Education
Slouching towards decentralization: consequences of globalization for curricular control in national education systems
Paradoxical impact of globalisation on curriculum policies
Authors:
M. Fernanda Astiz; A. Wiseman; D. P. Baker
Publisher:
Comparative and International Education Society, 2002
This article presents an analysis of how globalisation has influenced the spread of reforms for decentralising school governance and the consequences these reforms have had on models of curricular administration and implementation in classrooms across nations.
Both economic and institutional globalisation have sustained interest in the decentralisation of educational governance, and this is shaping a new image of the state relative to the control of schooling. This has meant that, over the past several decades, there has been a “preoccupation with decentralisation” in the policy discourse about education, particularly among the developing nations of Latin America, South Asia, and Eastern Europe and among international development agencies.
However, the neoliberal vision of decentralising the governance of public schooling presents a paradox in implementation. Will strong, centrally controlled states reduce the role that so clearly legitimates them as states? How will decentralisation be achieved through a highly centralised process? And finally, can decentralisation really assist centralised states to create democratic values and demands for change in educational governance to strengthen civil society?
Research into the administration of mathematics curricula has shown that globalisation has pushed more nations into various mixes of decentralised and centralised administration of education rather than the anticipated single decentralisation route. Governments that adopt the globalised economic goals of market criteria, represented by productivity, competitiveness, and flexibility, have heavily influenced curricula policy in the areas of maths and science. This in practice has meant more emphasis on standardization, achievement and assessments controlled through policies of accountability and client choice.
Globalisation does not necessarily produce a single educational policy route. Rather a global push for decentralisation has set the stage for a number of national adoptions of this general idea. Consequently, moving toward the globalized center leads centralised national education systems in many countries to adopt national decentralisation policies. Simultaneously, globalisation may cause decentralised national education systems to partially adopt more centralisation.
