Comparative Education

Volume 50, Issue 3, 2014

Special Issue: Knowledge in Numbers

Rethinking the pattern of external policy

referencing: media discourses over the
Asian Tigers PISA success in Australia,
Germany and South Korea
Abstract
The article compares how the success of the Asian Tiger countries in PISA, especially PISA
2009, was depicted in the media discussion in Australia, Germany and South Korea. It argues
that even in the times of today's globalised education policy field, local factors are
important in determining whether or not a country becomes a reference society for
educational reform. The article aims to uncover some of these factors, identifying the globally
disseminated stereotypes about Asian education, economic relations and the sense of crisis
induced through the relative position and change of position in PISA league tables in the
countries in question.

Reprints & permissions

Abstract
Jump to section

Introduction
Germany
Australia
South Korea
Conclusion: reference societies and local...
The article compares how the success of the Asian Tiger countries in PISA, especially PISA
2009, was depicted in the media discussion in Australia, Germany and South Korea. It argues
that even in the times of today's globalised education policy field, local factors are
important in determining whether or not a country becomes a reference society for

educational reform. The article aims to uncover some of these factors, identifying the globally
disseminated stereotypes about Asian education, economic relations and the sense of crisis
induced through the relative position and change of position in PISA league tables in the
countries in question.

Introduction
Jump to section

Introduction
Germany
Australia
South Korea
Conclusion: reference societies and local...
Historically, looking abroad for a policy model has been an integral part of the development
of modern systems of education. Ever since national educational systems first emerged in the
nineteenth century, nation states have closely monitored educational conditions in foreign
countries that are perceived as military or economic superiors or competitors. Not only are
policy ideas and programmes constantly borrowed cross-nationally but they often become
detached from the particular national context of their origin and then widely circulated as
international standards in national policy-making discourses (Zymek and Zymek 2004).
Hence, education policy making has always been highly transnational, with external
references or influences always present in the construction of individual nations' policies and
programmes.
Recently, the patterns of looking abroad have acquired new dynamics. Since the emergence
of large-scale assessments of student performance in the 1960s, more and more educational
comparisons have proceeded along more or less standardised lines and presented their results
in the form of league tables, bringing their units of comparison (often, but not always, nation
states) into a hierarchical order.1 This unleashes a whole new politics of league tables
(Steiner-Khamsi 2003), or governance through comparison (Nvoa and YarivMashal 2003), generating normative pressure on participating nations towards particular
kinds of education reform. Heading an international academic league table, or at least
achieving a high position, has become the hallmark of educational excellence. Through this
new frame for looking abroad, the organisations producing these international comparisons
and the actors determining their shape have come to gain considerable power over
international and, by implication, national education reform agendas (Grek 2009;
Kamens 2013; Meyer and Benavot 2013; Sellar and Lingard 2013; Wiseman2010).
Arguably, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD)
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has been most influential in
initiating this change in the pattern of external policy referencing. Lingard (2011) argues that
the days are gone when education policy actors' choice of reference societies was
conditioned by the particular characteristics of bilateral relations, regional power balance,
former colonial relations, and assumed political and cultural similarities. With PISA's league
tables triennially constructing the top-performing nations as the global model of education
reform, the incessant search for best practices elsewhere is now fully globalised
(Kamens 2013); it is no longer Swedish education to German policy makers, nor American
and British education to Australian counterparts; rather, it is Finnish education, which became
the education reform poster boy after its successive top performance in PISA, that has now
become the model for education reform in large parts of the globe (Takayama, Waldow, and
Sung 2013).

While it is certainly true that the current international fame of Finnish education would have
been unthinkable without its excellent PISA results, the nation's PISA success alone does not
explain the referential status that it currently enjoys on a global scale. In fact, other countries
and regions have achieved results on a similar level or even outperformed Finland in PISA,
yet they have not been able to gain a similar degree of international acclaim. This is
particularly true of several Asian countries or regions which achieved outstanding results in
PISA, including Shanghai, which participated for the first time in PISA 2009 and was
immediately ranked first in all three of PISA's literacy domains (reading, mathematical and
scientific literacy), and South Korea, which achieved consistently high placements in all
PISA rounds.
Intrigued by these different responses of the international community to the recent Finnish
and Asian PISA success, we explore multiple conditions beyond the PISA top ranking that
contribute to the construction of a given nation as a reference society or, conversely, impede
or even prevent that construction. More specifically, the study analyses the media discussion
of the success of Asian countries and regions, including Shanghai, in PISA 2009. It focuses
on two widely circulated, influential quality newspapers in each country that are different in
their political orientations, one centre-left and the other centre-right. The newspapers chosen
are the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH, centre-left) and The Australian (TA, centre-right,
including its weekend edition, Weekend Australian) in Australia, Sddeutsche Zeitung (SZ,
centre-left) and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ, centre-right, including its Sunday
edition Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung) in Germany and Hankyoreh News (HN,
centre-left) and Dong-A Daily(DD, centre-right) in South Korea (see Table 1).

Table 1. Numbers of articles on Asian education published

January 2001June 2012.
CSVPDFDisplay full size
These newspapers were selected not to compare the centre-left and centre-right newspapers
across the three countries. Rather, our intent is to capture the national media discourse in each
nation across the ideological range represented by the two contrasting newspapers. Then,
using search keywords such as PISA, Asian education and Shanghai, we located all the
articles dealing with education in Asian countries published in these newspapers from
January 2001 to June 2012 with a particular focus on the articles published after the PISA
2009 results (released in December 2010).
Conceptually, this study is indebted to the so-called externalisation thesis in its
understanding of how global education policy ideas and programmes are recontextualised as
they are inserted into national education policy fields. The term externalisation, going back
to Niklas Luhmann's systems theory (Luhmann and Schorr 2000), highlights how a social
sub-system, such as the education system, instigates and processes external references,
including references to foreign examples and international consensus, or what Schriewer
(1990) terms externalization to world situations. Externalisation is a discursive formation
that can become relevant in the context of borrowing, and lends itself easily to the purpose of
producing legitimacy (Waldow 2012, 418). Expanding on the idea of externalisation as
internally instigated for particular purposes, Steiner-Khamsi (2004), among others, shifts the
focus to the politics of externalisation, showing how given policy actors use external
references to legitimise preferred policy ideas and values (see also Sung 2011;
Takayama 2010).
Informed by this conceptual discussion around externalisation, the subsequent analysis of
media representation of Asian PISA success in Germany, Australia and South Korea is guided
by the following questions:

Which aspects of Asian education get particularly highlighted in the media? Who highlights them?

What is the function of these representations, especially which policy changes are legitimised or rejected by the particular
accentuation?

What are other discursive characteristics of Asian PISA success as represented by the media?

