National internationalisation of higher education policy in Singapore and Japan: context and competition

This cross-case analysis explores national level internationalisation of higher education (IoHE) policies in Singapore and Japan. Through comparison of the state level internationalisation strategies, this paper aims to highlight how each country’s unique policy environment impacts their approach to IoHE. The analysis suggests that despite the differing national circumstances and ultimate approaches to internationalisation, both states use it primarily as a means to stay competitive in the twenty-first century global knowledge-based economy. This suggests that while IoHE does build bridges between nations, institutions, and individuals within and between regions, within these cases it is being driven by nationally-centred rationales. While some criticize a competition orientation in IoHE, even with such rationales it may still serve to drive greater collaboration and integration among East Asian higher education systems.     

Taking stock of environmental education policy in England – the what,the where and the why

Abstract

Taking England as our case study, this paper reviews secondary school environmental education from a policy perspective. By drawing on Stevenson’s typologies for environmental improvement and Lucas’ categorisation of environmental education, we analyse national policy documents, local authority and Multi-Academy Trust policies; and individual school planning documents. Our findings suggest in these areas a general absence of environment education policy, and where identified a rhetoric towards conservative reform framed as technology solutions, where learning is about the environment, rather than for the environment. We explain how the (lack of) environmental education rhetoric is a result of global economic changes and national austerity policies, and offer insights and signposting for policy makers.     

Negotiating for change: women’s movements and education reform in Taiwan

The dramatic changes during the past 20 years in Taiwan offer a good example of how gender policy in education is facilitated by a combination of interrelated economic, political and social forces. Taiwan’s policy on gender education emerged from the interaction of state, education, academic and non‐academic feminist positions in reforms. This paper demonstrates – first, the importance of the socio‐political contexts in which reform was proposed, and second, the actions of feminists in making best use of the opportunities thrown up by a confluence of social factors. The social, economic and political transformations of the 1980s saw the rise of a ‘new’ state both supposedly and in reality more responsive to the needs of non‐profit organisations. In testing out relationships of partnership with the state, feminist activists saw the deregulation of education as an opportunity to get women’s issues on the agenda. These reforms were catalysed by a series of social events bringing together supporters in a mood of celebration, protest or mourning specifically in response to particular events. The struggles, contentions, and negotiations that underlay the eventual approval of gender reform in education are illustrated.     

Internationalization or commodification? A case study of internationalization practices in Taiwan’s higher education

This article examines how commodification and consumerism have sharpened the discourse of internationalization in Taiwan’s higher education. Given the strong sense of crisis in the less prestigious universities, this article argues that internationalization is only a means to survive instead of a pursuit of excellence to these universities. This empirical finding leads us to rethink the concept of internationalization and its relevance and application to Taiwan’s higher education. This article adopts a case study approach to investigate the practices of internationalization, including program and institutional mobility, overseas networking, curriculum design, teaching, and administrative support. The implications of these internationalization practices for sustainability and quality in higher education development are then discussed.     

A case for rethinking inclusive education policy creation in developing countries

This article presents a critical analysis of the development and implementation of the 2014 inclusive educational policy in Samoa. While Samoan culture is traditionally founded on inclusive social practices, rather than reflecting these practices in their policy, Samoan policy developers have been under pressure to adopt or borrow policy from other countries. The findings of this intrinsic case study highlight the complexity of formulating inclusive education policies for small developing countries and why policy developers borrow from other developed countries. The theoretical framework used to analyse observation data in this study is based on the notion that national process of development is a powerful influence in educational policy. The authors argue and advocate for the existing but overlooked strengths of the local knowledge community capacity when policy is borrowed from other countries, and how the findings of the case study contribute to future attempts at policy development. We found that the draft policy needs to and does reflect Samoan culture, values and vision. However, adopting foreign practices such as the individual education plan and placement rules is not relevant to the Samoan context. The identification and development of inclusive education beliefs, skills and practices in schools is a priority.     

