Policy borrowing for a world-class university: a case of a writing center in Japan

ABSTRACT

Increased pressures of internationalization compel universities worldwide to search for successful education models and frameworks that can enhance their entrepreneurial status and international competitiveness. This study aims to explore the political interests, power dynamics, and consequences of transferring educational systems, models, and concepts across context, by focusing on the popularity of the writing center (a writing support service originating in the United States) in Japan. To examine the political and socio-economic factors that motivated a Japanese university to establish a writing center, I trace the process of the writing center’s establishment from documents and interviews with five university staff involved in the planning. Policy borrowing as a conceptual framework is employed to illuminate the ways in which participants exercised their agency and justified the writing center in relation to the university’s internationalization mission. Given the findings, I discuss the impulses, externalizing potentials, and reference societies that attracted administrators to the idea of the writing center and critically examine the policy borrowing practices that aim to internationalize higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy borrowing
• Japanese higher education
• writing centers
• academic language policy and planning
• university language planning

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their constructive input during the revision of this manuscript. I would also like to thank Dean Jorgensen for providing suggestions for increasing readability.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Tomoyo Okuda graduated with a PhD in TESL from the University of British Columbia, Canada. Her research interests include second language writing, writing center studies, internationalization of higher education, and language policy. Her articles appear in such journals as TESOL Quarterly, Applied Linguistics Review, and Canadian Journal of Studies in Discourse and Writing.

Notes

1 I use upper case ‘Writing Center’ to denote my research site, and lower case ‘writing center’ to refer to writing centers in general.

2 The full name and reference of the grant are redacted to ensure institutional anonymity.

3 A couple of months before opening, the administration team invited the writing center director and tutors from University A to offer workshops about the history, philosophy, and management of writing centers.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The International Research Foundation for English Language Education (TIRF).