Education for negotiation or capture: the cultural context of the education-economy relationship

Abstract

The move towards a global economy and the challenges emerging for all nations, has implications for future education and training structures. In both New Zealand and England the response has been to open up the education and training structures to market forces. The reasons given Stem from dissatisfaction with the ability and willingness of the current systems to respond rapidly and appropriately to the increasing pace of economic change. The views of opinion makers in industry, as owners of capital resources, and the unionists, as traditional representatives of human resources, are important in influencing policy at both Government and local level. In England and New Zealand, there have been calls for change as a response to the modernised means of production. In an effort to grapple with the same problems, the New Zealand Government has created legislation aimed at increasing responsiveness in the relationship between education and industry. The question is to what extent are those changes accepted and endorsed by both groups. In England, Stephen Ball has identified two distinct pedagogical positions taken by industry. One the one hand, there are those who favour a more traditional elitist system and on the other, a progressive group who advocate an integrated, competency based curriculum. This research is concerned with the responses of key education opinion makers in New Zealand to questions about the type of education and training systems needed for a modernised economy, the desirable links between education and industry in achieving new systems and the relative influence of education and industry on each others' activities. To test the two positions put forward by Ball in the New Zealand context, both unionists and industry opinion makers were asked to respond to a number of questions about the relationship between education and industry. The responses were then analysed and compared to Ball's research. The relationship between education and industry was problematic. The outcome did not reveal two distinct schools of thought, but rather, a congruence of the discourse surrounding these issues. All respondents recognised the need for a high-skill, high-wage, high-trust industrial response to the global challenge and most considered that this could not be achieved, entirely, through a free market approach, but through partnership and both national and local level. The essential requirement was for an accountable education and training system based on the notion of mass education.