Invitation to attend CEPaLS 24 Hour Meeting

1. Invited keynote presentations and discussion. The keynote speakers are Prof Roger Dale of the University of Bristol and Dr Stephen Parker of the University of Glasgow.
2. A joint book launch in Whitworth Council Chamber to celebrate the recent publication by Routledge of books by CEPaLS members and associates.

• ‘Educational leadership: Theorising professional practice in neoliberal times’, edited by Steve Courtney, Ruth McGinity and Helen Gunter. Introduced by Prof David James of Cardiff University.
• ‘Inside the autonomous school: Making sense of a global educational trend’, by Maija Salokangas and Mel Ainscow CBE.

3. An interactive methodological workshop by Prof Helen Gunter of the University of Manchester on ‘Investigating knowledge production: Identifying and using primary sources’.

Knowledge production and globalisation 

Critical scholars have long understood the vital influence of the state on knowledge production, and so for Gunter, for example, this latter ‘is concerned with what we know, how we know it, when we know it, who knows it, and why’ (Gunter 2006, p. 201), where ‘we’ are agents whose thinking - whose knowledges - are circumscribed and structured by state interventions at policy level. 

What is becoming clear, however, is how the nation state is itself located within a structured and structuring matrix of power relations that scholarship conceptualises through the metaphor of globalisation. In this way, the nation state is only one of diverse institutional actors that structure discursively and materially what is thinkable in the field of education. Such actors include the OECD and the World Bank, whose corporate and corporatising disposition is reflected in education policies, practices and identities. 

What we are witnessing are important changes in the context of education that have to be adequately taken into account and reflected in our accounts of the relationship between globalisation and education. Dale (2005), for example, identifies conscious efforts to develop new supranational forms of 'education' that consciously seek to undermine and reconfigure existing national forms of education, even as they run alongside them, and even in their shadow (p. 123). 

CEPaLS members are concerned to think about and theorise these developments in order to locate them and their effects on the fundamental issues of equity and social justice. We invite interested colleagues from across BELMAS and beyond to join us for a 24-hour meeting in the University of Manchester to hear from key scholars in the field, contribute to discussions and think of new directions for our scholarship.

Key information 

• Venue: University of Manchester
• Date and time: 12.30 28th June to 13.00 29th June.
• There are only 30 places available for this event.
• Registration is free and will be through BELMAS.
• Lunch and dinner on 28th June will be provided free of charge to delegates.
• Full venue details will be provided to registered delegates.
• There are three fully funded student places available, including travel, accommodation and subsistence. Priority will be given to unfunded students.
• NOTE: Accommodation in Manchester is not otherwise provided. 

28-29 June Schedule for BELMAS CEPaLS Meeting and Book Launch

Theme: Knowledge Production and Globalisation

Thursday 28th June 

Friday 29th June