Education and the Discourse of Global Neoliberalism

This book investigates neoliberalism in education and explains how it is a complex phenomenon which takes on local characteristics in diverse geopolitical, economic and cultural settings, while retaining a core commitment in all its manifestations to market fundamentalism.

Neoliberalism - that set of beliefs and practices which has become the economic orthodoxy of global preference since the 1980s - appears remarkably resilient despite the US financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent implementation of austerity in the massively indebted nations of the European Union. This book addresses the phenomenon of neoliberalism in education and focuses on school and higher education settings in Ireland, the UK, Singapore and Hong Kong. Specifically, it addresses the role of language and semiosis in the reconfiguration of global educational practices along increasingly marketised lines. At the same time, the nature of the counter-hegemonic discourses also in circulation in these sectors is also considered. Collectively, the chapters in the book seek to shed light on the possibilities for resistance and the prospect of change from a variety of theoretical and (inter)cultural perspective.

The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of the journal, Language and Intercultural Communication.

John Gray, John P. O’Regan and Catherine Wallace are members of the UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics in the Department of Culture, Communication and Media at UCL Institute of Education, University College London. They have published widely in areas related to English language education, cultural studies and applied linguistics.