Global Education Reform Movement Research Articles

What do you need to know to live in the world? Global educational reform and the democratisation of knowledge

ABSTRACT This paper is an interpretive study of a Global Educational Reform Movement marshalling Global Education, Global Citizenship Education, Global Competence and twenty-first Century Skills in response to the problems caused by capitalist globalisation and a technological society. What kind of knowledge is being endorsed by this educational reform movement? Using Critical Discourse Analysis this paper shows that Interpretivist methodological capability is part of what GERM actors think you need to know to live in the world. This raises a puzzle: why are technocratic organisations engaged in metrological politics endorsing interpretive methodological capability? GERM is content driven and despite many well founded critiques, needs to be theorised under the rubric of Global Knowledge Politics. I employ the concept ‘knowledge monopolies’ from Canadian Political Economist Harold Innis as a way of theorising the complexities of GERM. My study points to the necessity for a conversation about the democratisation of knowledge.

Rethinking teaching in the age of Artificial Intelligence

The emergence of powerful natural language Artificial Intelligence systems, such as ChatGPT 4.0, has created a new dynamic in schools, colleges and universities. Some see the present moment as a turning point in our thinking about teaching, learning and assessment, with new approaches and practices suddenly becoming possible. Others are concerned that unleashing powerful AI tools on an unready education system may distort and damage a fragile system. AI tools can be used to advance the agenda of technification and the global education reform movement (GERM) or can be used to enable a mindset shift to a more engaged, authentic, compassionate, and collaborative approach to teaching and learning. This paper explores this moment of truth.

Choice and control: corpus-based discourse analysis of teacher education policy in England (2010-2021)

Education policy in recent years has dramatically repositioned the role and status of teachers, trainee teachers and teacher education in the UK and beyond. This paper focuses specifically on education policy in England; however, it has broader significance for those interested in education and teacher education in international policy contexts. Two corpora were constructed for the project; one collated education policy documents in 2010–2021, and another collated education policy documents in 1970–2009. The analysis used the corpus linguistic tool Wordsmith 8. Keywords, concordance, and collocation, were used to examine themes within the discourse of the focus corpus, supported by a critical policy discourse analysis frame. The themes identified in this analysis were governance (control) and marketisation (choice). These themes have strong connections to analyses of the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) and contribute to understanding how education policy discourses can frame teacher education. The positioning of trainee teachers as both product and subject of initial teacher education in education policy documents is explored in the analysis.

Trends in global education reform since the 1990 s: Looking for the right way

Reforming national education systems has become a global phenomenon. International education development literature describes education policies and consequent reforms in different countries around the world. This article describes the emergence of the global education reform movement (GERM) and its main manifestations in national education policies and reforms since the 1990 s. The aim of this article is to show how GERM has evolved during the past decades as a neoliberal educational change orthodoxy and how it has become challenged by the international comparative data and research. The conclusion is that the success of whole-system educational change depends on national policymakers’ understanding of the difference between wrong and right drivers in planned education reforms for social and economic development of their countries. Global education reform movement as it is described in this article has not been able to improve quality, equity, and efficiency of education although that has been its basic promise.

The gendered construction of teachers’ identities and practices: feminist critical discourse analysis of policy texts in Ireland

ABSTRACT While gender and education studies abound, there are fewer studies examining how the gendered construction of teachers’ identities and practices are enabled, and constrained, in policy and research. Here, I conduct a Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis of this gendered construction in four policy texts in teacher education in Ireland, set within a neoliberal imaginary playing-out across OECD countries, and in mainstream research of teacher effectiveness. The analysis uses a metaphor of confinement to trouble the problem, and to generate wider representations and emancipatory possibilities. The findings reveal how this reform ensemble in Ireland acts more often than not in sync with a global education reform movement in gender-blind ways to constrain, if not actively confine (mostly women) teachers’ voices and agency, often in assumed, theory-weak and patriarchal ways. The study foregrounds the gendered politics of teacher education within a pressing need for egalitarian rather than conservative gender discourses.

The Impact of Test-Based Accountability in the U.S. and Its Relevance for the Global Education Reform Movement: A Brief Review

The current study briefly reviews the influence of test-based accountability in the United Status of America and its effect on global movements of education.

