Master of Education (First Class Honours), University of Auckland
MEd
| Status | Complete |
|---|---|
| Years | 2017 - 2018 |
| Project Title | Deconstructing the Global Evolution of Education for Citizenship: From the 1996 Delors Report to the 2030 Incheon Declaration |
| Project Description | At a time of intensifying globalisation and persistent transition towards a knowledge-driven society, this research aims to critically deconstruct the ways which the concept of Education for Citizenship (EFC) is shaped and redefined across time through three key global education policy documents. These official documents published by key global actors in education (the World Bank and UNESCO) have had an influential role in shaping debates and discussions about the purposes and mandate for EFC. The study begins with the release of the 1996 Delors Report and concludes at the 2030 Incheon Declaration. The source documents have been chronologically placed to suggest the contextual conditions of EFC have affected its movement through a temporal series of processes and states. Being committed to critical inquiry, this research follows a critical theory framework and a critical discourse analysis as the prime means for deconstructing the global evolution of EFC. Accordingly, this research takes particular interest in the relation between language and power by critically analysing the language of those who exert power. The study uses specific methods for document analysis. It reads policy as discourse by drawing on content analysis and metafunctional analysis from systemic-functional linguistics. The significance of this study also highlights the great importance of global education policy documents as they influence a large audience of policy developers and decision-makers and impact on the course of national education policy (Verger, Novelli, & A ltinyelken, 2012). An objective analysis of documents might suggest a shift towards an alignment with the humanistic themes of the 1996 Delors Report . However, the more critical analysis of the documents in the study has identified a series of ideological paradoxes which reveal a dominant economic-instrumentalist approach to EFC that is increasingly concealed within these documents. Overall, this research contributes to counter-hegemonic action and renews emphasis on past long-held liberal values and hope for a future reclamation from prevalent neo-liberal agendas in education. The evolution of EFC within global education policy reminds us that political and ideological dispositions change, and that it is worth imagining alternatives. https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/handle/2292/37166 |