TY - JOUR
T1 - Towards 'thick description' of educational transfer
T2 - Understanding a Japanese institution's 'import' of European language policy
AU - Rappleye, Jeremy
AU - Imoto, Yuki
AU - Horiguchi, Sachiko
N1 - Funding Information:
As part of its efforts to establish the status and identity of the Research Center, a full-time post, though contract-based, was created in 2004. The new associate professor, whose arrival became one key moment for the transfer initiative, was a 38-year-old teacher of French, hereafter Sato. Before arriving at the Center, Sato worked as a part-time French language lecturer at the Mirai campus, the newest and most ‘peripheral’ campus established in 1990 by a group of dissatisfied ‘revolutionary’ Okano professors, which emphasises the learning of multiple languages and competency in IT skills for the information society. Now at the Okano campus, his assigned role was to revitalise research, and to establish a better, well-equipped environment for foreign language learning at the Center. There was little money available for research, however, and so Sato proposed to the Center’s director at the time, Kuroda, to apply for a Ministry of Education (hereafter MEXT)-funded large-scale research project grant. Kuroda, a ‘powerful’ and ‘respected’ figure in the Okano campus who was working closely with the then-President of Aoba on the 21st Century Grand Design project, entrusted Sato, a young and aggressive academic with ‘real’ intentions for reform, to apply for and later to implement the AFG project.
PY - 2011/11
Y1 - 2011/11
N2 - Globalisation and convergence in educational policy worldwide has reinvigorated, while rendering more complex, the classic theme of educational transfer. Framed by this wider pursuit of new understandings of a changing transfer/context puzzle, this paper explores how an ethnographic 'thick description' might complement and extend recent research. Specifically, it relates findings from extended ethnographic work on an attempt by a prominent Japanese university to 'import' the Council of Europe's Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). This rare case of explicit 'borrowing' from a supranational space directly to the domestic institutional level, when approached in such a way, suggests new insights to help the field refine understandings of the processes, 'shape-shifting', and 'success' of international policy migration.
AB - Globalisation and convergence in educational policy worldwide has reinvigorated, while rendering more complex, the classic theme of educational transfer. Framed by this wider pursuit of new understandings of a changing transfer/context puzzle, this paper explores how an ethnographic 'thick description' might complement and extend recent research. Specifically, it relates findings from extended ethnographic work on an attempt by a prominent Japanese university to 'import' the Council of Europe's Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). This rare case of explicit 'borrowing' from a supranational space directly to the domestic institutional level, when approached in such a way, suggests new insights to help the field refine understandings of the processes, 'shape-shifting', and 'success' of international policy migration.
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U2 - 10.1080/03050068.2011.559698
DO - 10.1080/03050068.2011.559698
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84860768870
SN - 0305-0068
VL - 47
SP - 411
EP - 432
JO - Comparative Education
JF - Comparative Education
IS - 4
ER -