This book offers a critical and deconstructive account of global discourses on education, arguing that these overblown "hypernarratives" are neither economically, technically nor philosophically defensible. Nor even sane. Their "mythic economic instrumentalism" mimic rather than meet the economic needs of global capitalism in…

Globalization impacts on education everywhere; it is impossible to consider issues of curriculum or pedagogy without bearing in mind the effects of globalization. Here I consider to what extent it is possible to imagine curricula and pedagogies which could function at a global level? I do so from an anglo-phone perspective, from within the UK (and…

This paper explores how action research theories and practices are remodelled in local contexts and used to support educational reform. From an analysis of 46 publications from the period 2000-2008, five "variations" in the globalized theory and practice of action research are identified: action research in times of political upheaval and…

This article interrogates the notion of "glocalization" (Moja, 2004, based on Castells, 2001) as a concept that seeks to integrate the local and the global to address both the need for social justice and the need to participate in a global market economy. The article argues that the relation between the global and the local cannot be…

Although the determinants of trust in governments have received significant attention in the literature on political trust, there has been no attention paid to whether environmental concerns affect governmental trust. Yet, if individuals are worried about local and global environmental degradation, they may think that the government has failed in…

Experience of the drawbacks of a globalised and industrialised food system has generated interest in localised food systems. Local food networks are regarded as more sustainable food provision systems since they are assumed to have high levels of social embeddedness and relations of regard. This paper explores the social relations between food…

America is on the precipice of ruining its foundation for success. The movement toward a centralized education system through federal mandates and common curriculum and testing is threatening the very system that has contributed to America's success and that holds the potential for its future success: that is a decentralized, diverse, largely…

The aim of this article is to analyse the circulation of discourse in the global educational field and its relation to local-specific education policies and practices. The first section examines the logic of networks and relates it to the specificities of the networks of interaction that, it is argued, constitute "global policy spaces"…

Theory and practice in intercultural education remain problematic as they continue to reflect the tensions between universalistic and particularistic agendas. Particularism is manifested in a culturalist narrative which is mired in a failure to subject relativistic postmodernism to adequate critique. At the same time, universalism is frequently…

The purpose of this project was to initiate a program of research to explore how instructional designers around the world use design to make a social difference locally and globally. The central research question was, "Are there social and political purposes for design that are culturally based?" A growing body of research is concerned…

The town of Danville in Ohio was well known for its many turkey farms. Today there's barely a gobble to be heard around Danville, and the only talk of turkeys is at the annual Danville Turkey Festival, which has for decades celebrated the area's agricultural heritage. The local processing plant moved 200 miles north, into Michigan, in keeping with…

Using a global-local dialectic approach, this paper traces the rise of the basic education programme in the 1980s and 1990s in Botswana and its subsequent attenuation in the 2000s. Amongst the local forces that led to the rise of BEP were Botswana's political project of nation-building; the country's dire human resources situation in the decades…

This article takes up the issue of the internationalisation of Vocational Education and Training (VET) reforms, expressed in the way policy instruments such as National Qualifications Frameworks (NQF) are introduced in the European Training Foundation's (ETF) partner countries. There is an international debate and different perspectives regarding…

Open educational resources (OER) have become new buzzwords in the glocalization of education. While OER are often espoused as enabling educational equity, the reality is not always the case. Looking only at the positives of new educational methods can mask perpetuating challenges, which makes the open aspect of OER a misnomer. Taking an…

Young Canadian boys and girls aged nine to eleven were asked to consider their personal futures, the future of their community and the future of the world. Mixed methods were employed for data collection and analysis. Responses were compared with those given by children in eight countries and the discussion focused on the importance prior…