TOWARDS CUSTOMIZED PRIVATIZATION IN PUBLIC EDUCATION IN BRITISH COLUMBIA - THE PROVINCIAL EDUCATION PLAN AND PERSONALIZED LEARNING

Oct 15, 2026

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Corporate school reform is a global movement, and personalized learning is promoted as a better alternative to traditional schooling. Focusing on British Columbia’s Education Plan that places personalized learning at its core, the paper traces the plan’s genealogy and analyzes key public and private documents. Network construction and content analysis show the vision is shaped by neoliberal-oriented social imagination, turning education into a customizable consumer product, narrowing “learning” to skills, sidelining socio-cultural contexts, and diminishing the teacher’s role. The article concludes the plan enables customized privatization in public education.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages34

Reading Time1 h 26 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Corporate school reform and personalized learning

Neoliberal policy and education as a marketplace

TOWARDS CUSTOMIZED PRIVATIZATION IN PUBLIC EDUCATION IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: THE PROVINCIAL EDUCATION PLAN AND PERSONALIZED LEARNING* Vicheth Sen, University of British Columbia Corporate school reform is a global movement that is gaining a growing momentum. Central to this reform agenda is personalized learning, presented by its advocates as a better alternative to the traditional model of schooling. In spite of its appealing possibilities for education and society, scholars in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom have criticized personalized learning for its reductive conceptualization of education. Focusing critically on the new Education Plan of British Columbia, which places personalized learning at its core, this paper examines the genealogy of the Education Plan and discusses its implications for public education in the province. Through construction of a network of actors and content analysis of key documents produced by the public and private sectors, the paper shows that the vision of the Education Plan is largely influenced by a broader neoliberalism-oriented social imagination reinforced by a network of political, social, and economic actors. The analysis shows that this vision for education promotes a perception of education primarily conceptualized in narrow economic terms. The discourse and practice employed to promote personalized learning contribute to turning education into a customizable consumer product, reduce the notion of “learning” to a list of skills and attributes, disregard the significant importance of socio-cultural contexts in teaching and learning, and minimize the crucial role of the teacher. The article concludes that the Education Plan has created a conducive environment for the emergence of customized privatization in public education in the province. Introduction An increasing body of literature has examined the growth of the corporate school reform movement—an interlinking network of economic, social, and political actors, including wellfunded right-wing think tanks, advocacy and research groups, educational entrepreneurs, venture * I would like to thank Wendy Poole, Gerald Fallon, Pierre Walter, André Mazawi, and two anonymous reviewers for their feedback on earlier drafts ofthis paper. philanthropies, high net-worth individuals like Bill Gates and their foundations, management organizations, real estate development groups, media corporations, opportunistic politicians from across the political establishment, and transnational corporations such as Walmart and Pearson (Au & Ferrare, 2014, 2015; Ball, 2012; Ball & Junemann, 2011; Bulkley & Burch, 2011; Burch, 2009; Kretchmar, Sondel, & Ferrare, 2014; Robertson, 2005; Saltman, 2010, 2012; Verger, Lubienski, & Steiner-Khamsi, 2016) . The actors in this emerging community have influence in every aspect of society. Through advocacy of these powerful interests, corporate influence on and participation in school reform has come to dominate every aspect of public education in the United States from curriculum and pedagogy to organizational governance of the education system,“blurring the once fairly clear lines between public and private, as private corporations assume ever more control over publicly funded endeavors”(Roberts-Mahoney, Means, & Garrison, 2016, pp. 2–3) . This private participation in public education has resulted in changes in the governance of public education and the emergence of new actors with new discourses and ideas about how public education should be governed and financed (Ball, 2012; Ball & Junemann, 2011; Verger et al., 2016) . Through these new actors,“new voices are given space within policy talk,” “[n]ew narratives about what counts as a ‘good’ policy are articulated and validated”(Ball, 2012, p. 6), and “new forms of policy influence and enactment” are enabled (Ball, 2008, p. 748) . These networks ofactors possess the power “to shape policy outcomes”(Goodwin, 2009, p. 680) .

FAQs

What is the central focus of the paper on British Columbia’s Education Plan?

The paper critically examines how the plan’s personalized learning vision was formed and what it means for public education in the province.

How does the paper characterize the influence behind the Education Plan’s vision?

It argues the vision is largely shaped by a neoliberal-oriented social imagination supported by networks of political, social, and economic actors.

What changes does the paper say personalized learning discourse produces in public education?

It contends the discourse helps turn education into a customizable consumer product, reduces learning to skills and attributes, downplays socio-cultural teaching contexts, and minimizes the teacher’s role.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Muffet