Introduction: Researching the Global Education Industry

Abstract

The introductory chapter provides an overview of the emerging Global Education Industry (GEI). Referring in an exemplary manner to the landscape of worldwide operating businesses and organizations, it introduces the readers to how the field of education and educational policy is being currently reshaped. This includes the changing role of the actors involved (states, NGOs, companies) as well as the shifts in their rationales and logics and modes of operating. After delineating the central concepts and issues related to the GEI phenomenon, the introduction presents the questions and challenges that result from these recent developments: not only for educational policy and practice but also for educational theory and research. This not only involves, for instance, the blurred line between business interest and modernization, but also pertains to the question as to whether current conceptual approaches are adequate to grasp the present-day developments. Here, the aim is to show how actors from the educational field will have to perform a change of perspective in order to fully explore the consequences that the GEI will have for the future(s) of education. Finally, the introduction provides a brief overview of the chapters of the book.