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Cultural Compromise? The fate of the eighth Mayer Key Competency
Wyatt-Smith, Claire Dooley, Karen Teresa
Wyatt-Smith, Claire
Dooley, Karen Teresa
Abstract
[Extract] In recent decades, major re-structuring of work practices has occurred and continual, sometimes urgent, change has become an established feature of working life in Australia and in other industrialised economies (Kalantzis & Cope, 1994). Workers arc now expected to be multi-skilled, creative, adaptable, capable of autonomous decision making, and responsive to technological, organisational and market contingencies. Identification with negotiated purposes and workplace culture is also expected (Kalantzis & Cope, 1994; Bernstein, 1996). Accompanying the changes in work practices and the increasing emphasis on workplace culture as a mechanism of motivation has been 'a much publicised (and criticised) rhetoric about education as the key to economic recovery—the means to make Australia the clever country' (Wyatt-Smith & Burke, 1996, p. 43). Underpinning this rhetoric was the assumption of an unproblematic link between education and improved economic performance in conditions of intensifying global competition (Luke, 1992—93). A succession of Australian ministerial documents, government reports and education authority statements have taken up this rhetoric about education as an instrument of economic policy, insisting that educational reform is a key to increasing competitiveness and productivity in the international marketplace, particularly in the Asian region (e.g. Asian Studies Council, 1988; Garnaut, 1989; Ingleson, 1989).
Keywords
Date
1999
Type
Journal article
Journal
Discourse : Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education
Book
Volume
20
Issue
1
Page Range
125-139
Article Number
ACU Department
Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education (ILSTE)
Faculty of Education and Arts
Faculty of Education and Arts
Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
License
File Access
Controlled