Global education policy in the making: international organisations and lifelong learning

Abstract

In recent years, policy scholars have increasingly turned towards the international level as a source for national policy change. This article conceptualises this development as the emergence of a global policy field of education. The example of lifelong learning is given to illustrate this global policy process. In the first part, I introduce global public policy, focussing on the process of internationalised policy‐making and international organisations as important actors in global policy fields. In the second part, I present the case study of lifelong learning, showing its worldwide diffusion, actors, instruments and policies involved in this process. I conclude with a brief summary and an outlook for further research.

Keywords:

• international organisations
• lifelong learning
• policy diffusion
• global policy change

Acknowledgements

This article further develops thoughts presented in Jakobi (2009). I thank two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on a previous version of this article. This research has been financed by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Notes

1. This is a result of a standardised text analysis carried out with all English language reports submitted to the conferences 1996, 2001, 2004 and 2008. I checked these reports for the term ‘lifelong learning’ in different spellings.