Policy borrowing in the gulf cooperation council countries: Cultural scripts and epistemological conflicts

Abstract

Globalization through educational borrowing has transformed the K-12 educational landscape driving and shaping educational reforms worldwide by saturating nations’ educational polices and practices reducing education to products and services globally sold to those with adequate resources. Governments worldwide seize the opportunity to import educational theories, policies and practices anticipating quick fixes and delivered results to their educational systems. However, a major concern about the borrowing process is that educational policies and practices that are effective in their original context may not prove effective elsewhere. In particular, the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have developed educational reforms by importing policies and practices tested in the West. Against the backdrop of the educational borrowing processes in the GCC, this paper identifies several cultural scripts in the region based on reviewing the existing literature and examines how the local educational epistemological beliefs undermine or support the implementation of a borrowed educational policy.