Globalization and Curriculum Studies: Tensions, Challenges, and Possibilities

Abstract

Globalization in its recent forms has generated considerable debate. The contested nature of such discussions on globalization and education is captured well in Globalization and Higher Education, a book edited by Jaishree K. Odin and Peter T. Manicas (2004). While its focus is on higher education, the collection offers different viewpoints on important issues such as global capitalism, neoliberalism and its impact on education, the role of technology, regional responses to globalization, new modes of knowledge and pedagogy, and questions related to social justice and democracy. Multiple, sometimes even oppositional, perspectives of chapter authors—from different countries in different disciplines with different professions—provide a layered landscape that demonstrates the complex faces of globalization. Such a simultaneous depiction of multiplicity to negotiate dialogical bridges has a great potential to enrich “a complicated conversation” in curriculum studies.