Global Policies and Vernacular Politics in Education

Stephen J. Ball

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Abstract

This paper addresses a set of conceptual problems and an agenda of empirical questions related to the emergence of a new paradigm of educational governance. These concerns articulate with a more general debate around the issue of globalisation. The author rehearses briefly the sinews of that debate and examines what is sometimes called 'policy convergence' or policy transfer or policy borrowing. The article tries to understand to what extent are we seeing the wearing away of nation-state specific policy making, in the education, social and economic fields, and concomitantly, the collapse of these fields into a single over-riding emphasis on policy-making for economic competitiveness. That is, an increasing neglect or side-lining (other than in rhetoric) of the social purposes of education.