Processes of Policy Borrowing in Education: some explanatory and analytical devices

This paper addresses questions of policy ‘borrowing’ in education. Building on the authors' previous work, it proposes some explanatory and analytical devices to assist in the exploration of the processes involved in ‘cross-national attraction’ in educational policy and its consequences in terms of decision making, implementation, and ‘internalisation’.     

Common European framework of reference for languages (CEFR): insights into global policy borrowing in Malaysian higher education

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) has emerged as a global policy in language education which has been ‘borrowed’ by nations across the world. This paper presents a critical analysis of Malaysia’s borrowing of the CEFR as part of English language curriculum reform with particular reference to policy motivation and implementation processes as outlined in the English Language Education Roadmap for Malaysia (2015–2025). The analysis draws on Phillips and Ochs’s (2003, “Processes of Policy Borrowing in Education: Some Explanatory and Analytical Devices.” Comparative Education 39 (4): 451–461.) framework for examining educational policy borrowing to highlight challenges as well as prospects of the implementation of the global policy in higher education in Malaysia.     

The cultural politics of borrowing: Japan,Britain, and the narrative of educational crisis

In the recent debate over education reform, Japanese conservative politicians and intellectuals have selectively appropriated a particular crisis‐and‐success narrative of British education reform to de‐territorialize contentious policy changes. They assert that Britain achieved successful education reform by transforming the very same teaching practices and legal framework that currently afflict Japanese education. In so doing, the Japanese conservatives have legitimized the fundamental ‘reform’ of post‐war Japanese education through the combination of nationalistic and quasi‐market interventions in education. Drawing on a wide range of literature (literature on educational borrowing, postcolonial studies, and cultural studies), this article illuminates how the Japanese conservatives have appropriated external references to ‘British education reform’ to reconstitute the people’s common sense about the current state and the future course of Japanese education. In addition, we use this Japanese case study to advance the re‐conceptualization of the politics of educational borrowing from the perspective of non‐western ‘others.’     

Education policy borrowing in China: has the West wind overpowered the East wind?

Recent education reform in China reflects the global trend of education policy borrowing from Anglophone countries such as the USA. The reform in China essentially advocates shifting from knowledge reproduction and didacticism to knowledge construction by students through a learner-centredness approach. Aware of the trend of borrowing policy from ‘Western’ countries, some educators in China use the proverb ‘the West wind has overpowered the East wind’ to describe this phenomenon. This paper examines the cultural factors that influence education policy borrowing in China by drawing upon Johnson’s metaphors of the ‘politics of selling’ and the ‘politics of gelling’. This paper argues that there exist fundamental cultural differences between Western and Chinese perspectives on the nature and transmission of knowledge that make education policy transfer in China challenging. This paper further proposes that China borrow education policy judiciously by integrating foreign and indigenous sources of knowledge, teaching and learning.     

Decentralization and recentralization reform in Mongolia: tracing the swing of the pendulum

For the past 10 years the Ministry of Education of Mongolia has periodically oscillated between decentralization and recentralization policies. On paper, it has consistently and enthusiastically subscribed to decentralization, but in practice has given these policies low priority. This study attempts to explain the discrepancies between policy talk and actual implementation. Methodologically, the authors investigate local policy contexts and examine how international interventions such as decentralization policies are locally reinterpreted or ‘Mongolized’. The study examines several areas where cultural legacies from the socialist past have clashed with the expectations of international donors. Theoretically, the Mongolian fiasco of decentralization reform lends itself as a case to address issues that have been raised both in comparative research on ‘transitology’ and on cross‐national policy borrowing.     

The (mis)use of the Finnish teacher education model: ‘policy-based evidence-making’?

Abstract

Background: International achievement studies such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have an increasing influence on education policy worldwide. The use of such data can provide a basis for evidence-based policy-making to initiate educational reform. Finland, a high performer in PISA, is often cited as an example of both efficient and equitable education. Finland’s teachers and teacher education have not only garnered much attention for their role in the country’s PISA successes, but have also influenced education policy change in England.

