Steiner-Khamsi Gita, Stolpe Ines. Educational Import: Local Encounters with Global Forces in Mongolia

Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. — 255 p.This book addresses students, practitioners and scholars in educational policy studies. The authors use Mongolia as a case to illustrate how global influences shape domestic developments in education, and how imported education reforms are locally modified, re-contextualized, or 'Mongolized'. This is an extraordinary book. The authors have spent many years doing research on education in Mongolia, visiting many areas of this vast, land-locked country sharing its southern border with China. Stolpe studied there and is fluent in the Mongolian language. Consequently, they bring insights into schooling in Mongolia that would not ordinarily be accessible to expatriate scholars. The book contains an insightful analysis of the period of Soviet influence from the early twentieth century until 1990. Having grown up in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Stolpe is particularly knowledgeable with respect to the social, political and educational issues of the period in Soviet-bloc countries and brings that understanding to the book.