Abstract
Reviewing the arguments and findings of the chapters in this book, this concluding chapter illustrates the formation and workings of a global education governing complex. It explicates this governing complex and reveals its constitution, mechanisms, and trajectories, as well as the book’s connections and contributions to the fields of history of education and policy research. The chapter argues that an OECD-centered global education governing complex is characterized by (1) an historical trajectory going back to World War II and shaped during the bipolar world order of the Cold War, (2) distinct ideological components about capitalist economics pursuing economic growth based on human resources and the establishment of a well-functioning labor market, (3) underlying assumptions about the universality and general applicability of education programs and practices, and (4) inherent values where education is a utilitarian endeavor. These aspects are too often overlooked in political discourse about education and must be critically studied across local, regional, national, transnational, and global perspectives.
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Notes
- 1.
It should be duly mentioned that the latest PISA developments have sought to include more creative and social competences (Lewis, this volume). Even so, these dimensions still seem to hinge on a basically economic idea about measuring the allegedly appropriate kinds of competences for performing well in the future labor market.
- 2.
Interestingly, in his recent book, director of the OECD Directorate of Education and Skills, Andreas Schleicher (2018: 126), seems to emphasize a clear inspiration from Asian education systems: ‘The fact that students in most East Asian countries consistently believe that achievement is mainly a product of hard work, rather than inherited intelligence as Western children would often say, suggests that education and its social context can make a difference in instilling values that foster success in education’. If anything, this observation raises the question of what happens to historically Western organizations when they go global.
- 3.
Although, in some European contexts, the European Union rates higher because of a distinct European frame of reference (e.g. Lawn and Grek 2012).
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Ydesen, C. (2019). The Formation and Workings of a Global Education Governing Complex. In: Ydesen, C. (eds) The OECD’s Historical Rise in Education. Global Histories of Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33799-5_14
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