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Use and abuse of Vygotsky ‘s legacy
Vygotsky was a brilliant scientist in the twentieths of the past century ( 1898-1934) in Russia. As a psychologist he mainly devoted himself (...
Patterns of conflict in education
This paper was presented to the European Conference on Educational Research, Vienna 2009.
The course of educational reform in England has been broader, deeper...
Education as a market: views from Africa
Over the last few years, a growing body of literature referring to the process of globalization/marketisation of education in developed countries has been published. Most often, economic determinism, whether considered from an orthodox or a critical point of view, is evoked to describe the evolution of education systems.
However, even though such a tendency seems relatively new in developed countries, this has long been the case as regards Third World countries. Consequently, a critical analysis of what has been happening there in this domain can shed light on what is happening in the North.
Examples of African countries are sometimes even especially illuminating because the ‘travelling concepts and policies’[[The definition of this concept refers both to the “agendas and discourses developed by international organizations such as WTO, the World Bank and the OECD” and to “management theory and economic policy ” applied to a special field, education in this particular case. (Jones & Alexiadou, 2001) ]] can evolve there more freely than elsewhere.
However, even though such a tendency seems relatively new in developed countries, this has long been the case as regards Third World countries. Consequently, a critical analysis of what has been happening there in this domain can shed light on what is happening in the North.
Examples of African countries are sometimes even especially illuminating because the ‘travelling concepts and policies’[[The definition of this concept refers both to the “agendas and discourses developed by international organizations such as WTO, the World Bank and the OECD” and to “management theory and economic policy ” applied to a special field, education in this particular case. (Jones & Alexiadou, 2001) ]] can evolve there more freely than elsewhere.
Marketisation of Education in the Globalised Economy
The two main ideas of this paper are, firstly, that the material, economic circumstances push the education systems in advanced capitalist countries towards marketisation; and secondly that we should understand this concept of marketisation in a broad sense: marketisation means not only privatisation, transforming education into a new market; it means also adapting narrowly education to the present, very specific, demands of labour markets; and it means using education systems as an instrument to stimulate some markets, especially the ICT-markets. The paper is essentially based on the study of national reform programs in European countries and on reports published by international organizations like OECD, World Bank and the European Commission.