Big change questions : can we create a form of public education that delivers high standards for all students in the emerging knowledge society?

Within many Anglophone nation states there is significant debate about<br>the future of public education and its ongoing capacity to provide quality<br>education. The new knowledge economy not only challenges the position<br>of educators as the primary producers, disseminators and authorizers of<br>what is valued knowledge, but also requires them to prepare students for<br>new ways of working with that knowledge. In the service economies of<br>post-industrial Western nations, 'knowledge work' is critical to national<br>productivity and international competitiveness. At the same time, the<br>globalization logic suggests that the nation state is under threat, and therefore its role as provider of universal services such as education is also threatened.<br>