Education Reform and Education Policy in East Asia

Ka-ho Mok

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134207374
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book assesses the impact of globalization on the education systems of key East Asian countries, including China, Hong Kong, Japan, and the "tiger economies" of South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, examining how the increasingly interdependent economic system has driven policy change and education reform.

It discusses how policy makers have responded to changes required in educational outcomes in order to equip their societies for new global conditions and explores the impact of new approaches and ideologies related to globalization, such as marketization, privatization, governance changes, managerialism, economic rationalism and neo-liberalism, making comparisons across the region.

Based upon in-depth research, fieldwork, literature analysis, policy document analysis and personal reflections of academics serving in the education sector, this volume recounts heated debates about the pros and cons of education restructuring in East Asia. The discussions on national responses and coping strategies in this volume offer highly relevant insights on how globalization has resulted in restructuring and draws lessons from comparative public policy analysis and comparative education studies.

Part I
Education systems, policy change, and education reforms

1 Globalization and new governance

Changing policy instruments and regulatory arrangements in education

Introduction

Over the past decade, people have begun to talk about the impact of globalization on economic, social, political, and cultural fronts. Seeing globalization as very complicated processes of economic transactions and worldwide telecommunications, sociologists generally believe that the impact of globalization is profound as it is restructuring the ways in which we live and creating a new hybridity of cultural styles and mixes. Albeit no country is immune from the impact of globalization, there are heated debates about positive and negative consequences of globalization. No matter how we assess the impact of globalization, it is undeniable that contemporary societies are not entirely immune from the prominent global forces. Within the same context of globalization, some scholars in the field of education studies also believe education policy and development is not immune from globalization pressures, while many others argue we should avoid an overly deterministic view of globalization’s impact on education policy. This chapter attempts to identify, examine, and discuss issues related to globalization challenges and educational restructuring, especially analyzing education governance from the policy instrument approach. The present chapter will focus on a few key issues related to changing state and education relationships and new regulatory arrangements when education service providers and funding providers are increasingly diversified.

Globalization challenges to contemporary development

Globalization is a central concept in this book but it is important to note that “globalization” is a highly contested term. To different people, globalization has different meanings. Some scholars believe one can obtain a better understanding of contemporary society only when we analyze the impact of globalization processes, while others reject such a thesis by criticizing the overstatement of global impacts on social, economic, cultural, and political developments (Sklair 1995; Sassen 1998; Hirst and Thompson 1999; Mittelman 2000). Despite the disagreements over and diverse interpretations of the impacts of globalization on contemporary society, no one can deny that there has been a growing literature in globalization discourse and that many have examined how globalization processes have affected public policy formulation and modern governance (see, for example, Massy 1997; Pierre and Peters 2000; Yeates 2001).

There are three major theories of globalization, namely, strong globalists, skeptics, and trans-formationalists; they have different interpretations of the impacts of globalization on modern states (Held et al. 1999). At the crudest level, “strong” globalization theory argues the global economy is dominated by uncontrollable global forces in which nation-states are structurally dependent on global capital that is primarily determined by transnational corporations (TNCs) (Yeates 2001). The emerging complexity of the global economy has inevitably led to changes in state structures. It is believed globalization processes create great uncertainty in the global economy that, in turn, requires nation-states to act in ways that will promote stability in the domestic economic order. In addition, the growing complexity also constrains the capacity of nation-states to coordinate political bargaining and compensate interest groups (Woods 2000; Jayasuriya 2001). To strong globalists, globalization means a drastic shift in structural power and authority away from nation-states toward non-state agencies and from national political systems to global economic systems and they also believe the world will a converge in the context of globalization (Strange 1996; Held 2000).

In contrast, scholars who oppose the convergence thesis criticize the strong globalists for overstating and overgeneralizing the convergence tenets of globalization. Instead, they point out the importance of nation-states and heterogenization in terms of national, regional, and local responses to global processes or imperatives (Hirst and Thompson 1999; Held 2000; Waters 2001). The skeptics, in contrast, maintain that contemporary levels of economic interdependence are not historically unprecedented. Criticizing strong globalists for being fundamentally flawed and politically naive since they underestimate the enduring power of national governments to regulate international economic activity, the skeptics point out the important role that regional organizations perform in the world economy. They also assert that in comparison with the age of world empires the international economy has become considerably less global in its geographical embrace (Held et al. 1999; Smith et al. 1999).

The transformationalists, like the strong globalists, perceive globalization as an unprecedented driving force for rapid political, economic, and social changes in modern societies. Nonetheless, they reject the thesis of global convergence. Instead, they believe the existence of a single global system is not evidence of global convergence or of the arrival of a single world society. Instead, the transformationalists consider globalization would result in “global-stratification” since some states, societies, and communities are enmeshed in the global order at the expense of other countries, thus marginalizing some so-called less competitive economies in the process of globalization. Such new patterns require reformulation of vocabulary from North/South and first/third world, acknowledging that new hierarchies cut across and penetrate all societies and regions of the world (Held et al. 1999; Waters 2001).

