Globalization and Educational Restructuring in the Asia Pacific Region

Transcription

1 Globalization and Educational Restructuring in the Asia Pacific Region

2 Globalization and Educational Restructuring in the Asia Pacific Region Edited by Ka-ho Mok and Anthony Welch

3 Editorial matter, selection and Chapters 1 and 10 Ka-ho Mok and Anthony Welch 2003 Chapters 2 9 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 2003 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Globalization and educational restructuring in the Asia Pacific region / edited by Ka-ho Mok & Anthony Welch. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN Education and state Asia. 2. Education and state Pacific Region. 3. Educational change Asia. 4. Educational change Pacific Region. 5. Globalization. I. Mok, Ka-Ho, II. Welch, Anthony R. LC94.A2 G dc

4 Contents Notes on the Contributors Preface Acknowledgements vii x xiii 1 Globalization, Structural Adjustment and Educational Reform 1 Ka-ho Mok and Anthony Welch 2 Reflections on Singapore s Education Politics in an Age of Globalization 32 Jason Tan 3 Globalization s Challenges to Higher Education Governance in South Korea 58 Ka-ho Mok, Kiok Yoon and Anthony Welch 4 Globalization, Localization and Education Reform in a New Democracy: Taiwan s Experience 79 Wing-wah Law 5 The Quest for Quality Education and a Learning Society in Hong Kong 128 Ka-ho Mok and Paul Wilding 6 Globalization and Educational Restructuring in China 160 King-lun Ngok and Julia Kwong 7 Globalization and the Philippines Education System 189 Swee-hin Toh and Virginia Floresca-Cawagas 8 Education and the Localization of Structural Adjustment in Cambodia 232 David Ayres 9 Globalization, Structural Adjustment and Contemporary Educational Reforms in Australia: The Politics of Reform, or the Reform of Politics? 262 Anthony Welch v

5 vi Contents 10 The New Zealand Education Experiment: From Democratic Participation to Self-Management, and From Universal Welfare Entitlement to Private Investment 302 Michael Peters 11 Conclusion: Deep Development or Deep Division? 333 Anthony Welch and Ka-ho Mok Index 357

6 Notes on the Contributors David Ayres has long experience of Cambodian reforms in education, a field in which he is an acknowledged expert. His recently published book is one of the standard references in the field, and is complemented by substantial, and ongoing, practical experience. Virginia Floresca Cawagas is Adjunct Associate Professor in Educational Policy Studies, University of Alberta. She has been active in Philippine formal and community education for over three decades. Her key areas of educational work and social action focus especially on education and development, peace and global education. She served as Executive Secretary of the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines from and she has actively participated in various international networks related to comparative education. Julia Kwong is Professor of Sociology at the University of Manitoba in Canada. She was educated in Hong Kong and received graduate training in Canada. She has written numerous books and articles on a wide range of issues in Chinese education such as curriculum, examination system, school organization, student movement, private education and others. She has also published extensively in the field of comparative education and education policy. Wing-wah Law is Associate Professor of the University of Hong Kong at the Faculty of Education. His research interests include education and development; higher education; values education and curriculum; and education in Chinese societies including Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Ka-ho Mok is Associate Dean, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and also Convenor, Comparative Education Policy Research Unit, City University of Hong Kong. He is the editor of this book and he has published extensively in the fields of comparative education policy, public policy and comparative social development studies in contemporary China and East Asia. His recent research centres on changing educational governance in East Asia. vii

7 viii Notes on the Contributors King-lun Ngok is Member of Comparative Education Policy Research Unit, and Instructor, Department of Public and Social Administration, City University of Hong Kong. He has a strong research interest in policy studies, particularly specializing in labour policy, education policy and law and administration in Mainland China. Michael Peters is Professor of Education at Glasgow University, and Adjunct Professor in Education at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Highly regarded internationally for his work in philosophy of education, and policy studies in education, he is the author of numerous major works in these fields. Jason Tan is Associate Professor in Policy and Management Studies at the National Institute of Education, Singapore. He is Editor of Challenges Facing the Singapore Education System Today (Singapore: Prentice Hall, 2001). His research interests centre on school decentralization and privatization, education and ethnicity in Singapore, and on school and curriculum reform. Swee-hin Toh is Professor of Education at the University of Alberta, Canada. A longstanding specialist in Third World education, and Peace Education, he has worked in many parts of the world, and published widely on education and development. His highly regarded work on Peace Education, led recently to the award of a UNESCO prize. Anthony Welch is Associate Professor in the School of Policy and Practice, Faculty of Education, University of Sydney, Australia. He is the co-editor of this book and he has published extensively in the fields of comparative education, policy studies, methodology, and higher education reforms, and is currently engaged in fieldwork in China and Vietnam. His work has been published in some 8 languages. Paul Wilding is Emeritus Professor, University of Manchester of the United Kingdom and Adjunct Professor, City University of Hong Kong. He is a leading social policy and administration expert in the UK. He has published extensively in the field of social policy, comparative social development and policy studies. His most recent research focuses on social policy in Hong Kong and East Asia, as well as welfare model and welfare policy developments in East Asia.

8 Notes on the Contributors ix Kiok Yoon is presently a Professor of Instructional Supervision at the Inchon National University of Education in Korea. She received her BA from Seoul National University, her Diploma and M.E. from University of Sydney and Seoul National University, and her Ph.D. from University of Oregon. Her primary professional interests are instructional supervision, in-service education, and teaching. She has published extensively, including many books, numerous articles in professional journals, papers for professional associations, as well as numerous presentations.