We first present three separate discussions of the national media discourse of Asian PISA
success in Germany, Australia and South Korea. Then we synthesise in the conclusion section
the findings of these analyses to identify a set of factors that facilitate or prevent the
construction of Asian tigers as reference societies for education policy in the three nations.
Studying mass media discourses can provide important insights for understanding the
dynamics of educational reform. According to Luhmann (2000), the mass media do not just
represent, but actually produce what constitutes our shared social reality, from which follows
what constitutes the past and what are relevant hopes and expectations for the future. Mass
media choose modes of presentation that resonate with underlying patterns of interpretation
among their audience (framing; see Scheufele and Tewksbury 2007). Thus, the study of
media discourses is a fruitful way of examining the underlying patterns of interpretation in a
population (Volkmann 2004). These patterns of interpretation are, in turn, important for how
educational references to elsewhere are inserted into domestic educational reform
discourses, i.e. for how externalization to world situations operates in concrete national
contexts.
Comparing the media reception of the Asian PISA success in Germany, Australia and South
Korea is particularly interesting because of their varied levels of success in the last four
rounds of PISA (see Table 2) and thus different ways in which PISA has influenced their
education reform discourses. Germany underwent a major crisis in education which was
triggered by the fact that the results of the first round of PISA were well below the country's
general expectations. Reform-minded political figures used the mediocre performance of
Germany's 15-year-olds to scandalise the system and then legitimise a set of radical reform
initiatives thereafter (Tillmann et al. 2008). Since then, German PISA performance has
registered an upward trend, improving its status from horrendous to average (Ulla
Burchardt as quoted in Guttenplan 2010). In contrast, the performance of Australian students
in the first two rounds of PISA placed the country among the top-performing nations,
exceeding the general expectation of the public. However, the celebratory media reporting
suddenly changed once Australian students' rankings dropped in PISA 2006 and 2009.
Nonetheless, the sense of urgency for reform was nowhere near the intensity witnessed in
Germany in the immediate aftermath of PISA 2000. In clear contrast to these nations, South
Korea has been one of the best performing nations, along with Finland, since the inception of
PISA in the early 2000s. Despite its consistently high PISA rankings and the international
fame that it enjoys elsewhere, many Korean observers use the PISA scores to identify a
crisis in its education system. These contextual differences, coupled with their varied
geographical distances from and cultural and economic relationships with some of the topperforming Asian nations, might shape the divergent representations of Asian PISA success in
these nations' media reporting.

Table 2. PISA ranks of Germany, Australia and South Korea.

CSVPDFDisplay full size

Germany

Jump to section

Introduction
Germany
Australia
South Korea
Conclusion: reference societies and local...
Compared to economic and political topics, education has been a side issue in the media
representation of East Asia in Germany; still, there has been a steady trickle of articles on
education in East Asian countries over the years. Similar to the way the Nordic countries are
sometimes lumped together and treated as more or less interchangeable in educational matters
(Waldow 2010), South Korea, Japan and China (and, to a lesser degree, Singapore and
Taiwan) are often viewed as possessing a shared, Asian educational culture. Some slight
nuances are distinguished between countries but, on the whole, it is possible to discern a
repertoire of stereotypical images that characterise the way in which education in all of these
countries is presented. To a very high degree, these stereotypes are shared by the FAZ and
the SZ. The presentation and discussion of education in East Asia including East Asian
countries' results in large-scale assessments such as PISA is conditioned by these
stereotypes.
Central to the image of Asian education in Germany is the notion that the Asian educational
systems are characterised by rote learning, excessive drill and gruelling examinations. Parents
coach children like professional athletes to secure their success in examinations (school
entrance, school leaving or university entrance examinations) that are decisive for their future
career. In addition to regular school, children cram in institutions of shadow education or
with private tutors. A large part of what pupils learn for examinations consists of mindless
rote learning. This merciless routine leaves children and youths very little time for play and
leisure, or even sleep. Many pupils crack up under the pressure and take their own lives. The
good results in international large-scale assessments thus appear as the result of barbarous
drill and bought at too high a price. Dissenting voices that do not subscribe to or try to
differentiate this picture are very scarce.
Although the discussion is heavily dominated by aspects that bear negative connotations, the
image of Asian education as it is painted in German media is not totally dark: particularly in
relation to the Korean case, a number of articles stress that in Korea there is less variation
between achievement levels of pupils than in Germany, especially that there are fewer pupils
at the lower end of the achievement scale. Korea thus demonstrates, as Joseph Hanimann
(2003/FAZ) remarked already after the publication of the first round of PISA results, that it is
possible to combine producing an elite with a solid strategy of lifting the average pupil.
Also, the fact that the achievement gap between Korean pupils from different social
backgrounds is smaller than in Germany is mentioned repeatedly. The high respect learning
enjoys in East Asia sometimes arouses envy and is mentioned in a positive light, although
some articles add that respect for learning easily turns into an obsession with learning,
leading parents to pressure their children into excessive hours of study.
The stereotypical images of Asian education are fairly stable over time and were firmly in
place long before the publication of the results of PISA 2009 or even before the publication of
the results of the different rounds of the TIMSS study from the late 1990s on, in which
Singapore, Japan, Korea and Hong Kong were among the top-performing countries (see e.g.
Aznarez1993/SZ; the title of the article is When discipline crowds out creativity). TIMSS
created a certain fascination with the purported problem-centred approach of Japanese

mathematics teaching (Sddeutsche Zeitung 1997), but was not able to change the
stereotypical image of Asian education in any fundamental way. Japan did not become a
reference society to any larger extent. Instead, Japan's success was, at least in part,
explained according to the stereotypical image, i.e. as a result of drill and rote learning,
sending children through an examination hell (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 1999). As a
result, Heike Schmoll (1997/FAZ) saw no reason for envy for Germans:
There is little cause to direct an envious glance to the Japanese educational system and to
throw the strengths of the European educational tradition overboard, which is not to say that
there is nothing we might learn from the Japanese system.
The quote also points to another characteristic of the image of Asian educational systems as
they appear in German mass media which will be discussed in more detail below: the
educational traditions of Asian countries are constructed as the Other against which the
purported European educational traditions are asserted.
Turning from TIMSS to PISA, in which again East Asian countries scored very highly, the
picture changes very little. As in the case of TIMSS, the success of countries such as South
Korea and Japan did not significantly alter the image of Asian education; the
heterostereotype of Asian education remained firmly in place. Education in South Korea,
which had not been discussed to any larger extent before PISA came out, now began to
receive a certain (though limited) amount of media attention. However, despite the fact that
South Korea's results were on the same level as Finland's, South Korean education was far
from becoming a media sensation like Finnish education (see Takayama, Waldow, and
Sung 2013).
When the results of PISA 2009 were published in December 2010 and Shanghai led the
league tables in all three literacy domains, a certain stir was generated in the media studied.
The publication of the results of PISA 2009 (OECD 2010) came at a time when there was
considerable insecurity in Germany about its relation to what is seen as its main industrial
competitor, China, and the Shanghai results were often extrapolated to the whole of China as
an indicator of China's economic power and potential. Already before Shanghai's PISA
success, articles had appeared showing how China was catching up, e.g. in terms of the
number of engineers educated (Heiser 2007/SZ). Again, however, Shanghai's results were
interpreted according to the existing image. In a long report on Chinese education, Henrik
Bork (2011/SZ) claimed that a Chinese childhood or youth is like running the gauntlet from
one examination to the next. Even more clearly than in the case of Japan after TIMSS, the
Chinese way is not the path to be followed by Germany according to Bork.
The discussion of Shanghai's success in PISA 2009 became articulated with the discussion on
the Chinese Tiger Mom, American Chinese professor of law Amy Chua's book
(2011a, 2011b) and the education of her children. When Chua's Tiger Mom book was
published early in 2011, it instantly became a bestseller, both in the US and in Germany. In
this book, Chua describes how she educated her two daughters the Chinese way, forcing
them to work very hard and threatening to punish them severely when they did not meet her
expectations. Soon after its publication, Chua's book became articulated with the discussion
of Asian education more generally. The book created quite a stir, but Chua's educational
principles met with universal rejection, even from the conservative side of the political
spectrum. Some authors expressed a certain degree of understanding for Chua's methods,
acknowledging the hardships connected to raising and educating children, but these authors,
too, hastened to distance themselves from Chua's educational principles (e.g.
Schaaf 2011/FAZ). The book resonated strongly with perceptions of Asian education and
seemed to corroborate existing stereotypes. However, some authors alluded to other possible

