This paper examines the outstanding performance of Shanghai, China on PISA 2009 and its effects on other national systems and within the global education policy field. The OECD's PISA is helping to create this field by constituting the globe as a commensurate space of school system performance. The effects of Shanghai's success are considered in three other national contexts: the USA, England and Australia. We combine (a) analysis of data from more than 30 research interviews with senior policy actors at the OECD, the IEA and within Australia and England; and (b) document analysis of policy speeches, commissioned research reports and media coverage from the three national contexts. Shanghai's performance in PISA 2009 produced a global ‘PISA-shock’ that has repositioned this system as a significant new ‘reference society’, shifting the global gaze in education from Finland to the ‘East’ at the beginning of the so-called ‘Asian century’.

Looking East: Shanghai, PISA 2009 and the reconstitution of reference societies in the global education policy field

The international branch campus is a phenomenon on the rise, but we still have limited knowledge of the strategic choices underlying the start of these ventures. The objective of this paper is to shed light on the motivations and decisions of universities to engage (or not) with the establishment of international branch campuses. As a point of departure, institutional theory has been selected to frame the potential motives for starting an international branch campus. Secondary literature, including professional journals and university reports and websites, has been analysed to obtain information that alludes to the motivations of universities for adopting particular strategies. It was found that university managements’ considerations can be explained by the concepts of legitimacy, status, institutional distance, risk-taking, risk-avoidance and the desire to secure new sources of revenue. We argue that universities should avoid decisions that are based largely on a single dimension, such as legitimacy, but rather consider a broad spectrum of motivations and considerations.

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The international branch campus as transnational strategy in higher education

The international branch campus has emerged as a prominent feature on the international higher education landscape. Although there exists a fairly substantial body of literature that has sought to ...

https://purehost.bath.ac.uk/ws/files/271725/Wilkins_JSIE_2011.pdf

Student choice in higher education: Motivations for choosing to study at an international branch campus

Educational assessments define what aspects of learning will formally be given credit and therefore have a huge impact upon teaching and learning. Although the impact of high-stakes national and in...

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Assessment and learning: fields apart?

This chapter traces the development of student engagement as a research-informed intervention to shift the discourse on quality in higher education to emphasize matters of teaching and learning while providing colleges and universities with diagnostic, actionable information that can inform improvement efforts. The conceptual lineage of student engagement blends a set of related theoretical propositions (quality of effort, involvement, and integration) with practice-focused prescriptions for good practice in undergraduate education. The development of survey-based approaches to measuring student engagement is reviewed, including a treatment of recent criticisms of these approaches. Next, we summarize important empirical findings, including validation research, typological research, and research on institutional improvement. Because student engagement emerged as an intervention to inform educational improvement, we also present examples of how engagement data are being used at colleges and universities. The chapter concludes with a discussion of challenges and opportunities going forward.

Student Engagement: Bridging Research and Practice to Improve the Quality of Undergraduate Education

Europeanizing education: Governing a new policy space

Globalisation and higher education in the Arab Gulf States

Public policy for academic quality: Analyses of innovative policy instruments

This chapter analyses the trend of transformation and diversification of higher education in Latvia due to political, economic and social changes in the country. Higher education institutions (HEIs) were established prior to Soviet legacy and during the first independence of Latvia in early twentieth century. During the Soviet rule in Latvia, HE was under full state control, organised to serve the needs of the centrally planned economy and the official Marxist-Leninist ideology. When Latvia proclaimed its independence from the USSR in 1990, its higher education system consisted of ten state HEIs; five of which were placed under the Ministry of Education and others were operating under the auspices of the ministries of healthcare, culture and agriculture. Multiple changes have taken place in the sector of higher education since then. The most important accomplishments of the HE reform during the transition period from the centrally controlled Soviet system to a democratically governed system of independent Latvia as reported in literature were autonomy of HEIs, the expansion of the HE sector in terms of the number of institutions and students, the creation of private HEIs, the introduction of HE quality assessment, the development of new study programmes, the modernisation of existing study programmes and the intensification of international cooperation between HEIs in Latvia and abroad. Hence, ensuring transformations of the HE sector involved continuing the diversification of the institutional landscape. Factors leading to this diversification include increased demand for higher education in social sciences, government’s initiated restructuring of higher education, regulation of the use of languages in higher education, secondary education reforms in early 1990s and shifts in demographic composition of higher education students.

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Ali Ait Si Mhamed

Papers

Europeanizing education: Governing a new policy space

Globalisation and higher education in the Arab Gulf States

Public policy for academic quality: Analyses of innovative policy instruments

Latvia: A Historical Analysis of Transformation and Diversification of the Higher Education System

Inclusive education in African contexts: A critical reader