Abstract
The past decade has seen increasing international education activity and interest from policymakers and think tanks in looking to other countries for educational reform strategies. This “new isomorphism”—the notion of global best practices in education—has been the subject of intensive debate between advocates and critics. But missing from this debate is an empirical account of what actually happens when global leaders gather, whether these leaders accept or resist borrowing from abroad, and, more constructively, how such gatherings might be organized to promote productive learning. Given these gaps, our research examines the emergence of what we call International Learning Communities (ILCs), which are sustained efforts to support public education leaders in ongoing cross-national learning. In this paper, we describe the nature of these communities and re-evaluate their role in the new isomorphism. Drawing on observations of two such communities and interviews with 30 ILC participants, we conclude that this model offers three types of learning: borrowing, co-construction, and systems thinking. While we view each as useful, we suggest that systems thinking is critical if international lessons are going to be effectively assimilated into coherent, contextually-appropriate strategies. Our findings are relevant not only for the continued study and development of system-level international learning, but also for all who seek to learn from other nations’ educational policy and practice.
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Notes
We do not name all of the participant countries in an effort to protect the anonymity of the networks we studied.
Respondents were quick to say that this was not about the experts themselves, for whom they had immense respect. But given that they had already read much of their work, most participants felt they learned more novel ideas through site visits and discussions.
This is closer to the epistemic community perspectives discussed above, and specifically to the “policy movements” perspective of Dale and Robertson, which emphasizes that policy movements are “relational, dialectical and co-constitutive” (Dale and Robertson 2012). It also parallels the notion of “expansive” as opposed to “restrictive” policy learning, where the motivation for cross-national learning is a more collaborative effort to develop better knowledge (Hodgson and Spours 2016).
While outside observers might question the notion that CTE is any less integrated—indeed, accounts of the historical development of vocational education systems (Anderson and Hassel 2013; Thelen 2004) would suggest they are highly intertwined with a country’s particular labor market and culture—it is notable that system leaders make these distinctions.
We observed, however, that differences of language could prevent new (English) concepts and categories being applied to or adopted by some countries. This could be seen as a helpful buffer against isomorphism or a limit to the benefits of co-construction, where participants’ perspectives are not equally subjected to challenge. Further research on ILCs might focus on language to delineate the multiple ways in which both having a shared and a singular language can allocate power across participants.
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Mehta, J., Peterson, A. International learning communities: What happens when leaders seek to learn across national boundaries?. J Educ Change 20, 327–350 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-019-09348-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-019-09348-0