ABSTRACT
Nearly three decades ago, a number of individuals within the critical educational community warned that movements then taking hold in education in the United States would soon become the norm not only there, but in many other nations as well. There are movements toward reductive, mechanistic, and industrialized accountability systems, tighter control over the curriculum and pedagogy, the complex dynamics of deskilling and reskilling of teachers, an increasingly close relationship between economic rationality and educational means and ends. 1 The list could go on. It is with no great sense of glee that I note that these predictions have not been proven wrong. Of course, economic, political, and ideological conditions and the educational traditions and balance of power within each nation have mediated these movements and have created specific configurations of them that are not mirror reflections of their original impulses. Yet, no matter how detailed and conjunctural our analyses, it is difficult to miss the international transformations that have occurred.
