The privatisation of education: a political economy of global education reform

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 322-323
Author(s):  
Diego Santori
2019 ◽  
pp. 101-104
Author(s):  
Erika Moreira Martins

Recensão ao Livro: Verger, A., Fontdevila, C., & Zancajo, A. (2016). The privatization of education: A political economy of global education reform. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. A privatização da educação tem sido percebida como uma tendência mundial, principalmente em referência aos seus indicadores educacionais fundamentais, como provisão e financiamento. Os debates sobre os benefícios, os desafios e os custos da privatização da educação em escalas local e global têm desafiado pesquisadores nacionais e internacionais. Nesse contexto, a obra The Privatization of Education: A Political Economy of Global Education Reform (A Privatização da Educação: uma economia política da reforma da educação global, em tradução livre), cujos autores são Antoni Verger, Clara Fontdevila e Adrián Zancajo, investiga o fenômeno da privatização da educação, não como um processo monolítico, mas a partir de uma perspetiva comparada e global da economia política. Contribui, desta forma, para suprir uma lacuna nos estudos a respeito do tema: como e por que ocorre a privatização da educação? Partindo de um robusto mapeamento sobre a literatura internacional, os autores utilizam uma metodologia de revisão sistemática da literatura (Systematic literature review) na tentativa de explicar por que as pressões por uma reforma educacional em favor do mercado não se traduzem em um processo unívoco e linear. A obra se propõe a enfrentar o desafio de abrir a “caixa preta” da privatização da educação em escala internacional analisando sistematicamente suas tendências, suas razões, seus agentes e as condições por trás da difusão e adoção de políticas de privatização nos sistemas educativos. (...)  


Author(s):  
Doris A. Santoro

Teachers often characterize their interest in and commitment to the profession as moral: a desire to support students, serve their communities, or uphold civic ideals embedded in the promise of public education. These initial and sustaining moral impulses are well documented in research on teaching and teacher education. However, moral commitments can also be a source of teachers’ dissatisfaction and resistance, especially in the age of the market-based Global Education Reform Movement. This article explores the phenomenon of conscientious objection in teaching as an enactment of professional ethics. Conscientious objection describes teachers’ actions when they take a stand against job expectations that contradict or compromise their professional ethics. Teachers who refuse to enact policies and practices may be represented by popular media, school leaders, policymakers, and educational researchers as merely recalcitrant or insubordinate. This perspective misses the moral dimensions of resistance. Teachers may refuse to engage in practices or follow mandates from the standpoint of professional conscience. This article also highlights varieties of conscientious objection that are drawn from global examples of teacher resistance. Finally, the article explores the role of teachers unions as potential catalysts for collective forms of conscientious objection.


Author(s):  
John McCollow

Teacher unions (or alternatively “education unions”) are organizations formed to protect and advance the collective interests of teachers and other education workers. What the collective interests of educators entail and how they should be pursued have been and remain active matters for debate within these organizations. Different unions at different times have responded differently to these questions, for example, in relation to the degree to which an industrial versus a professional orientation should be adopted, and the degree to which a wider political and social justice agenda should be embraced. Several ideal-type models of teacher unionism have been identified, as well as various strategic options that these unions might employ. A spirited debate is ongoing about the legitimacy and power of teacher unions. One perspective portrays them as self-interested special interest groups, and another as social movements advocating for public education. The status of teacher unions as stakeholders in educational policymaking is contested, and union–government relations occur across a spectrum of arrangements ranging from those that encourage negotiation to those characterized by confrontation and hostility. Internationally, education unions face significant challenges in the early decades of the 21st century. Neoliberal economic and industrial policies and legislation have eroded the capacity of unions to collectively organize and bargain, and the global education reform movement (GERM) has created a hostile environment for education unions and their members. Despite these challenges, education unions remain among the most important critics of GERM and of global neoliberal social policy generally. The challenges posed and the strategies adopted play out differently across the globe. There is evidence that at least some unions are now prepared to be far more flexible in adopting a “tapestry” of strategies, to examine their internal organization, build alliances, and develop alternative conceptions of the future of education. Researchers, however, have identified certain internal factors in many teacher unions that pose significant obstacles to these tasks. Unions face difficult choices that could lead to marginalization on the one hand or incorporation on the other.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (8) ◽  
pp. 1075-1116
Author(s):  
Brian Ford

This article is the third of three on “Sources of Authority in Education.” All use the work of Amy Gutmann as a heuristic device to describe and explain the prevalence of market-based models of education reform in the US and the business-influenced Global Education Reform Movement. The other two are “Negating Amy Gutmann: Deliberative Democracy, Business Influence and Segmentation Strategies in Education” and “Neoliberalism and Four Spheres of Authority in American Education: Business, Class, Stratification and Intimations of Marketization.” All three are intended to be included together as chapters of my Democratic Education and Markets: Segmentation, Privatization and Sources of Authority in Education Reform. The “Negating Amy Gutmann” article looks primarily at deliberative democracy. The “Neoliberalism and Four Spheres of Authority” article, considers its main theme to be the promise of egalitarian democracy and how figures ‘such as Horace Mann, John Dewey and Gutmann’ have argued it is largely based on the promise of public education. It thus begins with a consideration of what might be called a partial historical materialist analysis – the growth of inequality in the US (and other countries) since the 1970s that correlates with much of the basis for changes in the justifications and substance of education reform. The present article, “The Odd Malaise of Democratic Education and the Inordinate Influence of Business,” continues the argument by offering some historical background and comparisons and ends by considering what happens to the philosophy of education when democracy and capitalism are at odds. It thus starts with recent history, looking at how the content and context of educational policy have changed in the US since Gutmann wrote in the 1980s. Specifically, it concerns itself with the increasing prevalence of twin notions: that our system of education must be reformed because of global competition and that the educational system should emulate the market. The article then goes back a little bit further, to the origins of the common school in the 1600s and Horace Mann’s articulation of the principles behind public education, which are shown to be in stark contrast to Education Reform. The narrative describes how the standards movement, variously, coalesced around George H. W. Bush’s America 2000 and Bill Clinton’s Goals 2000 programs, was reflected in a ‘21st-century schools’ discourse, found programmatic form in George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and it’s offspring, Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top. All of the preceding were, to a shocking degree, based on misleading and selective statistical analysis and sets goals that are unreachable even in the best of all possible worlds. The article concludes by considering paradigm change in education and its causes; I draw on both Peter Hall’s exposition of social learning 1 and Antonio Gramsci’s conceptualization of hegemony. 2


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (7) ◽  
pp. 99-103
Author(s):  
Yingxia Luo ◽  
Zaiqian Qi ◽  
Bai Li

COVID-19 has triggered an upsurge of research on the reform of higher education teaching mode. Based on the analysis of the main problems and experiences of online teaching in colleges and universities during the epidemic period, this article emphasizes on the innovation of higher education teaching reform in the post-epidemic era from five aspects which are the teaching objectives, contents, methods, modes, and priorities in order to provide ideas and become a reference for global education reform.


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