9 Preface Over the past decades, people have begun to talk about the impact of globalization on economic, social, political and cultural fronts. As the processes of globalization are complicated, the developments in economics, politics and culture are not immune from such restructuring processes. The growing impact of globalization has unquestionably drawn a number of people to believe that there are many aspects of globalization that are beyond the control of nation states. It is also argued that the rising global capitalism has inevitably forced individual states to change both their roles and their constitutions in order to adapt creatively to the demands and pressures generated from changing external environments. In addition, globalization and the evolution of a knowledge-based economy have created additional pressures for nation states to improve/maintain their competitiveness in the global economy environment. In order to enhance their national capacity, education reforms have become common agendas among nation states of advanced industrialized countries since the 1980s and have extended to the Asia Pacific in the 1990s. In order to maintain the national competitiveness in the global marketplace, governments across the world have started to review their education systems and different reform initiatives are introduced in education to enhance the global capacity of their citizens to better adapt to the ever-changing socio-economic and socio-political environments. In the context of globalization, we can easily see a paradigm shift in public policy and public management toward a financially driven and free-market ideology, whereby education policy change and governance mode have been significantly shaped by market principles and practices. Not surprisingly, discourse of economicism, ideological stance as performativity and notion of neo-liberalism have become increasingly popular in governing educational developments across different parts of the globe. This book is set out in a wider context of globalization in order to examine and reflect critically upon the origin, evolution and development of how processes of globalization have affected educational developments and educational policies in the Asia Pacific region. More specifically, the major focus of this book is to examine how the selected x

10 Preface xi societies in the region have reacted, and what strategies these governments have adopted, in response to the tidal wave of marketization, corporatization, commercialization and privatization in education. This book also discusses how processes of globalization have resulted in structural adjustments and how education policies are influenced, and in what way academics and teaching professionals have been affected. There are eleven chapters in this volume. Chapter 1 is the introduction setting out the major theoretical and conceptual issues that this volume will tackle. In Chapters 2 to 10, we have selected nine societies in the Asia Pacific region which includes Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, the Philippines, Cambodia, Australia and New Zealand as our case studies. The contributors of this volume have attempted to outline the most current and recent educational changes and transformations in their societies, discussing in particular the impact of structural adjustment that have resulted from globalization processes on educational developments. The final chapter of this book is the conclusion drawn by the two editors. Welch and Mok have chosen the theme Deep development or deep division? and examine whether processes of globalization have really promoted genuine improvement and development in education; but they conclude that such processes have intensified education disparities between the poor and the rich. The world seems to have been divided into the haves and have nots. Even with the advancement of technology and communication, the gap between the rich and the poor has not come closer but has in fact widened. Similarly, sociologists of development have contrasted development and distorted development by arguing that rapid economic growth may not bring real social progress, let alone realize the goal of achieving social welfare for all. Instead, as an increasing number of people have begun to realize, the growing impact of globalization has in some cases resulted in regional disparity, highly skewed income distribution, poverty, deprivation, low health status, insufficient housing, unemployment, oppression of women, intensified disparities in education opportunities, and a variety of social problems. It is in such wider socioeconomic and socio-political contexts that this volume sets out to examine issues related to how globalization and structural adjustment has changed the way education is managed and governed. We hope that this volume will offer our readers a better understanding of the most current educational developments in the Asia Pacific region as well as

11 xii Preface providing comparative perspectives and international insights. Finally, this book is an attempt to reflect upon the social, cultural and political implications of educational restructuring in the Asia Pacific region in the context of globalization. KA-HO MOK ANTHONY WELCH

12 Acknowledgements In the course of research on globalization and educational restructuring in Asia and the Pacific Region one accumulates debts of many kinds. A great many people and institutions deserve thanks for their help and service during the researching and editing of this book, but we can only mention a few in this formal acknowledgement. Throughout the whole editing process, we are particularly grateful to all the contributors who have worked very hard to meet the deadline and their contributions to this volume make the publication plan a reality. The present volume is based upon our research projects conducted in different parts of the Asia Pacific region, with particular reference to examining how governments in particular and education institutions in general respond to challenges generated from the growing impact of globalization. When conducting our research projects, many people have provided useful assistance to us, particularly our research collaborators who have made arrangements and provided help necessary for enabling us to conduct field visits and field interviews in different parts of the Asia Pacific region. Particularly we wish to thank those unnamed officials, friends and scholars for freely sharing with us their valuable experience and views. Special thanks must be expressed to Professor P.S. Chung, Vice President (Research), and Professor Matthew Chen, Dean of Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, City University of Hong Kong, for offering special research grant to support the work of the Comparative Education Policy Research Unit (CEPRU). This book project is part of the initiatives of the CEPRU and thanks must also be extended to the editorial assistance and clerical support offered by Michael Lee, Joyce Yeung and Ho-ka. Without this and their support, this book would have taken much longer to complete. When we are aware of intellectual debts, we have tried to acknowledge them in the notes. Inevitably, many indirect influences have not been mentioned here. We have attempted to repay these scholarly debts in the most appropriate coin by trying our best to engage in future research to promote better understanding of globalization and educational restructuring in Asia and the Pacific realm. We dedicate this book to those who are interested in comparative education. KA-HO MOK ANTHONY WELCH xiii