Globalizing Education, Educating the Local: How Method Made us Mad

Globalizing Education, Educating the Local offers a critical and deconstructive account of global discourses on education, arguing that these overblown 'hypernarratives' are neither economically, technically nor philosophically defensible. Nor even sane. Their 'mythic economic instrumentalism' mimics rather than meets the economic needs of global capitalism in ways that the Crash of 2008 brings into vivid disarray. They reduce national education to the same 'hollowed out' state as national capitalisms, subject to global pseudo-accountancy and fads. The book calls for a philosophical and methodological revolution, arguing for more transformative narratives that remodel qualitative inquiry, particularly in addressing a more performative rather than representative ideal.

Ian Stronach is Professor of Education at the Faculty of Education, Community and Leisure at Liverpool John Moores University, UK.