Educational assessment and policy change
A study on university admission reforms in South Korea
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21510999 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Hoonhui Cho (0009-0006-6529-1226, Ministry of Education, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 52 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 504-520 |
| Publication date | 2026-07-04 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Oxford Review of Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0305-4985 • E-ISSN: 1465-3915 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/03054985.2025.2511730 |
| OpenAlex | W4411367120 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 41 |
This paper draws on a case study of South Korean education reforms, with attention to the cultural and political practices articulated around changing the rules on university admissions. It first traces the historical trajectory of what I term the National Education Narrative (NEN), then considers the emergence and working of the Globalising Education Narrative (GEN). Recent education reforms are presented as governing spaces loaded with political contestations, where two competing educational discourses met, where policy was negotiated, and agreement reached. The NEN is briefly defined as presenting education in terms of meritocratic success in society, while the GEN discourse is preoccupied with enabling the nation to cope with global economic competition. The contest between these discourses is reflected in two contrasting admission tracks developed in South Korea since 1995, the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) and the Comprehensive School Education Report (CSER). The analysis presented here shows that the NEN challenged education reform agendas, limited the scale of policy reforms and re-balanced power relations. From that analysis, the argument is made for closer attention to the domestic dynamics of national policy making in order to better understand the interaction of global and ‘local’ factors in contemporary education policymaking
Economic growth · Economics · Education policy · Educational assessment · Higher education · Pedagogy · Political science · Sociology · Educational Systems and Policies · Global Educational Reforms and Inequalities · Higher Education Learning Practices · Public Administration
Cultural Foundations of Learning
Education Fever
Making policy move
The Handbook of Global Education Policy
Success and Education in South Korea
New directions in policy borrowing research
Policy Worlds
Making sense of policy practices
Dreamscapes of Modernity
Interpretation and Method
The Koreas
The OECD policy-making assemblage
What is policy assemblage
Singapore's ‘global assemblage’
Global education policy and international development
Global governance and the promissory visions of education
What’s the problem with ‘policy alignment’? The complexities of national reform in Australia’s federal system
Educational imaginaries
Following policy
Public Administration as Storytelling
Travel, translation, and governing in education
Pasts and futures that keep the possible alive
| Highly cited | No |
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