ROBIN MASON ( 1998). Globalising education 
- Trends and Applications. London: Routledge, 
pp. 167, NZ$45.58. 

Mason begins with the question, "Is the advent 
of global education a threat or a promise?" The 
answer, she concludes, is that it is neither: 

T h e  higher education m a r k e t  is 
changing rapidly and there is much 
evidence to support the rumours of 
l a r g e  scale closures of existing 
institutions, of very different working 
conditions for staff at those educational 
establishments which remain, and of 
wholesale re-thinking of the 
o r ganisational, pedagogical and 
t e chnological delive r y  o f  h i g h e r  
education. Many o f  these changes are 
caused by or informed by the growth 
of some forms of global education 
(p. ix). 

The globali sation of e d u c a t i o n  is a 
development that is becoming increasingly 
significant to many distance e d u c a tion 
professionals although the implications of this 
trend for institutions, programmes and careers 
is not at all clear. Mason provides a timely 
examination of the globalization of education 
in an appropriately international context 
together with the media t h a t  make this 
possible. Attention is given to the social and 
cultural implications of globalising education 
for developing countries and for the expanded 
markets it provides for established providers. 

Mason is well placed to write on this subject 
as h e a d  of t h e  Centre f o r  I n f o r m ation 
Technology in Education at the UK Open 
University. Her criteria for offering global 
education include: (i) having students in more 
than two continents of the world able to 
communicate with each other and with the 

BooK REVIEWS 

teacher, (ii) an express aim on the part of the 
teacher or institUtion to attract international 
participation, (iii) course content devised 
specially for transnational participation, (iv) 
support structures, both institutional and 
technological, to tutor and administer to a 
global student body, and (v) operations on a 
scale of more than one programme and more 
than one curriculum area, with more than 100 
students. However, the author 's search found 
n o t  a single i n s t i t u t i o n  offering global 
education according to these criteria. 

A major ar gument for global education, 
according to Mason, is the benefits it provides 
for students, who become part of a diverse, 
international student body within which 
interaction is encouraged. The taste of global 
interaction in a course reported by one teacher 
on his first venture onto the information 
superhighway left him concluding: 

I cannot i m a g i n e  e v e r  passing a 
semester in the classroom again without 
the umbilical cord to the network to 
energise, diversify, and deepen what we 
do (p. 4). 

A second and particularly powerful argument 
is the improved access to education that is 
provided for more students, especially those 
in t h e  d e v e l o p i n g  w o r l d .  There is an 
educational rationale for global education in 
making "the expertise of the few" widely 
available and, finally, there is the growing 
realisation that many areas of the curriculum 
are global in nature and lend themselves to 
development on an international scale. The 
European Association of Distance Teaching 
Universities, for example, has encouraged the 
joint authorising amongst its members of the 
European M B A  and of a comprehensive 
course in the humanities called "What is 
Europe?" 

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With the increasing prominence of the internet 
in teaching and learning and an expanding 
range of educational software, the means of 
making one's ccmr s e s  and e d u c a t i o n a l  
products globally available i s  becoming a n  
option for more institutions. One of the most 
powerful arguments for considering the 
globalisation of education is simply the access 
it provides for many people. As one 
commentator noted: 

Technologically-mediated knowledge 
provides the basis of individualising 
learning in a more complete and active 
way . . .  Here distance is subservient to 
the discourse of open learning and 
'educative' processes are displaced and 
reconstituted as relationships between 
producers and consumers in which 
knowledge is exchanged on the basis of 
the usefulness it has to the consumer 
(Edwards, 1995). 

The implications of global education for those 
who teach at a distance are exciting but, as this 
book sets out in some detail, the process is 
complex and there is much to be considered 
by institutions considering global expansion. 

Five case studies of the applications of global 
education provide a broad overview of recent 
developments in this area and form the basis 
of a discussion of recent trends: The Duke 
University G l o b a l  Executive M B A  
programme, the Graduate Certificate i n  Open 
and Distance Learning of the University of 
Southern Queensland in Australia, the move 
from TV to t h e  i n t e r n e t  of the Jon e s  
Educational Company, I B M  global training 
and education and the UK Open University. 
These are collectively examined in the final 
section of the book in terms of the technologies 
that these institutions use, joint c o u r s e  
development, on-line support s y s t e m s ,  
individualised learning and, o f  course, use of 
the internet. 

Mason concludes with a look at future trends, 
focusing on the future transformation of 
universities, the social and cultural impact of 

global education and the 'educational 
exploitation' of computer and communi­
cations technologies. 

