(I) Global Education Reform for the 21st Century

1. 北京师范大学教育研究方法讲座系列Lecture 9Explaining Big Structures and Large ProcessGlobal Education Reforms: In Comparative-Historical Perspective

2. (I) Global Education Reform for the 21st Century

3. The Statement of the Problem • What are the natures and features of HKSAR education reform • Why is there such an education reform at this point in time in HKSAR? • What are the natures and features of education reform in PRC? • Why is there such an education reform at this point in time in PRC? • Why are there education reforms in the US, UK, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, and PRC at the turn of the century? • ?

4. The Statement of the Problem • What are the similarities and differences in these education reforms • Global convergence or divergence of education reform: A New Institutionalist Perspective • What are the natures and features of HKSAR education reform?

5. Education Reforms as Phenomena of Global Convergence: Lifelong Learning… • Education Reform in the UK • Lifetime learning: A policy framework (1996) • The learning age: A renaissance for new Britain (1998) • Education Reform in the US • Goal 2000 Act, 1994 • A nation learning: Version for the 21st Century (1997) • No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 • Education Reform in Canada • Knowledge Matters: Skills and learning for Canadians (2002) • Achieving excellence: Investing in people, knowledge and opportunity (2002)

12. Education Reforms as Phenomena of Global Convergence: Lifelong Learning… • Education Reform in Australia • National Board of Employment, Education and Training (1996) Lifelong learning ―― Key issues • Dept. of Education, Science and Training (1998) Learning for life: Review of higher education financing and policy (1998) • Dept. of Education, Science and Training (2003) Lifelong learning in Australia • Education Reform in South Korea • Ministry of Education Adapting Education to the Information Age (2000-2004)

15. South Korea

16. Education Reforms as Phenomena of Global Convergence: Lifelong Learning… • Education Reform in Singapore: • Education for Learning Society in the 21st Century (2000) • Education Reform in Taiwan • 教育改革行動方案, 1998 • Education Reform in HKSAR • Education Commission (2000) Education for Life and Education through Life

26. Education Reforms as Phenomena of Global Convergence: Lifelong Learning… • OECD (1991) The lifelong learners in the 1990s. • OECD (1996) Lifelong learning for all. • OECD (2001) Education policy analysis 2001. • UNESCO (1996) Learning: The Treasure from within. • European Commission (1995) Teaching and learning: Towards the learning society

27. Methodological Assumptions of Convergence of Global Education Reform • Paradigm convergence of education reforms rather than simple convergence of education reforms (Ball, 1999)

28. By simple convergence, Ball refers to "exactly the same policies being invoked in very different national settings." (Ball, 1999, p. 198) As for paradigm convergence of education reform, it refers to "invocation of policies with common underlying principles, similar operational mechanism and similar first and second order effects: first order effects in terms of their impact on practitioners, practice and institutional procedures and second order effects in terms of social justice—patterns of access, opportunity and outcome." (Ball, 1999, p. 198)

29. Methodological Assumptions of Convergence of Global Education Reform • Paradigm convergence of education reforms rather than simple convergence of education reforms (Ball, 1999) • Conditional or functional causality rather than deterministic or nomological causality

30. Methodological Assumptions of Convergence of Global Education Reform • Paradigm convergence of education reforms rather than simple convergence of education reforms (Ball, 1999) • Conditional or functional causality rather than deterministic or nomological causality • Specification framework of global effects on education reforms

31. Dale has identified seven mechanisms of external effect on national policy. Two of them are what Dale characterized as 'traditional' or 'orthodox' mechanism. They are 'policy borrowing' and ‘policy learning'. The other five are mechanism "could be seen to be associated, though not exclusively, with globalization." (Dale, 1999, p.5) These mechanisms are 'harmonization', 'dissemination', 'standardization', 'installing interdependence' and 'imposition'.

