The Emergence of Global Non-Governmental Spaces in Education: Non-Governmental Organizations and the Global Turn in Education

About 30 per cent of the world’s population are children. Children are not only the most important people for their parents, but also the future of our societies. Providing them with the best possible education is of inestimable importance. Which education is best, however, is a question that is continually being negotiated.

For a long time, this question was answered primarily by national governments.

For some years, however, ongoing processes of globalisation are significantly shaping education, leading to what scholars term the global turn in education. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have become core actors in this global turnaround.

They are increasingly joining forces in education-related transnational networks (i.e., global non-governmental spaces) that express an obvious claim to influence schools and education systems worldwide.

Hence, questions arise about the associated risks and benefits for schools, particularly with regard to education's role in promoting educational achievement and equal opportunity among students from different backgrounds.

However, despite this increasing relevance scholars have neglected to investigate transnational networks of NGOs in the field of education.

EmergEd aims to drastically improve scientific knowledge on NGOs in education by analysing the emergence of global non-governmental spaces in education and how they influence education systems and schools – a contribution from which a far-reaching scientific – and in the long run societal – impact is to be expected.

It will do so by developing an inter-disciplinary methodology integrating (inferential) Social Network Analysis (SNA) and Discourse Network Analysis (DNA), alongside qualitative data analysis based on Grounded Theory, to contribute to further theory building.

This methodology is highly innovative as it draws theories and methods from different disciplines together in novel ways and thus follows an approach at and beyond the frontiers of disciplines.