Something New, Something Old

Abstract

We have seen that over the course of the twentieth century many educational reformers supported the idea of learning outcomes or objectives, as well as the idea of learner centredness, and that in many instances these ideas were positioned as an alternative to subject-based curricula. In the 1980s these ideas once again came to the fore in the reform of vocational education in the United Kingdom and Australia. This was in the context of the rise of neoliberalism as an emerging and soon to be dominant political and economic force throughout the world. In this chapter I start with a short discussion of neoliberalism and its implications for education.