Comunicación Interna en la Organización y el Gobierno Empresarial

The literature suggests that it is not sufficient to explain a country’s development in relation to global trends in economics and politics (Cheng, 2004; Green, 1999), implying that systems of education not only cannot be ignored, but are to be stressed in relation to globalization (Demidenko, 2007; Green, 1999). According to Carnoy (2000):

Two of the main bases of globalization are information and innovation, and they, in turn, are highly knowledge intensive. Internationalized and fast-growing information industries produce knowledge goods and services. Today massive movements of capital depend on information, communication, and knowledge in global markets. And because knowledge is highly portable, it lends itself easily to globalization (p. 43).

As Bottery (2006) argues, ‘The new economy, then, is a ‘knowledge economy’, the new capitalism is ‘knowledge capitalism’, and such a knowledge economy,

however, will bring more flexibility in career and more movement between jobs’ (p. 104). The literature suggests the significant role that knowledge has to play in globalization (Bottery, 2006), such as in relation to the structure and the quality of labor forces around the world (Lyotard, 2006). Education is the means used by a society to assist children, who are the learners, to survive in the world (Durkheim, 2006). Durkheim (2006) defines the concept of education as:

[T]the influence exercised by adult generations on those that are not yet ready for social life. Its object is to arouse and to develop in the child a certain number of physical, intellectual and moral states which are demanded of him [sic] by both the political society as a whole and the special milieu for which he [sic] is specifically destined (p. 80).

The literature also represents education as a commodity in relation to economic, politic and cultural issues in considerations of globalization (Rizvi, 2005),

describing it as ‘one of the most globalized of all social institutions’ (Robertson & Scholte, 2007, p. 366). According to Tsang (2000), education plays a key role in developing human contribution to production and supporting scientific and technological development of markets in a globalising world. Education is to engage ‘knowledge audits’, determining what to learn and what to know in relation

to labor, and such education allows the transfer of such knowledge and

understanding (Bottery, 2006, p. 104), particularly in the context of globalization.

The literature represents changes that have occurred in education throughout the world as being influenced by globalization, particularly as they appear in pedagogy used to promote knowledge transmission (Carnoy, 1999, 2000; Carnoy & Rhoten, 2002; Green, 1999; Lim & Renshaw, 2001; Stromquist, 2002). As Lim and

Renshaw (2001) argue, globalization has shifted emphases in pedagogy in relation to ‘learning to build new knowledge and new possibilities, learning to deal with change, learning with others’ (p. 13), all of which the literature emphasises that people are required to be equipped with to engage challenges of globalization (Lim & Renshaw, 2001). The literature highlights the interrelationship between

education and knowledge in the context of globalization, which has drawn me to such issues in my research on the current EFL curriculum reform as part of the field of education. Within traditional pedagogical perspectives in China, teachers are positioned as ‘knowledge holders’, embracing ‘teacher-centred, book-centred, grammar-translation methods’ and addressing ‘deep understanding and repetitive learning’ (Anderson, 1993 cited in Zheng and Davison, 2008, p. 5). The literature suggests that such traditional pedagogical perspectives cannot engage challenges of globalization (Hu, 2005a, 2005b). EFL teachers are then encouraged to shift from traditional pedagogical perspectives towards modern ones that embrace

student-centred and task-based teaching approaches in the reform under study, which I have discussed in detail in Chapter 3.

Global transformations of education have increasingly required children to develop new skills to prepare them as highly qualified 21st century citizens (Suárez-Orozco & Qin-Hilliard, 2004). Children’s lives and experiences are linked in the literature to various aspects of a global world as being influenced by economic, political and cultural development (Suárez-Orozco & Qin-Hilliard, 2004). The literature

represents the role of education as being to develop children’s comprehensive competence as successful learners in relation to their ‘cognitive skills, interpersonal sensibilities, and cultural sophistication’, being responsive to processes of

transformation in their local contexts as these have been affected by globalization (Suárez-Orozco & Qin-Hilliard, 2004, p. 2 ). As Cheng (2004) states, education in a

global world aims to develop a person with global knowledge and wisdom, one who will be able to compete locally as well as globally. I have drawn upon such

perspectives to inform my research in relation to public articulations of what the reform under study has been intended to achieve. This reform aims to develop students’ comprehensive language competence, rather than just knowledge and skills in EFL, with a focus on improving the quality of labor forces and 21st century citizens, which I have detailed in the foregoing and further in Chapter 6.

According to Demidenko (2007), economic development in the context of globalization calls for the improvement of the quality of education. Such

considerations have attracted increasing attention to education policy-making and reconstructions of curriculum (Carnoy, 1999, 2000). As Burbules and Torres (Burbules & Torres, 2003) say, a growing understanding of globalization has posed challenges for relevant policies in relation to ‘evaluation, financing, standards, teacher training, curriculum, instruction, and testing’ (p. 17). Education changes in China, including the reform under study, are designed to engage the country’s rapid economic, political, cultural development, and with that certain implications for preparing students for being qualified citizens in a globalizing world as suggested by Rizvi (2005), which I have discussed below. My review of the literature on globalization in relation to economics, politics, culture and education has allowed me to engage an investigation of globalization and its influences on education in particular—of ways in which the current EFL curriculum reform is linked to globalization—on the basis of curriculum documents and policy statements as well as participant EFL teachers’ experience. I have discussed this further from Chapters 6 to 10.

To sum up, the literature indicates that education plays one of the most significant roles in social and economic development within nation-state contexts (Carnoy, 1999; Demidenko, 2007; Henry, Lingard, Rizvi, & Taylor, 1999; Rizvi, 2005). As Armstrong (2005) argues, a nation’s economic, political and social development is strongly influenced by the quality of its education. Torres (2002) argues that education in nation-state contexts has been ‘shaped by the demands of preparing labor for participation in its economy and to prepare citizens to participate in the polity’ (p. 363). Each nation or local community has its distinguishing features

(Cheng, 2004). Such views have allowed me to turn to an examination of the literature on the Chinese context in relation to its economic, political, cultural and education development, and to foreground these as the context for the reform under study.