International education policy transfer – borrowing both ways: the Hong Kong and England experience

Abstract

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 'progressive' discourses in the West. England and Hong Kong are used as case studies. Since 2010, England's coalition government has prioritised its determination to look to jurisdictions like Hong Kong to inspire and justify reforms that emphasise traditional didactic approaches to teaching and learning.in contrast Hong Kong's reforms have sought to implement practices related to less formal and pressured, more student-centred lifelong learning, without losing sight of strengths derived from its Confucian heritage culture. Conclusions highlight factors that underpin English interest in Hong Kong education policy, values and practice, and point to the need for further attention to be given to these multidirectional and often contradictory processes by researchers concerned with the study of policy transfer.

Política educacional, exames internacionais de desempenho e a busca da escolarização de classe mundial: uma análise crítica

“…O que está emergindo é que as reformas educacionais nos países do Leste Asiático com alto desempenho não foram explicitamente concebidas para melhorar os resultados no PISA, e que as reformas educacionais estão voltadas para a redução da prevalência das características específicas (instrução direta, orientação para exames e foco na aquisição de conhecimentos acadêmicos) que os políticos ingleses admiram e tentam emular (FORESTIER;CROSSLEY, 2014;HAN, 2016).…”

PISA, policymaking and political pantomime: education policy referencing between England and Hong Kong

“…Hong Kong's education system allured and seduced English policymakers (Sellar and Lingard 2013;You and Morris 2015;Forestier and Crossley 2015). It was first signalled as a possible source of reference in the preliminary report of the International school effectiveness research project (1995), led by David Reynolds, and in a subsequent publication, Worlds apart?…”

Referencing and borrowing from other systems: the Hong Kong education reforms

“…The most marked change has been in reading literacy, for which Hong Kong's 4th graders improved from 14th in the 2001 cycle of PIRLS to 1st in 2011 (University of Hong Kong 2012). This performance, along with that of other 'high performing' systems in East Asia, has caught the attention of policy-makers in the West seeking to emulate their achievements (Forestier and Crossley 2015;Morris 2015).…”

“…The strong performance of East Asian education systems in international tests such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's (IEA) Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) has attracted increasing interest from policy-makers in Western education systems to reference or borrow features believed to explain their success (Alexander 2012;Forestier and Crossley 2015;Morris 2015;Han 2016), with Hong Kong one of the 'high performing' reference systems (OECD 2014).…”