Main argument: This article argues that the Finnish model of teacher education has been borrowed uncritically by UK policy-makers. Finnish and English philosophies of teacher preparation differ greatly, and the borrowing of the Finnish teacher education model does not fit within the teacher training viewpoint of England. The borrowed policies, thus, were decontextualised from the wider values and underpinnings of Finnish education. This piecemeal, ‘pick “n” mix’ approach to education policy reform ignores the fact that educational policies and ‘practices exist in ecological relationships with one another and in whole ecosystems of interrelated practices’. Thus, these borrowed teacher preparation policies will not necessarily lead to the outcomes outlined by policy-makers in the reforms.

Sources of evidence: Two teacher preparation reforms in England, the University Training Schools (outlined in the UK Government’s 2010 Schools White Paper, The Importance of Teaching) and the Master’s in Teaching and Learning (MTL), are used to illustrate the problematic nature of uncritical policy borrowing. This article juxtaposes these policies with the Finnish model of teacher education, a research-based programme where all candidates are required to complete a Master’s degree. The contradictions exposed from this analysis further highlight the divergent practices of teacher preparation in England and Finland, or the disparate ‘ecosystems’. Evidence of educational policy borrowing in other settings is also considered.

Conclusions: Both the MTL and the White Paper reforms overlook the ‘ecosystem’ surrounding Finnish teacher education. The school-based MTL contrasts with the research-based Finnish teachers’ MA. Similarly, the University Training Schools scheme, based on Finnish university-affiliated, teaching practice schools, contrasts heavily with the rest of the White Paper reforms, which contradict the philosophies and ethos behind Finnish teacher education by proposing the move of English teacher preparation away from the universities. The analysis highlights the uncritical eye through which politicians may view international survey results, looking for ‘quick fix’ options instead of utilising academic evidence for investigation on education and education reform.     

International education policy transfer – borrowing both ways: the Hong Kong and England experience

This paper analyses how the impact of international student achievement studies and the recent economic crisis in Europe are influencing the development of educational policy transfer and borrowing, from East to West. This is contrasted with education reform movements in East Asia, which have long legacies of borrowing from so-called ‘progressive’ discourses in the West. England and Hong Kong are used as case studies. Since 2010, England’s coalition government has prioritised its determination to look to jurisdictions like Hong Kong to inspire and justify reforms that emphasise traditional didactic approaches to teaching and learning. In contrast, Hong Kong’s reforms have sought to implement practices related to less pressured, more student-centred lifelong learning, without losing sight of strengths derived from its Confucian heritage culture. Conclusions highlight factors that underpin English interest in Hong Kong education policy, values and practice and point to the need for further attention to be given to these multidirectional and often contradictory processes by researchers concerned with the study of policy transfer.     

Educational borrowing as negotiation: re‐examining the influence of the American black industrial education model on British colonial education in Africa

This study explores the extent to which American educational ideas made an impact on policy‐making and practice of education in British African colonies between the two World Wars. The analysis re‐examines the apparent ‘borrowing’ of American black industrial education models for application in Africa. It is argued that, while the view that Americans were successful in handling racial conflicts by means of education at home carried strong symbolic meaning in the colonial political arena, the ideas themselves were not new. The paper focuses on the motivations and characteristics of the people involved in this political discourse and in transferring American and other models to Africa. By doing this, the paper draws attention to a more complex network of factors that were involved in the transfer of educational policies to British colonies in Africa.     

Deconstructing the ‘magnetic’ properties of neoliberal politics of education in Bahrain

This article makes contributions to questions of why international transfers of programmes do not lead to the outcomes that nations engaging in them expect to gain. Using Bahrain as an example, it is argued that tensions arising from policy borrowing are rooted in the complexities of the political incoherence between the new teaching policies, the Kingdom’s economic vision and educational aspirations of many locals that have been shaped by old political and employment settlements within the nation state. The research shows that educating for global development is not a ‘magnet’ that equally attracts everyone.     

