Beyond Nostalgia: Reshaping Australian Education. Australian Education Review Series, No. 44.

Overview & Synopsis

This book disrupts an unproductive polarization in education by providing a basis for building more productive conversations about education and the course of education reform into the future. The work distills the ongoing debate into a concise account of developments in education, and provides a positive framework for finding a way forward. It examines the shifting relationships between government and education, implications of commercializing education and broader social factors, such as globalization, that affect education. It also examines the prospects, challenges, and opportunities for Australian education in the new millennium. This collection of articles is prompted by recent debates in institutional theory that the editors have accessed through their role as coordinators of the education strand of the cross-disciplinary "Reshaping Australian Institutions" project, orchestrated by the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. The book examines as well the changing social infrastructure of education to identify the effects of recent reforms in both shaping individual behavior and the ongoing work of education in Australia. (Contains 16 pages of references.) (DFR)