Education has been considered a key factor for national development in countries around the world. Colonialism, and later the post-WWII rise of state-led (but externally funded) national development placed education at the core of projects around national identify formation, modernisation of societies/economies, and the integration of 'third world' countries into the global economy. A vast array of research literature linking educational ideas, structures and processes with social, cultural and economic change has been produced in the decades since. This course examines the nature and role of education within the ‘developing’ world, with a particular focus on the region of which New Zealand is part, Oceania. The theoretical content of the course is derived largely from concepts and models of ‘development’ and globalisation and how these influence educational policy and practice. A key question that guides this course is whether and how education, and more specifically formal schooling, can both contribute to, and work against goals of inclusive, prosperous and just societies globally.
The course will pay particular attention to the:
- Reasons behind the growing importance given to education within international accords and development agendas
- Impacts of globalisation on national education systems and policies
- The politics of global educational agenda setting and the aid dynamics that follow suit
A key focus of the course this year is to explore how against the current global context, marked by record numbers of children who have been forced out of school due to displacement, disease, and disasters, education may have an even more critical important role in ensuring in less than a decade, the global community has met the global commitments signalled under the Sustainable Development Goals. As part of this we'll give specific attention to the post-colonial and post-development turn, the increasing tensions between globalism and nationalism, the impacts of securitisation agendas in the post-9/11 era, and the calls which are growing for societies to free themselves of histories of racism and bigotry. In all of this we'll critically explore what form of education might best serve the new world order we find ourselves in, and whether the institution of schooling as has existed in the developed (or 'Global North') world for nearly 200 years, is desirable, replicable or relevant on a global scale.