readings, such as interpreting the book more as a sign of the insecurity and ambition of an
immigrant to the US than as a representation of Asian education (Steinberger 2011/SZ).
The unanimous rejection of Asian education by observers from different parts of the
political spectrum fills a political function in educational policy making, as the nondesirability of Asian education provides common ground for very different actors in
educational policy making. SZ and FAZ occupy different, sometimes even contrary positions
concerning contentious aspects of education policy in Germany such as the
comprehensivisation of secondary schooling (see Takayama, Waldow, and Sung 2013). Yet,
in their portrayal of Asian education, they are very close. This is also true for other policy
actors: even the conservative academic secondary teachers' association (Philologenverband)
warns against an Asian culture of learning and drill (Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung 2010), thereby sharing the stance of voices in the debate that lean more towards the
political left. If it is difficult for actors to agree on what they want, in this way they can at
least agree on what they do not want.
The Othering of Asian education is effected by dichotomisation. This can take the form of
positing Asia against Europe or against selected European countries, such as PISA top
performer Finland:
Two different educational traditions turn out to be equally successful in the international
PISA-tests: on the one hand school cultures building on performance and industriousness or
even drill, such as China and South Korea. On the other hand more liberal, progressively
inspired school systems such as Finland. (Schultz 2010/SZ)
It is not difficult to guess on which side the author's sympathy lies. Elsewhere, we have
argued that Finland has come to serve as a projection screen for everything that is seen as
good and desirable in the educational policy-making debate in many national contexts
(Takayama, Waldow, and Sung 2013; Waldow 2010). Asia fills a somewhat complementary
position in the German discourse: while Finland serves as the image of an educational utopia,
Asian education provides the dystopian mirror image. This includes the imagery used:
where Finnish education is connected to metaphors of redemption like paradise in the North
(Taffertshofer and Herrmann 2007/SZ), Asian education is connected to metaphors of
damnation and torture (examination hell, running the gauntlet).

Australia
Jump to section

Introduction
Germany
Australia
South Korea
Conclusion: reference societies and local...
Traditionally, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) have been the key
reference societies for Australian education policy makers. As Seddon (quoted in Whitty et
al. 1998, 40) rightly points out, Australia in general has displayed a dependent and
subservient preoccupation with developments in the UK and USA. This trend continues up to
today, as seen in the Kevin Rudd Labour Government's (20082010) so-called education
revolution: a national curriculum, national testing and accountability on the basis of the
publication of test results. As Donnelly (2009) maintains, Australia's education revolution
copies what has been tried in Britain over the past 12 years.

While the Australian dependency on the UK and the US for new reform ideas persists, these
two nations no longer monopolise the external referential authority in Australian education
reform discourse. Since around 2009, for instance, Finnish education has been extensively
featured in the Australian media, though the implications drawn from the Finnish PISA
success differ depending on the political agenda of those who make use of the representation.
Many observers across political lines, but those in the centre-left in particular, criticise the
Rudd and Gillard Labour Governments for blindly following UK and US quasi-market
reform models and maintain that they should have learned from Finnish education which has
achieved the best international academic outcomes (Takayama, Waldow, and Sung 2013).
The Asian model is the most recent addition to this mix of reference societies in the
Australian education debate. However, until around 2007, Asian high achievers had been
largely absent from the media discussion apart from a quick reference to the success of some
of the Asian countries in PISA (e.g. Doherty 2004/SMH) or a descriptive account of new
curricular reform in Hong Kong (Chong 2002/TA). This was despite the fact that Hong Kong,
Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan had performed just as well as, if not better than,
Finland in the earlier rounds of PISA or in other international academic testing (e.g. TIMSS).
This initial inattention to Asian high achievers might reflect Australia's self-perception as
educational exporter to Asia and the associated sense of superiority vis--vis the less
modernised region. The majority of SMH and TA articles identified through the use of such
keywords as Asian and education concern Asian international students in the Australian
education system, the marketing of Australian educational products in Asia, and Australia's
foreign aid to educational development in South East Asian and Pacific nations. Furthermore,
the high educational aspiration of Asian immigrant families in Australian metropolitan cities
was much featured in both newspapers throughout the 2000s. They were often presented as a
problem, as in their excessive use of academic coaching and the overconcentration of
Asian-Australian students in selective high schools in places like Sydney. Until the late
2000s, therefore, the overall media discourse around Asian education had left little room for
an alternative view of Asia as a source of educational ideas and innovation and a possible
model for education reform (Singh 2010).
This picture changed around 2007 and particularly after the publication of the PISA 2009
results, wherein the aforementioned Asian nations and regions dominated the highest
rankings of the PISA league tables. Four out of the total of nine articles collected
from SMH and 12 out of 16 from TA were published after the publication of PISA 2009 in
December 2010. The attention to the Asian success in PISA was further promoted by the
declining performance of Australian students, both in terms of mean test scores and rankings.
In the immediate aftermath of the PISA 2009 data release, Prime Minister Gillard (2010
present) stressed the need for Australia to win the education race against its Asian
neighbours (Patty 2012/SMH). Reflecting this sentiment, both SMH and TA started using the
top-performing Asian students' PISA performance as a benchmark against which the
performance of the Australian students was to be assessed and debated (e.g.
Jensen 2011a/TA, 2011b/TA; Patty 2012/SMH).
Behind this sudden media attention to the Asian PISA success lay the emerging recognition of
Australia's economic dependence on the rising Asian economies.2 Within a year of the
publication of the PISA 2009 results, Prime Minister Gillard (2011) commissioned a White
Paper on Australia in the Asian Century to help Australia navigate the Asian Century to
seize the opportunities it offers and to meet the challenges it poses. This particular
circumstance of the Australian economy in Asia, combined with the declining international
placements of Australian students, contributed to the view of Shanghai's PISA success as a

wake-up call for Australia (Harrison 2012/SMH) and legitimised the subsequent
characterisation of Asian education as a model for Australian education reform.
In the immediate aftermath of the publication of the PISA 2009 results,
both SMH and TA extensively featured the PISA success of Asian nations, with a particular
focus on the Shanghai miracle. However, Shanghai's success was explained in a contrasting
manner. Some observers, on the one hand, highlighted the Confucian reverence for
education which supposedly explains why Chinese and north-east Asian students do so well
and also why many are so unhappy (Garnaut 2010/SMH). Perpetuated in such reporting is
the stereotypical image of Asian education as a symbol of damnation and torture; driven by
intense competition, rote-memorisation and testing. Though painting the Asian educational
success not as negatively, Marginson (2011/TA) and Slattery (2011/TA) promoted a similar
culturalist explanation, when they explained both the Asian nations' PISA success and
theTiger Mum's stance towards education in terms of Confucian values of respect for work,
diligence and authority especially parental authority (Slattery 2011/TA).
On the other hand, other observers avoided or went as far as to dismiss such a culturalist
explanation and drew specific policy implications concerning Australia from the Asian
success. To Donnelly (2007/TA), the success of Asian nations and regions (e.g. Hong Kong,
Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) in TIMSS was due to the coherent national
curriculum, regular testing and feedback, the value placed on competition, and the more
traditional approaches to teaching (thus the rejection of outcome-based education), all the
things that he claimed were absent in Australian education. Former OECD education officials
and Australian academics such as Barry McGaw and Richard Sweet highlighted the
successful curricular reform in the Asian nations, suggesting that what goes on in Chinese
classroomsis a process of teaching kids to think and not a process of just drumming in
facts (Sweet quoted in Patty 2012/SMH, see also McGaw in Garnaut 2010/SMH and
Schleicher in Harrison 2012/SMH). More detailed descriptions of Asian schools were
provided a few years later by Harrison (2012/SMH) and Ferrari (2012/TA), both of whom
highlighted the concerted effort of Shanghai and other Asian nations to improve the quality of
teaching and learning in classrooms.
Ben Jensen, the director of the education programme at the Grattan Institute, a Melbournebased think-tank, was particularly influential in changing the rather simplistic and often
negative representation of Asian education in Australia. The Grattan Institute was established
by Prime Minister Rudd in 2008 as a think-tank for his government (Crook 2008). Backed by
the political and media visibility of the institute, Jensen was extensively featured in
both SMH and TA in the post-PISA 2009 debate over Australian education reform. In the
immediate aftermath of the release of the PISA 2009 results, Jensen provocatively asked
readers what is Australia's long-term economic role in Asia when students in Shanghai,
South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore all significantly outperform Australian students?
(Jensen 2010/TA), maintaining that we should turn east and learn from the world's best
school systems (Jensen 2011b/TA). Later in the same year, under Jensen's leadership, the
Grattan Institute published a report Catching up: learning from the best school systems in
East Asia (Jensen et al. 2012), which closely looked at what were seen as the four successful
school systems in Asia: Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Korea. The report enjoyed
extensive media coverage at the time (Hall 2012/SMH; Jensen 2012/TA) and then continued
to be discussed in the subsequent media commentary on educational matters (e.g.
Ferrari 2012/TA; Gittins 2012/SMH; Harrison 2012/SMH; Kelly 2012/TA).
The central thesis that Jensen developed through his research into the four Asian education
systems is that educational attainment has less to do with money thrown at the system or
class sizesthan an unerring focus on teacher performance (Jensen cited in Walker 2012).

