Essay Question 5 - Discuss the rise and distinctiveness of contemporary globalisation and its influence on education.

Question 1

Question five - Discuss the rise and distinctiveness of contemporary globalisation and its influence on education.

Answer 1

GLOBALISATION IS A STRUCTURAL (POST-MODERNITY) CHANGE

Question 2

What does globalisation in the post-modern world look like

Answer 2

• Characteristics of contemporary globalisation: extensive networks, intensive flows within networks, speedy, frequent instantaneous global interactions; all of which impact on all areas of economic, social and political life, and affect everyone in the world to a greater or lesser extent
• Examples: electronic mass media,
• Globalisation is the movement of people, goods and ideas across the word
• “The main distinctiveness of contemporary globalisation is the time-space compression (with reference to transnational call centres)” (PAGE 219)
• contemporary globalisation is associated with the demise of
• Put simply, globalisation could be described as a set of processes which in various ways – economic, cultural and political – make supranational connections (Taylor et al., 1997, p. 55).
• Is the product of certain mutually reinforcing processes, most importantly the capitalist search for lower costs and higher profits that is encouraged by capitalist states and facilitated by advanced technologies that shrink space and time
o Less and less workers
o Internet – our concept of space begins to collapse
o Profit before people
• Globalisation – in action and outsourcing
o Eg: call centres (especially off-shore) – the idea running this movement > profit, cheaper, management of employees
o Fordism (manufacturing of cars) – dependent on manual workers, not performing asked to get out → now an automated assembly line – only needs 1 man not 20
o Farming in the modern era – automation (postmodern farming) → Shepparton – orchids are being pulled out, SPC struggling to survive

Question 3

What are the three phases of Globalisation?

Answer 3

1. Global imagination – to the eighteenth century (pre-modern)
2. Incipient globalisation – (early modern → 1850’s to 1950’s)
3. Full-scale globalisation – (post modern → 1960’s to present)

Question 4

Explain Appadurai’s (1990) notion of scapes

Answer 4

Financescapes → defined as “cross-border movements” of loans, equities, direct and indirect investments, and currencies that transcend the power of the nation-state.
Ethnoscapes → the landscape of persons who constitute the shifting world in which we live: tourists, immigrants, refugees, exiles, guest workers and other moving groups and persons constitute an essential feature of the world, and appear to affect the politics of and between nations to a previously unprecedented degree
Technoscapes → the global configuration, also ever fluid, of technology, and of the fact that technology, both high and low, both mechanical and informational, now moves at high speeds across various kinds of previously impervious boundaries
Mediascapes → refer both to the distribution of the electronic capabilities to produce and disseminate information (newspapers, magazines, television stations, film productions studios, etc.) which are now available to a growing number of private and public interests throughout the world; and to the images of the world created by these media
Ideoscapes → the global flow of ideologies; consists of a concatenation of ideas, terms and images, including ‘freedom’, ‘welfare,’ ‘rights’, ‘sovereignty’, ‘representation’, and the master term ‘democracy.

Question 5

What are the implications for education?

Answer 5

• Teachers → Casualization and globalisation – if you are a private school that wants to make a profit by lowering your costs, if you have permanent people you have to pay benefits – casualization - costs come down (this is largely related to ‘financescapes’)
• Curriculum → teachers need to teach 21st century skills → with globalisation taking place here are new skills students need to acquire (eg: learning about other cultures, business studies, understanding and using media/technology) therefore teachers need to alter their curriculum to facilitate these new concepts
• Students → in relation to ‘ethnoscapes’ there is now more than ever a large multicultural population of students in many schools and this is a relevant change related to globalisation. This has increased the need for English support classes, languages centres and teaching of LOTE to change from the modern times (eg; modern times – European languages mainly taught in schools → post-modern times – Asian languages now taught)
• Resources → in relation to ‘technoscapes’ the increase in the types of technologies available and the speed at which they transmit information has increased the number of resources available in schools, tis can be both positive and negative. POSITIVE – much easier and greater access to current information. NEGATIVE – difficult to ensure all information is validated and correct