The Transformation of Work and Educational Reform Policy

Abstract

Attempts to respond to economic crisis associated with declining competitiveness and productivity have driven the development of educational reform during the 1980s. Meliorative strategies have centered on human capital development of the labor force. Review of industrial, occupational, and organizational restructuring reveals, however, that general attributes of the labor force have little direct influence on economic outcomes. The primary difficulty is one of structural and ideological discontinuity associated with transformation to a service-based society. School policy development is thus located within the broader arena of cultural politics, in which the power to define the meaning of social events is at stake. Emerging school policy needs to place examination of structures of accumulation and legitimation at the center of curricular and pedagogical reform and to prepare all students to participate in the social reconstruction of the social and economic life-world.