Wooden dolls and disarray: rethinking United States’ teacher education to the side of quantification

ABSTRACT

According to the 2013 report by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), most teacher education programs are failing in the United States. These programs, NCTQ insists, are not preparing new teachers with sufficiently ‘scientific’ methods and are, in the process, failing to properly train prospective teachers how to ‘lead the classroom’ (p. 2). In the deficit discourses employed by NCTQ, teacher education programs have become a cesspool of ‘mediocrity’ (p. 1) where the overall findings ‘paint a grim picture of teacher preparation in the United States’ (p. 17). We actually agree that things are grim, but for very different reasons and in very different spaces. Using NCTQ’s ‘Teacher Prep Review: A Review of the Nation’s Teacher Preparation Program’ as an entryway, the authors argue that the report typifies not only an alarmist approach usually found in conservative attempts at social policy and reform, but also further reifies quasi-empirically based research as the best (indeed the only) method by which to measure effective teacher education programs. The authors deconstruct the taken-for-granted assumptions within the NCTQ text, challenging quantification as a research/policy paradigm while arguing for the value of newly imagining educational possibility through risk and creation.     

Students ‘at‐risk’ policy: competing social and economic discourses

Within a context of global reform agendas that promote economic ideologies in education the discourses surrounding ‘school failure’ have shifted from ‘individual risk’ to ‘a nation at‐risk’. Enhancing the quality of schooling through improving educational outcomes and standards for all, and thereby reducing ‘school failure,’ is simultaneously constructed as enhancing both social justice and a nation’s economic advantage in the global marketplace. Within this broader context, this research explores the complexity of issues related to policy for students at educational risk through an analysis of the Education Department of Western Australia’s ‘Making the Difference: Students at Educational Risk Policy.’ This research adopted a theoretical framework of a ‘policy cycle’ (that allowed for an exploration of power relations within the policy process. Primarily, consideration is given to the competing social and economic discourses found within the policy text and subsequent tensions reflected and retracted throughout the policy process from macro (system), to meso (district) and finally to micro levels within the schools and classrooms.     

PISA and high-performing education systems: explaining Singapore’s education success

Singapore’s remarkable performance in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has placed it among the world’s high-performing education systems (HPES). In the literature on HPES, its ‘secret formula’ for education success is explained in terms of teacher quality, school leadership, system characteristics and educational reform. This article offers an alternative explanation for the education success of Singapore and, in so doing, questions the basic assertions of the HPES literature and, in particularly, the use of PISA results as the prime indicator of the educational performance of a school system. The explanation is informed by a historical perspective on the development of the Singapore education system and based upon a body of empirical findings on the nature of pedagogical practice in classrooms, both of which are vital for understanding the educational performance of Singapore’s education system. The article concludes by addressing the implications of this analysis for educational policy borrowing.     

Portuguese,French and British discourses on colonial education: Church–State relations,school expansion and missionary competition in Africa, 1890–1930

This article draws a comparison between the Portuguese in relation to British and French discourses on overseas educational policies at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century until the 1930s. It focuses on three main colonial educational dynamics: school expansion (comparing the public and private sectors); State–Church relations (comparing these relationships at the European and colonial levels); and missionary competition (comparing Catholic with Protestant strategies towards educational incorporation). Colonial discourse is seen here as a power‐knowledge discourse aimed at constructing the colonial subjects as individuals, enabling them to imagine themselves as belonging to a particular cultural polity. The article intends to show how cross‐national discourses on education affect the principles on which theories of schooling are built and the ways in which they influence the first attempts to systematize pedagogical and school models in the colonial peripheries. On the other hand, it tries to understand, within government technologies of domination, the conflicting views, negotiations and ambiguities between global policy formulation and local school system implementation. In this sense, the author sought to analyse the different ways in which concepts such as ‘assimilation’, ‘civilizing mission’, ‘adapted education’, and ‘learning by doing’ were mobilized and appropriated into the colonial education discourses in order to legitimize particular governmental strategies. Two main ideas run through the text: the first attempts to demonstrate the existence of discontinuities between official educational ideologies at home and local system and school expansion strategies in the colonies. The second claims that educational borrowing from other colonies at the Empires' peripheries was, more often that is thought, a crucial feature of colonial educational discourse.     