Downplaying the role of culture (e.g. Confucian reverence for education) and excessive focus
on academic success as the decisive factors for Asian PISA success, Jensen
(2010/TA, 2011a/TA, 2011b/TA, 2012/TA) highlights various strategies implemented in the
four Asian nations that, he claims, have contributed to the improvement of teaching and
learning in classrooms: teacher mentoring and modelling, lesson studies (lesson observation
and research), the allocation of the most talented teachers to the most disadvantaged schools,
and rigorous initial teacher education. He goes on to argue that the effectiveness of these
strategies for improving teachers' instructional quality has been well recognised in Australia
and yet never enforced in classrooms. While their findings are nothing new to those who are
familiar with these practices in some of the Asian countries (see Fernandez and
Yoshida 2004; Howe 2008), they were probably new to the general Australian readership and
thus helped disprove the widely held notion that Asian education systems were based on rote
learning (Harrison 2012/SMH).
The political impact of Jensen's promotion of the Asian model was carefully calculated with
a view towards influencing the education reform debate thereafter. Notably, Jensen's report
was published on the eve of the release of the government-commissioned Review of Funding
for Schooling, the so-called Gonski Report named after the chair of the commission, David
Gonski the biggest review of Australian schools funding in more than 30 years
(Hall 2012/SMH). Gonski recommended a $5 billion a year injection of funding into public
and private schools (75% to public schools) and an overhaul of the funding scheme to ensure
money goes where most needed (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace
Relations 2011). His recommendations were quickly endorsed by teachers' unions and
progressive academics despite their criticisms of some aspect of the recommendations (e.g.
Bonnor 2012; Zyngier 2012).
Jensen's report counters the underlying logic of the Gonski Report, its diagnosis of Australia's
declining academic performance as resulting from the inappropriate funding scheme that fails
to provide resources to disadvantaged students and schools. As Jensen and others drawing on
his findings maintain, his study of four high performing Asian education systems shows that
there is no clear link between school funding levels and good test results, with South Korea
spending less than Australia on students and performing better than them in a range of
subjects (Hall 2012/SMH). Though Jensen largely endorses the Gonski recommendations, his
message is clear: the funding issue, which has dominated the education reform debate in
Australia for the last few decades, is not the main game (Jensen quoted in Hall 2012/SMH),
the point further reinforced by journalists and conservative political figures who draw on his
study (see Gittins 2012/SMH; Hall 2012/SMH; Pyne 2012). Hence, as Bonnor (2012) rightly
criticises, Jensen's articulation of the Asian educational model is characterised by the
problematic separation of educational standards from macro-structural issues in educational
systems.

South Korea
Jump to section

Introduction
Germany
Australia
South Korea
Conclusion: reference societies and local...
Since the first release of the PISA results, Finland and South Korea have attracted global
attention for their consistently high performance in international league tables. However,

these two nations receive contrasting media responses in Korea; while the media applaud the
Finns for their outstanding achievement in the PISA and tout Finnish education as the global
reform model, they downplay their own PISA success (Y. Lee 2010b). Regardless of their
political stances, the Korean media dismiss their students' PISA success, attributing it to
excessive competition, exam hell, shadow education and education fever in the Korean
education system (Kwon 2009b). This self-perception echoes the stereotypical image of
Asian education as a symbol of educational damnation and torture highlighted in our
German and Australian reports which has been perpetuated by Western media and some
scholars (Finkelstein, Imamura, and Tobin 1991; Stevenson and Stigler 1992).
The tendency to downplay the Korean PISA success is more apparent among writers in
centre-left Hankyoreh News (HN). Writers such as Kwon (2009b/HN), Y. Lee (2010b/HN)
and Park (2010/HN) tend to caution readers about the South Korean PISA success, which
they perceive as a corollary of the Asian model of education. They are reluctant to view the
exceptional performance of Korean students as a testimony to the merits of the South Korean
educational system. If any, some of the HN writers (Choi2007/HN; Kwag 2008/HN;
Park 2010/HN) discuss the Korean PISA success in a way that justifies their rejection of
market-inspired educational reforms. In their minds, the excellent PISA scores verify the
strength of South Korean public education characterised by egalitarian policies which
increasingly are under attack by the government. Other HN writers draw particular attention
to negative indicators from the PISA data to highlight the systemic malfunction of Korean
education. Kwon (2009b/HN) and Kwag (2008/HN) highlight the low level of South Korean
students' interest in the subject matter despite their high performance. Eujin Lee (2010a/HN)
maintains that South Korean students are not autonomous learners, as evidenced by the fact
that their use of control strategies (self-regulating learning) is the lowest among all the PISA
participating countries. To such progressive observers, then, the Asian, including Korean,
PISA success results from all the wrong reasons: excessive academic competition and long
hours of study in private tutoring and hagwon (for-profit cram schools after-school or at
night) with serious consequences for the high suicide rates of secondary students and the loss
of motivation for learning (Lee 2008/HN).
Likewise, writers in conservative Dong-A Daily (DD) are equally sceptical about the Korean
students' top performance in PISA but their reservations reflect different educational
concerns. Many DD writers quote experts from government-affiliated research institutes now
acting as local PISA administrators to justify more policy focus on elite students. Seong-Yul
Kim, the president of the Korean Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation, is quoted as
maintaining that the highest performing 5% of South Korean students lag behind other Asian
countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan, and that this seemed attributable
to the lack of elite education (Kim 2010/DD). The conservatives' identification of the PISA
ranking for this small highest fraction created a sentiment of crisis and was used to legitimise
their agenda to promote elite high schools (Sung 2011). Endorsing conservatives' policy focus
on the best and brightest students, elite school supporters have insisted that competitive elite
schools are essential for the nation to respond to global economic competition (e.g.
Kim 2011/DD).
While the South Korean media demonstrate strong interest in the way other countries praise
their educational performance, the different political orientations have generated varied
responses to the foreign appraisal. A case in point is the media sensation caused by US
President Barack Obama's remarks on South Korea's educational success (Hong 2011/DD;
Jung and Koh 2011/DD; Kim 2011/DD). An influential columnist, Tae-Sun Kwon
(2009a/HN) criticises Obama for ignoring the fact

