Why Time Matters

In this blogpost, Gita Steiner-Khamsi reflects on the seven temporalities of global school reform.

In a recently published book, I highlighted the seven most common temporalities utilized to understand why some reforms circulate globally (and others don’t), what exactly travels and what sticks, and when there is receptiveness for global policies, best practices, or broadly defined international standards. They are the (i) present at the time (historical context), (ii) timing, (iii) future, (iv) sequence, (v) lifespan, (vi) aging, and finally (vii) tempo (Steiner-Khamsi, 2025).

In educational research, we are accustomed to explaining changes in the education sector in relation to broader societal transformations, that is, the current or historical context at the time. Research questions such as the following are typical of such endeavors: What have been the educational responses to multiculturalism, climate change, or democratic backsliding? Comparative policy research also pays close attention to timing: when and under which circumstances decision-makers are most receptive to change? A fascinating body of new research has emerged on the policy utility of promissory futures or anticipatory governance. International organizations rely on target-setting (e.g., SDG 2030) and references to the future (e.g., UNESCO Futures of Education report) to hold governments accountable by monitoring national developments. Similarly, the OECD’s Directorate for Public Governance currently encourages governments to reflect on the future they (the governments) want. Thus, the compass metaphor is being tried in the education sector (see OECD 2030 Learning Compass) as well as across all sectors. Thinking about the future has, under certain conditions, a salutary effect on coalition and consensus-building in the present.

Said this, we are still left with four temporal dimensions that are relatively less explored: sequence, lifespan, aging, and tempo.

Sequence is also important. For instance, New Public Management in the 1990s was initially adopted in ministries of finance before being applied to line ministries. Around the same time, many countries established new public procurement laws that mandated governments to outsource the delivery of public goods and services. Outsourcing and contracting private providers made it essential to define, measure, and monitor the expected outcomes. As noted, standard setting, performance measurement, and accreditation became widely used policy tools. These public-administration reforms have significantly impacted the education sector, leading to a surge in privatization along with an increase in standardized testing and other evaluation methods. Similarly, today’s e-government reform, participatory budgeting, and social accountability measures are primarily driven by ministers of finance. The global counterparts of public administration reforms are the OECD and the World Bank. Unsurprisingly, they were the first movers in promoting and financing reforms that targeted government downsizing and private sector engagement simultaneously, known as New Public Management in OECD countries and Structural Adjustment Policies in countries of the Global South. Decades later, we encounter “hollow states.” As with the previous public administration reforms, the two international organizations are leading the changes: This time in the direction of e-government, citizen engagement, social accountability, data-driven evidence, and more user-friendly public services.

A sequential analysis reveals the power differential between the Ministries of Finance and the line ministries. In addition, there is a system logic in the temporal order of reforms: As explained in great length elsewhere (Steiner-Khamsi, 2025), the policy responses to the rapid expansion of education led to two subsequent problems: inequality and a decline in quality. Depending on their political affiliations, governments prioritized one of the two policy challenges over the other.

Considerations of lifespan help us to distinguish between what travels and what sticks. Some popular concepts such as, for example, accountability, agentic learning, or socio-emotional learning, travel but are either not implemented or short-lived in practice.  As with the other temporalities: why and how questions are in order here. Are some reforms short-lived because of the (negative/mixed) outcomes of the reform, or because of the process such as, who was empowered and who disempowered as a result of the reform? Perhaps needless to state, sometimes reforms are only implemented for the duration of external funding or grants.

Another fallacy that the temporal preoccupation with reforms attempts to remedy is the assumption that all policies are equally enforced. For example, some governments neither registered nor monitored the quality of education in low-fee private schools. Others did so, but then, after a while, with the increasing popularity coupled with business interests in the sector, they stopped regulating the low-fee private school sector. Aging may be due to natural causes, but also a result of layering. This applies especially to externally funded reforms: they are added to existing provisions without phasing out previous provisions. A good case in point is pathways to teacher education; each funded by a different international donor and, depending on the funder’s vision of good teacher education, is of varying duration and substance. Additionally, we are now witnessing a new practice in some countries: policies are kept on the books but not reinforced because the regulatory bodies have been suspended, as is the case in the United States with climate change or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives.

Finally, similar to fashion, rumors, and epidemics, school reforms spread slowly at first, but then gain momentum once a critical mass of countries has adopted a reform. By that time, a global reform has become so localized that it is both everybody’s and nobody’s reform, lowering the threshold for subsequent adoption. Moreover, the frame of reference shifts: early adopters tend to reference experiences from elsewhere, while late adopters justify the importance of joining the global trend with “best practices” or “international standards” (vaguely defined). The role of international organizations in accelerating the pace of diffusion should not be underestimated: they not only provide a stamp of approval, along with policy advice and funding, but also establish targets and benchmarks, thereby speeding up the implementation of the reform in the following years. This is when “tempo meets future” as temporal units of analysis.

Time is neither linear, chronological, nor unidimensional. The number seven is meant symbolically as many more temporalities come to the surface, especially once the temporalities intersect and multi-level analyses are applied.

The Author

Gita Steiner-Khamsi is the William H. Kilpatrick Professor of Comparative Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, and the Honorary UNESCO Chair of Comparative Education Policy and the Geneva Graduate Institute.

Reference

Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2025). Time in education policy transfer. The seven temporalities of global school reform. Palgrave/Macmillan – Springer Nature. Open Access