The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending

Will the “best practices” of schools in Scotland work in South Africa? Are PTAs, a mainstay of American school governance, as valuable in European countries? Who decides and why?

The globalization of educational policy has become a popular, if not ubiquitous, phenomenon among educational policymakers across the world. In this volume, Steiner-Khamsi and her colleagues provide an in-depth empirical and critical examination of the practice of global educational policy. Contributors question the value of importing and exporting educational policies, analyze who benefits from these arrangements, and test the effectiveness of adapting one country’s policies in other (often quite culturally distinct) countries. The book investigates how global policies have been implemented locally, and examines the extent to which they work in diverse locales.

Steiner-Khamsi and her colleagues also examine the role and practices of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), multilateral organizations, and the World Bank in fostering how educational policies are disseminated and adapted across national and cultural boundaries.

Gita Steiner-Khamsi is Professor of Comparative and International Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York.

“An important contribution to comparative studies of education and educational politics.”
—From the Foreword by Thomas S. Popkewitz

“Steiner-Khamsi has established one of the major centers where cutting-edge work is being done on educational borrowing and lending. This book provides the richest textual evidence of this work in the context of globalization, and I give it my strongest endorsement.”
—Val Rust, UCLA

“An illuminating study that provides innovative theoretical insights on the impact of globalization in education.”
—Nelly Stromquist, University of Southern California