Interview with Susan Robertson and Roger Dale

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Susan Robertson and Roger Dale, Co-Editors of Globalisation, Societies & Education

This is the twenty-third interview in a series Routledge is conducting with the editors of some of its key Education journals.

The interview page has been split into sections which can be quickly accessed by selecting any of the links below:

• Introduction
• Susan Robertson and Roger Dale answers the questions
• More about Susan Robertson
• More about Roger Dale
• Suggested Reading and Related Articles

Introduction

These interviews are aimed at students, educational researchers, academics and visitors to the Education Arena website who are interested in particular journals and would like to find out more.

Each interview provides information about the editors in question, details about the creation of their journal and its purpose and scope within the wider sphere of educational research. Each editor is also asked to offer advice, hints and tips to prospective authors who may be hoping to submit papers to their journal.

This twenty-third interview is with Susan Robertson and Roger Dale, Co-Editors of Globalisation, Societies & Education. The journal aims to fill the gap between the study of education and broader social, economic and political forces by analysing the complexities of globalisation. The journal seeks to provide means for affecting, as well as reflecting the experiences, distribution, contributions and outcomes of education at all levels and in all settings.

Globalisation, Societies and Education represents scholarly analysis carried out from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including sociology, philosophy, politics, geography, history, economics, management and comparative studies as applied to education and its related fields. In addition, Globalisation, Societies and Education seeks to encourage and include more innovative means for communicating information, ideas, debates and arguments on globalisation, education and societies.

Susan Robertson and Roger Dale answers the questions

This interview took place at the Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, on 25th March, 2011

We also provide a transcription of this interview to overcome accessibility problems if you have hearing difficulties (or for those of you who may just prefer to read the interview).

More about Susan Robertson

Susan Robertson is a professor of Sociology of Education in the Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol.

She took up this post in 1999 and has worked to create the first centre of its kind in the UK - the Centre for Globalisation, Education and Societies (GES). Along with her colleague Roger Dale, she is founding editor for the journal Globalisation, Societies and Education. There is now a core and critical mass of scholars working with her in the GES.

Susan has just completed a Synthetic Review of Globalisation, Education and Development for the Department of International Development. Between 2002 and 2005 she was co-director of a major ESRC funded project on new technologies and learning, InterActive Education: Teaching and Learning in the Information Age, with a particular interest in the wider policy issues.

Much of Susan's earlier work is focused on teachers' work, state restructuring and education policy in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Her current work is engaged with globalisation and regionalisation as it works on and through both education systems and new sites of knowledge production. Recent work includes analyses of the various global (WTO) and regional (EU; ASEM, NAFTA) agreements and their implications for education; the creation of the European Education Space as part of the EU's competitive knowledge economy strategy; new educational spaces that are being generated as part of state's knowledge economy strategies; new patterns of education aid in the global economy; rescaling and citizenship regimes.

Along with Professor Kris Olds (Geography - Wisconsin-Madison) she is the co-convenor of a new Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) initiative on globalisation and education - Constructing Knowledge/Spaces: Transnational/Transdisciplinary Perspectives. Kris and Susan also maintain a CK/S blog on developments on global higher education.

More about Roger Dale

Roger Dale is Professor of Education at the University of Bristol. Until 2002, he was Professor of Education at the University of Auckland.

Prior to moving to Auckland, he had been involved in producing courses in sociology of education and education policy at the Open University for almost 20 years.

Whilst at Auckland he co-led a major research study into the responses to globalisation of four education systems - Alberta (Canada), New Zealand, Scotland and Singapore. One strand of investigation was the role of regional organisations (EU, NAFTA and APEC) in national responses to globalisation. This led to a major interest in the EU and education policy, which is now the main focus of his work, complementing and extending qualitatively his earlier work on the state and education policy. It led to him becoming Academic Coordinator of the EU Erasmus Thematic Network, GENIE (Globalisation and Europeanisation in Education) which was based in the GES.

Together with Susan Robertson he co-founded the journal Globalisation, Societies and Education, whose first volume was published in 2003.

Suggested Reading and Related Articles

Susan Robertson and Roger Dale recommend the following issues and articles:

The new research agenda in critical higher education studies
Eva Hartmann
Volume 8.2, Pages 169 - 173 Lingard et al 7.3

The right to research
Arjun Appadurai
Volume 4.2, Pages 167 - 177

Globalisation, knowledge and the myth of the magnet economy
Phillip Brown; Hugh Lauder
Volume 4.1, Pages 25 - 57