ABSTRACT

Despite its rather grandiose title the aim of this chapter is not to rehearse the scholarly debates on the processes or project of ‘globalization’. These wider debates are skilfully articulated in a number of more general works (for example, Hirst and Thompson, 1999; Held et al., 1999; Held and McGrew, 2002) and works with specific reference to social policy (Deacon et al., 1997; Mishra, 1999; Yeates, 2001; George and Wilding, 2002). The following also does not provide a comprehensive assessment of the implications of globalization for learning and teaching at the more general level. Detailed discussion of the nature and implementation of ‘distributed learning’ can be found, for example, in Edwards and Usher (2000) and Lea and Nicoll (2002) and analysis of some of the issues arising from a global market in education in Room (2000). Rather, the purpose of this chapter is to identify, within the context of social policy and social work provision in HE, some of the more specific and practical implications of ‘the expanding scale, growing magnitude, speeding up and deepening impact of transcontinental flows and patterns of social interaction’ (Held and McGrew, 2002: 1).