The Challenges of Educational Transfer and Borrowing

Sidney Leite

Northcentral University

Introduction

• In a globalized economy, communication and travel between countries is easier than ever before

• The ease of worldwide travel and access to information from other countries or regions allow for the exchange of ideas and the emulating of what some consider to be better practices or policies as seen elsewhere

• This “emulating” is more technically known as “educational policy borrowing or transfer”

Definition

• Educational or policy borrowing• “copying or emulating successful practice as it

is manifest in other countries” (Phillips & Schweisfurth, 2007)

• “a rational and objective quest to identify and learn from the evidence concerning the universal features of best practice” (Morris, 2012)

Definition

• Borrowing is a three-stage process (Phillips & Schweisfurth, 2007):• “Identification of successful practice”• “Introduction into the home context”• “Assimilation”

Why borrow?

• There are many possible reasons why a country, a system or a school should borrow educational practices from others. Among them:• To improve at home (Halls, 1990)• To remain competitive in the world• To gain a better understanding of society

(Durkheim, 1982)

Benefits of borrowing

• A few possible benefits of educational borrowing:• The ideas have been tested and seem to work

elsewhere• There is no need to reinvent the wheel• The case for change is more easily made• It allows for the establishment of new

benchmarking data at home• It allows for a model to be followed, giving

structure to something that lacked it at home

Benefits of borrowing

• An example of educational borrowing and cooperation is the UNIBRAL program that links Brazilian universities with the German higher education system (Jazdi, De Lucena & Göhner, 2006).

• Positive changes to curriculum• More courses• New practical experiments.

Cautions when borrowing

• Caution is called for when borrowing/transferring educational policies:• The target may have a very different socio-

economic-political reality than the source• The target may not fully understand all that is

involved in the implementation of the source’s policies

• Borrowing should not be used for “quick fixes” (Phillips & Ochs, 2003)

Cautions when borrowing

• An example of caution when borrowing educational policies is the Continuing Vocation Training in Europe• Germany, France and the U.K. have tried to

implement practices from other nations in their training programs, but with limited success

• A researcher has pointed out that the limited success is due to the fact that “education and training systems are embedded within a wider societal, institutional and cultural context that limits the success of transfer” (Turbin, 2001).

The McKinsey Report

• The McKinsey Report (McKinsey & Company, 2010) provides very important lessons extracted from a study of schools that demonstrated superior improvement. These lessons should provide policymakers guidance when borrowing educational policies and practices:• “A system can make significant gains from wherever it starts”• “There is too little focus on ‘process’ in the debate today”• “Each particular stage of the school system improvement

journey is associated with a unique set of interventions”• “A system’s context might not determine what needs to be

done, but it does determine how it is done”• “Six interventions occur equally at every performance stage for

all systems”• “Systems further along the journey sustain improvement by

balancing school autonomy with consistent teaching practice”

Conclusion

• There are several factors that need to be taken into consideration when borrowing educational policies, and some of the most important are:• Educational policy borrowing/transfer has serious

implications and can fundamentally impact how education takes place in the target location

• The social, political, economic, and cultural background of the source and the target all affect the implementation and outcomes

• Important lessons learned through academic studies, such as the McKinsey Report (McKinsey & Company, 2010) really matter

• The process by which the changes take place is extremely important

References

Durkheim, E. (1982). The rules of sociological method and selected texts on sociology and its method. London: Macmillan.

Halls, W. (ed.). (1990). Comparative education: Contemporary issues and trends. London: Jessica Kingsley, UNESCO

Jazdi, N.; De Lucena, V.; & Göhner, P. (2006). UNIBRAL: An educational and research cooperation between Brazil and Germany. In Frontiers in Education Conference: 36th Annual (pp. 20-25).

McKinsey & Company (2010). How to world's most improved school systems keep getting better. Retrieved from http://mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/education/how-the-worlds-most-improved-school-systems-keep-getting-better_download-version_final.pdf

Morris, P. (2012). Pick "n” mix, select and project; Policy borrowing and the quest for ”world class" schooling: An analysis of the 2010 schools white paper. Journal Of Education Policy, 27(1), 89-107.

Phillips, D. & Ochs, K. (2003). Processes of policy borrowing in education: some explanatory and analytical devices. Comparative Education, 39(4), pp. 451-461.

Phillips, D. & Schweisfurth, M. (2007). Comparative and international education: An introduction to theory, method and practice. New York: Continuum Books.

Turbin, J. (2001). Policy borrowing: Lessons from European attempts to transfer training practices. International Journal Of Training And Development, 5(2), pp. 96-111.