This open access book investigates a topic underexplored in policy transfer: time. Drawing on well-known theories from comparative education, public policy studies, political science, and sociology, but written in an easy-to-understand language, the author discusses seven temporalities of policy transfer: historical period, future, sequence, timing, lifespan, age, and tempo. The temporal dimension helps us understand when the current school reform, known as the school-autonomy-with-accountability reform, developed into a global script, why it conquered the globe, and how it was selectively adopted and translated into each local context. Also, for the first time in this book, the author demonstrates what exactly diffused and what “stuck,” that is, which features of the reform were eventually institutionalized. Internationally renowned for her seminal work on policy borrowing, the author systematically applies a comparative, transnational, and global perspective to capture the role of the OECD and the World Bank in advancing and accelerating the reform’s worldwide diffusion.

Steiner-Khamsi, Gita and Waldow, Florian, eds. (2018)

PISA for scandalisation, PISA for projection: the use of international large-scale assessments in education policy making

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Seitzer, Helen, Baek, Chanwoong and Steiner-Khamsi (2023)

Instruments of Lesson-Drawing: Comparing the Knowledge Brokerage of the OECD and the World Bank

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Gita Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2023)

Chapter 5: Understanding travelling reforms from a systems perspective

In Systems Thinking in International Education and Development

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