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Abstract
This paper undertakes a critical analysis of recent education and curriculum policies in Portugal, focusing on the relationship between globalization, international agencies, and the curriculum. It aims to highlight not only changes in the organization of schools, but also the setting of a agenda structured at a global level for education in which the ability of supranational and transnational institutional forces to cross or go beyond national borders and the configuration of relationships between nations are all implicit. The paper contends that education and curriculum policies should be understood as a product of multiple influences and interdependencies; they are the result of a process of bricolage which reveals the interests, values, principles, and rules that, at any given moment, are dominant or not. Drawing upon this approach, the aim is to show, on the one hand, how the results of the large OECD research projects influence educational and curriculum policy‐making in Portugal, and, on the other hand, how these policies are affected by the ‘Europeanization’ process.
Acknowledgements
This paper was written within the context of the research project ‘Educating the global citizen: Globalization, educational reform and the politics of equity and inclusion in 12 countries: the Portuguese case’. This research project is funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. The paper was presented at the III International Colloquium on Curricular Politics, held in Universidade Federal da Paraíba, João Pessoa, Brazil, in November 2007, at a round table organized by the Ibero‐American Research Network on Curricular Politics, co‐ordinated by Professor António Teodoro, and funded by the CYTED (Programa Iberoamericano de Ciencia y Tecnologia para el Desarrollo).
Notes
1. Founded in 1961, OECD is an intergovernmental institution with considerable influence on its member countries. Within the OECD framework, education has been increasingly growing in relevance; it acquired a central role in debates around the competitiveness of national economies—framed within an understanding of human capital and the emergence of the knowledge‐based economy. OECD does not provide prescriptive mandates for its member countries. Instead, it works through the building of consensus.
2. OECD focused on two areas at the end of the 1990s: assessment of how schools work; and external assessment of learning.
3. The PISA studies aim to measure 15‐year‐olds’ ability to face the challenges of real life. The project is conducted in 3‐year cycles: the first data collection took place in 2000 and the main area of assessment was reading literacy. Motivation, attitudes towards learning, familiarity with computers, and pupils’ ability to manage and monitor their own learning were also assessed. PISA 2003 looked more closely at mathematical literacy and problem‐solving skills; PISA 2006 focused on scientific literacy.
4. In particular, the Indicators of Educational Systems (INES) project, undertaken by OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI). CERI is understood to be a globalizing agency playing a decisive role as an international knowledge mediator in shaping understanding about education (Henry et al. Citation2001; for INES, see US Department of Education n.d).
5. This relationship between national education policies and the initiatives of international organizations, assuming a character of legitimization and mandate, may be illustrated by what occurred in Portugal between the post‐war period and the integration into the European Economic Community (Teodoro Citation2001).
6. According to Santos (Citation1995, Citation1997), we should use the term ‘globalizations’ rather than the singular form. We can distinguish four modes of production of globalization: two of the modes are mainly hegemonic and achieved through top‐down imposition—’globalized localism’ and ‘localized globalism’, and the two other are counter‐hegemonic and emerge through down‐top mechanisms—’cosmopolitanism’ and ‘common heritage of humankind’.
7. See Cox and Sinclair (Citation1996), Hettne (Citation1995), and Mittelman (Citation1996).
8. According to Dale (Citation2001: 146–147), globalization is made up of three interlinked classes of activity: economic, political, and cultural activities, characterized by ‘hyper‐liberalism, governance without government, and marketization and consumerism, respectively’.
9. Santos (Citation2001) distinguishes two types of globalization intensity: ‘high‐’ and ‘low‐intensity’ globalization. Where the mediation of nation‐states is required for the formulation of, e.g. education policies, we may identify a ‘low‐intensity globalization’. In other areas, such as finance, international trade, or tourism, where nation‐states have practically abandoned their regulatory functions, we have ‘high‐intensity globalization’.
10. The EU area of intervention was created by the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. Aimed at supporting and contributing to the development of the actions of member‐states, they maintained full responsibility for the organization and curricula of their education systems. However, the conditions were created to increase the future scope of action of the EU, which occurred in 2000 with the so‐called ‘Lisbon Strategy’.
11. The software industry has become one of the main new educational actors; see, e.g. the Negroponte Project, ‘One Laptop per Child’ (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/The_OLPC_Wiki, accessed 25 February 2010) and the Magalhães Project in Venezuela and Portugal (http://www.portatilmagalhaes.com, accessed 25 February 2010).
12. See Aníbal (Citation2007).
13. And the education policies of other countries which participate in some of the surveys.
14. Their formulation and design have undergone several changes, namely with respect to the indicators used in the project Education at a Glance.
15. See Mendes and Galego (Citation2009).
16. Although all these areas were included in the three data collections, one was privileged each time.
17. These policies were not only addressed to the member states of the EU but also to the candidate states which at that time had not been integrated into the EU.
18. During the Barcelona Summit, the working group on the ‘key competences’ for the 21st century proposed reducing the range of hypotheses for the number of competences to be defined, understanding these competences to be interlinked with knowledge, skills, and attitudes.
19. These benchmarks were reformulated in May 2003 but only a few amendments to the earlier targets were made. See Council of the European Union (Citation2003).
20. Lyotard (Citation2006: 93) defines ‘optimization of performances‘ as a search for a ‘better relation between input/output’, allowing for an opening up of a ‘large market of operative competences’.
21. The reduction of the number of teachers in the non‐compulsory curriculum areas in years 7–9 of compulsory schooling, the establishment of time allocations for the primary school curricular areas, and the creation of guidelines for pre‐school education programmes of study as well as for non‐compulsory curricular areas.
22. See e.g. Education and Training 2010, an EU Project (Commission of the European Communities Citation2001, Council of the European Union Citation2001).
23. Benavente et al. (Citation1996) was based on this study.
24. See Elley (Citation1992).
25. See Ministério da Educação (Citation1997).
26. See Ministério da Educação (Citation1998).
27. In fact, multicultural classrooms and teachers’ difficulty in managing them, the content‐based curriculum being used, poor curricular implementation, and the concept of the teacher as a curriculum ‘consumer’ are some of the explanations these reports give to justify the low scores reported by the literacy studies.
28. The Portuguese Minister of Education stated in an interview the Portuguese public television channel RTP1 that the OECD’s 2007 Education at a Glance showed that the Portuguese education system was very closed and did not promote social mobility, thus, there was the need to include secondary education pupils (years 14–18) in the existent social benefits scheme (3rd September 2007).
29. Centres for the Recognition, Validation and Certification of Competences were created by legislation in which explicit reference is made to the Lisbon European Council’s conclusions and the considerations around life‐long learning.
30. For an example, see the ‘Projecto Nacional de Educação para o Empreendedorismo’ [National project of education for entrepreneurship], launched in 2007, or the contest ‘A União Europeia e a Não Discriminação’ [The European Union and non‐discrimination], initiated 22nd October 2007, both promoted by the Ministry of Education.