International HE in the UK: leveraging the policy-institution-expert nexus in uncertain times

ABSTRACT

Long-established paradigms around intensifying internationalism and ‘borderless-ness’ in the UK higher education (HE) sector are being challenged and disrupted by the nationalist drift of global political and socioeconomic forces. The UK’s international HE space is fragmented with neither a coordinated national policy nor a central agency overseeing sector-wide activity. Instead, national stakeholders interact in a ‘policymaking-sector expert nexus’ that itself engages internationally. UK institutions create structures to support ‘global engagement’ to help them to transcend national policy concerns and weather global ‘storms’, and to shape policy proactively. However, growing national policy divergence and competing policy priorities mean that enhanced coordination through a sector-level body must precede, and facilitate, the development of any UK-wide international HE strategy. A strategy will face the challenge of embracing institutional autonomy and mission diversity, recognising and value the full spectrum of international HE activities, and providing sufficient funding to leverage the implementation of institutional strategies.     

Making different equal? Fractured state and ruptured policy: The National Qualifications Framework in South Africa

This paper explores the making of the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) in South Africa, and asks how a policy that was intended to unite education and training, and build new forms of equality, failed to become hegemonic as the new state established itself. In so doing, it engages, and argues for, theoretical tools that help keep ‘the state’ at the centre of policy analysis. The paper explores a rupture within the NQF between the fields of education and training by examining practices through which the policy developed between 1985 and 2007. Informed by involvement in these events, the author draws on data gathered from documents and interviews with over 70 participants engaged in making the NQF. Using a conceptual vocabulary derived from Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory the paper analyses the way social antagonisms were constructed and political frontiers drawn in changing political conditions [Laclau, E., Mouffe, C., 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. Verso, London]. The paper argues that the emergence, development and rupture in the NQF can be explained in relation to shifting hegemonic practices that sought to organise social relations throughout the transition and within the post-apartheid era. The policy is portrayed as a feature of the political transition, marking the articulation of elements within the fields of education and training by hegemonic formations concerned with securing a democratic economy within a global market. The analysis runs that there has been a failure to maintain hegemony and that a rupture has occurred along a fault line within the South African state between practices building a corporatist state and those constructing a developmental state. The paper argues that the fractures built into the South African NQF point to complex challenges that states ‘at the margins’ face when simultaneously articulating with differing, contradictory globalised practices, whilst also seeking to build equitable national education systems. Local concerns remain significant in struggles to re-make the state, and education and training policy.     

美国公民教育对于我国思想政治教育的启示

近年来,公民教育在我国越来越受到重视,如何培养社会发展需要的独立民主精神,提高公民的法律意识和道德意识,增强公民的政治参与能力已成为我国思想政治教育的重要课题。本文从公民与公民教育入手,总结归纳了美国公民教育的核心理念和培养途径,重在解决我国思想政治教育在现实中面临的现状和遇到的难题,为我国的思想政治教育引入公民教育理念进行教育改革提供有益启示。     

Rationality and rationalisation in teacher education policy discourse in New Zealand

Background:?A newly elected centre-right coalition government in New Zealand was forced to deal with the cumulative fiscal consequences of two unforeseen challenges: a global financial crisis in September 2008 and two major seismic events in the country's second largest city in 2009 and 2010. This paper examines the way in which policies for initial and continuing teacher education were reshaped thereafter and the justifications provided by government for these changes.

Purpose:?The paper examines the plausibility of the government's contemporary ‘crisis’ discourse and aims to show how ‘rational’ education policy changes also carry broader ideological and political agendas for teacher education. Thus, current changes to teacher education policy are located in the historical context of trends over the last two decades.

Sources of Evidence:?The paper uses official statements by government and officials to show how they justified the policy changes as the only possible responses to an external economic crisis. Secondary sources of statistical economic data and policy texts are used to demonstrate that equally plausible alternative responses were overlooked, rejected or ignored.

Main argument:?The paper construes teacher education policy as both text and discourse. It is argued that the media statements of politicians and officials are intended to secure popular approval for public education austerity measures, while at the same time masking an underlying political and ideological project and ignoring the informed policy rebuttals of some educationists.

Conclusions:?The steps taken in New Zealand to respond to a short- to medium-term national fiscal crisis have major long-term consequences for teacher education. Most apparent is the continued failure to acknowledge the major incremental reductions in public subsidies for initial teacher education that have occurred year on year since the early 1990s and, instead, to reiterate the new public management ideology of further public service efficiencies.     

