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This article argues against the juggernaut view of globalization, suggesting that much depends on how we engage with the forces of globalization to mitigate their worst consequences and use them to advantage. The task of democratic nation building, within which education plays an important role, is seen as pivotal to the process of engagement. In exploring how it might be possible to work with and against the pressures of globalization in education, the article looks in particular at aspects of educational governance and purposes.

This paper presents a philosophical critique of the widely accepted ‘technological’ conception of policy analysis in education. With the use of a Wittgensteinian understanding of language, it is argued that the assumptions upon which the technological conception is based are fundamentally mistaken. In particular it is argued that the fact‐value distinction is epistemologically incoherent, and that questions of moral value, which lie at the heart of all educational problems, can be rationally debated and assessed, and that they therefore should be regarded as integeral to educational policy analysis. With this philosophical undergrowth cleared, we can now work towards formulating a view of policy analysis as practical reason.

(1988). Multiculturalism in Australia: the construction and promotion of an ideology. Journal of Education Policy: Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 335-350.