Page 93 - Education in a Digital World

80 National Policymaking

This is not to argue that the educational technology policies of the
UK, US, Japan, Chile, Singapore or Nepal are intended to fulfil no practical purpose at
all. Yet it would seem that any intended outcomes are broader and less immediate
than may first appear to be the case. For example, state interest in educational
technology plays an emblematic role in terms of addressing wider ambitions
towards the ‘transformation’ of countries’ public sector organisations in ways that can
support globally competitive economies. Many of the educational technology policies
highlighted in this chapter certainly appear to support the logics of economic glo-
balisation “which privilege choice, competition, performance management and
individual responsibility and risk management” (Apple 2010, pp.1–2). In this sense,
educational technology policymaking from the 1980s onwards can be seen in many
countries as reflecting the economically focused nature of public sector policymaking
during the last twenty years. As Stephen Ball (2007, p.188) argues:

Generally speaking, within this new episteme, education is increasingly,
indeed perhaps almost exclusively, spoken of within policy in terms of its
economic value and its contribution to international market competitiveness.
Even policies which are concerned to achieve greater social inclusion
are edited, modified and co-opted by the requirements of economic partici-
pation and the labour markets and the values, principles and relations of
trade/exchange … Education is increasingly subject to the normative
assumptions and prescriptions of economism … Within policy this economism
is articulated and enacted very generally in the joining up of [education] to
the project of competitiveness and to the demands of globalisation and very
specifically through the curriculum of enterprise and entrepreneurship.

Set against this background, digital technologies would seem to be a prominent
instance of the recent tendency of educational policymakers to seize upon shared
‘magical solutions’ to the ‘generic problems’ that education policymaking is seen to
face (Ball 1998). In many respects, then, digital technologies could be seen as con-
forming to the notion of globalisation as ‘knowledge wars’– i.e. nations moving
beyond the stage of ‘bloody’ armed conflict and, instead, competing “for ideas, skills
and knowledge that contribute to economic advantage by ‘out-smarting’ economic
rivals” (Brown et al. 2008, p.133). Yet it would perhaps be overstating the case to
argue for digital technology as a straightforward instance of an increased shaping of
education by concerns of economic competition and conflict. Instead, there are also
distinct differences between the educational technology policy agendas of countries
such as the UK, US, Japan, Chile and Singapore that are best understood in terms
of the political economy of the countries under investigation. The policy drives of
the US and UK, for example, reflect a clear interest in supporting the development
of educational technology marketplaces within their borders, as well as supporting
the distribution and sale of American and British educational provision in other
countries. Policymaking in the US has also, on occasion, reflected an internationalist