ABSTRACT

Increased pressures of internationalization compel universities worldwide to search for successful education models and frameworks that can enhance their entrepreneurial status and international competitiveness. This study aims to explore the political interests, power dynamics, and consequences of transferring educational systems, models, and concepts across context, by focusing on the popularity of the writing center (a writing support service originating in the United States) in Japan. To examine the political and socio-economic factors that motivated a Japanese university to establish a writing center, I trace the process of the writing center’s establishment from documents and interviews with five university staff involved in the planning. Policy borrowing as a conceptual framework is employed to illuminate the ways in which participants exercised their agency and justified the writing center in relation to the university’s internationalization mission. Given the findings, I discuss the impulses, externalizing potentials, and reference societies that attracted administrators to the idea of the writing center and critically examine the policy borrowing practices that aim to internationalize higher education.

摘要

国际化的压力越来越大，迫使世界各地的大学寻求可以提高其企业地位和国际竞争力的成功的教育模式和框架。这项研究旨在通过关注写作中心（起源于美国的写作支持服务）在日本的受欢迎程度来探讨政治利益，权力动态以及跨上下文转移教育系统，模型和概念的后果。为了研究促使日本大学建立写作中心的政治和社会经济因素，我从文件和与计划中五名大学工作人员的访谈中追溯了写作中心的建立过程。借用政策作为概念框架，以阐明参与者行使其代理人权和证明写作中心与大学的国际化使命有关的方式。鉴于这些发现，我讨论了促使管理人员了解写作中心理念的动力，外在潜力和参考社团，并严格审查了旨在使高等教育国际化的政策借鉴做法。