Julia Resnik

MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION – GOOD FOR BUSINESS BUT NOT FOR THE STATE? THE IB CURRICULUM AND GLOBAL CAPITALISM

ABSTRACT:  In the 1970s and the 1980s, multicultural education spread in many countries. However, in the mid-1980s the golden age of multiculturalism came to an end. Neo-conservative political forces attacked multicultural policies and progressively a neo-liberal discourse pervaded economic and social policies, also affecting national education systems. In contrast, multicultural approaches have emerged with tremendous vigour in the field of business management. Juxtaposing cognitive, emotional and socio-communicative multiculturalism found in organisational studies onto multiculturalism in the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum indicates whether multiculturalism in international schools aims to respond to the needs of global capitalism. The findings show that emotional, cognitive and socio-communicative multiculturalism are seen as essential traits for good performance in transnational corporations, and they are strongly encouraged in the IB curriculum. The relevance of multicultural skills in global management alongside the decay of multiculturalism in public education systems entails a growing educational disparity between lower class and higher class children. A new educational structure in which two differentiated systems – a national system and an international system – emerges and redefines the terms of inequality of opportunities.

Alternative Identities in Multicultural Schools in Israel: Emancipatory Identity, Mixed Identity and Transnational Identity.

Economic and technological processes of globalization and the increasing migrations of people in the world undermine dominant national identities. One of the main characteristics of our time is the instability of identities and the continuous invention of new/old identities. Traditions and ethnic identities are deconstructed and reconstructed. Immigrants, first, second and also third generation, participate in the dynamic of identity production. It is as part of this global process of identity production that recently founded multicultural schools in Israel have to be understood. The Kedma, Shevach/Mofet and Bialik multicultural schools provide alternative identities to the prevailing national identity: an emancipatory identity to Mizrahi (Oriental) children, a mixed identity to children of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union and a transnational identity to the children of migrant workers. Rather than facilitating integration into the discriminatory hegemonic national identity, these alternative identities provide new empowering options for young immigrants within Israeli society.

Sociology of international education – an emerging field of research

This article points to international education in elementary and post-elementary schools as an emerging and promising field of enquiry. It describes the state of art of this new field and sets out the nature of the research. The rapid development of international networks in recent decades; the contribution of international education policies to the expansion of international education; the growing number of international students and its implications for school life; and the different meanings of international curriculum are the main topics in this literature. Issues of globalisation, social stratification, multiculturalism, identity formation, and the link between education and the nation state are closely related to international education. Scholars adapt classical theoretical frames and advance new concepts and methodologies in order to clarify this new phenomenon and highlight the deeper meanings of the expansion of international education. For this reason the study of international education has the potential of enhancing our sociological understanding concerning new developments in education in particular and in society in general.

Discourse structuration in Israel, democratization of education and the impact of the global education network

The 1968 structural reform of the education system in Israel was part both of a global process of democratization of education launched after the Second World War and of a larger modernization project in which the social sciences played a crucial role. This dynamic was an expression of a conjunction of interests, in which political forces used research on educational matters in order to advance their socio‐political agendas, while researchers used the states interest in their work and in the ‘social problems’ they elaborated in order to receive public funding and to obtain state recognition of their scientific contribution. This article traces the reformist discourse structuration—the process of institutionalization of the different social science discourses in state institutions, such as universities and national institutes—in order to disclose the social sciences/politics linkage in Israel. It also puts forward the argument that in order to understand discourse structuration at a national level, it is essential to consider an additional factor: global education networks. Global networks adopted a discourse inspired by the American school model that tended to be adopted by scholars in different countries. The article focuses on the processes in Israel whereby knowledge producers elaborated the ‘inequality of opportunity’ and ‘ethnic gap’ social problems, and proffered the 1968 structural reform as the solution.

Introducing a neo‐Weberian perspective in the study of globalisation and education: structural reforms of the education systems in France and Israel after the Second World War

Only since the 1990s has the impact of globalisation on education drawn scholarly attention, primarily due to the impact of international school achievement surveys. This study argues that the globalisation of education began much earlier, with the establishment of intergovernmental agencies, such as UNESCO and the OECD, and the adoption of American educational models after the Second World War. The neo‐Weberian perspective I propose focuses on knowledge producers and education global networks and incorporates an analysis of the specific national context and their peculiarities without losing sight of the globalisation process and its homogenising character. Knowledge producers constitute a status group that increases its social and academic capital through advancing global education models locally. The analysis of reforms in the education systems of France and Israel after the Second World War shows how the diffusion of global educational models that stress equality of opportunity enhanced local transformations and affected national policies. Such an analysis elaborates the process whereby knowledge producers, linked to global networks, constructed ‘social problems’ according to the education knowledge production institutionalised in each country and the socio‐politic conditions of each society, and how their alliance with highly ranked functionaries brought about structural reforms aiming at the ‘democratisation of education’ in France and Israel.

THE DEMOCRATISATION OF THE EDUCATION SYSTEM IN FRANCE AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR: A NEO-WEBERIAN GLOCAL APPROACH TO EDUCATION REFORMS

ABSTRACT: The structural reforms of the education system in France (1959, 1963, and 1975) were part both of a global process of democratisation of education launched after the Second World War and of a larger modernisation project in which knowledge producers (experts, scholars and consultants) played a crucial role. Instead of a national approach or a world system approach to education reforms I propose a neo-Weberian glocal perspective that focuses on knowledge producers as a status group, education discourse structuration and education global networks; this perspective integrates national contexts and their peculiarities in the analysis without losing sight of the global forces. Global education networks centered in international organisations – such as UNESCO and the OECD – in which French knowledge-producers were largely involved, adopted a discourse inspired by the American school model that was adopted by scholars in different countries. The reformist network, in which scholars, experts and policy makers participated, enhanced reformist discourse structuration in the knowledge-production institutions (universities and national institutes) around social problems such as ‘technological and scientific lag’, ‘inequality of opportunity’, and ‘disenchantment from the education system’, thus, fostering transformations of the French education system.

