Translating Global Ideas

Explores the varying influence of foreign policy recommendations on education reforms in Chile, Argentina, and Colombia.

Winner of the 2025 Best Monograph Award presented by the Globalization & Education SIG of the Comparative and International Education Society

International organizations have consistently influenced education reforms in Latin America, but not all countries have adopted the same policy recommendations. This book offers a unique comparative analysis of secondary education reforms in Chile, Argentina, and Colombia, from the 1960s to the 2010s, with a focus on three key areas: manpower planning, state-retrenchment (market-based versus active-state), and ideas about having a right to a quality education in an era of government accountability. While responding to similar policy recommendations, these countries have differed in how they have implemented decentralization, incorporated private actors, allocated authority over curriculum, and established instruments of accountability. Claudia Diaz-Rios traces the legacies of previous education policies and local struggles among stakeholders in reshaping-and sometimes rejecting-foreign recommendations. Translating Global Idea will be an invaluable resource for scholars of comparative politics and the globalization of education-particularly those interested in policy development in middle- and low-income countries, as well as practitioners invested in promoting education policy changes in Latin America.