INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE: MANUFACTURING CONSENT FOR THE PRIVATIZATION OF EDUCATION IN CANADIAN CONTEXTS

Résumé

The contributors to this special issue expose, in their respective work, the existence and dynamics of privatization in many different forms. The constitutive articles represent varied contexts (e.g., national and provincial, K–12 and post-secondary) and focuses (e.g., social finance, school fundraising, co-op education, personalized learning, and international education), resulting in a rich and comprehensive discussion. Each contributes important insights concerning discursive practices utilized to legitimize and normalize privatization in education and the means through which public consent for the privatization of education is discursively manufactured. Indifferent ways, these articles explore how individual and collective actions of public, private, and not-for-profit actors generate and use systems of meanings through which privatization is presented as common sense in thinking about and addressing challenges in public education.

The seven articles are organized according to institutional context (post-secondary institutions and K–12 institutions). The first article spans these institutional boundaries; the next three articles focus on post-secondary education, followed by three articles centred around K–12 education.