The developmental history of labor education in South Korea from a sociopolitical and economic perspective

Although there is a considerable body of research regarding the relationships between the sociopolitical and economic transition and its implications for the education system in South Korea, there is little known about how sociopolitical and economic factors affect labor education practice in South Korea. The premise of the study is that the development of labor education is driven not only by workers’ needs but also by the state's policy to increase productivity while keeping the labor movement and political expression under control. Since many educators often overlook the importance of labor education by excluding it from adult education, very few studies have been conducted to identify the relationship between sociopolitical and economic factors and labor education in South Korea. The purpose of the study is thus to examine the effect of particular combinations of social, political, and economic forces on the development and expansion of labor education in South Korea during the period between the 1960s and the 1990s. The results of the study can be compared with studies of other countries that underwent a similar pattern of political and economic transformation.     

Artificial intelligence and education in China

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the political economy of artificial intelligence (AI) and education in China, through an analysis of government policy and private sector enterprise. While media and policy discourse often portray China’s AI development in terms of a unified national strategy, and a burgeoning geopolitical contestation for future global dominance, this analysis will suggest a more nuanced internal complexity, involving differing regional networks and international corporate activity. The first section considers two key policy documents published by the central Chinese government, which are shown to implicate educational institutions as influential actors in national and regional strategies for AI development, with a significant role in plans to train domestic expertise. The second section outlines three prominent private education companies: New Oriental Group, Tomorrow Advancing Life (TAL), and Squirrel AI. These companies are selected to represent important aspects of China’s development of educational AI applications, including the influence of a well-established private education sector, and a growing interest in international corporate activity. The paper concludes with the suggestion that while central government policy reserves a significant role for education in the national AI strategy, the private sector is utilising favourable political conditions to rapidly develop educational applications and markets.     

The phantom national? Assembling national teaching standards in Australia’s federal system

In this paper, we use the development of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) as an illustrative case to examine how national schooling reforms are assembled in Australia’s federal system. Drawing upon an emerging body of research on ‘policy assemblage’ within the fields of policy sociology, anthropology and critical geography, we focus on interactions between three dominant ‘component parts’ in the development of the APST: the Australian federal government; New South Wales state government agencies; and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. While policies like the APST claim to be national in form and scope, our analysis suggests ‘the national’ is much more disjunctive and nebulous, constituted by a heterogeneous and emergent assemblage of policy ideas, practices, actors and organisations, which often reflect transnational traits and impulses. We thus see national reforms such as the APST as having a phantom-like nature, which poses challenges for researchers seeking to understand the making of national policies in federal systems.     

The west,the rest and the knowledge economy: a game worth playing?

The unprecedented geopolitical and economic shifts across the world have triggered much debate over the re-thinking of internationalisation of higher education (IoHE). This article discusses how a deeper understanding of the knowledge economy paradigm contributes to re-thinking IoHE, and how it reshapes the relations between the west and the rest in the international education industry. In the global knowledge race, the rules are set by the knowledge economy agenda, but these rules could be changed through appropriate IoHE strategies. The knowledge economy promotes a predominantly western-oriented knowledge paradigm, and IoHE contributes to its dissemination. For this reason, it is important to consider how the western theoretical underpinnings of IoHE and the knowledge economy are transformed and integrated in a given local context and if this game is worth playing.     

从国家与社会关系视角探讨我国教育元评估制度的建构

我国教育评估中长期存在政府处于主导地位的现象,当前国家决意要采取措施实现管办评分离,实现教育治理现代化,但是管评不分仍然是教育评估制度中争议的焦点。文章通过分析教育元评估制度建构的两种方案,即国家法团主义模式影响下的教育评估制度和多元主义模式影响下的教育评估制度,认为应在符合中国国情的法团主义语境下构建我国的教育元评估制度。通过对教育评估机构进行再评估,保障教育评估质量,提升教育质量,促进管评分离,实现教育治理现代化。     

