World Yearbook of Education 2012 Policy Borrowing and Lending in Education World Yearbook of Education Series

The phenomenon of "travelling reforms" has become an object of great professional interest and intensive academic scrutiny. The fact that the same set of educational reforms is transferred from one country to another made scholars wonder whether policy transfer has increased as a result of globalization. But also the fact that policy makers increasingly import "best practices "and international standards and use them as a tool to accelerate reform has captured the imagination of many that deal with policy studies. An international comparative perspective is key for understanding why reforms travel from one corner of the world to another. Not surprisingly, the study of policy borrowing and lending constitutes one of the core research topics of comparative policy studies; a new area of research that links comparative education with policy studies.

The World Yearbook of Education 2012 brings together a diverse range of perspectives on education policy through contributions from internationally renowned authors. It reflects on the way policy borrowing and lending is reconfiguring the world of education and offers a new collection of insights into the changes occurring across the world. It particularly focuses on:

• The political and economic reasons for policy borrowing,
• The agencies, international networks and regimes that instigate policy change,
• The process of borrowing and lending
• The impact of these systems, agendas and institutions on indigenous settings.

This book will prove invaluable to researchers of globalization and to policy experts, especially those interested in comparative and international educational studies. It is also essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students and anyone involved in the sociology, economy or history of education.

Gita Steiner-Khamsi is Professor of Comparative and International Education at Teachers College Columbia University, New York, US.

Florian Waldow is Research Director at the University of Münster, Germany.

Part I: Reasons 1. Politics of Policy Borrowing 2. Economics of Policy Borrowing 3. Harmonization, Fabricating an Educational Space and the Concept of Reference Societies 4. Cross-National Policy Attraction, Emulation, Lesson-Drawing Part II: Agencies 5. Non-State Actors, Theory of the Post-Bureaucratic State 6. International Networks 7. Transnational Regimes: OECD, World Bank 8. South-South or East-East Cooperation Part III: Processes 9. Diffusion of Beliefs and Standards and Practices Themselves 10. Policy Learning by Means of Advocacy Coalitions 11. Agenda Setting in Evidence-Based Policy Planning 12. Agenda Setting 13. Reception, Projection Part IV: Impact 14. Convergence, Isomorphism 15. Differentiation between First-Order, Second-Order and Third-Order Change 16. Impact on Existing Practices 17. Translation, Interpretation, Local Adaptation, Indigenization

Gita Steiner-Khamsi is Professor of Comparative and International Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, USA.

Florian Waldow is Research Director at the University of Münster, Germany.