Unveiling global agendas: A case of the globalisation of learner-centred education

Abstract

Enhancing the quality of teaching and learning in low-income countries has been a vexing global policy issue, in terms of both effectiveness and efficiency. Within these debates, learner-centred education (LCE) has been widely promoted as a solution to this quality crisis, but not without widespread critique. This thesis adds voice to this growing concern by arguing that the globalisation of learner-centred education through open education serves the interests of the global elite by rescaling the governance of education to global centres of power. Using an instrumental case study design, this research investigates how one intergovernmental organisation, the Commonwealth of Learning, uses open education teacher training initatives to facilitate the globalisation of LCE. Drawing on Robertson and Dale’s (2015) Critical Cultural Political Economy of Education (CCPEE) and Bernstein’s (2000) pedagogic theory as theoretical and methodological frameworks, this thesis engages in an internal analysis of the structure of pedagogic discourse at macro (policy) and micro (curricular) levels. The findings reveal that the Commonwealth of Learning’s Open Education for English Language Teaching modules facilitate the recontextualisation of LCE by reproducing teacher-centred pedagogic principles within a learner-driven design. This adaptation of LCE was found to aid an ideological shift in the nature of teaching and learning to reposition control of educational provision away from national governments, and to relay neoliberal and neocolonial ideologies into low-income countries. This study provides a rich description of how pedagogic discourse is used to aid the global governance of education by delinking national governments from having sole power and authority over local forms of education. These findings not only challenge assumptions about the neutrality of pedagogic practice in open education, but they also identify how globalising processes are facilitated through pedagogy to protect the economic, political and social interests of the global elite.