Theorizing Educational Transfer: Toward a Conceptual Map of the Context of Cross-National Attraction

This article highlights some of the current methodological issues surrounding how to analyze and understand educational transfer with particular reference to cross-national attraction. It reviews the resurgent interest in the themes of attraction and transfer and evaluates new models and typologies that describe those complex processes. It argues that gaps in the current research and new challenges posed by ‘globalization’ necessitate a new interpretive framework. To that end, a contextual map of cross-national attraction is presented and its component parts are described in considerable detail. Examples from the author's previous work on Chinese and American attraction to Japanese education are used to illustrate the uses of this new analytical framework. The article concludes by suggesting the various ways the device may assist in analyzing attraction and transfer and in opening up new areas of research.