Educational policy borrowing

Today in the era of globalization, many countries require the borrowing of policies in order to integrate into the globalized world and to become the equal participants in the so-called knowledge-based economy. As the economic and social change affect the educational structures and content, education needs to defer to globalization in pace and direction. Thus, globalization leads to “internationalism in education, that is, to an international model of education” (Steiner-Khamsi,  2004, p. 4).

“Policy borrowing” is a term established in the context of comparative studies and which is often interpreted as “learning from experience of foreign systems” (Steiner-Khamsi, 2014, p.153). According to Philips & Ochs (2004), borrowing is a deliberate and purposive phenomenon which is adopted to fit the home circumstances and has then become a part of the home system. Policy borrowing is a trend in education that comparativists, from the time of Marc-Antoine Jullien (1775–1848) onwards, have been concerned with the transferability of ideas from one country to another due to the process’s ambiguity nature (Philips, 2006); because taking on the board educational ideas from one country will have the positive effects as well as the absolutely opposite consequences. In this sense, a number of researchers assert the importance of analyzing and adapting the policy borrowing before transferring it to the local context. Since the local context is often alien to the implementation of policy which has been developed under different circumstances, the adoption process can create enormous problems. Governments can eliminate the risk of policy failure by taking a cautious step forward which considers both contexts: local and transnational (Steiner-Khamsi, 2014). 

Nowadays we are surrounded by “well-travelled” reforms to which policy makers refer as “international reforms” due to their global status. The traveling reform undergoes many modifications and alterations. Depending on how long it has been around, it may have become increasingly “deteritorialized - everybody’s and no one’s at the same time” (Steiner-Khamsi, 2014, p.160). An approach to the educational borrowing will be deteritorialized and abused unless governments stop to “ignore processes of research and inquiry, to jump from problem to solution without using evidence and to marginalize educators from the policy process” (Reid, 2011, p.8). 

In a nutshell, borrowing a global education policy is fruitful only if it is imported as a whole package with completed elements which attract a country to buy the entire package rather than selectively grabbed elements. Further the implementation process of the reform is supervised under the international consultancy by signing a mutual agreement. Such agreements contribute to the diffusion of innovation, international student mobility and speculative analysis of education system.

So, if educational borrowings became deteritorialized, why do governments need to receive and further translate them? Is there a certain kind of attraction of educational policy?

References:

Phillips, D. (2006). Investigating policy attraction in education, Oxford Review of Education, 32(5), 551-559. DOI: 10.1080/03054980600976098

Phillips, D., and Ochs, K. (2004). Researching policy borrowing: some methodological challenges in comparative education,  British Educational Research Journal 30(6), 773-784.

Reid, A. (2011). Policy borrowing will not ‘close the achievement gap’, Social Alternatives 30 (4), 5-9.

Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2004). Globalization in education: real or imagined. In G. Steiner-Khamsi (Ed.), The global politics of educational borrowing and lending (pp.1-6). New York, NY: Teacher College Press.

Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2014). Cross-national policy borrowing: understanding reception and translation,  Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 34(2), 153-167.