Competing discourses in early childhood education and care

What are the concerns in the early childhood education and care sector about the global education reform movement? Dave Hancock summarises a recent report

Open for business: a quantitative analysis of teachers’ experiences of marketisation in international schools

ABSTRACT The global education reform movement has led to the development of quasi-markets and the promotion of business-like operation of schools with the goal of improving education for students and opportunities for teachers. While many types of schools have been influenced by marketisation, the international school market is a prime example of how such processes can be fully integrated into education. However, despite the prevalence of market reforms, little is known of their impact on educational employees. This research investigates the perspectives and experiences of teachers in compulsory-age international schools operated by large multi-national for-profit education management organisations to understand how business-like operations within a school market affect their daily work. Semi-structured interviews were used to create items to measure the business influences. Scales were then developed with Mokken Scale analysis and Rasch analysis. The two scales demonstrate distinct patterns of marketisation. The scale of direct business influences on teachers’ work includes items on competition between schools, increasing admissions and improving finances, while the scale of indirect influences includes items about job insecurity, hierarchical organisational structures, fear of repercussions when voicing professional opinions, and an emphasis on evidence of learning. Notably, these quantitative patterns were consistent across many different types of schools, both for-profit, non-profit private schools and government schools. These findings demonstrate the strength of researching teachers’ experiences to understand the impact of marketisation on education.

Books in Review: Resisting the Global Education Reform Movement

A new edited collection reimagines schools as sites for resisting the forces of Commodification.

Scotland and Pedagogy: Moving from the Anglophone Towards the Continental?

Across the Anglophone world, throughout the late 20th and early 21st century, learning and teaching became the go-to descriptions for teacher and learner activity. Notably, this term posited individualistic views that ‘education is an individual right’ realised through technically proficient teacher-action that engenders favourable positioning in a post-industrial, efficient world. More recently, pedagogy seems to have remerged as a flavoursome term. However, its use is still dominated by the doctrines of the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) realised through education science assumptions and approaches. In turn, across much of the Anglophone world, pedagogy is mostly described as ‘the methods and practices of teaching’ often associated with delivery-type teaching and learning judged by quantitative uplift on test scores. Pedagogy, it seems, is still subservient to individualism reified by forms of technically legitimate teaching competence.
 In many respects, Scotland is no different: policy frames and explanations (Adams, 2016) often legitimise through technocratic and positivist Discourses (Gee, 2012). Matters such as the recent incorporation of the UNHRC into Scottish law offer hope though, for they offer ‘rupture’. The OECD might prevail over system-wide evaluation and conversations about ‘curriculum’ dominate, but ever-increasing calls to shift ‘schooling’ from ‘learning and teaching’ to ‘education, more broadly conceived’ seem to have widened discourse (Gee, 2012) and acknowledged the inherently political. While this has not magically moved pedagogy on, it is clear is that pedagogy as ‘being in and acting on the world, with and for others is finding a Scottish voice.

The Global Liberal Arts Challenge

AbstractThe democratic backsliding that has accelerated across the globe over the past decade has included a rollback of liberal arts and sciences (LAS) as a system of university education. This essay explores the origins and goals of the global LAS education reform movement. I argue that while the movement is under threat largely due to its principled value of educating democratic citizens, it still has powerful potential and global impact; in part because LAS education is primarily an indigenous phenomenon adapting to local circumstances. I also argue that U.S. universities could contribute more constructively to the movement if they conceived of their role as global civic actors that conduct themselves in the spirit of mutuality and reciprocity, not as multinational corporations that channel neoliberal tendencies to maximize revenue. U.S. critics of the global LAS movement should also pay heed to the United States’ own history. Specifically, they can learn from historically Black colleges and universities how, operating under the extreme authoritarianism of the Jim Crow era, they managed to produce leaders who shaped a more democratic country. Liberal arts education produces short term benefits for students and alumni, but in the democratic context it is a long-term wager.

Are Teachers Still the Problem? An Analysis of the NSW Education What Works Best Documents

This paper interrogates Stacey’s assertion that New South Wales (NSW) education policy is underpinned by a ‘particular instance of neoliberalisation’ which has significant ‘direct and material impacts’ on teachers. It examines the role Evidence-based Practice can play in the neoliberalist reform of education globally and analyses the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation’s What Works Best documents. The paper asserts that the character of education policy in NSW is consistent with the wider Global Education Reform Movement and continues to exhibit and extend the neoliberalist tendencies identified by Stacey. Furthermore, it claims that, through a collection of neoliberalist devices, teachers are being ‘governed at a distance’ through documents such as What Works Best. It is hoped this paper might provide teachers with ‘insights and arguments to help them to resist unwarranted expectations about the role of evidence in their practices and even more so of unwarranted interventions in their practices’.

