Across the Pond and Back Again: Education Policy Tourism and Policy Borrowing Between the United Kingdom and the United States

• In Event: Roundtable Session 100
  In Roundtable Session: Accountability as More Than Testing and Sanctions: Alternative Instruments to Improve Schools From Around the World

Abstract

Despite the xenophobic perspective of many U.S. policymakers, much of educational reform in the United States is not home grown. Indeed, since at least the mid-19th century, there has been a long tradition of what is known as trans-Atlantic policy tourism and policy borrowing. School choice/school autonomy and accountability in particular are two current policy areas in which there has been much cross-pollination between countries on a global scale and between the US and the UK in particular. This paper, written by two authors from different sides of the pond, focuses on the trans-contextual ideologies that shape these rationales and allow policy makers in different social and political contexts to come to similar conclusions about the efficacy of similar policies.

Authors

• Amy Stuart Wells, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Geoff Whitty, University of Bath