Journal article
National agendas in global times: curriculum reforms in Australia and the USA since the 1980s
GC Savage, K O’Connor
Journal of Education Policy | Published : 2015
Abstract
This paper provides a comparative analysis of national curriculum reforms in Australia and the USA, set against the backdrop of global trends since the 1980s. The analysis is driven by an interest in the reconstitution of national policy spaces in global times, and draws particularly upon Stephen Carney’s notion of global policy-scapes as a way of understanding the complex and disjunctive flows of transnational policy ideas and practices. The paper begins by arguing that reforms since the early 1980s have been driven by global panics about globalisation, equity and market competitiveness. These global influences have underpinned parallel reform attempts in each country, including the develop..
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Funding Acknowledgements
This paper has emerged from research conducted as part of a University of Melbourne funded Early Career Researcher Grant project awarded to the lead author, titled: The national agenda: Exploring the rescaling of curriculum governance. During the project, the lead author has benefitted from many formal and informal conversations with policy-makers and colleagues in Australia and the USA. Special thanks are extended to the following colleagues who have contributed important insights and have helped shape the ideas in this paper: Paul Manna, Linda Darling-Hammond, Fazal Rizvi, Lorraine McDonnell, Bob Lingard, Lyn Yates, Jeffrey Henig, Joel Spring, and Robert Rothman. Thanks is also extended to Jory Brass (Arizona State University) and Laura Engel (George Washington University), who organised and hosted sessions in August 2014 at which the lead author presented a draft version of this paper. The authors would also like to sincerely thank the anonymous reviewers of this paper, who provided detailed and thoughtful responses and suggestions that significantly strengthened the final version of this article.