The implications of globalised education are 
becoming increasingly apparent to those who 
use the inter11et and its growing number of 
applications. The move from traditional, 
centralized distance education institutions to 
mass teaching and learning on dispersed sites 
that is possible from teachers' internet-linked 
computers, opens the possibility of global 
teaching and learning. While the range of 
teaching and learning at a distance has been 
considerably extended by advances i n  
information and communication technologies, 
the pedagogical, social, cultural, political, 
professional and financial implications of 
doing so are enormous. This book is ambitious 
in attempting to d r a w  together an 
exceptionally complex and rapidly changing 
area of education. 

I found the chapter on pedagogy and global 
education to be of particular interest for the 
way in which it brought together a range of 
ways of organising teaching and learning in 
this emerging environment. Mason provides 
a useful section in this chapter on assessment, 
and a discussion of some of the cultural 
implications of teaching across nati onal 
boundaries. 

This is a timely discussion of contemporary 
practices in global education based on diverse 
institutional case studies. It provides anyone 
contemplating teaching transnationally with 
an o v e r v i e w  of the complexities of an 
emerging area of distance education. 

REFERENCE 

EDWARDS, R. (1995). Diff e r e nt discours e s ,  
discourses o f  difference: Globalisation, distance 
education and open learning. Distance Education, 
16,2. 

Ken Stevens 
Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada 

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49 



GEOFF SCOTT ( 1999). Change matters: Making 
a difference in education and training. Sydney: 
Allen and Unwin, pp. 236, NZ $39.95. " 

.I 

As the introduction to this book points out, 
there were some 800 books published in the 
US in the first half of the 90s on change. Some 
would have b e e n  'snake o il', most had 
relevance to business and a few related to 
change in education. Managing change in 
educational institutions is not the same as 
managing it in the corporate sector. Some 
change managers describe educational change 
as not unlike herding cats. Scott's book 
reminds us that the best way to manage cats 
is to put out milk and give them a comfortable 
environment. Inasmuch as Scott recognises the 
real issues in managing educational change, 
this book is highly recommended as a useful, 
practical and enthusiastic work. 

Chapter One examines the dynamics of the 
change process in education. Scott describes a 
number of myths about change management, 
mostly drawn from the non-education sector. 
He proposes an educational framework 
consisting of the milieu, learning progr ammes, 
leadership and the external context. These are 
displayed in an atomic molecular diagram 
below which runs the horizontal version of the 
action-research spiral. 

Chapter Two offers a change management 
process for learning programme innovation 
and enhancement. Scott proposes a 'swamp' 
model of educational programming where the 
outcome of an effective learning programme 
must survive navigating the nature of the 
subject, similar programmes elsewhere, 
accreditation requ irements, available 
resources and tools, conditions of learning and 
the nature of students. A cloud entitled 
'general conditions' hovers above the swamp. 
Apart from risks entailed in crossing the 
swamp, Scott shows that startup shortfalls, 
inadequa t e  p l a n n i n g  and ineffective 
consultation a r e  key f a c t o r s  ca using 
innovations to fail. 

Chapter T h r e e  f o c u s e s  on workplace 

improvement and the need for supportive 
workplace cultures if change is to be effective. 
Scott advocates continuous quality 
improvement (CQI), an extension of the 
business TQM model, as a change mechanism 
in education. He describes how CQI can 
placate angry 'trjbes' who inhabit the swamp 
by making the workplace conditions more 
conducive to change. 

Chapter Four examines workplace action­
research in the educational context. Here he 
identifies some new 'tribes' who live in the 
broader educational context and whose 
adherents or allies might be found among the 
locals. He identifies Photographers, 
Experimenters, Naturalists and Activists. He 
uses metaphors to describe how each tribe 
operates an<\ what it believes in. Knowing this 
helps the change manager identify and use 
particular strengths and insights about the task 
on hand. 

Scott deals with one of the key elements of 
change later in his book. He notes that 
leadership is not about the powerlessness of 
the led. He uses the reflection-in-action model 
to show how successful educational leaders 
think and act. He draws on Fullan' s ideas 
about emotional and cognitive intelligence, 
knowledge and skills, as well as highlighting 
the need for an ability to encourage a critical 
mass of staff to 'ride the wave of change'. 

So, is all change progress? We know it is not, 
but progress will not occur without change. 
Scott concludes that educational institutions 
and change managers are having a rough time 
navigating the swamp. In the end he states "it 
is people that matter, that the golden rule is 
doing unto others ... and that actions speak 
louder than words", which, although hardly 
new, constitute the combination of the 'what' 
and 'how' of change that makes the difference. 
The book is highly recommended to those 
responsible for delivering educational services 
and to those who participate, willingly or 
otherwise, in educational change. 

. Andrew Higgins 
Higher Education Development Centre, Otago University. 

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