Perspectives on environmental education, citizenship, and assessment: A case study of elementary school teachers and principals in Israel

Environmental education (EE) is recognized as an important way to improve the environmental crisis. It seems that international and national educational assessment and accountability ideas are working against EE. By examining the perspectives of Israeli teachers, who are important change agents in society, this qualitative case study seeks to understand the potential of EE, when paired with citizenship, to foster a more equitable society in the context of the global educational reform movement. The study focuses on EE implementation in two Israeli schools, asking, “How do Israeli elementary school teachers understand EE’s role in fostering citizenship in the context of assessment and accountability?” The findings contribute to the literature by exploring the relationship between EE, assessment, and citizenship. They also suggest that a school’s ontological perspective on knowledge, namely the constructivist approach, enhances pro-environmental behavior, while the positivist approach matches the EE scientific approach that focuses more on assessment. A whole-school approach to EE deepened the active involvement of participants and enhanced their sense of citizenship more than an inquiry-based learning approach. This study recommends integrating the social component of EE and developing action skills for citizenship, taking into consideration the global assessment movement and accountability context.

The Opt-Out Movement and the Reform Agenda in U.S. Schools

In this editorial, the authors situate the opt-out movement in the broader context of resistance to the global educational reform movement and its specific playing out in the USA in relation to the opt-out movement. The editors review the 11 articles and commentary and discuss the contributions of the collection as a whole to the literature. They note the contribution of the special issue to the literature on the application of social movement theory to educational politics and the literature on resistance to the global education reform movement.

The odd malaise of democratic education: Horace Mann, Amy Gutmann and the inordinate influence of business

This article is the third of three on “Sources of Authority in Education.” All use the work of Amy Gutmann as a heuristic device to describe and explain the prevalence of market-based models of education reform in the US and the business-influenced Global Education Reform Movement. The other two are “Negating Amy Gutmann: Deliberative Democracy, Business Influence and Segmentation Strategies in Education” and “Neoliberalism and Four Spheres of Authority in American Education: Business, Class, Stratification and Intimations of Marketization.” All three are intended to be included together as chapters of my Democratic Education and Markets: Segmentation, Privatization and Sources of Authority in Education Reform.The “Negating Amy Gutmann” article looks primarily at deliberative democracy. The “Neoliberalism and Four Spheres of Authority” article, considers its main theme to be the promise of egalitarian democracy and how figures ‘such as Horace Mann, John Dewey and Gutmann’ have argued it is largely based on the promise of public education. It thus begins with a consideration of what might be called a partial historical materialist analysis – the growth of inequality in the US (and other countries) since the 1970s that correlates with much of the basis for changes in the justifications and substance of education reform.The present article, “The Odd Malaise of Democratic Education and the Inordinate Influence of Business,” continues the argument by offering some historical background and comparisons and ends by considering what happens to the philosophy of education when democracy and capitalism are at odds.It thus starts with recent history, looking at how the content and context of educational policy have changed in the US since Gutmann wrote in the 1980s. Specifically, it concerns itself with the increasing prevalence of twin notions: that our system of education must be reformed because of global competition and that the educational system should emulate the market.The article then goes back a little bit further, to the origins of the common school in the 1600s and Horace Mann’s articulation of the principles behind public education, which are shown to be in stark contrast to Education Reform. The narrative describes how the standards movement, variously, coalesced around George H. W. Bush’s America 2000 and Bill Clinton’s Goals 2000 programs, was reflected in a ‘21st-century schools’ discourse, found programmatic form in George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and it’s offspring, Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top. All of the preceding were, to a shocking degree, based on misleading and selective statistical analysis and sets goals that are unreachable even in the best of all possible worlds. The article concludes by considering paradigm change in education and its causes; I draw on both Peter Hall’s exposition of social learning1and Antonio Gramsci’s conceptualization of hegemony.2

