This study investigates the adoption process of a TVET policy, usually driven by the state, by private actors. Considering a Cultural Political Economy analytical approach, we use the adoption of Sector Skills Councils in three Chilean sectors (mining, wine, maintenance) to examine the different factors that explain the process. We draw on…

International organisations' (IOs) legitimacy in global educational governance is commonly seen as a function of their regulative or normative power. By contrast, this paper stresses the increasing importance of scientific research and policy-relevant knowledge and its strategic production, dissemination and transfer by IOs. The article examines…

Over the past decades, the Vietnamese government has strategically encouraged the import of the 'Western' curriculum through the so-called Advanced Programmes. It is envisioned that by learning from the more advanced systems such as Australia, Canada, the US, and the UK, Vietnamese universities will be able to overhaul their outdated curriculum…

The lived realities of agents involved in educational borrowing or transfer are often omitted as research and discussions reside predominantly at a macro level. Through the lens of a comparative educational change framework synthesising concepts in educational change and comparative education, this study examines the lived experiences of teachers…

In Asian and Chinese contexts, internationalisation fundamentally means the adoption of Western modes of education. Given how much internationalisation is being promoted at the national and institutional levels, the authors would like to find out how well the related initiatives and reform are received by college professors at the front line of…

Throughout history educational leaders have looked to other countries and have attempted to learn by borrowing useful examples to implement in their own educational systems. As recent comparative policy research shows, processes of policy lending and borrowing have their own socio-historically defined dynamics. In this paper, the authors approach…

The power of local borders to resist and prevent transnational mobilities in education has received little attention in comparative education. In this article we explore the motif of "border immunology' with reference to new history, a mobile paradigm of history teaching, and Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot history textbooks as types of…

This article explores the discourses concerning, and actors promoting, the recent 'rise' of East Asia in the global trend of education policy borrowing. It focuses on the ways in which English policymakers and media have represented the 'success' of East Asian education systems in international large-scale tests. Taking the Organization for…

Researchers interested in the global flow of educational ideas and programmes have long been interested in the role of so-called "reference societies." The article investigates how top scorers in large-scale assessments are framed as positive or negative reference societies in the education policy-making debate in German mass media and…

This article focuses on the structural changes Turkish higher education is going through as a result of Turkey's integration into the European educational space. The focus of the article is the process of policy transfer. For this purpose, the article outlines the changes in Turkish higher education comprehensively to explain the dynamics of the…

The paper examines the transfer of the Bologna Process (BP) outside Europe, focusing on its "external dimension" and dynamics in global settings. It argues that the BP impacts on the internationalisation activities of universities, especially with regard to cross-border transparency of qualifications, transnational improvement of quality…

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…

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…

The last three decades has witnessed a burgeoning comparative education as a field of study in Asia. In China comparative education has taken a phenomenal course from a small and relatively low-key field in search of an identity in the late 1970s to a vibrant one today with a sizable group of scholars across the country, seeking to integrate…

Countries reforming their education systems frequently look outside of their borders for best practice and seek to import policies, practices and programs that appear to incorporate it. In so doing they appear to contribute to the increasing globalization of education. Scholars of comparative education examining this process have focused on the…