Globalisation and Its Educational Discontents: Neoliberalisation and its impacts on education workers' rights, pay and conditions

This article examines some impacts of neoliberal education policies during the current period of the intensification of neoliberal capital. Section 1 examines the relationship between education and capital, identifying three plans capital has in relation to education. It sets out some of the major aspects of neoliberal policy developments in schooling and further education. Section 2 describes, analyses and evaluates the research methodology used in developing this article, locating the methodology within the debate between 'methodological purists' on the one hand, and 'committed research' on the other. The research for this article, within the 'research for social justice' paradigm, is rationalised. Section 3 examines the impacts of neoliberalisation on education workers' securities - their pay/ salaries, conditions of employment, stresses and pressures at work, and their work identity and status. It also examines the impacts on the rights and powers of education trade unions. The article ends, in Section 4, by briefly calling for resistance to the global neoliberal capitalist agenda in schooling and education.