Education, Development and the Imaginary Global Consensus: reframing educational planning dilemmas in the South

Abstract

In the context of knowledge-intensive globalisation and severe poverty, policy makers in the South face various educational planning dilemmas. These are ultimately political, implying that there are no ways of avoiding tensions and trade-offs when attempting to handle them. Such dilemmas have been subject to debate in the research community and have been framed differently in different historical contexts. The contemporary development policy discourse, however, largely conceals the existence of dilemmas by suggesting that we have reached a global consensus regarding the role of education in development. This article illustrates that this consensus is imaginary and consequently aims to reframe educational planning dilemmas in the contemporary policy context. It is shown that the dilemmas have changed character and now largely revolve around how to navigate and negotiate in highly complex political landscapes. Future research should focus on such ongoing wars of position and expose the many tensions concealed by the hegemonic policy discourse.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Gothenburg Centre of Globalization and Development (GCGD) for providing funding, which made this research possible.

Notes

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