Policy borrowing or transfer has been a popular phenomenon in the era of globalization. When adopting foreign policies, evidences that support the success of these foreign policies are often quoted to support their local use. However, these evidences often lost their validity during implementation stage. The aim of this paper is to find out why evidences from foreign research failed to work in local context. Teacher Evaluation Policy (TEP) in Taiwan is used as the case for study. In sum, the paper addresses the following research questions: 1. What evidences are presented and used to support the adoption of foreign policy? What are missing? Why? 2. What are the problems emerged during the implementation stage? 3. Based on the problems encountered during implementation stage, what other evidences are needed for successful policy implementation? Internal competition for policy idea pushes politicians to look for ideas from the outside world to promote themselves for election or public support. Policies that have “international brand” increase the credibility of the politicians, thus increasing their legitimacy an popularity. Globalization has made the spread and exchange of new ideas much easier. Increasing migration of scholars across countries also makes the spread of ideas easier. However, borrowed policies often created more problems than solutions in the local context. Several scholars have provided their explanations. For example, Dolowitz and Marsh(2000) saw the failure of policy borrowing as the results of uninformed transfer, incomplete transfer, or inappropriate transfer. Ball(1998) argued that borrowed policies are often recontextualized by local politics and culture, thus making the accomplishment of policy goals impossible. He described the policy borrowing as a process of bricolage. Dimonck and Walker’s discussion (2000) emphasized more on the cultural dimension of policy failure. Cultural differences between the lending and the borrowing countries created obstacles for successful policy adoption. These findings suggest that evidences that go beyond foreign policy experiences are needed for achieving expected policy effect in the local context. Teacher Evaluation is a new idea in Taiwan. The idea was borrowed for preparing teacher career ladder system and pilot-tested in Taiwan since 2006. Preliminary evaluation findings suggest that the policy did not accomplished its expected goals. The number of schools and cities participate in TEP increased very slowly. Most of the schools are persuaded to join the pilot-testing project and withdrew after one year. Educational practitioners are conservative about the policy impact on teacher professional growth.

The research used case study method to address the proposed research questions. As was mentioned before, Teacher Evaluation Policy will be used as a case for focused research. Data collection methods include document analysis, focused group discussion, and interviews are conducted. For the document analysis, policy reviewed included relevant policy texts, evaluation reports, research reports, etc. Focused group meeting invited staff of city education bureaus who are responsible for implementing the policy to discuss the problems they experienced when implementing the policies. Interviews are conducted to collect information from school teachers and administrators.

Expected Contributions Since policy borrowing is unavoidable in the globalization era, assessing possible obstacles for successful policy implementation before large-scale adoption would be critical for policy planning. Findings from this policy can help providing a framework for prospective policy evaluation. It can identify problems encountered during the implementation stage and analyze the reasons behind these problems. This case study, along with other case studies conducted elsewhere, would also contribute to the improvement of prospective policy evaluation before policy adoption. As a result, it can help improve theories and practices of policy planning and evaluation and increase the likelihood of achieving expected policy effects in the local context. Policy makers would know, in addition to the evidence yielded in foreign contexts, what other evidences to be collected for policy moification before its implementation.