Post-EFA Global Discourse: The Process of Shaping the Shared View of the ‘Education Community’
ISBN: 978-1-78441-271-5, eISBN: 978-1-78441-270-8
Publication date: 17 June 2016
Abstract
This chapter will examine the interplay among actors who took part in the process of consensus building towards a post-2015 education agenda via different channels of global governance, including both formal and informal channels.
Most of the forums and entities established as part of the global governance structure are composed of representatives from UN or UNESCO member states, civil society organizations (CSOs) and UN agencies. However, each of these categories has diverse constituent groups; representing these groups is not as straightforward a task as the governance structure seems to assume. Therefore, based on interviews and qualitative text analysis, this chapter will introduce major groups of actors and their major issues of concern, decision-making structure, mode of communication and relationship with other actors. Then, based on an understanding of the characteristics of the various channels and actors, it will present the structural issues that arose during the analysis of post-2015 discourse and the educational issues that emerged as the shared concerns of the ‘education community’. While most of the analysis to untangle the nature of discourse relies on qualitative analysis of texts and interviews, the end of this chapter will also demonstrate the trends of discourse in quantitative terms.
What was the post-2015 discourse for the so-called education community, which in itself has an ambiguous and virtual existence? The keywords post-2015 and post-EFA provide us with an opportunity to untangle how shared norms and codes of conduct were shaped at the global scale.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
I would like to express sincere appreciation to those anonymous interviewees who candidly shared their opinions and observations of the post-2015 consultation process. Although I cannot write their names here, some of them even gave additional comments on my research after the interview. Takashi Miyake and the executive members of Japan NGO Network for Education (JNNE) connected me with the first group of interviewees, who became the important gates to a wider circle of informants.
I also owe a great deal of thanks for technical assistance in the process of conducting the data analysis from the team of Takeshi Furuhashi and Tomohiro Yoshikawa of the School of Engineering, Nagoya University. Special gratitude goes to Shingo Tsukioka, a master’s student of engineering, for providing tireless support to me, an amateur text miner. Koichi Higuchi of Ritsumeikan University, developer of the software KH Coder, also provided timely and detailed advice on overcoming various technical problems. The study was also made possible by the support of two PhD students who worked as my research assistants, Xuemei Li and Natsuki Kondo, in taking charge of the laborious work of downloading texts from the Web. I also would like to express my sincere appreciation to my former colleague Naohiro Takizawa, of Ritsumeikan University, for our initial brainstorming and suggestions.
Citation
Yamada, S. (2016), "Post-EFA Global Discourse: The Process of Shaping the Shared View of the ‘Education Community’", Post-Education-Forall and Sustainable Development Paradigm: Structural Changes with Diversifying Actors and Norms (International Perspectives on Education and Society, Vol. 29), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 67-142. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-367920140000029014
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016 Emerald Group Publishing Limited