Globalization and the Neoliberal Imaginary of Educational Reform

Abstract

Most recent policies and programmes of educational reform have been framed, justified and promoted on a widely held belief that aligning educational policies and practices with the economic, political and cultural changes that globalization signifies is necessary. However, this signification has mostly been couched in neoliberal terms– the view that globalization is largely an economic phenomenon, in which markets play a fundamental role in reconfiguring the nature of social relations. So globally ubiquitous has this mode of thinking become that it can appropriately be referred to as a ‘social imaginary’. The neoliberal imaginary of globalization has re-cast the purposes and governance of ed..