Speculation: The future(s) of a global education market.

摘要

This dissertation establishes a structural understanding of what is necessary to imagine in material terms the future of how education will be financed and how education knowledge will be circulated on a global scale. Making explicit a governmentality perspective for examining neoliberal constructions of education policy and practice first, this dissertation applies that perspective to understanding the trajectory of World Bank policies on financing and governing education over the last twenty years. While the first three chapters draw on existing conceptual and policy work, the chapters combine aspects of them in new ways which reveal a clear understanding of an economic government of education and how it is operationalized by World Bank policy. The latest iteration of this economic government of education is the World Bank's Systems Approach for Better Education Results, SABER, examined in detail in Chapter 4. Speculations on futures of education finance and knowledge circulation are made plausible because of the work of earlier chapters, when put side by side with emerging online social technologies examined in the final chapter. The dissertation concludes that a social economy for finance and policy construction may emerge, the distinction between education and economic knowledge will likely continue to collapse, but that the balance between social and economic capital could be rebalanced compared to its current dynamic in this field.