GLOBALIZATION AND EDUCATION AID POLICY DISCOURSE: AN ANALYSIS OF ASIAN DONORS’ POLICY DISCOURSE FOR CAMBODIAN ASSISTANCE

This paper seeks to explain the formulation of education policy discourse of bilateral aid agencies in Japan, South Korea, and China to examine theories of globalization of education with Cambodia as a case study. A further effort was made to explore the potential of post-structural theory to examine processes of globalization in terms of policy convergence or divergence in relation to the two dominant sociological theories in the field of comparative education: Neo-Institutional Theory and Systems Theory. Policy documents and interviews with government officials were analyzed to test these two theories against a post-structural approach. It was found that Asian aid agencies display tendencies toward both convergence and divergence in their aid policy discourse. There is a tendency for the agencies to practice self-referentiality in an effort to strengthen their political influence in international relations. Further research will be required to examine how project implementation may confirm or challenge the interpretation of the aid policy discourse in relation to post-structural discourse analysis.