Globalisation and Education

Education has seemingly always represented the interest and goals of the community, region, state, or country that it was established. Whether to provide basic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic, or preparing students for higher education, the goals and policies within those communities or countries are ever changing because the world around us is ever changing. It was after reading through the various sources that I became more enlightened and yet somehow even more confused regarding my understanding of “globalization” and “internationalization” as it relates to education. Thus, it is the goal of this post to explain and reflect on my understanding regarding this topic. 

When referring to higher education in particular, the scholar, Futao Huang referenced Internationalisation as “the process of integrating an international, intercultural, or global dimension into the purpose, functions or delivery of postsecondary education” (Huang, 2007, p. 48). Huang then described what I believe to be the broader term of globalisation by stating that it can be defined as “the process of consequences of instantaneous world-wide communication made possible by new technology” (Huang, 2007, p. 48). 

It is through these references that I was able to begin to think through the connection between these two topics and what might be the effects of globalisation on education policy. The observation that we are continually becoming a more interconnected world through the rapid growth of technology thus only lends itself to affect all parts of our lives; education not excluded.

This leads to the common assumption that the more globalisation occurs, the more internationalisation will occur as it relates to education policies. There will be more of a need for an intercultural and global dimension in education so as to prepare students for a more global world. The question that is then raised is: “Is globalisation having a positive effect on education policies and/or student learning?” 

The concept that education as a whole is simply seen as another resource on the global market economy is another topic that arises during this discussion. Huaung argued that in this climate of internationalisation and globalisation, that he believed the prior to assume countries and cultures exist, whereas for the later term, they are decreasing in significance (Huang, 2007, p. 49). However, it is in my opinion, as an international educator in Asia for the past 8 years, that with the rise of globalisation, I see countries and cultures attempting to be more openly and intentionally emphasized and discussed within schools. There may be no doubt  historically, or even more recently within say the British empire’s imperialization goals, that education was attempting to make one culture more important, possibly even trying to eliminate another culture completely through education, I think the current deconstruction of that ideology is swinging the pendulum back in the other direction. While a culture was once ubiquitous to the people or students, globalisation is now forcing educational institutions to think of a both/and approach rather than an either/or approach regarding a global or local educational identity. 

Cambridge and Thompson note that the rise of nationalism in the early 20th century caused what many feared as the “greatest divider of human kind,” thus creating the urgent need as recognized by Robert Blackurn for education to be “used as a tool to break down the barriers of race, religion and class which separate our students” (Cambridge, 2004, p. 163). And while globalisation and it’s interconnected topics which are in nature, economic, political and cultural, Cambridge and Thompson’s believe international education and it’s institutions and policies to be identified with “an ideology of international understanding and peace, responsible world citizenship and service” (Cambridge, 2004, p. 172). Their statement or approach, however idealistic at its surface is also the hope and belief I have as an international educator. It is also my understanding in the enormous and seemingly irreducible complexity of this topic that I yield to the understanding that it is not always possible to find the perfect system, but to create policies and understandings in the right direction in hopes to achieve the best options in the imperfect and ever changing global landscape. 

However, scholars such as Rizvi and Lingard, seem to take a much more pessimistic and even antagonistic approach to the effects globalisation on education by stating that it “produces and reproduces social inequalities limiting the transformative potential of education” (Nagahara, 2011, p. 371). While Cambridge and Thompson seemed to have believed that globalisation is just the reality and that international education must strive to bring positives to that reality, Rizvi and Lingard seem to take issue with globalisation as a whole because of its innate attacks on a culture’s norms by affecting the social imaginary. It was within Nagahara’s book review of Rizvi and Lingard that I believe he did a good job of clearly addressing their opinions on the critiques of globalisation, that he rightly notes that they challenge assumptions and bring key issues to light regarding this topic (Nagahara, 2011, p. 376). The evaluation I have made based on Nagahara’s review is one that reveals that Rizvi and Lingard believe the connection between economy, politics and education to be one of a neoliberal ideology seeking to assert control and power of value structures upon typically non-western cultures that are not as powerful within the global marketplace. While this evaluation may be true, I did not seem to understand what their solution to the problems they espouse, or maybe their goal is simply to raise awareness to bias that governments and policy makers may have when dealing with importing educational values outside of their original culture. 

All of these topics raise larger questions relating to the creation of international standards or testing such as the PISA or even how educational policies are being shaped. Are they beneficial at all, and if they are, to whom do these assessments and policies benefit? Are 21st century skills needed in every place in the world, or maybe which ones are more important or necessary within certain countries? While I personally don’t have answers to these questions, I think that the honest discussion and presentation of these questions is a good place to start as I journey on my understanding of globalisation and its impact on education. 

It is my hope that even while I am in Hong Kong  that I begin to think more thoroughly about these questions and to seek to understand the policies within my own international school. Thinking even more recently to the COVID-19 Pandemic and its effect on the global economy as well as the impact on school closures or online learning has also caused a lot of discussion on the flexibility of our policies or external assessments. For once it seems that we are able to see throughout the world all schools to be affected in a significant way. Students, families, loss of jobs, lack of movement, lack of community, isolation and depression are having an impact on student learning. Maybe it is in this moment that we are better able to think through how different countries and cultures deal with these stressors far more often than say the western world, yet we also far too often expect or impose the same, if not higher standards for students to meet with even less resources. There is a possibility of even thinking through how certain countries and cultures have navigated this time of home-learning or self-learning by more family input on the education decisions that were rapidly being decided by each school, district or community. It is in this time we might see that the large scale global expectations and desires to be compared to the smaller or more locally decided decisions that were able to adjusted and adapted quicker, while the large and more international or global systems took much more time and effort to decide on a direction. In the midst of all these questions I hope that this global situation as well as countless other data points will continue to inform and direct my understanding and opinion on globalization's effect on education. 

Sources 

Cambridge, J, & Thompson, J (2004, June). Internationalism and globalization as context for international education. Carfax Publishing.

Huang, F (2007). Internationalisation of Higher Education in the Era of Globalisation: What have been its Implications in China and Japan? OCED. 

Nagahara, Minori (2001, May 21). Fazai Rizvi and Bob Lingard: Globalizing education policy (Book Review). Springer Science+Business Media.