that (Korean) parents are pouring a large sum of money into private education to the extent
that it threatens their livelihoods, and that well over 100 Korean students are taking their own
lives annually due to the exhaustion from the academic battle.
In contrast, the columns, op-ed and editorial pieces in DD are more accepting, or at least less
critical, of the US appraisal of the Korean educational success. They either accentuate
Obama's praising of the Asian educational model (e.g. South Korea and Shanghai) to justify
the ongoing quasi-market reform in Korea and elsewhere or to highlight the central role of
competition and accountability in Obama's reform plan and the regrettable lack thereof in
Korea (Hong 2011/DD; Kim 2012/DD).
In response to the political left's idolising of the Finnish success as a symbol of educational
quality and equality, the conservative writers in DD (Kim 2004/DD; Nam 2010/DD) criticise
progressive observers for appropriating the image of Finnish education to achieve their preexistent education policy agenda: no iljegosa (national testing), free school lunches, free
public education, and no teacher evaluations (Nam 2010/DD). Sun-Deok Kim (2004/DD), an
influential conservative columnist, admonishes that blindly adopting the Finnish system of
equal education without consideration of the Nordic country's unique education environment
will turn out futile. Along the same line, Nam (2010/DD) identifies distortions in what
progressive educators report about Finnish education.
It is in this context of the conservative attempt to demystify the Finnish PISA success that the
Asian PISA success is asserted as an alternative counter-reference point, a trend which has
become increasingly apparent after the release of the 2009 PISA results. Sung-Hee Jung
(2010b/DD) suggests four possible explanations for Shanghai's success in PISA 2009.
According to her, first, China has an educational system that designates particular schools as
achievement-first schools, and Shanghai has 100 of these schools. Second, Chinese students
spend the longest study hours in the world. Third, every school provides a differentiated
curriculum according to students' academic abilities and thus promotes special classes for
gifted students. Fourth, entrance examinations into middle schools encourage academic
competition at the early primary stage. Many of these characteristics are analogous to what
South Korean conservative observers have stressed as their vision of improving the
competitiveness of education.
Notable about the DD writers' discussion of the Shanghai PISA success is their appropriation
of it to confirm South Korean education's outcomes and effectiveness. In this process, just as
we saw in the case of Germany, the media representation of Shanghai's miracle becomes
closely articulated to the supposed superiority of Chinese, or more broadly Asian, education
projected by Amy Chua (2011a)'s Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother (Hong 2011/DD; Jung and
Koh 2011/DD; Kim 2011/DD). These writers endorse Chua's highly regulating parenting
methods which they see as effectively fostering children's confidence and ability to compete
in the future. In featuring Shanghai or Chinese education, the DD writers see the PISA
success of Shanghai and South Korean education as proof of the merits of competition-based
education and educational fever driven by competitive parents. In contrast, it is interesting
to note that HN rarely draws attention to Shanghai's success in PISA 2009. A possible
interpretation is that HN is less inclined to highlight the competition-based Asian model of
education, which is represented as negative self-perception.
The overwhelming endorsement of Shanghai's success among DD writers is set against their
contrastingly negative assessment of the recent Japanese reforms under yutori (low
pressure/no cramming) education.3 DD commentators' reservations about the recent change in
the Japanese education policy has much in common with Japanese conservative reactions to it
after the PISA 2003 shock, a manufactured crisis causing a return to the past of Japanese

education allegedly characterised by academic competition, teacher-centred instruction,

strong emphasis on academic basics, and strict law and order in schools (Takayama2008,
393). Many Korean writers in the conservative newspaper believe that
Japan's yutori education, which involved the 30% reduction of curricular content to spare
more student-centred learning time and more focus on constructivist learning, was modelled
after the child-centred, progressive education of the 1970s in the US. Jung (2010a/DD), for
instance, sees the student-centred progressive education as Americanized education that, he
thinks, has already proved to be ineffective in the US and Japan. These writers discuss Amy
Chua's best-selling book to question the child-centred, soft pedagogic approach and warn
the Korean public not to model education after the failed pedagogic experiment. Not
surprisingly, Japan's lower PISA ranking compared to South Korea is used as a ground
against the introduction of any reform measures designed to lessen academic pressure and
competition. Hong (2004/DD) argues that Korea should not give up its own merits embedded
in a historically constructed competitive system. He goes on to explain that Japan could stop
the deeper decline of achievement by doing away with yutori education and turning back to
the past path.
The rise of Japan as the counter-model reflects the South Korean government's new plan to
promote creativity and insung(personality/character) education, announced in 2011. Facing
the criticism that South Korean students have excessive study loads, the plan, proposed to be
implemented in 2014, includes the 20% reduction of curricular content and more curricular
focus on constructivist teaching practice. In response to this announcement, the conservative
writers claim that this streamlining of curricular content has already caused public fears over
the deterioration of scholastic achievement (Hong 2004/DD; Jung2010a/DD; Kim 2012/DD).
In sum, the underperformance of Japanese students relative to Korean students in the last
rounds of PISA has rendered Japan a convenient counter-reference society for Korean
conservative observers. In all these debates, PISA's national ranking powerfully functions as
a criterion upon which particular countries are chosen for reference and counter-reference
with their characteristics highlighted for domestic political consumption.

Conclusion: reference societies and local

configurations
Jump to section

Introduction
Germany
Australia
South Korea
Conclusion: reference societies and local...
It has become a stock phrase among those who study education policy that large-scale
assessments such as PISA have profoundly changed the processes of educational policy
making. The politics of international league tables provide ample possibilities for
scandalization and glorification (Steiner-Khamsi 2004 drawing on Phillips 2004) and have
sparked new processes of externalisation and policy borrowing and the reconstitution of
reference societies for national education systems (Lingard 2011, 369; see also Grek 2009;
Nvoa and Yariv-Mashal 2003). Hence, much of education policy scholarship in recent years
recognises the emergence of a globalised education policy field through the creation of the
globe as a commensurate space of measurement of the comparative performance of schooling
systems (Sellar and Lingard 2013, 201). In particular, PISA plays a critical role in

institutionalising a new mode of global education governance wherein state sovereignty over
education is increasingly replaced by the influence of large-scale international assessments,
and the key features of top-performing nations in such international assessments are widely
circulated as the global panacea (Kamens 2013; Meyer and Benavot 2013; Wiseman 2010).
While our findings certainly support some of these claims, they also help us nuance the
existing discussion of the globalized education policy field and reference societies. The
near-universal endorsement of Finnish education among many nations, including those
studied here, seems to verify the observation that countries that are high up in league tables
produced by large-scale assessments become global reference societies. However, the
specific implications that local media of varying political orientations draw from Finnish
success considerably differ from country to country (Takayama, Waldow, and Sung 2013).
Furthermore, the responses to equally high performing Asian tigers, when compared to
Finland's global acclaim, seem to suggest a need to explore other factors in order to
understand the way a reference society becomes selected and constructed in the globalised
policy field.
In what follows, we draw on the findings thus far presented to identify three connected sets of
factors shaping how a country becomes a reference society and what prevents it from
becoming one. These are: (1) national auto- and heterostereotypes and their interplay;
(2) economic relations between countries; and (3) the decline or increase of the results of a
country in large-scale assessments relative to potential reference countries. This discussion of
factors is necessarily exploratory, given that it is based on as few as three national cases. Its
potential limitations withstanding, it is warranted, we believe, with a view towards initiating a
more nuanced conceptualisation of the construction of reference societies and the globalized
education field.
Stereotypes condition the way in which an observer's own nation as well as other nations are
perceived (Williams and Spencer-Rodgers 2010). Many comparative education scholars
specialising in Asian education have long identified the existence of negative stereotypes
about Asian education. Much of comparative education scholarship on Japanese education,
for instance, has consistently challenged the dismissive characterisation of Japanese
education as didactic teaching, education mama (excessive parental pressure for academic
success) and examination hell (e.g. Finkelstein, Imamura, and Tobin 1991; Stevenson and
Stigler 1992). Despite the effort of such scholars to paint a more nuanced picture, the overly
negative stereotype of Asian education persists today.
This was clearly demonstrated in the case of Germany, where this sort of dismissive image is
well established and thus effectively blocked the use of Asian countries as reference societies
in educational policy making. Stereotypes of individual countries or regions are part of the
larger stereotype of the whole region, hence the German media constructing the monolithic
representation of Asian education. In Australia, too, there is an overarching Asian
heterostereotype spanning several countries. However, the Australian heterostereotype of
Asian education is more contested than in Germany. During the period discussed in this
article, actors such as the Grattan Institute successfully altered the existing Australian
heterostereotype of Asian education, shifting the focus away from aspects such as strict
discipline, intense academic competition, and didactic rote learning to effective teacher
professional development, innovative pedagogic work and targeted resource allocation to
underperforming schools. The privileged media and political access that the Grattan Institute
enjoys was certainly a decisive factor in this dramatic shift of the referential status of Asian
education in Australia.

