Reframing Policy Transfer

This chapter first attempts to come up with some effectiveness and criticisms of the Four Stages framework and the Contextual Map based on the analysis of China’s borrowing of the Japanese vocational education model from 1895 to 1922. Then, theories on structure and agency that could be applied to further develop educational policy transfer research are introduced. Based on the theories of structure and agency, a new theoretical framework for educational policy transfer is provided, along with a full presentation and explanation of the newly conceptualised framework. Finally, the resulting framework is then used to re-explore the process of China’s borrowing the Japanese vocational education model from 1895 to 1922 to briefly illustrate how the framework may be used in practice.