Building on an increasingly sophisticated body of research on policy ‘borrowing’ in education, this collection explores ways in which the foreign example in education has been and is being used by policy makers in a variety of settings, its principal aim being to assess the usefulness of ‘foreign’ experience in ‘home’ contexts.

(1) Investigating Policy attraction in education. (2) Acting comparatively upon the educational world: puzzles and possibilities. (3) The influence of overseas examples on DES policy-making for the school system in England. 1985-1995. (4)Cross National policy borrowing and educational innovation: improving achievement in the London borough of Barking and Dagenham. (5) Educational Standards and the changing discourse on education: the reception and consequences of the PISA study in Germany. (6) Comparative research as an instrument or EU aid and development programmes. (7) Assumptions and Implications of cross-national attraction in education: the case of ‘learning from Japan’. (8) The economics of Policy borrowing and lending: a study of late adopters. (9) Comparing the trajectories of educational change and policy transfer in developing countires. (10) Global and cross-national influences on education in post genocide Rwanda.