Description

Transfer, Transnationalization and Transformation of Education Policies (1945-2018)

During the second half of the twentieth century, education systems worldwide underwent remarkable processes of change. Under the influence of international organizations such as UNESCO, the OECD, the World Bank and the WHO, national education systems began to connect with each other in an unprecedented fashion. We should also highlight the central role played by other multilateral cooperation agencies during these years, such as the Ford Foundation and USAID from EEUU, and the spaces opened up by public diplomacy between different countries. This resulted in education systems being framed as key institutions for  economic development purposes. Modernization theory became one of the main springboards for the universalization of schooling. In other words, the political space opened by the Cold War gave rise to a new concept of the role that school systems should play in the national and international arenas.

However, it was not only education policies that underwent extensive change; the curriculum policies themselves were also subject to intense transnational exchange and cross-cultural transfer flows. All this had an effect on literacy programmes, school knowledge, teaching methods, teacher training and even schooling and education universalization policies. This phenomenon, which continues to the present day, led to the introduction of subjects such as Information and Communication Technology, programmes to review school textbooks, and the advent of new disciplines such as the Economics of Education, Comparative Education and Educational Sciences. All of these are good examples of how the international factor has generated important changes in curriculums and education policies worldwide.

This symposium focuses on generating a space for analysis, debate and reflection on the importance of the international organizations in the modernization processes and changes in curriculum policies in the international context. Around these processes of educational transfer, another purpose is to analyse the philosophical concept of the model of society and education that the indicated educational vision was based on. In short, it is about introducing new historical, philosophical, political, and comparative perspectives of analysis to help us to examine the origin of this concept and the directions taken by education systems in the global context.

For this reason, this symposium will pay special attention to the following topics: 1) Transfer and importation processes of curriculum policies; 2) The influence and importance of international organizations in the creation and evolution of curriculum policies; 3) Historical impacts on curriculum policies and teaching and learning processes at the national level; 4) The philosophical, theoretical and conceptual components of such educational policies; 5) New spaces for schooling, the universalization of education systems, and their effects on the curriculum; 6) New educational players in the processes of change generated; 7) Implications for the organization, administration and management of education systems; 8) Creation of new transfer, exchange and training circuits for research and scientific staff; 9) The role of public diplomacy in educational transfer processes; 10) Influences on researchinto education.