FRAMEWORKS FOR ANALYSIS
5. POLICY BORROWING IN EDUCATION: A COMPOSITE MODEL Our composite model incorporates an analysis of the impulses which initiate
Legislation, reports, etc.
Factors in cross-national
attraction Result
the State of Popular Education, 1858
for the introduction of compulsory
elementary education Cross Report on the
Elementary
Education Acts, 1888
strategies, enabling structures, processes
Potential models for the solution of problems resulting from legislation 1902 Education Act
(the Balfour Act)
strategies, enabling structures, processes
Introduction of local education authorities 1918 Education Act
(the Fisher Act)
strategies, enabling structures, processes
Principled support for notion of continuation schools
1944 Education Act (the Butler Act)
guiding philosophy, ambitions, enabling structures, processes, techniques
Selective secondary education, based on a tripartite system Robbins Report on
Higher Education, 1963
strategies, enabling structures Expansion of higher education
HMI Report on Education in the Federal Republic, 1986
enabling structures, processes Introduction of National Curriculum;
National testing (Source: Phillips, 2003, derived from Ochs & Phillips, 2002a )
Here, then, we attempt to analyse the aspects of education elsewhere that have attracted attention in terms of British interest in education in Germany. But we can now incorporate our typology of cross-national attraction into a larger model that takes the processes of policy borrowing back a stage and also anticipates future developments once initial ‘attraction’ has become manifest.
5. POLICY BORROWING IN EDUCATION: A COMPOSITE MODEL
POLICY
‘BORROWING’
IN EDUCATION IMPULSES
-INTERNAL DISSATISFACTION - SYSTEMIC COLLAPSE -NEGATIVE EXTERNAL EVALUATION -ECONOMIC CHANGE / COMPETITION -POLITICAL AND OTHER IMPERATIVES
-NOVEL CONFIGURATIONS -KNOWLEDGE/SKILLS INNOVATION
-POLITICAL CHANGE
EXTERNALISING POTENTIAL -GUIDING PHILOSOPHY
-AMBITIONS/GOALS -STRATEGIES -ENABLING STRUCTURES
-PROCESSES -TECHNIQUES
-THEORETICAL -REALISTIC/PRACTICAL
- ‘QUICK FIX’
-‘PHONEY’
-ADAPTATION -SUITABILITY OF CONTEXT
-SPEED OF CHANGE -SIGNIFICANT ACTORS
SUPPORT NATIONAL/LOCAL
RESISTANCE
‘NON-DECISION’
REJECTION -IMPACT ON EXISTING
SYSTEM/MODUS OPERANDI -ABSORPTION OF EXTERNAL FEATURES
-SYNTHESIS -EVALUATION
1. CROSS-NATIONAL ATTRACTION CONTEXTUAL FRAMEWORK
2. DECISION
3. IMPLEMENTATION 4. INTERNALISATION/
INDIGENISATION
Figure 2. Policy Borrowing in Education: Composite Processes
(Source: Phillips & Ochs, 2003)
5.1 Impulses
This more complex model starts with the impulses that spark off the types of cross-national attraction described in the typology. These impulses might originate in various phenomena:
– Internal dissatisfaction: On the part of parents, teachers, students, inspectors and others
– Systemic collapse: Inadequacy or failure of some aspect of educational provision; the need for educational reconstruction following war or natural disaster
– Negative external evaluation: For example, in international studies of pupil attainment such as TIMSS or PISA, or through widely reported and influential research by academics
– Economic change/competition: Sudden changes in the economy (as in South- East Asian countries); new forms of competition creating additional needs in training
– Political and other imperatives: The need to ‘turn around’ policy as voters become dissatisfied; responsibilities through aid donation or occupation following conflict
– Novel configurations: Globalising tendencies, effects of EU education and training policy, various international alliances, for example
– Knowledge/skills innovation: Failure to exploit new technologies – Political change: New directions as a result of change of government,
particularly after a long period of office of a previous administration
We are dealing here with the preconditions for change; the next segment of the model describes the various foci of attraction and places them, as we have seen, against the background of the complex contexts in which they are embedded:
historical, political, economic, social, cultural, religious, demographic, and administrative.
5.2 Decision making
The next stage is that of decision making. We see the types of decision falling into various categories:
– Theoretical: Governments might decide on policies as broad as ‘choice and diversity’, for example, and they might retain general ambitions not easily susceptible to demonstrably effective implementation
– Realistic/practical: Here we can isolate measures which have clearly proved successful in a particular location without their being the essential product of a variety of contextual factors which would make them not susceptible to
introduction elsewhere; an assessment will have been made as to their immediate implementational feasibility.
– ‘Quick fix’: This is a dangerous form of decision-making in terms of the use of foreign models, and it is one that politicians will turn to at times of immediate political necessity. Examples might be various measures introduced in the countries of Eastern Europe – often as the result of advice from outside advisers - following the political changes of 1989.
– ‘Phoney’: This category incorporates the kind of enthusiasms shown by politicians for aspects of education in other countries for immediate political effect, without the possibility of serious follow-through. An example might be the case of American ‘magnet schools’ which attracted the attention of Kenneth Baker when he was Secretary of State for Education in England in the 1980s.
The nearest example to such schools that emerged in Baker’s 1988 Education Reform Act was found in the city technology colleges, which were by no means an instant success and which clearly did not resemble the ‘model’ of the magnet schools of the United States.
5.3 Implementation
Implementation will depend on the contextual conditions of the ‘borrower’
country. Speed of change will in turn depend on the attitudes of what can be termed
‘significant actors’ – these are people (or institutions) with the power to support or resist change and development, and they can be particularly effective in decentralised systems, where there is less direct control. Resistance might take the form of delayed decision, or simply of non-decision.
5.4 Internalisation/indigenisation
Finally, there is a stage of ‘internalisation’, or – as it has been called –
‘indigenisation’ of policy. The policy ‘becomes’ part of the system of education of the borrower country, and it is possible to assess its effects on the pre-existing arrangements in education and their modus operandi.
There are four steps in this segment of the model:
1. Impact on the existing system / modus operandi: Here, we examine the motives and objectives of the policy makers, in conjunction with the existing system.
2. The absorption of external features: Close examination of context is essential to understand how, and the extent to which features from another system have been adopted.
3. Synthesis: Here, we describe the process through which educational policy and practice become part of the overall strategy of the ‘borrower’ country. Carnoy &
Rhoten (2002) discuss the process of ‘re-contextualisation’ in acknowledging that context affects the interpretation and implementation of such ‘borrowed’
policies.
4. Evaluation: Finally, internalisation requires reflection and evaluation to discern whether the expectations of borrowing have been realistic or not. The results of evaluation might then start the whole process again, with further investigation of foreign models to put right perceived deficiencies.
This brings the model full-circle. In a Hegelian sense, we see a process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, with a ‘synthesised’ system ripe for further development as the developmental process begins again.