ABSTRACT
In addition to its impact on national economies globalization also has major political, demographic, cultural and environmental consequences (Bottery 2001). While nation states have always felt the need to make changes in their education systems in response to international trends and modernizing ideas, for Dale (2000: 90) globalization represents a ‘new and distinct shift in the relationship between state and supranational forces, and it has affected education profoundly and in a range of ways’. A powerful global influence is exerted through the publication of international surveys of pupil achievement – most notably the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) studies – together with notions of the knowledge, values and skills that should be taught to tomorrow’s citizens to make them economically competitive and methods of delivering these. As international and national pressures to improve educational performance intensify, governments look for direction in the education policies of their more successful rivals or from explicit policy guidance offered by international agencies such as the OECD. Across the western industrialized world, in the drive to make education systems more effective, a multiplicity of accountability mechanisms (such as accreditation, standards, high-stakes testing, external evaluation and career profiles) have been introduced by many governments in order to bring about change, enforce ‘best practice’ and control teachers’ work. For example, a large-scale education reform to improve performance driven by faith in such mechanisms is the controversial No Child Left Behind Act 2002 in the USA, which links high-stakes testing with strict accountability measures to ensure that no child is left behind (Smith 2005).
