Alexander Means
Alexander J. Means is Associate Professor of Educational Policy with Global Perspectives in the Department of Educational Foundations, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He is the author most recently of Learning to Save the Future: Rethinking Education and Work in the Era Digital Capitalism (Routledge, 2018); Educational Commons in Theory and Practice: Global Pedagogy and Politics (Palgrave, 2017); and The Wiley Handbook of Global Education Reform (Wiley-Blackwell, 2018). His research examines educational policy and organization in relation to political, economic, cultural, and social change.
Address: University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Department of Educational Foundations
University of Hawaii, at Manoa
Wist Hall
1776 University Ave
Honolulu, HI 96822
Address: University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Department of Educational Foundations
University of Hawaii, at Manoa
Wist Hall
1776 University Ave
Honolulu, HI 96822
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transformations within Empire. Several unique themes emerge concerning power and pedagogy as they intersect with subjectivity and global crisis. Drawing on the common in conjunction with the tradition of love in education uncovers a different path that attends to today’s real political, ecological, and social needs. Finally, a focus on collectivity points to a possible strategy—collective intellectuality—for educators to revise traditional notions of leadership to encourage more ethical, democratic, and sustainable futures. Yet, what this looks like in practice remains for us to imagine.
are framing emergent technologies as a hypermodern risk. It
outlines how innovations in artificial intelligence andmachine learning
are feeding into global policy imaginaries and responses oriented to
education and skills as adaption and minimization of potential disruption
flowing from unpredictable workforce transitions. Drawing on
research reports by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development, World Economic Forum, and McKinsey, the paper suggests
that this emphasis on risk and uncertainty represents a shift in
elite policy discourse. The paper discusses how automated uncertainty
is feeding into educational policy trajectories that seek to mitigate
disruption through digital learning and work synergies via agile learners
of risk. The cognitive structuring of these policy trajectories
reflects a closed ideological loop deflecting analysis from political
economy and alternative policy futures within hypermodern
capitalism.
transformations within Empire. Several unique themes emerge concerning power and pedagogy as they intersect with subjectivity and global crisis. Drawing on the common in conjunction with the tradition of love in education uncovers a different path that attends to today’s real political, ecological, and social needs. Finally, a focus on collectivity points to a possible strategy—collective intellectuality—for educators to revise traditional notions of leadership to encourage more ethical, democratic, and sustainable futures. Yet, what this looks like in practice remains for us to imagine.
are framing emergent technologies as a hypermodern risk. It
outlines how innovations in artificial intelligence andmachine learning
are feeding into global policy imaginaries and responses oriented to
education and skills as adaption and minimization of potential disruption
flowing from unpredictable workforce transitions. Drawing on
research reports by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development, World Economic Forum, and McKinsey, the paper suggests
that this emphasis on risk and uncertainty represents a shift in
elite policy discourse. The paper discusses how automated uncertainty
is feeding into educational policy trajectories that seek to mitigate
disruption through digital learning and work synergies via agile learners
of risk. The cognitive structuring of these policy trajectories
reflects a closed ideological loop deflecting analysis from political
economy and alternative policy futures within hypermodern
capitalism.
The introductory essay for the special issue goes beyond a brief description of each of the cases. This article (a) presents a framework for understanding the connections among globalization, privatization, and marginalization in relation to education; (b) distills, visually presents, and expands upon the dialectical connections evident “in” and “through” the cases that make up the special issue; and (c) emphasizes a number of lessons for the globalization-privatization-marginalization nexus.
The papers in this special issue are grouped into two clusters. This grouping reflects the fact that, while all the papers speak to the three core concepts of globalization, privatization, and marginalization, the papers typically place analytic emphasis on two of the three and then consider the implications of their findings for the third. The papers in the first cluster focus on the ways privatization is being advanced through the dynamics of globalization, and then consider the implications for—or the connections to—marginalization. For example, these papers examine how policymaking processes, the provision of refugee education, quasi-market reform politics, international large-scale assessments of student learning, and the work of international non-governmental organizations are all advanced by political and economic globalization in ways that not only open spaces for privatization but also exacerbate marginalization in various forms.
The papers in the second cluster, in contrast, take as their point of departure various forms of privatization, considering directly their consequences for marginalization. These essays are framed with, and then connect back to, the dynamics of globalization. The different forms of privatization discussed by these papers include charter schools, vouchers, neo-vouchers (i.e., tax credits), and private schools that serve low-income families. Although their analytic focus is not squarely trained on the causes of each kind of privatization, the articles do address the contextual factors and the forces of political-economic globalization that have led to, or have contributed to, the form of privatization under study.
