The affective ideology of the OECD global competence framework: implications for intercultural communication education

ABSTRACT

This paper adds to the growing literature that critically examines the cultural politics of the OECD’s framework of global competence by turning our attention to the ‘affective ideology’ underlying this framework, namely, how affect is used ideologically to produce specific subjectivities and moralities in students. Building upon the work of affect theories in education policy, this paper explores how the concept of global and intercultural competences, as it is manifested in the OECD global competence framework, constitutes a site of affective sense-making and affective governance. In particular, the analysis reveals two ways in which this happens: first, by capitalising on global and intercultural competencies as self-centred, emotional skills to sell policy and pedagogical ideas and tools; second, by using certain affects as moral imperatives to shape global competence in intercultural communication education. The paper concludes with a discussion of the research, policy, and pedagogy implications for intercultural communication education.

KEYWORDS:

• Affect/emotion
• affective ideology
• OECD
• global competence
• intercultural communication education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. To the best of my knowledge, there are not yet any empirical studies that present contextual case studies where the OECD framework on intercultural competences has been implemented in certain localities. As shown here, most studies so far focus on analysing the conceptual framework of OECD documents from a variety of theoretical perspectives (e.g., Bourdieu, Bernstein etc.)