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Policy convergence is an often-assumed outcome of transnational policy movement. However, different scholars have recently drawn attention to the need to unpack and critically interrogate such assumptions – going beyond the policy adoption stage and paying greater attention to sources of policy variation. This chapter engages with these debates by examining implementation patterns of performance-based accountability (PBA), a model that has expanded globally over the last few decades. Drawing on analyses of the Program for International Student Achievement (PISA) dataset of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) spanning 55 countries and seven cycles (from 2000 to 2018), our study relies on different convergence tests to assess, first, how and to what extent PBA policies have advanced across different educational systems over time, and, second, the explanatory power of two theoretically plausible sources of variation that might contribute to explaining divergence patterns – namely, administrative regimes and partisan politics. The chapter shows first that there is not a single pattern of convergence in practice around PBA, for while many countries might adopt similar discourses and policy instruments, the uses of such policies and their penetration in schools are very uneven. Second, our study shows that PBA patterns in practice are, to some extent, contingent on administrative regimes, whereas partisan politics appear to have a more limited explanatory power.
The movement of policy is a core feature of contemporary education reform. Many different concepts, including policy transfer, borrowing and lending, travelling, diffusion and mobility, have been deployed to study how and why policy moves across jurisdictions, scales of governance, policy sectors or organizations. However, the underlying theoretical perspectives and the foundational assumptions of different approaches to policy movement remain insufficiently discussed. To address this gap, this book places front and center questions of theory, ontology, epistemology and method related to policy movement. It explores a wide diversity of approaches to help understand the policy movement phenomena, providing a useful guide on global studies in education, as well as insights into the future of this dynamic area of work.
The literature on education policy movement – that is, the diffusion, transfer and translation of education policy globally – has continued to expand. This expanding research on policy movement has built on established approaches, while also reflecting the development of new approaches or the combination of existing ones. However, the underlying theoretical perspectives and the foundational assumptions of policy movement scholarship frequently remain implicit and insufficiently elaborated. This chapter responds by characterizing four related yet distinct orientations to understanding and studying education policy movement: cross-scalar approaches, discourse-centered approaches, policy mobilities approaches and decolonial approaches. The approaches discussed within and across these groups are distinguished in terms of their theoretical and methodological features. However, before presenting these approaches, the chapter first situates education policy movement within the broader phenomenon of globalization. This section explains how the political, economic and cultural dimensions of globalization affect education systems around the world and encourage or impede education policy movement. It is also attentive to how the features of globalization continue to evolve and, indeed, how globalization is experiencing a backlash along all three dimensions (political, economic and cultural). This discussion thus describes the “context of contexts” in which – and in reaction to which – scholarship on education policy movement itself continues to develop. The conclusions emphasize, first, that emerging approaches to education policy movement reflect eclecticism and, second, that the boundaries between different approaches to researching policy movement are now less clearly defined than before. The conclusions furthermore recognize the contributions and complementarities of different approaches, while also calling on scholars to strive for theoretical clarity, to move beyond descriptive studies and to engage with a range of theoretical perspectives in order to see and explain policy movement in new ways and to achieve more nuanced understandings of policy movement phenomena.
The movement of policy is a core feature of contemporary education reform. Many different concepts, including policy transfer, borrowing and lending, travelling, diffusion and mobility, have been deployed to study how and why policy moves across jurisdictions, scales of governance, policy sectors or organizations. However, the underlying theoretical perspectives and the foundational assumptions of different approaches to policy movement remain insufficiently discussed. To address this gap, this book places front and center questions of theory, ontology, epistemology and method related to policy movement. It explores a wide diversity of approaches to help understand the policy movement phenomena, providing a useful guide on global studies in education, as well as insights into the future of this dynamic area of work.
The movement of policy is a core feature of contemporary education reform. Many different concepts, including policy transfer, borrowing and lending, travelling, diffusion and mobility, have been deployed to study how and why policy moves across jurisdictions, scales of governance, policy sectors or organizations. However, the underlying theoretical perspectives and the foundational assumptions of different approaches to policy movement remain insufficiently discussed. To address this gap, this book places front and center questions of theory, ontology, epistemology and method related to policy movement. It explores a wide diversity of approaches to help understand the policy movement phenomena, providing a useful guide on global studies in education, as well as insights into the future of this dynamic area of work.
The movement of policy is a core feature of contemporary education reform. Many different concepts, including policy transfer, borrowing and lending, travelling, diffusion and mobility, have been deployed to study how and why policy moves across jurisdictions, scales of governance, policy sectors or organizations. However, the underlying theoretical perspectives and the foundational assumptions of different approaches to policy movement remain insufficiently discussed. To address this gap, this book places front and center questions of theory, ontology, epistemology and method related to policy movement. It explores a wide diversity of approaches to help understand the policy movement phenomena, providing a useful guide on global studies in education, as well as insights into the future of this dynamic area of work.
The movement of policy is a core feature of contemporary education reform. Many different concepts, including policy transfer, borrowing and lending, travelling, diffusion and mobility, have been deployed to study how and why policy moves across jurisdictions, scales of governance, policy sectors or organisations. However, the underlying theoretical perspectives and the foundational assumptions of different approaches to policy movement remain insufficiently discussed.
To address this gap, this book places front and center questions of theory, ontology, epistemology and method related to policy movement. It explores a wide diversity of approaches to help understand the policy movement phenomena, providing a useful guide on global studies in education, as well as insights into the future of this dynamic area of work.
