Global-local Education Policy Dynamics: A Case Study of New Zealand and Norway

ABSTRACT

While a number of studies have established the growing role impact PISA has had on national education policy, much less is known about the global-local recontextualization of policy transfer, and the role of national policy officials. Through interviews with key policy officials in Norway and New Zealand, the study revealed a growing cosmopolitanism in outlook in both countries with strong indications of changes made to respond to PISA data. However, officials also reasserted the strengths of their national education system and worked to enrich OECD understandings of educational quality. Theorizing through Bourdieu, the authors propose that the concept of cosmopolitan capital provides a useful analytical tool to explain increasingly outward and globally-oriented practices and dispositions held by policy officials within a global education policy field.

KEYWORDS:

• Cosmopolitanism
• capital
• policy officials
• Norway
• New Zealand
• PISA
• Bourdieu

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Janicke Heldal Stray http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7453-9864

Bronwyn Wood http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3560-2194

Notes

1 The IEA conduct a four-year cycle of international testing—Progress in Progress in International Reading Literacy Study [PIRLS] and Trends in International Mathematics and Science [TIMMS].

2 The then OECD Director for the Directorate of Education and Skills.