Page 57 - Education in a Digital World

44 International Organisations

therefore brought to our attention. For example, how do international organisations
deliberately set out to ‘set the tone’ and ‘frame the problem’ of educational
technology? How do they influence and intervene in national policies, and what
bearing do they have on local practice?
Of course the roles and responsibilities of these multinational corporations and
supranational authorities are not straightforward. As was discussed in Chapters 1
and 2, educational technology is a complex intertwined set of processes that
involve an array of intergovernmental organisations and multinational corporations.
These processes are varied in nature, often being practical and discursive, financial
and technical, political and cultural. Furthermore, the motivations and intentions
behind each organisation’s actions vary considerably, as does the dimension of
their organisational power. In short, this is by no means a straightforward area
of education and technology to describe. Thus while there are many ways that
we could attempt to frame the proceeding discussion of the international shaping of
educational technology, perhaps the easiest distinction that can be made is in
terms of what can be loosely seen as ‘public’ interest and ‘private’ capital. As such,
we can first consider the influence of intergovernmental and supranational
organisations and then, second, the influence of multinational and transnational
corporations.

The Role of Educational Technology in the Activities of
Intergovernmental and Supranational Organisations

Intergovernmental and supranational political and economic groupings have long
been important components of the global superstructure, particularly since the end
of the Cold War at the beginning of the 1990s and the parallel rise of organisations
such as the European Union in maintaining regional interests (see Stubbs and
Underhill 2006). As such, the past thirty years has been a period characterised by the
growth of a ‘new regionalism’. Here groupings of nations have assumed a leading
participatory role in global economics and politics, both in terms of trade and in
terms of flows of capital (Dale and Robertson 2002). Now intergovernmental
organisations (IGOs) proliferate the global political stage. These include high-profile
organisations such as the European Union, the Organisation of Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD), the G-20 group of major economies,
the League of Arab States, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and others.
Similarly a number of supranational organisations (SNOs) are also significant
economic and political actors, such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the
World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund.
Although all primarily economic in their focus and political in their actions, the
exact focus and role of these organisations varies according to constitution and his-
tory. For example, as an organisation established to represent and influence the
interests of the developed economies of the world, the OECD has tended to work
on behalf of the most successful and powerful elements of the world economy.