“十三五”期间我国关键教育政策问题与对策建议

教育政策可以划分为横向与纵向两个维度。横向教育政策是针对国家教育事业发展整体所确定的行动依据和准则,包括教育公平政策、创新人才培养政策、教育体制政策、教育信息化政策和教育国际化政策。纵向教育政策是针对不同类型与层次的教育所制定的具体行动依据与准则,包括学前教育、义务教育、高中教育、职业教育、高等教育、继续教育、民族教育、特殊教育等领域的教育政策。基于我国横、纵向教育政策关键问题的本质、特征与原因,应依据党的十九大对教育事业做出的总体部署,从教育质量认证与评估体系、人才资历框架构建、教育内涵发展模式转变、优质教育资源扩大、产学研融合发展等方面制定颁布、修订与创新教育政策内容。     

Higher education privatisation,internationalisation and marketisation: Singaporean versus Malaysian models of Asian education hub policy

The metaphor of an ‘education hub’ was initially promoted as also a policy concept for reversing cross-border student flows to the West in both Malaysia and Singapore. The Singapore version of ‘Asian education hub policy’ represents a distinct economic policy model of higher education which has since also influenced the very Western contexts it was derived from. However, it appears the Singaporeans might have actually borrowed the policy concept from the Malaysians whose aspirations to reverse international student flows to the West was rather aligned to related national capacity development plans as still something of a public good. This paper will use a Malaysia-Singapore contrast to compare distinct developing country (national/regional) vs. developed country (globalised) conceptions of the Asian education hub model. On this exemplary basis, it will also outline an integrated framework to better make sense of the related yet also often conflicting imperatives of privatization, internationalization and marketization.     

新时代背景下我国特殊教育事业发展需求分析--基于2016-2019年全国两会特殊教育提案的文本分析

从我国的基本国情来看,教育政策不仅是政府有序开展教育工作的重要手段,也是推动教育事业快速发展的有力保障。全国两会是人民参与政治生活、推动国家决策科学化的主要平台。全国两会代表所提交的教育提案内容反映了民众教育需求的变化,并且在一定程度上推动人民意愿向政策性、制度性保障的转化。21世纪以来我国特殊教育事业呈现出快速发展的良好势头,但距新时代党和国家提出的"办好特殊教育"目标仍有一定差距。文章采用文本分析方法,运用语义网络分析技术,对2016-2019年全国两会特殊教育提案的答复文本进行分析,厘清了我国特殊教育事业发展的三大热点话题及其核心思想,就对三大热点话题的发展思路提出了相关建议。     

澳大利亚高等教育国际化的历史形态:起因、发展与未来趋势

澳大利亚高等教育国际化的发展已经有多年的历史,是经过不同阶段的逐渐演变而来。新时期澳大利亚推动高等教育国际化的战略、目标、具体措施与路线图的制订都凸显了其导向为能力建构、贸易取向和协同共生的新特征。依据研究提出以下启示:(1)从援助走向共赢:推动高等教育国际化政策的发展;(2)从松散走向规制:高等教育国际化的质量保障;(3)从沟通走向合作:向他国学习并重视伙伴关系的建立;(4)从战略到目标:高等教育国际化的长远计划。     

'Quality' in the Bologna Process: from 'competitive edge' to quality assurance techniques

The theoretical premise of this article is that policy is constructed and presented discursively. The Bologna process presents us with an example of such a policy construction process where the quality policy goals are set jointly in transnational settings, requiring different kinds of negotiations and discursive strategies. Discourse analysis of policy texts can be useful in tracing policy changes and describing them, but also in explaining and understanding some of the developments that lead up to the implementation of the policies and the (political) views which are embedded in the debates. In this article, some discourse analytical methods are used to analyse the potential meanings of ‘quality’ at the European and national level of the Bologna process. The linguistic analysis focuses on the different meanings of ‘quality’ and the value assumptions attached to it from the point of view of word choice, metaphors and argumentation strategies. The data used are the official declarations and communiqués of the Bologna process; the central background reports of the process; and brief national follow‐up reports prepared for the Berlin meeting of 2003 from Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands.     

全球性竞争环境下的我国高校发展战略

章认为,知识经济和经济全球化的发展实质上是全球性竞争的发展新阶段,高等教育国际化使我国高校也面临全球性竞争的挑战。章分析了我国高校在全球性竞争环境下所面临的教育资源的竞争、高校发展空间的竞争、综合国力的竞争等问题,并提出了我国高校应规划可持续人才发展战略、加快高等教育现代化的步伐、构建终身教育体系等对策。