Chapter 3: Analyzing Educational Policies

The third chapter turns to method. According to the same review, it argues for critical reflexivity, for attention to the relations and interconnections among policies, and for a historical orientation. It proposes a framework that places the policy problem in time and space, and asks researchers to state their own position and values.

Chapter 4: Educational Purposes

Here the book asks what education is for. The reviewer describes the chapter as reading policy through philosophical, political and economic values, and as criticising a narrow economic view in which education is a private good tied to market efficiency.

Chapter 5: Curriculum and Pedagogy

The chapter looks at how curriculum and teaching are being reframed in response to global economic pressures and to changing ideas of identity and citizenship. The review mentions examples from several countries, including England, Scotland, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Pakistan.

Chapter 6: Assessment and Accountability

This chapter takes up the regime of accountability built on testing student performance. The publisher's description lists pedagogies and high-stakes testing among the issues the book covers, and the reviewer notes the role of internationally compared performance in judging national systems.

Chapter 7: Educational Governance

Chapter 7 deals with new forms of governance, including devolution and decentralisation. It follows the move from state-centred government to a polycentric governance that includes private and global actors, with the OECD and the World Bank as examples, and discusses governmentality.

Chapter 8: Access and Equity

The publisher's description lists access and equity and the education of girls among the issues covered. The review adds that the authors compare how different countries emphasise different aspects of justice and argue that recognition and respect need to be added to a purely distributive view.

Chapter 9: Student Mobility and Educational Trade

This chapter treats the global trade in education and the growing movement of students and skilled people. The review notes the policy dilemmas it raises, including cultural diversity, language policy and the globalization of English, the internationalisation of curriculum, and brain drain.

Chapter 10: Alternatives to Neo-liberal Globalization

The final chapter asks what else globalization could be. The reviewer reports that it looks at civil-society initiatives such as the World Social Forum and at what economic crisis means for national education policy, and calls for rethinking efficiency, equity, community, liberty and security.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–3: Policy and globalization

• From government to governance: the shift from state-centred policy to arrangements involving private and global actors.
• Social imaginaries: shared ways of picturing the world that filter how global pressures are taken up in national policy.
• Critical reflexivity and relationality: the methodological stance of Chapter 3, which attends to connections among policies and to the analyst's own position.

Chapters 4–9: Policy areas

• Neo-liberal precepts: the market-oriented ideas the publisher says now shape how educational governance is thought about.
• Accountability through testing: the use of measured and internationally compared performance to judge systems.
• Governmentality: a Foucauldian term for self-governing, entrepreneurial individuals, used in the discussion of governance.
• Student mobility and brain drain: the movement of students and skilled people, and its uneven benefits.

Chapter 10: Alternatives

• Another globalization: the call to reimagine globalization around interconnection and interdependence, and to rethink basic public values.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A policy-analysis method as well as a survey. The publisher says the book provides an approach to education policy analysis, and Chapter 3 is devoted to it, so readers get both content and a way of working.
• Breadth of policy areas. The ten chapters cover purposes, curriculum, assessment, governance, equity and international trade in education, which makes the book useful as a map of the field.
• Theoretical grounding. Aaron Schutz, reviewing the book in the Journal of Educational Change, points to its use of Foucault and Nikolas Rose on governmentality, Bourdieu on social fields, Appadurai on neo-colonialism and Held on globalization, and judges the frameworks relevant to the authors' interest in culture, language and material context.
• Comparative reach. The Orbis Scholae review lists examples from England, Scotland, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan and elsewhere, and the publisher quotes Stephen Ball calling it the first really comprehensive discussion of global trends in education policy, their effects and resistance to them.

Limitations

• Dated by its moment. The book was published in 2010, the Routledge page lists only a first edition, and its discussion of the global economic crisis and of alternatives belongs to that moment.
• Theoretically demanding. The book is grounded in social theory, so it assumes some familiarity with sociology or political theory.
• A critical standpoint. The authors argue that neo-liberal ideas have become hegemonic, and the final chapter makes the case for alternatives; readers who want a neutral overview of policy options will need other texts as well.

Where It Fits in the Course

Within the policy and sociology of education course, this is the book about global policy. Ball's The Education Debate is a critical introduction to education policy in England and treats England as a laboratory for global trends, so it is a good starting point before Rizvi and Lingard. Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great American School System examines test-based accountability and school choice in the United States and is a national case to set beside Rizvi and Lingard's global account.

Bourdieu and Passeron's Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture is the classic account of how schooling reproduces class, and Ballantine and colleagues' The Sociology of Education is a broad textbook; the first gives the theory behind the social-field language in Rizvi and Lingard, the second the general background. Reay's Miseducation is a short account of class and schooling in England. Rizvi and Lingard fit best after one of the introductory texts and alongside Bourdieu and Passeron.

How to Use This Book

The book is aimed at graduate students and researchers in education policy, sociology of education, comparative and international education, higher education and curriculum studies. No specific prerequisites are stated, but some background in social theory and policy studies will help.

A practical plan: read Chapters 1 to 3 first, because they set up the concepts and the framework used throughout. Then choose among Chapters 4 to 9 according to your interest: Chapters 5 and 6 for curriculum, pedagogy and testing, Chapter 7 for governance, Chapter 8 for equity, Chapter 9 for international education. Finish with Chapter 10 to see the authors' alternatives. For a research project, use Chapter 3 as a checklist when designing your own policy analysis.