Background: This article critically discusses the key tensions and challenges arising from the educational policy borrowing in China, through its current education reform. Focussing on the new curriculum reform (NCR), the paper highlights the interactions and conflicts between foreign and local ideologies and practices. Sources of evidence: The…

China's recent education reforms are a result of selective policy borrowing from "the West". Although comparativists have highlighted the importance of cultural context in policy borrowing in China, what remains relatively under-explored is the epistemological basis for cultural views that mediate policy transfer. This article argues…

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…