In my view, globalization processes are complex and often contradictory and therefore we need to avoid an overly deterministic view of globalization. On the one hand, we cannot deny that globalization is real, not a virtual phenomenon, and its effects are enhanced and even transformed by the revolution in communications and the continuing advancement of technology-driven innovation. On the economic front, globalization is a process for removing restrictions, hence leading to increased trade and economic growth and the benefits of having a more liberal trade environment. On the other hand, we should not underestimate the social and political costs of globalization. We can easily see growing inequalities in some countries, environmental degradation, commodification of culture and education, rises in unemployment, greater uncertainty and risk, and reduction of power in states as unacceptable consequences (Hsieh and Tseng 2002; Stiglitz 2002). The extreme form of globalization may have led to the consequent acceleration in economic integration which privileges market capitalism. These processes place economic power in the hands of TNCs, for many of them have been dominated by Western developed economies primarily based in the United States and Europe. Similar processes have also resulted in “international stratification of national powers,” making the developed economies far more powerful and dominant in international affairs, while marginalizing those developing economies and threatening their social, economic, political, and cultural developments.

Therefore, we should be cautious about the growing impact of globalization instead of overstating the benefits that globalization processes have brought to us.

Globalization challenges to modern governance

The growing impact of globalization has caused a number of modern states to rethink their governance strategies to cope with rapid social and economic changes. When examining the capacity of modern states in the context of globalization, both the skeptics and transformationalists believe nation-states still retain the ultimate claim of legal legitimacy within their territories even though they have to respond to external pressures generated by international laws and authorities (Pempel 1998; Jayasurya 2001). Contrary to strong globalists’ arguments, the institutionalized state-society linkages (i.e., the mobilization of nonstate sources and actors to engage in social/public policy provision and financing) may not necessarily diminish the state’s capacity. Instead, globalization could be conducive to the reconfiguration of modern states, creating forces to drive modern states to restructure their governance models and reform the ways they manage the public sector (Pierre 2000). These changes could also be seen as productive forces for modern states to shift from “positive coordination”¹ to “negative coordination,”whereby the state can choose to perform the role of regulator, enabler, and facilitator instead of being heavily engaged in the role of provider and funder (Scharpf 1994; Jayasurya 2001). The debate just outlined here clearly indicates that scholars in public policy and governance have begun to reflect upon how far globalization pressures have really weakened state capacity in shaping local public policies and directing public sector management.

A close scrutiny of the impacts of globalization on public policy/public sector management has led some scholars to conclude that even though there may be similar trends and patterns in the public policy and public management domain along the lines of privatization, marketization, commodification, and corporatization, different governments may use similar strategies to serve their own political purposes. Modern states may tactically make use of the globalization discourse to justify their own political agendas or legitimize their inaction (Mok 2003c). Other studies report that public sector reform and reengineering of the government in Asian societies have become “tools” or “instruments” adopted by governments in Asia to build state capacity (Cheung and Scott 2003). Similarly, the revitalization of nonstate sectors (including the market or private actors) in public policy provision and social service delivery may not necessarily weaken state capacity (Knill and Lehmkuhl 2002) but instead may drive modern states to reconstitute and restructure their systems to become activist and proactive in shaping policy agendas and policy directions. In short, such restructuring processes could strengthen the capacity rather than weakening the role of modern states (Salomon 2002; Yang 2003).

Seen in this light, processes of globalization have prompted individual states to change their roles and reform their institutions in order to accommodate, and not just adapt to, the demands and pressures generated from the external environments (Giddens 1999; Waters 2001; Mok and Currie 2002). Marginson and Rhodes (2002) clearly describe the challenges posed by globalization to modern states, stating that the role and functioning of the state in the context of globalization is skewed toward the competitive state (see also Cerny 1996), which prioritizes the economic dimensions of its activities above all others. Therefore, maximizing welfare to promote enterprise, innovation, and profitability in the private and public spheres is becoming popular. It is in such a context that Dale argues that the world is in the process of becoming wholly commodified, both through the recommodification of those elements of public provision that the welfare state decommodified and much more by the extension of the commodity form into all those areas of the world that were previously concealed from it (Dale 2000, p. 95).

