Special Issue: Policy Transfer in vocational education and training and adult education

International policy transfer is a key theme within international and comparative education and has not been explored fully in the fields ofvocational education, workplace learning and labour marketrelated adult education. The term refers to the process ofexchanging and adopting policy measures, reforms, strategies and ideas from one context to another (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000; Li and Pilz, 2021), either with or without adaption to the new context. We explore policy transfer in respect to learning, be it voluntary and purposeful, incidental and accidental or purposeful, but enforced (Phillips and Schweisfurth, 2011).
International policy transfer has a long and strong tradition in education. With respect to vocational education and training, for example, the apprenticeship training in German-speaking countries has been a role model for many countries all over the world for decades and there were countless attempts to transfer at least elements of it to other regions and countries (e.g. Euler, 2013; Oeben and Klumpp, 2021). In the field of(labour-market related) adult education, policy transfer is less obvious though it was particularly international organizations which “borrowed” concepts of lifelong learning and learnt from one another as regards learning over the lifespan (e.g. Jarvis, 2014). Policy borrowing is particularly eminent in higher education and the Bologna process is one of the most prominent examples of policy transfer. Additional examples refer to the learning outcomes orientation, qualifications frameworks or New Public Management tools finding entrance to education (such as the use of monitoring or benchmarks in education).
Against this background, this special issue is concerned with debates and theoretical perspectives on the issue ofinternational policy transfer. We, the editors, intent to contribute to closing the gap of

Volume 16 Number 4 December 2021

https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/rcia/16/4

Contents

Special Issue: Policy Transfer in vocational education and training and adult education
Guest Editors: Antje Barabasch, Sandra Bohlinger and Stefan Wolf
Editorial: Policy transfer in vocational education and training and adult education, 335
Antje Barabasch, Sandra Bohlinger and Stefan Wolf

Articles

Reconstructing policy transfer in adult and vocational education and training, 339
Antje Barabasch, Sandra Bohlinger and Stefan Wolf

Conditions for cross-border policy transfer and cooperation: Analysing differences between higher education and vocational training, 361
Lukas Graf and Anna P. Lohse

Towards understanding of policy transfer and policy learning in adult education in the context of United Kingdom, 384
Natasha Kersh and Andrea Laczik

The institutional development of skills formation in Lithuania and Ukraine: Institutional settings, critical junctures and policy transfer, 405
Vidmantas Tutlys, Daiva Bukantait˙e, Sergii Melnyk and Aivaras Anuˇzis

The role of culture in policy transfer. A pilot study for transferring European models of peer review in vocational schools to China, 433
Junmin Li

International education governance in the francophone microcosm, 452
Isabelle Le Mouillour

The ‘recognition of prior learning’ in vocational education and training systems of lower and middle income countries: An analysis of the role of development cooperation in the diffusion of the concept, 469
Markus Maurer

Decolonising recognition of prior learning – The drawbacks of policy mimicking, 488
Patrick Werquin