The Korean autostereotype remarkably resembles the negative heterostereotypes of Asian

education in Germany and Australia. Irrespective of their political orientations, the Korean
media continue to view Korean education as characterised by intense academic competition,
excessive private tutoring, test-driven rote learning, and drill at the expense of creativity,
curiosity and humanity. At the same time, there is a difference along political lines as
concerns whether these characteristics of Korean education are viewed as strengths of the
Korean education system or as oppressive features to be reformed. The Korean selfperception also places Korean education in the context of a larger Asian model, which
(perhaps not surprisingly) is more nuanced than in Germany and Australia. Conservative
Korean observers, who affirm the competitive Asian educational system, see
Japan's yutori reforms as a deplorable departure from the Asian path that, according to
them, has caused a decline in Japanese PISA results, the message being that Korea should not
digress from this path.
In all the nations studied here, the stereotypes of Asian education closely interact with
another powerful heterostereotype, Finnish education [see Takayama, Waldow, and Sung
(2013) for an analysis of the media representation of the latter]. In Germany, the nearuniversal, dismissive stereotype of Asian education is complemented by a near-universal,
affirmative representation of Finnish education, which in addition is part of a generally
positive larger image of the North deeply rooted in history and going back at least to the
Romantic Period. The existence of a strong, favourable image of Finnish education is often
pitted against and thus serves to stabilise the unfavourable heterostereotype of Asian
education. As long as there is an alternative path to salvation, the Asian countries' successes
seem to provide less of a challenge to education in Germany.
A similar contrast between Finnish and Asian education was observed in Korea and Australia,
though their stereotypes tend to be more varied and contested. In Korea, conservatives
actively try to demystify the progressives' idolisation of Finnish education and see the PISA
success in Shanghai and South Korea as proof of the merits of the Asian competition-based
model. In Australia, progressives highlight the humane and egalitarian nature of Finnish
education and pit it against the Asian education model in order to keep the focus of the
ongoing education reform debate on equity issues including a reform in the inequitable
funding scheme in Australian education. In all three countries, thus, the contrastive
representation of Asian and Finnish education shapes much of the media discourse on high
performing nations in PISA, often reflecting the existing political dichotomy in the ongoing
education debate.
Another noteworthy factor is the significance of economic relations for the construction of
reference societies. In the German discourse, the Asian Tiger countries, especially China, are
perceived as important economic competitors; yet, they did not gain referential status in the
German education policy discourse. Perhaps, coupled with the deeply ingrained, dismissive
view of Asian education, the existence of a prominent counter-stereotype in the shape of
Finland that is seen as highly successful, not just in educational but also in economic terms,
makes it easier to shrug off another educational/economic challenge from the East. Contrary
to the German case, the acute awareness of economic challenges that the Asian century
poses to the Australian economy certainly helps legitimise learning from the Asian
neighbours campaign, despite the presence of the powerful counter-reference, Finnish
education. While the privileged media and political access that Jensen (the Grattan Institute)
enjoys is surely a major factor, another reason for his success was the fact that his insertion of
the Asian model as a critique of the ongoing education debate that had largely focused on
macro policy issues (e.g. funding issues) enjoyed considerable conservative political support.
This also explains the disproportionate media appearance of Jensen in the centre-right TA,

with his writings appearing in the newspaper four times between 2010 and 2012 while none
of his writings appeared in SMH during the period under study. In the case of Korea, though
all the high performing Asian nations are certainly critical economic competitors and partners
to the country, the internalisation of the unfavourable autostereotype of Asian education
effectively discourages observers of the political left to consider Asian education as a reform
model for the Koreans. By contrast, the Korean conservatives tend to use the Asian PISA
success as a legitimation of what they perceive as the Asian model. The competitive
economic relations with other Asian Tigers are certainly part of the backdrop against which
they assert staying on the Asian path (thus the rejection of the constructivist curricular
reform).
Finally, the decline or improvement of the PISA ranking of the country of an observer relative
to potential reference countries may play a role. Here, a comparison of Australia and
Germany is instructive. While Australia's relative results declined over subsequent PISA
rounds, Germany's PISA results slowly increased after the PISA shock in 2001. Hence, by
the time that Asian PISA success became a media sensation, Australia was recognised as in a
serious crisis and Germany as stepping out of a crisis (while in absolute terms, Germany
still performed considerably less well than Australia, see Table 2). This may contribute to a
general feeling of losing ground to the Asian Tigers in Australia, producing a sense of
urgency to react and possibly to borrow reforms from Asian countries, while in Germany the
improvement of the relative position leads more to a sense of catching up, with less pressure
to borrow reforms as a consequence. The same explanation applies to the case of Korea,
where the declining ranking of Japan in relation to Korea contributed to the centre-right
media's construction of Japan's education reform of recent years as a counter-reference not to
emulate. At the same time, the superior performance of Shanghai to Korea encouraged the
same media to view the former's educational characteristics as something we must preserve
or return to.
The way in which Amy Chua's (2011a) Tiger Mum book was received in the three countries
throws into relief their differences in terms of their perception of and reaction to Shanghai's
success in PISA 2009. In Korea, conservative writers praised Chua's supposedly Chinese
methods of raising her children; Chua's methods represent part of what they consider as the
good old Korean education which they fear will be eroded by the proposed reduction of the
curricular contents and student-centred instruction. By contrast, in Germany, the book
corroborated the already prevalent view that the PISA success of Asian children is bought at
too high a price and provided an opportunity to affirm across political camps where we do
not want to go. In Australia, although the book was extensively featured by the media, only
one author (Marginson 2011/TA) articulated the book with Shanghai's PISA success, stressing
the Confucian cultural heritage as the common cause of Shanghai's PISA success and the
success of Amy Chua's educational methods. Instead, the book was discussed more
prominently in terms of the high academic aspiration and success of Asian migrant families in
Australian metropolitan cities (e.g. Taylor 2011/TA).
In sum, we hope to have shown that while prevalent patterns of externalization to world
situations have certainly changed and a globalized policy field may be emerging, local
configurations, including local patterns of political controversy and problem perception, still
considerably influence whether or not and in what ways countries become reference
societies. A high ranking in international large-scale assessments may have become a
necessary condition for achieving the status of a global reference society, but it still is far
from being a sufficient condition. The emergence of an increasingly globalised education
policy field, therefore, entails simultaneous processes of global standardisation and national
and regional diversification. The former necessarily involves the production of policy

localism/nationalism with the latter constantly invigorated through the domestication of the
international policy discourse.

