Editorial: No Man is an Island

Abstract

No man is an Island, entire of it self;
Every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main...

If this was true in the 17th century, when John Donne wrote these well-known, and often-quoted words, how much more is it true today? New Zealand, as a small cluster of green, South Pacific islands, with a relatively affluent and highly literate population, has always been subject to international influences in education. Our educationists have always travelled widely, and curriculum, assessment, teaching and administrative innovations have regularly been imported from jurisdictions overseas, to be accepted, modified, or rejected. Our best scholars have always moved in an international educational marketplace, both giving and receiving. Many of our writers in this issue allude to these influences, relatively benign and reciprocal. But globalisation has in recent years taken on an ominous new set of meanings, and as yet there is no consensus about exactly what these might entail. For many, it now means much more than simply the emergence of new, global educational practices and cultural forms, distributed via revolutionary new media and technologies of communication, but rather such things as:

the emergence of supranational institutions whose decisions shape and constrain the policy options for any particular nation state; the overwhelming impact of global economic processes .; the rise of neoliberalism as a hegemonic policy discourse.

Some writers in this issue are expressing concern about this new development, and their voices are a clarion call to be heeded urgently.