The increasing power of globalisation
means improved communication, travel, knowledge and greater effects of global
communities on education all around the world. This has led to a need to change
classroom practices and policies to ensure the highest quality instructional system,
particularly for Australian schools, because this country is renowned for its’
multicultural and global sense of culture and capabilities. In my opinion, it
is the job of schools to accommodate to the expanding need for global knowledge
and connections and to alter classroom practices in order to achieve the best
educational outcomes for all students studying and produce well rounded, global
citizens that can contribute to the ever increasing global labour market.
With greater travel and global
movement now more available to the masses, and more desirable, Robertson (1992)
describes a compression of the world and a demographic shift in the social
understanding of space and time. Combining this with the increase of the power
of money within the global labour market, we can see how an orientation towards
business models and direct institutional control has led to the view of
education as a commodity. Furthermore, due to recent changes in Australia’s
migration policy which has reduced the number and type of migrants allowed into
the country, Australia’s economy has been affected as many educational institutions rely on the income from full-fee
paying international students to assist in the distribution of quality
education to all students. Education is Australia’s largest services export (Marginson 2011, p. 21) with
the sustained belief
about the value of international education as an international good in the
global labour market. It
is clear to see that improved global mobility is a large contributor to the
economic needs of education systems around the world. This is why educational
institutions are increasingly becoming viewed as businesses and are altering
classroom practices, in assessments and testing, to remain a predominant
provider of international goods and services.
Globalisation has also caused a shift
in individual and societal senses of identity and this is particularly relevant
to education because schools now have to deal with highly flexible notions of
belonging and citizenship (Ong, 1999). With an increase in complex, multiple
identities in the classroom, globalisation and mobile individuals diversify
communities but also cause a ‘complex cultural diversity characterised by a
fluid & dynamic set of relationships’ and so the idea of a single,
homogeneous, national cultural identity has been challenged (Leaney, 2013, Week
3). Basu (2011, p. 1309) states ‘As a public institution, the
school has a mandate to serve all students and to create an educational system
that is sensitive to diversity and that allows for equality of opportunity… the
exclusion of the experiences, values, and viewpoints of Aboriginal, racial, and
ethnocultural minority groups constitutes a systemic barrier to success for
students from those groups’.
Hence, by changing classroom practices to support lower language skills
students and multiculturalism, globalisation influences educational outcome
requirements and classroom practices to support students within a global
context. It is the ‘connections
between education and democracy in the period of increasing cross-border
movement, transnational processes, and accelerated flow of capital,
commodities, culture and people’ Mitchell (2001, p. 52) that support
integration and movement flows due to globalisation and force schools to become
more integrated and considerate towards difference. Through continuously changing
practices of integration and understanding by teachers and students and the
reorientation towards education’s value in a global community as a commodity,
it is clear to see the globalisation is forcing a shift in the way teaching and
learning is conducted in Australian and global educational institutions.
References
- - Basu, R. (2011). Multiculturalism Through Multilingualism in Schools: Emerging Places of “Integration” in --- Toronto. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 101(6), 1307-1330, doi: 10.1080/00045608.2011.579536
- - -
Gratton,
M. (2012). The globalisation of work – and people. BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19476254
- - Leaney, G. (2013). Global Context of Australian Education, Week 3. EDST1104 Social Perspectives in Education Lecture Notes. University of New South Wales.
- - Marginson, S. (2011). It’s a long way down: the underlying tensions in the education export industry. Australian Universities Review, 53(2), 21-33.
- - Mitchell, K. (2001). Education for democratic citizenship: Transnationalism, multiculturalism and the limits of liberalism. Harvard Educational Review 71(1), 51–78.
- - Ong, A. (1999). Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
- - Robertson, R. (1992). Globalization: A Brief Response. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,31(3), 319-323.
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