ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1 it has been argued that with globalization and the associated breakdown of the ability of nation states to sustain economic nationalism, it has become widely recognized that the future prosperity of nations will depend on their ability to be internationally competitive (Brown et al. 1997). Bottery (2004a) has noted that globalization is not a unifi ed and coherent movement but consists of a number of loosely interconnected global trends that appear to have a signifi cant infl uence on the shaping of educational policy in many countries. The most important of these is what Bottery calls ‘economic globalization’ which: ‘not only sets the context for other forms of globalization. Its language is also increasingly used to describe their activities – it “captures their discourses” ’ (Bottery 2004b: 7).