Emerging new forms of governance

Despite the disagreements over and diverse interpretations of the impacts of globalization on state capacity in governance, new forms of governance and new governance philosophies have emerged in recent years in order to maintain the competitiveness of modern states. Fundamental transformations have taken place in public policy instruments and public management (Faulks 2000; Lane and Ersson 2002). Theories of “new governance” propose that modern governments are adapting to radical changes in their environments by turning to new forms of governance that are “more society-centred” and focus on “co-ordination and self-governance” (Pierre 2000, pp. 2–6). Peters (1995) highlights four governance models as alternatives to the traditional system, namely, the market model, the participatory state model, the flexible government model, and the deregulated government model. Central to these governane models is the involvement of sectors other than the state such as the market, society, and other nonstate sectors in governing the public domain. Instead of relying solely upon government bureaucracy in terms of delivery of goods or services, there has been a massive proliferation of tools and policy instruments such as dizzying array of loans, loan guarantees, grants, contracts, insurance, and vouchers to address public problems. Diversified policy tools and instruments may render the conventional governance model inappropriate. This is particularly true when many of these tools are highly indirect. They rely heavily on a wide assortment of “third parties” such as commercial banks, private hospitals, industrial corporations, universities, social service agencies, and other social organizations (Salomon 2002). Therefore, networks and partnerships supplant hierarchical command and control (Rhodes 1997, 2000); in the delivery of services, public authority is shared between governments and with nongovernment actors—what Salomon (2002, p. 2) calls “third party government”; services are decentralized and in some cases privatized, and the role of governments in managing the economy is more sharply delineated and circumscribed by new arm’s length (from government) market-supporting instruments, in some cases relying on self-regulation (Gamble 2000, pp. 130–31; Jayasurya 2001). Many possible causes have been highlighted: ideological changes such as the discrediting of “statist” models, fiscal and bureaucratic “overload”problems, the growth in supranational bodies that undermine a government’s control, and economic globalization eroding state “steering capacities.”

Central to the changing governance is the emerging trend of “zations” or coexisting“processes” that have transformed the way public sector is managed and public policy is formulated. One of these trends is privatization. Privatization has been a common theme in evolving patterns of government-business relations in some countries (e.g., Malaysia and South Korea) (Gouri et al. 1991; World Bank 1995). Pressures for broad governance changes have been strong, coming to a head in the financial crisis of 1997. A feature of these pressures is the presence of influential international agencies such as the IMF and World Bank. Their preferred models of governance reflect many of the same tendencies noted earlier:

a less interventionist and arbitrary state; a strengthening of “juridical” forms of regulation (often associated with fundamental legal reform); more disag-gregated and decentralised forms of government, including partnerships and a stronger “co-production” role for civil society groups; and a preference for market-like mechanisms over bureaucratic methods of service delivery

(World Bank 1995)

Hence, it is not surprising that strategies, measures, and policy instruments along the line of marketization, corporatization, commodification, and managerializa-tion are becoming popular practices in public policy and public management (Minogue 1998; Lane and Ersson 2002; Mok and Welch 2003).

Globalization and educational restructuring

Our earlier discussion has suggested globalization is not the only driving force for the recent changes and transformation taking place in governance and public sector management. If we put the most recent reforms in public sector management and transformations in public policy domain into historical perspective, strategies along the lines of marketization, privatization, and decentralization have long been adopted by modern states to resolve the problems generated from competing and growing social demands. The continual growth in “welfare” has already drawn many modern states to transform the way social services and public policy are managed. This is particularly true when modern states encounter a fiscal crisis. In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the British government under Margaret Thatcher and the US government under Ronald Reagan used similar measures to improve public policy delivery and the efficiency of public administration. Hence, globalization may be understood as forces accelerating current changes and transformations in public administration or public sector management. More important, we must also pay particular attention to the unique social, political, economic, and cultural contexts in which policy and governance changes are introduced, trying to examine how local forces interact with regional and global variables in formulating public policy, implementing governance change, and launching reform in the public sector (Cheung and Scott 2003).

Nonetheless, some policy analysts argue that education policy and development, just like other public policy domains, are not immune from the impact of these globalization processes (Burbules and Torres 2000; Pierre and Peters 2000). Some scholars in the field of education even believe it is becoming increasingly difficult to understand education without reference to such processes (Currie and Newson 1998a; Jones 1998; Crossley 2000; Welch 2000, 2001; Mok 2001c; Currie 2002; Mok and Chan 2002; Mok and Lo 2002). A close scrutiny of comparative education literature has well documented that there seems to have been a convergence of curricula on a global scale. International organizations such as UNESCO, the World Bank, the OECD, and research institutes such as the IEA, by virtue of their recommendations, funding power, and cross-national comparisons have inevitably influenced the way curricula are designed and changed the mindsets of education ministries in different parts of the globe. It is remarkable that reform rhetoric is becoming increasingly similar across different education jurisdictions; all education reform proposals talk about the importance of competition, global competence, diversity, and choice, etc. (Mok and Welch 2003; Gopinathan 2005). In spite of Green’s assertion of the essentially na...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Education systems, policy change, and education reforms
• Part II Globalization and national response
• Discussions and conclusions: Globalization and education
• References
• Index