Education Technology Policies in the Middle East Globalisation, Neol
This book explores the potential educational technologies have for transforming education in the Middle East. Although technology has increasingly become a part of classrooms around the globe over recent decades, its application in classrooms in the
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Michael Lightfoot
Education Technology Policies in the Middle East
Michael Lightfoot
Education Technology Policies in the Middle East Globalisation, Neoliberalism and the Knowledge Economy
Michael Lightfoot Edera Balzan, Malta
ISBN 978-3-319-33265-9 ISBN 978-3-319-33266-6 DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33266-6
(eBook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016947265 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover image © RobinOlimb / Getty Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland
PREFACE
The narrative, based upon a case study of an education technology project in the Arabian Gulf, analyses the manifestations and the limitations of the “neoliberal imaginary” in policy enactment and in describing and analysing education reforms in the Middle East. The account seeks to address the paradoxes and conflicts inherent in the neoliberal policy formations in an Arab world where the trajectory towards modernism has been rapid and recent, and where neo-colonial interventions continue to colour the landscape. Neoliberalism is, as Shamir (2008:3) puts it, a complex, often incoherent, unstable and even contradictory set of practices organized around a certain imagination of the “market” as a basis for the “universalisation of market-based social relations”, with the corresponding penetration, in almost every single aspect of our lives, of the discourse and/ or practice of commodification, capital-accumulation and profit-making.
Within this context, and in the light of the increasing globalisation of education policy (Rizvi and Lingard 2010), this account looks at the ways in which education policy makers in the Middle East have sought to meet the perceived needs of the knowledge economy (KE). The research seeks to evaluate the role played by educational technology in policy making
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