Globalization and educational change: bringing about the reshaping and re‐norming of practice

The tendency in education writing on globalization has been to examine the congruence of educational policies in western societies and the international effects of global governance of education by powerful transnational institutions such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the European Union. The authors tend to identify massive changes in approaches to educational governance, including the establishment of a broadly common policy and management agenda that is characterized by ‘new managerialism’, devolution, and rigid accountability structures, entrepreneurialism, and school effectiveness, that have been imposed largely as a result of globalization. These measures are often seen as being directly related to the ‘hollowing out’ of the state, and the emergence of neo‐liberalism as the informing ideology of both international capitalism and residual nation‐states. There are few studies, however, of the dynamics of educational life and micro‐political activities that enable or challenge or bring about the kinds of educational reshaping and renorming that are typically associated with globalization. This study attempts to analyse such micro‐shaping, which, through reporting an ethnographic study in a site of educational practice, examines how school managers and teachers dealt with government policy intervention and, in the process, both willingly and unwillingly implemented significant educational change.     

Changes of tolerance of China’s English language policy from the aspect of English borrowing into Chinese

In recent years, because of the ’open-door’ policy and the increasing role of English as a global language, increasing numbers of English words have been absorbed into Chinese by both direct and indirect borrowing. This article is explored to discuss the way of English borrowing into Chinese and how the changes of China’s English language policy have been made.     

Comparing school accountability in England and its East Asian sources of ‘borrowing’

Education reforms in England are increasingly justified by borrowing ‘best practices’ of high-performing East Asian societies, including Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai. However, taking the reforms of school accountability as an illustrative example, this article argues that there are serious variations between England and its East Asian sources of ‘borrowing’ with regard to the ways in which schools are held to be accountable. How school accountability is organised and operationalised in practice deeply depends on socio-political priorities of each society. Therefore, education policy borrowing from East Asia to England is potentially extremely difficult. Furthermore, this article remains alert to the possibility that the claim (about improving the education system in England through imitating East Asian models) is symbolic rather than practical – symbolic in the sense of producing legitimacy for pre-existing policy agendas.     

Neither a borrower nor a lender be: exploring ‘teaching for mastery’ policy borrowing

Abstract

Mathematics education is a high-stakes indicator of success in ‘über’ performative systems. The search to address England’s mathematics underperformance resulted in cross-national attraction toward, and policy borrowing of, ‘teaching for mastery’ from the high-performing education systems of Shanghai and Singapore. We argue that the cultural baggage implicit in mastery was in direct conflict with fundamental structures underpinning the English education system—structures which resulted in significant barriers toward implementing and internalising mastery. Theoretically grounded in the work of Lyotard, Foucault, and Ball, our paper maps how teachers working in the East Midlands region of England borrowed, implemented, and internalised mastery. Our micro, classroom-scale, examination reveals macro-scale performative drivers, as well as the pitfalls of policy borrowing without due care and attention. We highlight that policy borrowing is far more complex than simply copying and checking for fidelity between the original and the borrowed. We conclude by suggesting that underestimating the consequences of policy borrowing has highly significant and even detrimental outcomes at both the micro and macro scales.     

Comparative education,the ‘New Paradigm’ and policy borrowing: constructing knowledge for educational reform

Education reform in England is increasingly portrayed as a quest to create ‘world class’ schools through the transfer of features of ‘high performing’ school systems. The demand for evidence to support policy borrowing has been serviced by an influential intermediary network, which uses international data banks to compare education systems, and to identify and promote evidence of ‘what works’. The approach to comparisons has been portrayed as a ‘New Paradigm’ by its advocates, and whilst the network has been extensively critiqued, this has largely focused on its deviation from the norms of academic comparative education. This article explores how the ‘New Paradigm’ operates, identifying its inherent features and the strategies used to overcome the methodological issues associated with policy borrowing. This is pursued through an analysis of the rationale; assumptions; underlying ideology; methodology; omissions and silences; dealing with critics; and language and presentation of four of its influential publications.