Crossing-boundary Approaches and Collaborative Strategies in Education Governance

Abstract

In the face of the complexity and uncertainty brought about by rapid social changes, governments not only need to demonstrate efficiency but also require capabilities to respond and deal with emergencies when governing education issues. For promoting the understanding of education governance, this study examines crossing-boundary approaches and collaborative strategies from the theoretical perspective of public administration, and further develops an analytical framework for analyzing crossing-boundary and collaborative governance of educational issues. To that end, this study is identified as theory-building research by adopting an analytical conceptual approach. This paper firstly defines prominent concepts of crossing-boundary and collaborative governance based on the literature on public administration, and then illustrates the relationships between and diversity of the various concepts. Secondly, the study explores the features of crossing-boundary approaches and collaborative strategies based on the research results yielded from the content analysis of media news and governmental documents regarding a case study on the policy issue of bridging the gap between higher education and the job market in Taiwan. Finally, the paper provides a two-dimensional framework for analyzing various types of crossing boundaries and collaboration in education governance by synthesizing the theories derived from the literature on public administration and the practical evidence offered by the empirical case.