`Education policy is now a global matter and all the more complex for that. Mark Olssen, John Codd and Ann-Marie O'Neill do us an invaluable service in producing a carefully theorised guide to current issues and key concerns - this is an important, erudite and very practical book' - Stephen J Ball, Education Policy Research Unit, University of London
`Given the global reach of neoliberal policies, we need cogent books that enable us to better understand the major effects such tendencies have. Education Policy is such a book. It is insightful and well written--and should be read by all of us who care deeply about what is happening in education in international contexts' - Michael W Apple, Author of 'Educating the "Right" Way and John Bascom Professor of Education University of Wisconsin, Madison
`I really am taken with the book, the range and depth of analysis are truly impressive. This book is a magnum opus and everyone in the area should read it'- Hugh Lauder, University of Bath
`In their insightful and comprehensive book on education policy Mark Olssen, John Codd and Anne-Marie O'Neill wrestle with the big questions of citizenship and democracy in an age of globalization. They argue that ducation policy in the 21st century is the key to security, sustainability and survival. The book, anchored in the poststructuralist perspective of Michel Foucault, traverses the whole territory of education policy not only methods and approaches of policy analysis and the dominant political perspectives that influence policy-classical liberalism, social democracy and neo-liberalism--but also those policy areas that require the closest scrutiny: markets, trust, professionalism, choice, diversity, and finally, community, citizenship and democracy. This is the new policy bible for educationalists - it is at once systematic, provocative and instructive' - Michael A Peters, Research Professor, University of Glasgow
'It is rare indeed for books with such ambitious scope as this one to appear within educational scholarship... This is an important book for any graduate student who is undertaking work on any aspect of education policy' - Education Review
This book provides an international perspective on education policy, and of the role and function of education in the global economy. The authors present a Foucauldian perspective on the politics of liberal education, within a theoretical framework necessary for the critical analysis of education policy.
The authors set out the analyses necessary for understanding the restructuring in education and social policy that has occurred in many countries affected by the resurgence of neo-liberal political theory. They examine education policy in relation to globalization, citizenship and democracy. The authors argue that globalization is an extension of neoliberalism and is destructive of the nation state, community and democracy. They show the importance of education in building strong democratic nation states and global communities based on cultural identity and inter-cultural awareness.
This book is essential reading for students of education policy studies and social policy analysis.
Author Biography:
My recent work has been in supplementing post-modern philosophy with a normative theoretical architecture by drawing and adapting the work of thinkers like Nietzsche, Foucault, Deleuze and others with the aim of surpassing the problems of skepticism frequently recognized within this approach. What has resulted is a normative political philosophy of life which resurrects a theory of the good and its priority over right, and surpasses all other traditional normative approaches, including forms of liberal philosophy, from Descartes to Kant, as well as the philosophies of Hegel, Marx, and pre-Enlightenment theories as well. A second interest has been to critique twentieth century liberal political theory in terms of its libertarian unconscious and to develop a more communitarian political theory relevant to the global twenty first century. A third aspect of my work has been to reconceptualise the way systems interact in relation to part and whole, individual and collective, structure and agency, in terms of complexity theory, thus resolving traditional conundrums around determinism and free will, structure and agency, and individual and collective. My research and teaching has examined the relationship between education and society, specifically, education's nature and role in the production and reproduction of stratified (unequal) societies. My platform has drawn from across, and contributes to, critical scholarship within policy, educational, gender and curriculum sociology, using educational, feminist, social and political theory. This integrated approach, developed in my Masters Thesis informs the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of Education policy: Globalization, citizenship and democracy (2004, written with M. Olssen and J. Codd, London: Sage). Developed from a Foucauldian perspective this analysis rejects neoliberal forms of governmentality, including globalization and 'third way' solutions, to embrace communitarianism as a basis for a new world order and 'education state'. As an original contribution, this text is a world leader in educational policy sociology, with high numbers of citations in high ranking journals. Reshaping Culture, Knowledge and Learning: Policy and content in the New Zealand Curriculum Framework (2004, edited with J. Clark and R. Openshaw, Palmerston North: Dunmore), critically examines the structure and content of the New Zealand Curriculum Framework. My contributions (5 of 15 chapters) analyse its discursive foundations (e.g. outcomes, technocratic and commercial), assess the field and suggest political and epistemological interventions. More recent book chapters (2006-2008) include the theorising of individualism in Aotearoa New Zealand historically, and in relation to the hegemony of neoliberal discourses on subjectivity, while examining the role of the curriculum in the construction of an enterprise culture. Another builds on previous work to present a synthesized, historical understanding of gender relations in education and our understanding of these. Its analysis of current discourses and the 'moral panic' over boys offers original insights into this issue. A third, presents an analysis of the discursive foundations of the last twenty years of neoliberal governmentality. Surveying national and international literature and locating curriculum change within forms of globalisation, consumer/youth culture and enhanced control over teachers' work, it argues for the importance of critically informed personal and professional responses to neoliberalism in curriculum and offers examples of these. My research across policy, educational and curriculum sociology has more recently informed a period of teaching intensification, new course development and writing (within groups and singularly) and course rewriting across the above, for four current programmes. During this period of familiarisation with various literature bases and their theoretical developments, I have produced a monograph on curriculum studies (2011) for teaching and begun my doctoral studies. Doctoral work will draw on fieldwork studies of interviews with teachers and principals across three sectors to analyse how recent curriculum changes, including the imposition of numeracy and literacy, the discursive intensification of assessment, the imposition of standards, and the introduction of competencies, is shaping curriculum content and form. The study will locate and theorise the fieldwork in the literature on educational policy, curriculum sociology and critical studies of teachers' work. It will acknowledge local, national and supranational level changes (particularly those driven by our membership of the OECD) in the context of neoliberal globalization. This project will build on and extend previous published work. More specifically, it will result in the publication of a number of journal articles over the next couple of years. I am currently working on the first of these analysing the discursive foundations of the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007). Following papers will focus on the effects of an assessment-led curriculum, the interpretation and practice of competencies at the school level and the effects of the economization of education through our membership of supranational organizations such as the OECD, on curriculum policy.