Tvímælis: Heimspeki menntunar og skólakerfi nútímans

Þetta rit er inngangur að heimspeki menntunar. Það inniheldur gagnrýna umfjöllun um hugmyndir sem stundum er gengið að sem gefnum þegar rætt er um skólamál. Þetta eru einkum hugmyndir í þá veru að: Þau sem gera námskrár fyrir skóla þurfi að velja milli þess að leggja áherslu á námsgreinar og þess að hafa barnið í brennidepli eða bæta samfélagið; skólar eigi að þjóna þörfum nemenda sinna eða hagsmunum atvinnulífsins; hægt sé að skipuleggja nám og kennslu sem sókn að námsmarkmiðum eða hæfniviðmiðum; stjórnvöld geti bætt skóla með fyrirmælum að ofan eða með því að skapa hagræna hvata; aukin skólaganga bæti efnahag samfélagsins.Í bókinni eru tólf kaflar og hver þeirra lýsir hugtakalegum ógöngum eða rökum sem vísa í ólíkar áttir. Fyrstu fimm kaflarnir sem og kaflar númer níu og tíu fjalla um efni sem liggja á mörkum heimspeki og námskrárfræða. Kaflar númer sex til átta og kafli ellefu snúast um efni á mörkum menntavísinda og stjórnmálaheimspeki. Tólfti og síðasti kaflinn fjallar um fagmennsku kennara.Hverjum kafla lýkur með spurningum fyrir lesanda. Flestar þessar spurningar snúast um tilgang skóla, skólastefnu og stjórn menntakerfa. Þótt fæstum þeirra sé beinlínis svarað er rökstutt að hugsunarleysi um þær ali af sér afglöp í stjórn og uppbyggingu skólakerfisins

Neoliberalism and four spheres of authority in American education: Business, class, stratification, and intimations of marketization

This is the second of three articles on “Sources of Authority in Education”. All use the work of Amy Gutmann as a heuristic device to describe and explain the prevalence of market-based models of Education Reform in the United States as part of what Pasi Sahlberg terms the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM). This movement is based on neoliberal tenets and encourages the enterance of private business and the adoption of business practices and challenges long standing notions of democratic education. The first article is “Negating Amy Gutmann: Deliberative Democracy, Education and Business Influence” (to be published in Democracy and Education) and the third is “The Odd Malaise of Democratic Education and the Inordinate Influence of Business” (to be published in Policy Futures in Education). My intent is to include them, along with a fourth article, “Profit, Innovation and the Cult of the Entrepreneur: Civics and Economic Citizenship,” as chapters of a proposed volume, Democratic Education and Markets: Segmentation, Privatization and Sources of Authority in Education Reform.The “Negating Amy” article looks primarily at Deliberative Democracy. The present article considers the promise of Egalitarian Democracy and how figures such as Horace Mann, John Dewey, and Gutmann have argued it is based largely on the promise of public education. “The Odd Malaise” article begins by offering some historical background, from the origins of the common school in the 1600s to market emulation models, No Child Left Behind and how this is reflected in a “21st century schools” discourse; it ends by considering and underlying theme: what happens to the Philosophy of Education when Democracy and Capitalism are at odds. The “Profit, Innovation” article then looks at how ideological forces are popularized, considering Ayn Rand’s influence, the concept of Merit, Schumpeter’s concept of ‘creative destruction,’ and the ideal of the entrepreneur as related sources in a changing common sense, pointing out that the commonplace of identifying the innovator and the entrepreneur is misplaced.The present article accordingly begins to question business influence and suggest show we may outline its major features using Amy Gutmann’s work as a heuristic device to interpret business-influenced movements to reform public education. Originally the title was Turning Amy Gutmann on her Head. Consequently it returns to Gutmann’s Democratic Education and its three sources of authority, suggesting that the business community is a fourth source. As such, it is in a contest to supplant the systems of deliberative democracy for which Gutmann advocates.It continues with a consideration of what might be called a partial historical materialist analysis – the growth of inequality in the United States (and other countries) since the 1970s; this correlates with much of the basis for changes in the justifications and substance of Education reform. After casting this question in principal-agent terms, it then looks at both those who sought to create a public will for public education and recent reform movements that have sought to redirect public support from a unified education system and instead advocate a patchwork of charters, vouchers for private schools, on-line education, home schooling, virtual schools and public schools based on market emulation models. Drawing from other theories of education, especially Plato (and the Spartan model), Locke, and John Stuart Mill, it also suggests that it might be instructive to compare Gutmann’s three sources of authority to Abraham Kuyper’s concept of Sphere sovereignty.It concludes that ultimate authority for education is —or should be—, somewhat paradoxically, vested in the adult the child will become, creating practical problems regarding the education of the sovereign that are never fully resolved and which may, in fact, be unresolvable based on rational deliberation. Finally, it looks at one instrument of business, market segmentation, and its importance as a motivating factor for education reform.