Struggling for recognition: access to higher education through the International Baccalaureate

ABSTRACT The recognition of the DP (diploma programme) for university admission is crucial for the development of International Baccalaureate (IB) schools and the expansion of the IB network worldwide. In an era of higher education (HE) massification, accompanied by high failure and dropout rates, intense debates on access to HE are taking place in many countries. It is within this context that the IB organization struggles for the recognition of the DP for admission to universities throughout the world. Through a global comparative approach, this study analyzes the ‘DP-HE admission’ assemblages in Argentina, Canada, Chile, Spain and the United States. Based on interviews with senior IB officials and principals at the head of IB schools associations, this study intends to understand the way the IB network fosters the recognition of the DP for HE admission. The recruitment of new allies to the IB network includes a myriad of negotiations and translations whose results are unpredictable. In Argentina, Chile and Spain, the efforts for DP recognition failed but in Canada and the United States, the DP-HE admission assemblage shows that by translating the skills acquired by DP students as a way to improve retention rates at universities increased their support of IB programs.

The development of the International Baccalaureate in Spanish speaking countries: a global comparative approach

ABSTRACT This paper compares the development of International Baccalaureate (IB) schools in four different settings: Argentine, Chile, Spain and Ecuador. The global comparative approach used in this study, based on actor-network theory (ANT), allows us to analyse the connections and interactions between global actors and the plurality of national, regional, municipal actors in a common conceptual frame – the IB network. The IB network includes mainly global actors, such as the Diploma Programme (DP), IB schools and the IB organisation, IB schools associations but also a myriad of local actors such as political leaders, national education administrations and local authorities. The paper examines two central assemblages: the institutional assemblage and the curricular assemblage. The institutional assemblage relates to who promotes and funds the DP in each country. While in Argentina and Chile an IB-private school assemblage prevails, in Spain it was an IB-public/private schools assemblage and in Ecuador an IB-government one. These assemblages condition the main point of passage of the IB network – the DP as a means to access to university – which further necessitates new assemblages between the DP and the official curriculum – the curricular assemblage.

Contextualizing recognition, absence of recognition, and misrecognition: the case of migrant workers’ children in daycares in Israel

This paper advances the analysis of multiculturalism by examining multiculturalism in a contextualized manner. To understand multiculturalism and assess its effects on the recognition of migrant children, researchers need to analyse multicultural practices in schools by taking into account the social mirrors resulting from different social and structural conditions, such as national ideologies and the ethos of reception. The analysis of multicultural policies in four different types of daycare centres enrolling migrant workers’ children in Israel—community, Catholic, municipal, and those supported by private associations—points to three types of contextualized multicultural models: contextualized misrecognition, contextualized recognition, and de‐contextualized recognition. By juxtaposing recognition or misrecognition appearing at the daycare level with legal and ideological social mirrors, multicultural patterns can acquire a different meaning. Municipal daycares with a few migrant children as well as daycares supported by private associations that adopt a ‘blind‐homogenizing’ approach reflect an absence of recognition that is contextualized in the larger society. Community daycares adopting a survival approach, Catholic daycares applying a ‘business as usual’ approach, and municipal daycares enrolling a large number of migrant children adopting a multicultural approach reflect different degrees of cultural and religious recognition. However, when analysed in the larger local or national context, this recognition results in a de‐contextualized recognition that suppresses the beneficial character of the multicultural education provided.

The power of numbers and networks: understanding the mechanisms of diffusion of educational models

This special issue has born from an international workshop held in June 2013 at the School of Education of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Among different themes discussed during three intense days at the Mount Scopus around ‘International and comparative education’ three main topics appeared to attract the attention of scholars. The first was in regard to the ‘power of numbers’, meaning the way we imagine education systems (Rizvi 2006) through numbers (league tables of different sorts, national or international testing) also impacts upon our educational choices. Our vision of education by numbers shapes education policies in particular ways, in turn reinforcing their instrumental aspects as well as contributing to what recent research reveals: the development of an expanding global edu-business. The second topic relates to the complexity of the education global governance network and the role of international governmental organisations (IGOs), such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank (WB) within the network. The discussion is not about the influence of the IGOs on education policies, a topic that has attracted research already, but rather to introduce a nuanced review of their functions. Recent research focuses on how IGOs carry out policy, on the intricate ways an educational concern becomes part of the international agenda (i.e., adult education), as well as the limits of IGOs prescriptions – meaning the local conditions that enable or hinder the implementation of an international agenda (i.e., inclusive education). The third topic concerns conceptual and methodological questions. Policymaking is increasingly dynamic and involves many different stakeholders, including states, private corporations, IGOs, scholars and non-profit organisations. Researchers are confronted with multi-spatial, fluid and ever-changing phenomena which traditional concepts and methodologies are unable to capture fully. Thus, as we will see, the authors in this special issue devote a significant part of their articles to adapt conceptual tools or develop alternative analytical frameworks and methodologies.