Why do Policy-makers Adopt Global Education Policies? Toward a Research Framework on the Varying Role of Ideas in Education Reform

Abstract

Introduction Globalization is profoundly altering the education policy landscape. It introduces new problems in education agendas, compresses time and space in policy processes, and revitalizes the role of a range of supra-national players in educational reform. This deterritorialization of the education policy process has important theoretical and epistemological implications. Among others, it is forcing comparative education scholars to pay more attention to the politics and dynamics involved in the policy adoption stage. Policy adoption is a moment that has acquired a great deal of strategic significance in current education reforms. Indeed, in the contemporary global governance scenario, education policy processes cannot be analyzed by simply looking at the conventional sequence of agenda setting, policy design, implementation, and evaluation stages; nor by looking at these different moments simply from a national optique. Due to transnational influences of a very different nature, education reforms are more and more often externally initiated, and multiple scales interact in the dynamics through which these reforms are negotiated, formulated, implemented, and even evaluated. Focusing on policy adoption implies paying closer attention to, and producing more empirical research on, the processes, reasons and circumstances that explain how and why policy-makers (or other education stakeholders) select, embrace, and/or borrow global education policies, and aim to implement them in their educational realities. Looking at the adoption stage has the potential to introduce new perspectives in the study of global education policy (GEP), as well as to disentangle several aspects of the global policy debate that, in comparative education, have been often captured by the convergence-divergence dilemma. To contribute to building this research strand, I suggest looking more in depth at the role that ideas play in policy decisions and related policy outcomes in a global governance scenario. It is noteworthy that policy analysis – not only in the education field - tends to neglect an explicit reflection on the role of ideas in processes of policy and/or institutional change. To a great extent, this happens due to the difficulty in defining and categorizing ideas, as well as in distinguishing them from other social phenomena (Kjaer & Pedersen, 2001). Despite these challenges, I argue that a more explicit conceptualization and theorization on the role of ideas will contribute to providing a better account of the nature, processes, and outcomes of GEP. Finally, I also argue that to understand why external policy ideas are selected and retained in particular places, we need to look more closely at contextual contingencies of a different nature, especially at those of a political and institutional nature. ‘Context’ is one of those concepts often used - and abused - in comparative education. It carries strong semiotic connotations and its meaning is often taken for granted. To address this frequent absence, in this article, I will explore how a range of key contextual variables can be operationalized in GEP research.