Teacher professional learning under audit: reconfiguring practice in an age of standards

ABSTRACT One of the key tenets of the global education reform movement, professional standards for teachers have reshaped different aspects of teachers’ work and learning in many contexts internationally over the past two decades. This paper explores the consequences of neoliberalism for teacher professional learning in contemporary times. The policies and processes built up around teacher professional development and learning as a consequence of contemporary regimes of standards and their dominant conceptualisation of teacher professionalism, constitute particular cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements that frame the practice of teacher professional learning. These in turn give rise to some possibilities of practice while limiting others, effectively creating the space within which what counts as 'authentic professional learning' can be enacted. A case study of the interplay between professional standards and professional learning in the jurisdiction of New South Wales, Australia, is presented, via an analysis of publicly available texts generated by the NSW Education Standards Authority explicitly related to teacher professional learning and development. The paper argues that the practice architectures of professional learning in an age of standards work to support instrumental forms of professional learning while constraining the possibility of more authentic or generative forms of professional learning and consequently, teacher professionalism.

Building Kids' Citizenship through Community Engagement by Bob Coulter (review)

Book Review: Disclosing Childhoods: Research and Knowledge Production… 135 Building Kids’ Citizenship through Community Engagement Bob Coulter (2018) New York: Peter Lang, 147 pages $51.00 (paperback); ISBN: 978-1433135187 In Building Kids’ Citizenship Through Community Engagement, Bob Coulter creates space for educators of all stripes to explore approaches to place-based education and citizen science projects that cultivate young people’s co-constructive roles in classrooms, schools, and communities. His book draws on the well of John Dewey’s works and offers a seminar on Deweyian thought and its implications in contemporary educational settings. Coulter reminds readers of a fundamental goal for education in the eyes of Dewey: developing people’s capacities to meaningfully engage with and improve the communities in which they live. Coulter directs the Litzsinger Road Ecology Center at the Missouri Botanical Garden, a role he fills after decades of service as a math and science teacher in a variety of educational environments, including public and private elementary schools, and extracurricular programs. The wealth and diversity of his teaching experiences buttress the arguments and practical examples in his book. Over the course of four chapters, Coulter reviews the benefits and challenges of place-based education for both teachers and students. In the first chapter, he outlines the educational context common in American schools that he revisits throughout the text: educational institutions, practices, and technologies have diminished opportunities to cultivate students’ intrinsic motivation for self-formation and service to one’s community. Coulter builds on Pasi Sahlberg’s (2012) critique of the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) and recommends the Deweypromoted concept of bildung as a vaccination to protect current and future generations of teachers and learners from the viruses of corporate, profit-driven curriculum and standardized testing void of connection to local contexts and students’ needs. The goal of bildung, according to Coulter, is to foster democratic engagement through self-formation in a manner that enables people to “serve both themselves and their community as they grow, develop new skills, and find ways to critique and improve their communities” (p. 80). In the second chapter, Coulter addresses fundamental concepts in learning from Dewey’s perspective, including experience and growth. Here, Coulter argues for creating educational experiences within students’ communities in order to bridge life at school with life at home. In this way, the activities are substantive and meaningful for young people’s personal growth, rather than singular and siloed within the classroom context. In the third chapter, Coulter interrogates fundamental questions of when and how educators should incorporate digital technologies into curriculum. He argues for maintaining pedagogic judgement for when technology—broadly defined from calculators to geographic information systems computer software—serve more as a distraction than a tool servicing learning and community engagement. Via commentary on the work of David Gauntlett (2014) and others, Coulter operationalizes a framework for assessing digital educational tools, such as a low entry level for skills, a tool that Book Review: Disclosing Childhoods: Research and Knowledge Production… 136 grows with the person, and a belief in the value of creative play. The fourth chapter briefly recounts key arguments and literature supportive of moving from the GERM approach to the bildung approach. To conclude his book, Coulter reviews Scot Osterweil’s (2007) Four Freedoms of Play, such as freedom to fail, which he argues moves conceptualizations of young people as passive recipients of knowledge toward engaged actors in constructing knowledge and their own educational opportunities. In addition to drawing on the seminal works of Dewey, Coulter references recent empirical research from psychology, sociology, and other education-focused fields to support his claims about the fundamentals of learning and the state of education in the United States of America. Rather than offer new theoretical pathways or empirical evidence, the merit of Coulter’s book is in the inspirational and practical examples for how to cultivate place-based educational opportunities. The arguments for why these opportunities promote young people’s engagement with their community are well known in field of environmental education and found in range of relevant texts. Of note is Coulter’s reference to the work of Roger Hart (1997) and the ladder of children’s participation, which Coulter draws...

