Education Policy Borrowing: Professional Standards for School Leaders in China

Abstract

Realizing there is a global policy convergence that emphasizes the standardized key qualities of and expectations for “successful” school leaders, this article provides an in-depth analysis on the initiation of the Professional Standards for Compulsory Schools Principals (Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China 2013) in China. Using policy borrowing as an analytical framework, this study sheds light on critical questions concerning why this standards-based leadership policy is borrowed, and how this policy document responds to local Chinese contexts. In alignment with an understanding of national policy across the local-global nexus, which is derived from critical policy analysis, this study uncovers the influences of global leadership discourses on its formation. It also focuses on the ways in which neoliberal ideology and Chinese sociocultural contexts have intertwined, and how this negotiates and shapes this policy. Finally, this article concludes that the introduction of this initiative suggests China’s efforts in its quest for a world-class education system, through the standardization of school leaders’ practices, which is both locally and internationally situated. It argues that while understanding the contested positions on standards-based policies around the globe, China did not blindly borrow this policy from “the West,” but rather employs it as a strategy for legislation, to reposition itself in the global order and gain broader international recognition.