Towards ‘thick description’ of educational transfer: understanding a Japanese institution's ‘import’ of European language policy

Globalisation and convergence in educational policy worldwide has reinvigorated, while rendering more complex, the classic theme of educational transfer. Framed by this wider pursuit of new understandings of a changing transfer/context puzzle, this paper explores how an ethnographic ‘thick description’ might complement and extend recent research. Specifically, it relates findings from extended ethnographic work on an attempt by a prominent Japanese university to ‘import’ the Council of Europe's Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). This rare case of explicit ‘borrowing’ from a supranational space directly to the domestic institutional level, when approached in such a way, suggests new insights to help the field refine understandings of the processes, ‘shape-shifting’, and ‘success’ of international policy migration.