Making education reform happen: is there an ‘Asian’ way?

Abstract

This paper presents a descriptive analysis of education reform in selected Southeast Asian nations between 1995 and 2007. It reports the results of a purposive survey of elite informants comprising scholars and educational leaders involved in education reform in Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. The paper addresses two main questions: What have been the main obstacles to education reform in Southeast Asia? And is there anything unique about the process of educational reform and change in Southeast Asia or anything different from processes reported in the Western literature? Although the paper finds more similarities than differences in the process of education reform in Southeast Asia, the author notes distinctive obstacles to reform in these societies. These differences are linked to a cultural explanation of educational change.

Keywords:

• leadership
• management
• educational change
• education reform
• Asia

Notes

1. For the purposes of this paper, we include Hong Kong and Taiwan along with the traditional grouping of Southeast Asian or ASEAN nations. We do note, however, that Hong Kong and Taiwan are sometimes grouped with China, Korea and Japan and referred to as East Asian nations. While both are accurate, the distinction holds no particular importance for the analyses in this paper.

2. For example, China is so large as to be a case unto itself. Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Indonesia, while sharing many features in common with the five nations selected for this study, differ significantly in their current economic and educational status. These societies are still working towards universal access to education and therefore can be considered to be at a different stage of educational development. The only other comparable country that we would have wished to include in the sample was Korea, but we lacked access to a comparable group of elite informants.