This book attempts to theorize cross-national attraction by comparing American and Chinese attraction to Japanese education. The study takes a long historical view - spanning roughly from the Meiji Restoration (1868) to today - to determine when and why Japanese education has become attractive to these two countries. It uses a combination of official reports and scholarly analysis as sources to evaluate attraction. The study is underpinned by recently developed models of educational transfer and it attempts to use a comparison of American and Chinese attraction to Japanese education as a means to further develop emerging theoretical understandings of cross-national attraction in education. The research begins with the more familiar case of American attraction to Japanese education finding that the American case shows a long period of historical neglect punctuated by a short burst of feverish attraction to Japanese education in the 1980s. The reasons for this attraction - when it finally did occur - seemed to be partially driven by Japanese economic competitiveness and partially driven by domestic political agendas within the United States. The domestic impulses for attraction are given particular attention in the analysis because few studies have detailed this aspect of attraction. The less familiar Chinese case shows a much longer educational relationship with not one, but two distinguishable periods of attraction to Japan. The first period- roughly occurring at the turn of the 20th century - was so feverish that it led to wholesale ‘borrowing’ of many aspects of the Japanese education system. A second period of Chinese attraction arguably began in the early 1990s continuing through today. The research investigates the reasons for this attraction again revealing a combination of external and internal developments that catalyze attraction. Perhaps because it is partially obscured by historical legacies and current political trends, little research has attempted to investigate Chinese attraction to Japanese education and thus the current attraction of Chinese observers to Japanese education is of particular note.By comparing these two stories of attraction (and neglect), it becomes apparent that cross-national attraction is as much a product of internal forces within these two countries, as it is a result of changes in Japanese education. The study finds that cross-national attraction is therefore best understood as a changing and malleable idea that arises as much from internal as external stimuli. This makes it vital to pay closer attention to the role of human actors in creating cross-national attraction in education. Further comparison of the two cases suggests the need to reorganize the existing theoretical models of cross-national attraction. In the final chapter, an attempt at reorganizing the models is attempted in the form of a Contextual Map of Cross-National Attraction.

For over a decade, Mainland China has been embarking on an ambitious nation-wide education reform ('New Curriculum Reform') for its basic education. The reform reflects China’s propensity to borrow selected educational policies from elsewhere, particularly North America and Europe. Chinese scholars have used a local proverb "the West wind has overpowered the East wind" to describe this phenomenon of ‘looking West’. But what do we mean by educational policy borrowing from the West? What are the educational policies in China's new curriculum reform that are perceived to be borrowed from the West? To what extent have the borrowed educational policies in China's new curriculum reform been accepted, modified, and rejected by the various educational stakeholders? How does culture influence the various educational stakeholders in China in interpreting and mediating educational policy borrowing from the West? How do the findings of this study on China’s education reform inform and add to the existing theories on and approaches to on cross-cultural educational policy borrowing? This book answers the above questions by critically discussing China’s policy borrowing from the West through its current reform for primary and secondary education. It presents the latest in-depth research findings from a three-year empirical study (2013-2015) with school principals, teachers, students and other educational stakeholders across China. This study offers new insights into China’s educational policy borrowing from the West and international implications on cross-cultural educational transfer for academics, policymakers and educators.

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.

SUZANNE MAJHANOVICH and CHRISTINE FOX Originally published in the journal International Review of Education, Volume 54, Nos 3–4, 287–297. DOI: 10. 1007/s11159-008-9097-9 Springer Science+Business Media B. V. 2008 The papers in this collection have been selected from over 800 presentations given at the XIIIth World Congress of Comparative Education Societies, held at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, from 3 to 7 September 2007. The Congress was hosted on behalf of the WCCES by the Mediterranean Society of Comparative Education and in association with the International Association of Intercultural Education. For such an int- national gathering, it was appropriate that the theme chosen was ‘‘Living Together: Education and Intercultural Dialogue’’, providing scope for c- tributions by participating scholars, policy makers and practitioners in e- cation from some 70 countries. The presenters approached contemporary educational issues with knowledge and insights about a world characterized by the tensions and demands of global and local interests, by regional c- ?icts and post-con?ict deliberations, and by the global diaspora, with c- tural, religious and linguistic diversity within both small and large states. Only a very few papers could be included for this collection, but they rep- sent some of the key topics under discussion during the Congress. The papers were selected from the recommendations of the convenors of the 13 Thematic Groups, the keynote addresses and several symposia.

This book is a cutting-edge collection of articles inspired by the writings of Robert Cowen about comparative education. Authors take up Cowen’s central concerns: re-theorising the field of comparative education, rethinking the interpretive concepts that are used by comparative education researchers, and the relationships between them.

Sparked by the confluence of accelerating domestic transformation and increasingly explicit impacts from ‘globalization’, the Japanese education system has undergone tremendous changes during the turbulence of the past decade. This volume, which brings together some of the foremost scholars in the field of Japanese education, analyzes these recent changes in ways that help us ‘reimagine’ Japan and Japanese educational change at this critical juncture. Rather than simply updating well-worn Western images of Japan and its educational system, the aim of the book is a much deeper critical rethinking of the outmoded paradigms and perspectives that have rendered the massive shifts that have taken place in Japan largely invisible to or forgotten by the outside world. This ‘reimagining’ thus restores Japan to its place as a key comparative link in the global conversation on education and lays out new pathways for comparative research and reflection. Ranging widely across domains of policy and practice, and with a balance of Japanese and foreign scholars, the volume is also indicative of new directions in educational scholarship worldwide: approaches that center global interactions on domestic education and contribute to a far greater recognition of the polycentric, polycontextual World unfolding today. This book will be of keen interest to scholars of education worldwide, as well as those working in and across anthropology, sociology, policy studies, political science, and area studies given that contemporary transformations in Japan at once reflect and approximate political, social, and educational shifts occurring throughout the World in the early decades of the 21st century.