Globalizing Trends in Colombian Higher Education
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LOCAL RESPONSES TO GLOBALIZATION: POLICY, CURRICULA, AND STUDENT CULTURAL PRODUCTIONS AT A COLOMBIAN PUBLIC UNIVERSITY DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Stephanie Lynn Daza, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2006 Dissertation Committee: Approved by: Professor Patricia Lather, Co-Advisor ______________________________ Associate Professor Peter Demerath, Co-Advisor ______________________________ Co-Advisors, College of Education ii © Copyright by Stephanie Lynn Daza 2006 All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Globalizing trends—underscored by neoliberalism, privatization, and imperial legacies—are changing the nature and purpose of education across the world. Manifestations of these trends, however, vary in different locales, as do responses to them. Indeed, globalizing trends are continuously shaped and reshaped by local practices in diverse contexts. Drawing on theoretical perspectives from discourse analysis and cultural studies, this dissertation analyzes and complicates local discursive formations of globalizing trends at La Universidad Industrial de Santander (UIS), a public university in Colombia, South America. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at the UIS between July 2003 and June 2004, this dissertation examines local, national, and global dynamics in UIS policy, curriculum, and student cultural productions. By analyzing student-produced materials, including graffiti, campaign flyers, and political cartoons as local practices in response to globalizing trends, this study shows that such cultural productions openly contest and reshape globalizing trends. These student materials offer counter-discourses that reconstitute globalizing trends as “US imperialism” and as shared pubic, not private, concerns. Complicating the decolonizing effects produced by their counter-discourses, some student-produced materials ignore or reify gender and other hierarchies in order to resist imperial-global ones. ii Embedded in global, national, and local policy contexts, the practice of policy as/in curriculum at the UIS also is a focus of this dissertation. Namely, this study considers local practices of and responses to a nationally mandated citizenship course entitled Ética. By offering Ética, the university is clearly in compliance with national policy and law. However, by examining curriculum policy, syllabi, readings, and historical formations of the course, as well as practices and perceptions of instructors and students, this study shows that Ética is often dismissed and contested. Therefore, the in/out binary of compliance is displaced. Compliance is more complicated; and it is theorized as a performance. Moreover, Ética is contested because as part of the imperial legacy in Colombia and at the UIS it positions students as barbarians in need of civilizing. Working against this, some students reclaim the barbarian subject-position, disrupting the civilized/barbarian and colonizer/colonized binaries. In short, this dissertation examines and complicates local innovations of policy, curriculum, and practice at the UIS in light of, or perhaps in spite of, globalizing trends. iii Dedicated to public school teachers, especially Peggy James (1st & 4th grade) Ruth Kegg (6th grade English) Sharon Patton (10th grade English) John Henshaw (High School History) Regina Weigle (Mentor during student teaching) and Don Rizzi (A teachers’ principal). iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A doctoral dissertation is the product of a long process, which involves the help and encouragement of many people. While I started this project in 2003, I also wish to thank the many people who supported me and my educational pursuits long before I began the doctoral program in 2000. I especially am grateful to the public school teachers to whom this dissertation is dedicated. I also would like to thank Dr. Trudier Harris, who was the first and only women professor of color I had until I began post-Bachelor study in California. Primer, me gustaría agradecerle a La Universidad Industrial de Santander y los universitarios y profesores, especialmente a Cesar, Aura Luz, José Vicente, Angélica, Olga, Álvaro, Martha, Sergio, Giovanni, Doris, Jolima, Gonzalo, Adriana, Julián, Milton y muchos otros. También en Colombia, quisiera agradecerlos a mi familia y a nuestros vecinos maravillosos, especialmente a Chiquí, que cuidaba a mi hijo con mucho amor durante la colección de los datos. Además un beso a Libia de Colombia, a Tichí por el verano de 2002 en Guadalajara, a mis familias y amigos Bolivianos y a Diana, mi gran amiga y su familia en California. v At Ohio State, I especially wish to thank my co-advisors, Drs. Patti Lather and Peter Demerath. I am grateful to Patti