In all, the articles report on research from the “Global North”, meaning the United States, Western European and Mediterranean countries (i.e. Portugal, Italy, Israel), and New Zealand, with other studies focusing on the “Global South”, meaning countries in Latin America (i.e., Argentina, Chile, Peru), Africa (Zambia), and Asia (with two papers focused on India). One paper focuses on refugee education generally and thus is not focused on a specific geographic context.
Importantly, the articles contained in this special issue include but go beyond a focus on low-income countries. High-income—“developed”—countries are not immune to the effects of globalization and privatization. It is crucial that we understand the ways that these phenomena manifest across different contexts, not least because, across contexts that may seem wildly different, globalization and privatization have similar effects and are the result of similar forces, though the details of how they play out may be distinct.
This project was developed over the course of the past two years or so. We thank the authors for their excellent contributions and the reviewers for their helpful feedback.
We hope this special issue makes a contribution. Please feel free to forward along to colleagues, students, etc.
Best,
Brent Edwards
Alex Means
University of Hawaii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Globalization, Privatization, Marginalization: Mapping and Assessing Connections and Consequences in/through Education
Authors: D. Brent Edwards Jr. and Alexander Means
Section 1: Privatization and Marginalization in/through Globalization
2. “Glocalisation” doctrine in the Israel public education system: A contextual analysis of a policy-making process
Authors: Dvir, Maxwell, & Yemini
3. Education governance and privatization in Portugal: Media attention on the public debate about public and private education
Authors: Fatima Antunes, Sofia Viseu
4. Private encroachment through crisis-making: The privatization of education for refugees
Author: Hang Minh Le
5. Marginalization in education systems: The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the failure discourse around the Italian education system
Authors: Goncalves de Freitas, Jacob, & Nozaki
6. “A Problem They Don’t Even Know Exists”: Inequality, Poverty, and Invisible Discourses in Teach First New Zealand
Authors: Oldham & Crawford-Garrett
Section 2: Globalization and Marginalization in/through Privatization
7. Education privatization in the United States: Increasing saturation and segregation
Author: Adamson & Galloway
8. Education markets and schools’ mechanisms of exclusion: The case of Chile
Author: Adrián Zancajo
9. Speaking cooperation, acting competition: Supply-side subsidies and private schools in socioeconomically disadvantaged contexts in Buenos Aires
Authors: Mauro Moschetti, Carolina Snaider
10. Educating on a budget: The subsistence model of low-fee private schooling in Peru
Authors: María Balarin, Clara Fontdevila, Paola Marius, & María Fernanda Rodríguez
11. Low-fee private schools, the State, and globalization: A market analysis within the political sociology of education and development
Authors: Edwards, Okitsu & Mwanza
12. Motivations to set up and manage low-fee private schools in India
Authors: Hannah Mond & Poorvaja Prakash
13. Children’s accounts of labelling and stigmatization in private schools in Delhi, India and the Right to Education Act
Authors: Michael LaFleur, Prachi Srivastava
Learning to Save the Future shows us why this thinking is not only wrong but harmful, particularly to those already most disadvantaged.
This book chapter calls into question FLE and EE initiatives’ near-universal acclaim, arguing that these initiatives and their promotion in the media draw from and recreate a neoliberal “public pedagogy” – a term used by Henry Giroux (2004) to describe the educative character of cultural discourses and practices which play “a central role in producing narratives, metaphors, and images that exercise a powerful pedagogical force over how people think of themselves and their relationships to others” (pg. 62). Contrary to claims that these initiatives assist those who are most economically insecure, this chapter illustrates that FLE and EE initiatives and their media promotions support an ethics and freedom driven by a responsibility to capital that exacerbates their precarity. The chapter begins with an overview of the ethics and freedom explicated in prominent FLE and EE texts. This is followed by a critical, philosophical analysis of their ‘capitalized’ character using concepts and insights from Levinasian scholars as well as Marxist theory and critical pedagogy. The chapter concludes that a lack of adherence to FLE and EE initiatives’ neoliberal precepts is not the problem. Instead the problem is teaching the insecure to be resilient in the face of social abandonment and to reform themselves so they can take up the offers of precarious inclusion capital offers, a ‘capitalization’ of both ethics and freedom. Rather than follow EE and FLE advocates and accept the abandonment and forced reformation of others as necessary and even ‘ethical’, this chapter explicates why we must create and promote non-capitalized ethical and economic relations and educative practices.