An Investigation Of The Evolution Of Western Education Policy Research

Under the background of globalization,Chinese educational policy research needs to be closely connected with the development in the world and this era.Educational Policy is one of leading journals in educational policy studies.Via CiteSpace,this paper visualizes and analyses journals published in Educational Policy from 1996 to 2016 in three aspects including research subjects,research methods,distributions and cooperation of authors from perspective of knowledge sociology,investigating knowledge production pattern and evolving trends in Western education policy.Implications for educational policy study in China are then put forward.The research topics of Western education policy are widely distributed.Classified and analyzed from three dimensions including the subject,activity and direction of educational policy,evolutionary features in research position,research scope and research orientation are summarized.Specifically,topics of educational policy research have developed into multiple positions,its scopes have developed towards multinational education policy and practical applications of research orientation have gradually reinforced.The research subjects of educational policy in Western countries have enlightened and reflected Chinese education policy research from three aspects:problem consciousness,theoretical orientation and practical orientation.The application of methods in Western educational policy research has its variety.With research methods used in 1996-2016 Educational Policy calculated,the characteristics and trend of research methods are analyzed.It is found that qualitative research method accounts for the main part,mixed research method presents the advantage of late-development and the application of research methods indicates diversified development.Generally,research methods applied in Western education policy studies have enlightened and deliberated education policy research of China in various aspects including research methods and methodologies.The distribution and cooperation of educational policy researchers in Western countries are obvious.Via visualizing information of authors including frequency,institutions,nationality and cooperation in Educational Policy,features of authors are mirrored.Research finds that with a few core authors leading the trend of educational policy research,authors of core journals in this field mainly come from USA and England.And some international first-rate universities have long been in the leading position of research in educational policy studies.The collaborative networks of authors and institutions demonstrate that cooperation across countries has been increasing and the proportion of Asian countries in international cooperative research gradually rises.In this respect,the enlightenment to educational policy research in China mainly covers three aspects including collaborative research,internationalization and practice orientation.This research analyses research subjects,research methods,distributions and cooperation of researchers in Western educational policy research from the perspectives of knowledge sociology,mirroring current pattern of knowledge production in Western educational policy studies under the background of globalization.With social structure characteristics and complex social connections in knowledge production of Western educational policy analyzed,research finds that issues including international discourse power monopoly and language barriers lie behind the phenomenon.Hence,proposals regarding speeding up cooperative research,promoting internationalization and enhancing discourse power on the basis of Western experience are put forward.