Page 31 - Education in a Digital World

18 Developing a Global Perspective

pursued to good effect by commentators such as Phil Brown, Hugh Lauder, Roger
Dale, Simon Marginson and others. As Marginson (1999, p.19) summarises, this
approach sees globalisation as:

irreversibly changing the politics of the nation-state and its regional sectors,
domestic classes and nationally-defined interest groups. It is creating new
potentials and limits in the politics of education. Its effects on the politics of
education are complex … Increasingly shaped as it is by globalization – both
directly and via the effects of globalization in national government – education
at the same time has become a primary medium of globalization, and an
incubator of its agents. As well as inhibiting or transforming older kinds of
education, globalization creates new kinds.

Problematising Education, Technology and Globalisation
These latter debates and definitions therefore offer a solid and sensible basis for the
remainder of the book. On one hand it seems clear that the perception of digital
technology leading to a global transformation of education around the world is a
deliberate over-simplification of what is a very complex set of arrangements.
Despite the forcefulness of some of the descriptions and predictions presented at the
beginning of this chapter, it makes no sense to follow a globalist agenda and attempt
to produce a technology-focused account of a new unified ‘global age’ of digital
education. It could, however, be argued that there is more sense in following a
sceptical approach towards education and technology. Indeed, the likes of Andy
Green have argued quite successfully that there has been little meaningful globali-
sation of education. As Green (1997, p.171) contends, although national education
systems may have become more ‘porous’ and “become more like each other in
certain important ways”, there is “little evidence that national education systems are
disappearing or that national states have ceased to control them”. At best it could
be reasoned that a more modest process of ‘partial internationalisation’ of education
has occurred, involving increased student and teacher mobility, widespread policy
borrowing and “attempts to enhance the international dimension of curricula
at secondary and higher levels” (Green 1997, p.171). Otherwise, it could be said
that a pronounced heterogenisation remains in terms of national – and indeed
local – responses to global educational processes and imperatives.
While these rejections are certainly more persuasive than the globalist position,
they are a dangerously dismissive position from which to commence our own ana-
lysis – especially as nearly twenty years of considerable social and technological
change have passed since they were made. Thus while we would do well to avoid
what Yeates (2001) terms a ‘strong’ version of the globalist thesis, it would be
foolhardy to discount the possibility of there being some international change and
possible convergence when it comes to education and technology. In this sense,
there is certainly merit for the time being in continuing to take the issues raised by