Administering the global trap : the role of educational leaders

This article begins with an analysis of Martin and Schumann’s thesis that globalization is (a) enhancing the power of corporations and undermining the sovereignty of nation states and (b) in the process consuming social capital at an alarming rate, thus producing a loss of social cohesion. Globalization is then discussed in terms of the transformations of technology, finance, production and culture, and Gray’s account of differing relationships between markets and cultures in differing forms of capitalism is introduced. The Third Way is then analysed as a specific attempt to resolve cultural contradictions and its limitations are set out. As a possible way forward Amartya Sen’s account of ‘development as freedom’ is outlined and the implications for the role of educational leaders are discussed.

Knowledge and education for a sustainable and socially just world : the ecology of innovation and creativity for humanity

Sustainability is a critical aim of Malaysian public policy and an important aim in education. Nonetheless, what sustainability means as it relates to education and the relationship between education and a sustainable future is unclear. In this paper I shall investigate the role that Universities in Malaysia play in shifting the practice and culture of innovation and creativity towards more sustainable values and outcomes. Sustainable education is based on ensuring that the capacities of students and the broader society are reengaged and empowered through connecting education to the needs and aspirations of civil society and moving away from neoliberal ideas of education as a practice of consumption towards, sustainable values of advancing human dignity.

Creativity and innovation within such an educational framework are goals and practices deeply connected and embedded within sustainable commitments to social justice, the public good, as well as individual growth and development which provide a critical legitimizing principle for university research and teaching. One of the key theoretical influences in making this argument will draw from the arguments of Amartya Sen whose theorization of capability may provide us with a way of thinking about social growth and development that is not possessively individualistic but rather socially concerned. I will discuss this in reference to the approach of University Sains Malaysia which provides an example of a public University seeking to engage sustainability and tie educational creativity and innovation back to the common good and a sustainable future.

The philosophical aim of this paper is to show how universities can pursue creativity and innovation as socially useful practices for advancing humane and sustainable values throughout Malaysian society and avoid the fusion of creativity with possessive individualism, consummerization and social irresponsibility. In this respect this paper addresses directly the theme of the conference: ‘Thinking Minds: Nurturing the Design of a Better Future'. '

To realise our national aspirations, a concerted effort is needed to increase our nation’s competitiveness, productivity and innovativeness. Attributes such as desire for knowledge, innovative thinking, creativity and competitiveness must be imbued within our people. The inculcation of moral values, progressiveness and performance-based cultures must also be instilled if we are to nurture successful individuals of the highest quality. This will determine our success as a knowledge-based economy.’ (Badawi 2007)

The changing nature of Islamic mission: The cases of Tablighi Jama’at and the Gülen movement

David Tittensor, argues for the role of faith in development to be reconsidered in relation to the issue of bias in the provision of aid. In doing so, he draws on the works of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum that seek to expand conventional understandings of aid to include wellbeing, and cites the cases of both Tablighi Jamaat and the Gülen Movement – from India and Turkey respectively – and how their religious interventions are at times precisely what Muslims are looking for.

Higher education development and knowledge economy optimism in Ethiopia

Higher education has been assigned new global importance. It is now the vehicle of choice for nations seeking to increase their competitiveness in an expanding knowledge economy. In developing nations, higher education has also been linked to goals to reduce poverty, under the influence of transnational aid agencies such as the World Bank and its knowledge-driven poverty reduction strategies. Drawing on Amartya Sen’s capability approach to development, this paper argues that this instrumentalization of higher education produces narrow conceptions of development, poverty and knowledge, and an unfounded optimism in ‘knowledge for skills’. The site for this analysis is the development and rapid expansion of Ethiopia’s higher education system, with its antecedents in a centuries-old religious education system but with more recent beginnings in the 1950s and, since the 1990s, under the influence of the World Bank. At stake are opportunity and process freedoms and the deprivation of capability (i.e. poverty) resulting from the constraint of these, evident in the nation’s higher education system. The paper concludes that without concerted efforts to redress injustices and to protect and expand people’s freedom, Ethiopian higher education has little to contribute to national socio-economic transformation agendas.

Social justice intents in policy: an analysis of capability for and through education

Primarily developed as an alternative to narrow measures of well-being such as utility and resources, Amartya Sen’s capability approach places strong emphasis on people’s substantive opportunities. As a broad normative framework, the capability approach has become a valuable tool for understanding and evaluating social arrangements (e.g. education policies and development programmes) in terms of individuals’ effective freedoms to achieve valuable beings and doings. This paper explores the recent emergence of ‘capability’ in Australian education policy, specifically in the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper. We explore capability as a framing device and reveal how its various meanings are at odds with the scholarly literature, specifically Sen’s conception of capability and its implications for social justice in and through education. The analysis shows that the social justice intent of a capability approach appears to be overtaken in the White Paper by an emphasis on outcomes, performance and functionings that seek to serve the nation’s economic interests more than the interests of students, especially the disadvantaged.