Abstract:

The education reform based on key competencies is a global education policy, promoted by most countries in the world to improve the quality of talent training in respond to social changes and economic competition. The success of its implementation is related to the country’s labour quality and economic prosperity, as well as global competitiveness. In order to find the main influencing factors and the model that would most likely lead to success of the reform’s implementation, this study compares the key competencies-based education reforms of China, the United States, and Finland from the perspectives of political commitment and implementation capacities. It then points out that, in terms of education reform, China has strong political commitment but not strong implementation capacities; the United States has strong reform implementation capacities but not strong political commitment; Finland has both strong political commitment and implementation capacities, which is a more ideal reform model. China could learn from the experience of Finland and the United States from the aspects of evaluation methods, teacher education and training, and innovation in teaching and learning environments to enhance the implementation capacities, meanwhile keep up the political commitment, transform it into execution, bring non-governmental actors into the reform and further promote the successful implementation of the reform.

Key words: key competencies, educational reform, political commitment, implementation capacities, non-governmental actors