Notes
1. Standardised large-scale assessments of pupil achievement are just one example for this
type of study (although perhaps the most prominent one). Another prominent example is
constituted by rankings of higher education institutions, such as the (in)famous Shanghai
ranking.
2. Australian political leaders have consistently called for deeper engagement with Asia since
the 1990s, often translated into the demands to introduce Asian languages and culture to
school children. This trend was further augmented more recently by Mandarin-speaking
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (20072010) and his initiative to improve Australian children's
Asia literacy.
3. Yutori education refers to a Japanese national curricular reform implemented in 2002,
emphasising an integrated curriculum, student-centred activity, cooperative learning and less
competitive assessment (Takayama 2007).

References

1. Aznarez, J. 1993. When Discipline Crowds Out Creativity [in

German]. Sddeutsche Zeitung, July 24.
2. Bonnor, C. 2012. Gonski the Game-changer. Inside Story, February
29. http://inside.org.au/gonski-the-game-changer/
3. Bork, H. 2011. The Firecracker from China [in German]. Sddeutsche Zeitung,
January 8.
4. Choi, H. 2007. Competition for the Special High Schools? [in
Korean]. Hankyoreh News, October 21.
5. Chong, F. 2002. HK Puts Reform Top of Curriculum. Weekend Australian,
August 24.
6. Chua, A. 2011a. Battle hymn of the Tiger Mother. New York: Penguin Press.
7. Chua, A. 2011b. Die Mutter des Erfolgs: Wie ich meinen Kindern das Siegen
beibrachte [The mother of success: How I taught my children to win]. Mnchen: Nagel &
Kimche.
8. Crook, A. 2008. The Grattan Institute: Centre for Ruddist Thinking. Crikey,
December 12.http://www.crikey.com.au/2008/12/12/the-grattan-institute-centre-for-ruddistthinking
9. Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. 2011. Review of
Funding for Schooling. Canberra: DEEWR.
10. Doherty, L. 2004. Focus on Skills Winning Factor. Sydney Morning Herald,
December 12.
11. Donnelly, K. 2007. Neighbours Put us to the Test - APEC 2007. Weekend
Australian, September 8.
12. Donnelly, K. 2009. ALP's Education Revolution Copies UK's Failed
Policies. News Weekly, September 5.http://www.newsweekly.com.au/article.php?id=4104
13. Fernandez, C., and M. Yoshida. 2004. Lesson Study: A Japanese Approach to
Improving Mathematics Teaching and Learning. New York: Routledge.

14. Ferrari, J. 2012. Helping Students Learn Key to Better Results. The Australian,
February 18.
15. Finkelstein, B., A. E. Imamura, and J. J. Tobin. 1991. Transcending Stereotypes.
Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.
16. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 1999. At the Age of Two Years the First Steps
into Examination Hell [in German].Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 9.
17. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 2010. Significantly Fewer Risk Pupils in
Germany [in German]. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 8.
18. Garnaut, J. 2010. China's Confucian Culture Clash. Sydney Morning Herald,
December 11.
19. Gillard, J. 2011. Australia in the Asia Century [press release], September 28.
20. Gittins, R. 2012. Better Teaching could Make Our Students the World's
Best. Sydney Morning Herald, February 29.
21. Grek, S. 2009. Governing by Numbers: The PISA Effect in Europe. Journal of
Education Policy 24: 2337. doi:10.1080/02680930802412669 [Taylor & Francis
Online], [Web of Science ]
22. Guttenplan, D. D. 2010. Western Nations Reaction to Poor Education
Results. New York Times, December 8.
23. Hall, B. 2012. Australian Students Lag Asia by Three Years. Sydney Morning
Herald, February 17.
24. Hanimann, J. 2003. PISA, Second Round: Asians, Too, Read Better [in
German]. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 2.
25. Harrison, D. 2012. Shanghai Surprise Reveals a Great Learning Culture. Sydney
Morning Herald, February 20.
26. Heiser, S. 2007. Let's Go to Asia [in German]. Sddeutsche Zeitung, January 27.
27. Hong, C. 2004. The Shanghai Shocks [in Korean]. Dong-A Daily, October 2.
28. Hong, C. 2011. Asian Education Grabs Global Attention [in Korean]. Dong-A
Daily, March 9.
29. Howe, E. R. 2008. Teacher Induction Across the Pacific: A Comparative Study of
Canada and Japan. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and
Pedagogy 34: 333346. doi: 10.1080/02607470802401503 [Taylor & Francis Online]
30. Jensen, B. 2010. Future Compromised by Failures in Education System. The
Australian, December 10.
31. Jensen, B. 2011a. Deafening Silence from Pollies about Declining Student
Performance. The Australian, July 5.
32. Jensen, B. 2011b. We should Turn East and Learn from the World's Best School
Systems. The Australian, July 29.
33. Jensen, B. 2012. Shanghai Success a Lesson in Delivery. The Weekend
Australian, February 18.
34. Jensen, B., A. Hunter, J. Sonnemann, and T. Burns. 2012. Catching Up: Learning
from the Best School Systems in East Asia. Carlton, Victoria: Grattan Institute.
35. Jung, S. 2010a. Creativity and Personality Education [in Korean]. Dong-A
Daily, May 20.
36. Jung, S. 2010b. The World Best Shanghai Education [in Korean]. Dong-A
Daily, December 8.

37. Jung, M., and S. Koh. 2011. U.S. Attracted to Asian Education and Let Alone
Tiger Mom [in Korean]. Dong-A Daily, July 22.
38. Kamens, D. H. 2013. Globalization and the Emergence of an Audit Culture:
PISA and the Search for Best Practices and Magic Bullets. In PISA, Power, and Policy:
The Emergence of Global Educational Governance, edited by H. Meyer, and A. Benavot,
117139. Oxford: Symposium Books.
39. Kelly, P. 2012. Wake-up Calls on Asia Century. The Australian, June 16.
40. Kim, S. 2004. Finnish Education [in Korean]. Dong-A Daily, December 9.
41. Kim, D. 2010. Shanghai's Secret of the Best Performance in PISA [in
Korean]. Dong-A Daily, December 13.
42. Kim, S. 2011. Impossible to Get the Better of Chinese Education [in
Korean]. Dong-A Daily, January 23.
43. Kim, D. 2012. The Superintendent of Seoul Detracts from South Korean
Educational Success [in Korean]. Dong-A Daily, July 13.
44. Kwag, T. 2008. A Little Knowledge is Dangerous Thing [in
Korean]. Hankyoreh News, June 1.
45. Kwon, T. 2009a. Some thoughts on the PISA [in Korean]. Hankyoreh News,
January 29.
46. Kwon, T. 2009b. How to Understand Obama's Praise on South Korean Education
[in Korean]. Hankyoreh News, March 15.
47. Lee, B. 2008. Does Competition Make Competence? [in Korean]. Hankyoreh
News, August 11.
48. Lee, E. 2010a. South Korean 15-year Olds did Well on the Test but not on Selfcontrol [in Korean]. Hankyoreh News, December 10.
49. Lee, Y. 2010b. Views on Education and Achievement: Finland's Story of Success
and South Korea's Story of Decline. KEDI Journal of Educational Policy 7 (2): 379
401. [Web of Science ]
50. Lingard, B. 2011. Policy as Numbers: Ac/counting for Educational
Research. The Australian Educational Researcher 38: 355382. doi: 10.1007/s13384-0110041-9 [CrossRef], [Web of Science ]
51. Luhmann, N. 2000. The Reality of the Mass Media. Stanford: Stanford University
Press.
52. Luhmann, N., and K.-E. Schorr. 2000. Problems of Reflection in the System of
Education. Mnster: Waxmann.
53. Marginson, S. 2011. Scholars Rise in the East. The Australian, April 6.
54. Meyer, H., and A. Benavot. 2013. PISA and the Globalization of Education
Governance: Some Puzzles and Problems. InPISA, Power, and Policy: The Emergence of
Global Educational Governance, edited by H. Meyer and A. Benavot, 926. Oxford:
Symposium Books.
55. Nam, Y. 2010. Why are Progressive Educators Rushing to Visit Finland? [in
Korean]. Dong-A Daily, October 8.
56. Nvoa, A., and T. Yariv-Mashal. 2003. Comparative Research in Education: A
Mode of Governance or a Historical Journey?Comparative Education 39: 423438.
doi: 10.1080/0305006032000162002 [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ]
57. OECD. 2010. PISA 2009 Assessment Framework. Paris: OECD. [CrossRef]

