Page 63 - Education in a Digital World

50 International Organisations

technologies in the comparative performance of education systems. The organisation’s
recent ‘Teaching and Learning International Survey’ project, for example, had an
explicit focus on the role of digital technology on school and teacher effectiveness.
As such, the recent activities of the OECD have tended to frame digital technology
as part of the wider ‘change management’ of education systems.

Understanding the Significance of SNOs and IGOs in
Educational Technology

While all these organisations have clear interests in promoting the use of digital
technology in education systems, it could be argued that much of the work described
above fulfils a primarily symbolic rather than practical purpose. Certainly,
educational technology is a highly visible and tangible means of allowing otherwise
remote international organisations and agencies to be ‘seen to do something’ about
the social and economic conditions of the countries and regions that they are con-
cerned with. Yet in pursuing these actions, SNOs and IGOs such as the UN,
OECD and World Bank also are seeking to influence the global discourses and
debates that frame educational technology provision and practice. While individu-
ally of limited practical outcome, these actions can nevertheless be said to have a
significant cumulative influence on ‘education politics’ and policymaking – for
instance, creating policy expectations of the role of technology in new curricular
arrangements, or creating interest and awareness of common ‘issues’. These
motivations of advocacy and agenda-setting are certainly clear in the on-going
efforts of SNOs and IGOs to create and sustain the ‘imperative’ for technology
use throughout education systems. As Rizvi and Lingard (2010, p.79) observe:
“organisations such as the OECD, the EU, APEC, UNESCO and the World Bank
have become major sites for the organisation of knowledge about education,
and have created a cajoling discourse of ‘imperatives of the global economy’
for education”.
As such, most of these organisations’ educational technology actions are based
noticeably around non-coercive ‘softer’ forms of power rather than any direct ‘hard’
influence. Moreover, any actual effect of these organisations’ interventions in
educational technology could be said to depend very much on the economic and
political situation of the countries where the work takes place. Through a
combination of “relentless global marketing … often backed by substantial financial
clout” (Green 2003, p.86) organisations such as the World Bank and OECD are
able to exert a noticeable influence on educational technology arrangements
in some economically weaker countries and regions. Yet in more secure and
wealthy countries, the provision of education (particularly the provision of
compulsory schooling) tends to remain primarily a matter of national sovereignty.
As Andy Green (2003, p.86) observed with regard to the influence of the European
Union, “education still remains officially a matter of national competence, which
few member states are willing to cede”.