The ‘new Orientalism’: education policy borrowing and representations of East Asia

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the discourses concerning, and actors promoting, the recent ‘rise’ of East Asia in the global trend of education policy borrowing. It focuses on the ways in which English policymakers and media have represented the ‘success’ of East Asian education systems in international large-scale tests. Taking the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and McKinsey as two illustrative examples, it also investigates how transnational policy actors have shaped the global knowledge production of East Asian education. This article argues that England – and more broadly Anglo-American societies – has represented high-performing East Asian societies as both an inspiration for education reforms and a threat to the domestic economy. The dominant ways of perceiving, representing and referencing East Asian education and the embedded East–West power relation are largely framed in a manner that continues the legacy of Orientalism.