Globalisation, cultural knowledges and sociomateriality in Middle Eastern education: how the global and local influence classroom practices?

ABSTRACT

This article examines how local, social and cultural knowledges were disrupted by global flows of human and non-human things in an international private Middle Eastern school. The study examined how the interplay of local and globally transient knowledges recursively influenced the sociomaterial actions of teachers in classroom learning. Critical ethnography was employed over three years using participant observation and interviews analysed from a critical orientation. The study’s findings confirm that educational global flows must not be taken as neutral and that their use is recontextualised within a local–global nexus. These findings are significant in our current global world of cultural unrest and dynamic and morphing local–national–global relations, and document social relations of learning in an early childhood context, not previously given much attention in globalisation and education research.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural knowledge
• globalisation
• place
• power
• reading
• sociomateriality

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by an Australian Government PhD Scholarship.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by an Australian Government PhD Scholarship.