Chapter 3: Changing Patterns of Power: Rethinking Decentralization in the Educational Reform in Taiwan¹

The aim of the chapter is to reexamine the meaning and the role of the concept of decentralization in current educational reform and education restructuring in Taiwan.² Decentralization has been regarded as one of the most prominent global reasons, which orders and guides the direction of current reform and education restructuring on the small island since the 1990s (Huang, 1997). It is believed that the decentralization of education is something “good” and “right” and ought to be carried out during the reform. People in Taiwan also think that current educational reform is merely a unidirectional process from a centralized educational system to a decentralized one. Education restructuring, in this sense, is just the objectification of the decentralization of the educational institutions.