Policy spaces, mobile discourses, and the definition of educated identities

The aim of this article is to analyse the circulation of discourse in the global educational field and its relation to local-specific education policies and practices. The first section examines the logic of networks and relates it to the specificities of the networks of interaction that, it is argued, constitute 'global policy spaces' in education. It is then suggested that the structural attributes and politics of 'global policy spaces' influence the type of discourses produced in this space. The second and third sections will analyse how the mobile discourses that are produced and reproduced in these networks are transformed as they move into the space of places (the state and institutions that are attached to a territory). The main argument is that as discourses that define an educated identity for the information age move from global space to the state and to practice-based institutions these discourses change their meaning and their practical effects.