for forging a space, not only at Ohio State, but also in the field, where post-foundational inquiry can be done and valued. I wish to thank Peter for modeling how to hang on to one’s integrity, while surviving academia. También, le quisiera agradecer a Dr. Abril Trigo sinceramente for his timely responses and advice throughout the process, and especially for our conversations in the spring of 2003 that largely laid the groundwork for this project. Additionally, I wish to thank both Drs. Antoinette Errante and Rick Voithofer for serving on my candidacy exam committee. Their invaluable input at the early stages of this project is evident in the final product. A great deal of admiration and appreciation goes to my inspirational friends and colleagues. To Drs. Roland Coloma, Jeong-eun Rhee, Binaya Subedi, and Sharon Subreenduth--sin palabras! Thanks also to the following divas: Drs. Michelle Proctor and Joy Wiggins, as well as Lydia Brauer and Julie Clemens. Many other individuals encouraged me in this process, particularly Drs. Patricia Enciso, Luz Calvo, and Judy Wu from Ethnic Studies, as well as Rebecca Nelson at the Multicultural Center. Finally, I wish to thank my family for their support. I especially would like to thank my Colombian family in Ohio, my mom, my Aunt Donna, and my Aunt Mae who taught me to read and paid for me to take my first graduate course. For all the sacrifices they have endured, most importantly, I thank my partner, Sergio David Daza, who enriched the project in many ways, and our son, Santana Andres David Daza, who accompanied me to Colombia during data collection. vi VITA October 26, 1970…………… Born—Lockbourne (Rickenbacker) Air Force Base, Ohio 1992………………………... B.A. English, Religion Minor Otterbein College, Westerville, Ohio 1994…………….…………... California Teaching Credential 1993-1998………….………. Public School Teacher, San Diego, California 1998-2000………………….. US Peace Corps Volunteer, Bolivia, South America 2000-2001………………….. Public School Teacher, Chillicothe & Columbus, Ohio 2001-2006………………….. Graduate Fellow and Associate, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 2003……………………….... M.A. Cultural Studies in Education, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 2006……………….………... Ph.D. Social and Cultural Foundations, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 2006………………………… Assistant Professor, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan PUBLICATIONS Daza, S. (2006). Local responses to globalizing trends: Student-produced materials at a Colombian public university. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 19(5). FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Education vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract…………………………………………………..……………………….... ii Dedication………………………………………………………………….………. iv Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………….. v Vita………………………………………...……………………………………….. vii List of Figures……………………………………………………………………… xiii Chapters: 1. Imperialism and Globalization: 1 A Backdrop to Educational Policy, Curriculum, and Practice at the UIS..… Prologue……………………………………………………………………... 1 Introduction……………………………………………………….………… 3 Terminology………………………………………………………………… 10 Globalizing Trends…………………………………………………... 10 Neoliberalism………………………………………….…….……….. 11 Imperialism………………………………………………….……….. 12 Policy………………………………………………………………… 13 Neoliberal Policy………………………………………………. 14 Analysis of Policy……………………………………………... 14 Curriculum Analysis………………………………………………… 16 Context of Study…………………………………………………………….. 17 Globalizing Trends and Education…………………………………... 17 Shifts since the 1990s: Policy and Higher Education in Colombia….. 21 A Legacy of Imperialism: Colombia’s External Relations…………... 24 Colombia and US Relations …………………………………… 25 viii Colombian Elites………………………………………. 26 Colombia and Global Relations………………………………... 26 History of the UIS in Santander………………………………... 28 Historicizing Local Resistance…………………………………. 29 Problem of the Study and Research Questions……………………………… 31 Rationale and Significance of the Study in Colombia………………………. 35 Organization of the Dissertation…………………………………………….. 37 2. The Impossibility of Noncomplicity: A Transbinary Framework for Transnational Research………………………….......................................... 40 Introduction: The Purpose of a Theoretical Framework……......................... 40 Frames for a South-North Study: US Researcher Researching Globalizing Trends on Educational Policy in Latin America.............. 43 Empire………………………………………………………………………. 46 Conditions of Empire: US Constitutionalism and Hybridity………… 51 Biopower………………………………………………………. 54 Complicitousness: Remembering Spivak…………………………………… 56 Complicity and Pervious Subjects…………………………………… 57 Complicity Analysis…………………………………………………. 59 Empire and/or Imperialism as Frames for the Study: Honoring Local Responses………………………………….………………………..