How has Finland Formed its Own Educational Policies‘in the Finnish Way’?: With Reference to Quality Assurance Evaluation and School Choice

[연구목적] 이 연구는 어떻게 하여 핀란드는 1990년대 이후 글로벌 교육개혁 흐름과 별도로 자신만의 독특한 경로를 밟았는가에 대해 알아보기 위한 것이다. 이를 위해 이 연구는 핀란드 교육의 역사적, 정치적, 문화적, 우연적 요인을 종합적 으로 알아 본 뒤, 핀란드의 주요 교육정책 형성과정에서 이러한 맥락적 요인이 어떤 식으로 작용하였는가를 파악해 보고자 하였다. [연구방법] 이 연구는 주로 문헌 조사방법을 활용하였다. 그리고 핀란드의 질보증 평가와 학교선택제를 문헌조사의 주 대상으로 하였다. 이 두 정책은 1990년대 이후 글로벌 교육개혁이 핀란드에도 영향을 준 대표적인 정책이지만 논쟁에 비해 실제 그 영향력은 매우 미미하였다. [연구결과] 주요 연구결과는 첫째, 핀란드는 역사적으로 볼 때, 중앙정부의 권위 주의적 리더십을 중시하는 전통에서 시장형 책무성평가를 도입하지 않았다. 둘째, 정치적으로, 사회민주당을 중심으로 한 연정으로 종합학교, 즉 뻬루스꼬울루 정신이 강해 매우 제한적인 학교선택제만을 실시하였다. 셋째, 우연적 요소로서, PISA에서의 높은 성취도와 교육전반에 걸쳐 나타난 모범적인 성과는 기존의 경로 의존성을 강화시켰다. [결론] 핀란드는 글로벌 거버넌스의 영향을 받았으나 국내 요인과 상호작용하면 ‘핀란드식’ 정책을 조형했다고 볼 수 있다. 이는 정책차용에서 로컬의 맥락적 요소가 간과되어져서는 안 되며, 글로벌 교육정책이 일방향으로 전파된다기 보다 일국의 역사, 정치, 문화적 요인과 상호작용하면서 변형되어 나타난다는 정책차용론과 관련이 있다.[Purpose] This study examines the way Finland has formed its own unique way with little influences from global education reform movement in 1990s. This research uses the framework with historical, cultural, and contingent components to investigate how these contextual elements have an affect on the formation of major educational policies. [Methods] Literature review method was used to identify relevant studies and materials that author targeted on two major educational policies: quality assurance assessment and school choice. These policies are thought of as crucial parts of global educational reform movement influencing on the Finnish education in 1990s. [Results] First, Finnish education did not actively introduced the market-based accountability tests because the Finnish are likely to respect the leadership of central government and the authority of National Board of Education. Second, only ‘soft’ school choice was implemented under the political environment in which the spirit of ‘Peruskoulu’ in comprehensive school reform has long been rooted partly by grand coalition around Social Democratic Party. Third, as a part of contingent elements, the Finnish PISA success in both students achievement and other overall positive outcomes has reinforced the path dependency of Finnish education. [Conclusion] Finland has also been influenced by global governance but has formed the applicable educational policies on its own way, so called ‘in the Finnish way’, by interacting with historical condition, political environment and factors of contingency such as PISA success. The research findings imply that complex phenomena of local context in policy borrowing should not be overlooked in that global educational policies are transformed and diversely implemented when they come to local particularities of history, politics, and culture of a nation-state rather than globally spreading in one direction.