58. Park, M. 2010. The PISA Shocks in South Korean Education [in
Korean]. Hankyoreh News, April 25.
59. Patty, A. 2012. Trailing, can do Better; Report Needs Answers. Sydney Morning
Herald, January 28.
60. Phillips, D. 2004. Towards a Theory of Policy Attraction in Education. In The
Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending, edited by G. Stiner-Khamsi, 5467.
New York: Teachers College Press.
61. Pyne, C. 2012. Hon Christopher Pyne MP: Achieving Teacher Quality the
Coalitions Approach, Sydney Institute.http://www.liberal.org.au/LatestNews/2012/07/17/Hon-Christopher-Pyne-MP-Achieving-Teacher-Quality-The-CoalitionsApproach.aspx
62. Schaaf, J. 2011. My Secret Envy [in German]. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
January 30.
63. Scheufele, D. A., and D. Tewksbury. 2007. Framing, Agenda Setting, and
Priming: The Evolution of Three Media Effects Models. Journal of Communication 57: 9
20. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2006.00326.x [CrossRef], [Web of Science ]
64. Schmoll, H. 1997. No Reason for Envy [in German]. Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung, September 13.
65. Schriewer, J. 1990. The Method of Comparison and the Need for Externalization:
Methodological Criteria and Sociological Concepts. In Theories and Methods in
Comparative Education, edited by J. Schriewer and B. Holmes, 2nd ed., 2583. Frankfurt am
Main: Peter Lang.
66. Schultz, T. 2010. Pisa-Test: Asia's Pupils are Best [in German]. Sddeutsche
Zeitung, December 7.
67. Sellar, S., and B. Lingard. 2013. PISA and the Expanding Role of the OECD in
Global Educational Governance. In PISA, Power, and Policy: The Emergence of Global
Educational Governance, edited by H. Meyer and A. Benavot, 185206 . Oxford:
Symposium Books.
68. Singh, M. 2010. Connecting Intellectual Projects in China and
Australia. Australian Journal of Education 54: 3145.
doi:10.1177/000494411005400104 [CrossRef], [Web of Science ]
69. Slattery, L. 2011. From the Editor. The Australian, April 6.
70. Steinberger, P. 2011. Loudly Roared, Tiger Mother [in German]. Sddeutsche
Zeitung, January 21.
71. Steiner-Khamsi, G. 2003. The Politics of League Tables. Journal of Social
Science Education, 2003-1. Accessed October 9, 2012. http://www.jsse.org/2003/20031/tables-khamsi.htm
72. Steiner-Khamsi, G. 2004. Blazing a Trail for Policy Theory and Practice. In The
Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending, edited by G. Steiner-Khamsi, 201
220. New York: Teachers College Press.
73. Stevenson, H. W., and J. W. Stigler. 1992. The Learning Gap. New York: Summit
Books.
74. Sddeutsche Zeitung. 1997. German Pupils Only Mediocre [in
German]. Sddeutsche Zeitung, February 19.
75. Sung, Y. 2011. Cultivating Borrowed Futures: The Politics of Neoliberal
Loanwords in South Korean Cross-national Policy Borrowing. Comparative Education 47:

523538. doi: 10.1080/03050068.2011.555118 [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science

]
76. Taffertshofer, B., and G. Herrmann. 2007. Paradise in the North. More Teachers,
no Grade Pressure, no Repetition of Grades [in German]. SddeutscheZeitung, June 18.
77. Takayama, K. 2007. A Nation at Risk Crosses the Pacific: Transnational
Borrowing of the U.S. Crisis Discourse in the Debate on Education Reform in
Japan. Comparative Education Review 51: 423446. doi: 10.1086/520864 [CrossRef], [Web
of Science ]
78. Takayama, K. 2008. The Politics of International League Tables: PISA in Japan's
Achievement Crisis Debate. Comparative Education 44: 387407.
doi: 10.1080/03050060802481413 [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ]
79. Takayama, K. 2010. Politics of Externalization in Reflexive Times: Reinventing
Japanese Education Reform Discourses Through Finnish Success. Comparative Education
Review 54: 5175. doi: 10.1086/644838 [CrossRef], [Web of Science ]
80. Takayama, K., F. Waldow, and Y.-K. Sung. 2013. Finland has it All? Examining
the Media Accentuation of Finnish Education in Australia, Germany, and South
Korea. Research in Comparative and International Education 8: 307325.
doi:10.2304/rcie.2013.8.3.307 [CrossRef]
81. Taylor, P. 2011. Tiger Mothers are a Study in Strict Parenting. Weekend
Australian, January 22.
82. Tillmann, K.-J., K. Dedering, D. Kneuper, C. Kuhlmann, and I.
Nessel. 2008. PISA als bildungspolitisches Ereignis: Fallstudien in vier
Bundeslndern [PISA as an Event in Educational Policy-making: Case Studies in Four
Federal States]. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag fr Sozialwissenschaften.
83. Volkmann, U. 2004. Die journalistische Konstruktion gerechter Ungleichheiten
[The Journalistic Construction of Just Injustices]. In Verteilungsprobleme und Gerechtigkeit
in modernen Gesellschaften, edited by S. Liebig, H. Lengfeld and S. Mau, 297328.
Frankfurt a. M.: Campus.
84. Waldow, F. 2010. Der Traum vom skandinavisch schlau Werden [Dreaming of
getting smart the Scandinavian way].Zeitschrift fr Pdagogik 54: 497511.
85. Waldow, F. 2012. Standardisation and Legitimacy: Two Central Concepts in
Research on Educational Borrowing and Lending. In World Yearbook in Education 2012:
Policy Borrowing and Lending in Education, edited by G. Steiner-Khamsi and F. Waldow,
411427. London: Routledge.
86. Walker, T. 2012. Asian Education Goes to Top of the Class. Financial Review,
February 18.
87. Whitty, G. 1998. Devolution & Choice in Education. Melbourne: Australian
Council for Education Research.
88. Williams, M. J., and J. Spencer-Rodgers. 2010. Culture and Stereotyping
Processes: Integration and New Directions. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 4:
591604. doi: 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00288.x [CrossRef]
89. Wiseman, A. 2010. The Uses of Evidence for Educational Policymaking: Global
Contexts and International Trends. Review of Research in Education 34: 124.
doi: 10.3102/0091732X09350472 [CrossRef], [Web of Science ]
90. Zymek, B., and R. Zymek. 2004. Traditional - National - International:
Explaining the Inconsistency of Educational Borrowers. In Educational Policy Borrowing:
Historical Perspectives, edited by D. Phillips and K. Ochs, 2535. Didcot: Symposium.

91. Zyngier, D. 2012. Gonski Review: Another Wasted Opportunity. The

Conversation, February 21.https://theconversation.edu.au/gonski-review-another-wastedopportunity-5453