Chapter 8: National Policies, Regional Dynamics, and the Global Dynamic

In Chapter 6, we examined how global reform efforts generally described as “new public management” have altered the kind of teacher-centered policies that Nordic and East Asian nations have implemented. In Chapter 7, we analyzed different approaches that scholars have taken toward regional effects and linked these to assumptions about shared cultural logics. This assumption of a uniform and universal culture in the region is inconsistent with reality. We reviewed how shared Nordic values of equality, teacher autonomy, and progressive pedagogy were overshadowed in Sweden by reforms promoting decentralization and accountability. In East Asia, we saw how concerns about global economic competition differentially affected how nations like Korea or Singapore tried to enact teacher education reforms, and that in Taiwan, a recent history of authoritarian control highlighted positive aspects of the New Public Management (NPM). This suggests that although teacher-focused reforms have been promoted on a global scale, we do not see uniform reactions within the two regions due to underlying differences in national histories of the development of teachers and the state.