Reimagining Global Education Policy Research: The case of the European language framework (CEFR) transfer to Japan

Education policies and reform ideas that circulate around the world are termed global education policy. Global education policy constitutes a major area of interest in comparative and international education (e.g., Edwards, 2021; McKenzie & Aikens, 2021; Mundy et al., 2016). This doctoral dissertation builds on an empirical case of global education policy involving adaptations of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) to the reform of foreign language education in Japan. The CEFR is one of the best-known, most widely used Council of Europe (COE) policy instruments, exerting significant influence over language learning, teaching, and assessment in Europe and beyond (COE, 2020). Japan is one of the countries where the CEFR was introduced to foreign language education policy at the national level. This dissertation analyses how the CEFR was transferred to Japan in order to exemplify how the ‘globals’—global education policy, global standards, and global actors—take shape within the transfer process.

This study begins by examining the political circumstances that gave rise to Japanese interest in the CEFR, drawing on the methodology of policy transfer literature (e.g., Dale, 2005; Steiner-Khamsi, 2012). This dissertation argues that the CEFR was adapted to Japan’s national foreign language education policy through an interplay between various exogenous and endogenous sources of political influence. It also suggests that globalisation, manifested in global trends such as the growing importance of education to national economic growth, had an actual influence on the politics of transferring CEFR policy to Japan. Simultaneously, references to ‘globalisation’ were used as a rhetorical strategy to legitimise CEFR adaptation in the politics of policy transfer (cf. Rappleye & Kariya, 2010; Steiner-Khamsi, 2004).

Next, the study explores how the CEFR-oriented reform agenda was implemented in Japanese schools by drawing on actor-network theory (ANT) (e.g., Latour, 2005; Law & Singleton, 2004; Mol, 1999). The entry point of my analysis was Japanese academics who had engaged in a Japanese research project, the CEFR-J. The CEFR-J aimed to modify the CEFR for use in a Japanese context. This dissertation argues that the CEFR-J played a key role in introducing the CEFR to the Japanese arena of policymaking and implementation. Japanese academics successfully enrolled themselves into the policymaking network through their ability to provide policymakers with scientific evidence and knowledge.

The academics further strengthened their capacity to enrol in the policy arena by providing materials, or more precisely, both developing and promoting teaching and learning materials aligned with CEFR-oriented curricular guidelines. They did so together with for-profit companies, such as textbook publishers and testing developers. Taken together, the CEFR became part of mundane teaching practices in Japanese schools through a network in which academics, educational publishers, a written curriculum, and textbooks (among other elements) all acted on one another.

The role of academics shifted between policy borrowers and lenders. By sharing empirical data and research results, the CEFR-J project collaborated in the further development of CEFR levels. That is, the Japanese case of CEFR transfer was not one of merely ‘borrowing’ global reform ideas, but also of co-developing them. In the process of co-development, the status and identity of the Japanese academics changed from that of a local borrower to a global lender of reform ideas. Moreover, the CEFR became part of the Japanese language education landscape because it morphed and multiplied by connecting various actors and formulating several networks. Consequently, multiple CEFRs—both as a technical standard enabling test score alignment and as an ideology of plurilingualism promoting cultural and linguistic diversity—together contributed to cultivating the power of the CEFR as a ‘global’ education policy in Japan.

This dissertation contributes to global education policy research by empirically demonstrating how the ‘global’ was (re)made co-constitutively, relationally, and multiplicatively, and how ordinary ‘things’ directed this process. To conclude, this dissertation suggests re-envisioning policy transfer research within the realm of global education policy through the lens of co-production. In addition, it proposes that studying policy transfer as a process of co-producing educational knowledge, policies and practices challenges hierarchical and binary assumptions about global policy lenders and local policy borrowers.