32. Global-Information Age and the Governance of the Global-Competition State • Globalization as a process of compression of time and space

34. Global-Information Age and the Governance of the Global-Competition State • Definition of Globalization: In connection to the penetrating, reconfiguring and converging capacities of IT, the globalization at the end of the twentieth century has outgrown its ancestors in bridging if not annulling the temporal and spatial distances between human societies and cultures around the globe. • David Harvey (1989) in The Condition of Postmodernity defines globalization as “time-space compression”. It signifies “processes that so revolutionize the objective qualities of space and time that we are force to alter … how we represent the world to ourselves.” (p. 240)

35. Global-Information Age and the Governance of the Global-Competition State • Definition of Globalization: … • Anthony Giddens (1994) indicates that “globalization is really about the transformation of space and time. I define it as action at distance, and relate its intensifying over recent years to the means of instantaneous global communication and mass transportation.” (1994, p. 4) • Zygmunt Bauman (1998): Bauman defines globalization as “annulment of temporal/spatial distances” (1998, p.18). • Manuel Castells (1996): Castells defines globalization as a process "to overcome limits of time and space." (Castells, 1996, p. 92-93) As a result, it enables human institutions, such as the economy, and organization, such as the firm, "to work as a unit in real time on a planetary scale." (Castells, 1996, p. 92)

36. Global-Information Age and the Governance of the Global-Competition State • Definition of Globalization: … • Ulrich Beck (2000): "Globalization…denotes the process through which sovereign national states are criss-cross and undermined by transnational actors with varying prospects of power, orientations, identities and networks." (Beck, 2000, p. 11) Beck’s definition is derived from his two conceptions of modern society, namely the first and second modern societies

38. Global-Information Age and the Governance of the Global-Competition State • Castells underlines two essential consequences of globalization. They are • Space of flow: Manuel Castells (1996) underlines that one of the profound features brought about by the global-informational infrastructure is the separation of simultaneous social practices from physical contiguity, that is time-sharing social practices are no long embedded in locality of close proximity and/or within finite boundary. As a result, the traditional notion of space of places has been transformed into space of flows. In informational network, such as the internet, "no place exists by itself, since the positions are defined by flows." There is practically no boundary, no concepts of center or periphery, no beginning or end. It is all but flows.

39. Global-Information Age and the Governance of the Global-Competition State • Castells underlines two essential consequences of globalization. They are • Timeless time: Castells also underlines that the global-Informational infrastructure has also transform the conception of time in human society. Time is no longer comprehended in terms of localities around the globe according to the international time-zones. Human activities around the global can be coordinated "simultaneously" in disregard of conception of local time, such as morning, evening, late at night, etc. Furthermore, with the aid of IT, the conventional linear, sequential, diachronic concepts of time has been disturbed. "Timing becoming synchronic inflate horizon, with no beginning, no end, no sequence." (Castells, 1996, p. 74)

40. Global-Information Age and the Governance of the Global-Competition State • Globalization as a process of compression of time and space • Economic consequence • The rise of informational-global economy • Polarization of globally mobile capitalists and locally immobile workers • The constitution of network enterprise • Internal organization: Flat and flexible • External organization: Lean by means of outsourcing • The demand of flexible workers

43. Global-Information Age and the Governance of the Global-Competition State • Political consequence • The shrinking of the sovereignty of nation-states • The collapse of the economic nationalism • The transformation of WWII welfare state to global-competition state • The rise of the New-Right and the public sector reform • Deregulation • Privatization • Marketization

45. Global-Information Age and the Governance of the Global-Competition State • Cultural consequence • Detraditionalization and the advent of the post-traditional society • The commodification of culture • The rise of consumerism

47. Global-Information Age and the Governance of the Global-Competition State • Social consequence • Decentering of the modern self From pilgrim to stroller, vagabond, tourist and player • The constitution of flexible family • Identities based on cultural-spatial communities was replaced by identity built on virtual communities and self-selecting specialized communities

49. Education Reforms as Governance Project of the Global-Competition State • Education reform as economic project of competition state to solve the economic crisis elicited by the erosion of the economic nationalism and to enhance nation competitiveness in global-informational economy and to elevate the employability of the national labor force • Education reform as part of the administrative project of competition state for reforming the public sectors of the welfare state, in which public schooling system is the major sector

50. Education Reforms as Governance Project of the Global-Competition State • Education reform as political project of global-competition state for nationally inclusive and politically empowering citizenship in post-materialist politicking bases • Education reform as cultural project of global-competition state to resolve the cultural nihilism and moral panic of consumerism and postmodernism • Education reform as social-solidarity project of global-competition state to re-constitute social solidarity among de-centering selves and flexible and virtual communities.