The effect of local level education resource on the diffusion of school as learning community

Diffusion is the process of one innovation spreading to other areas. To the governments, diffusion means policy making affected by the innovations in other places. In Taiwan, the research on the factors affecting policy and program diffusion as well as its models is under development. In previous studies, the neighborhood effect of nearby local jurisdictions and their internal resources are seen as important factors of diffusion. In this research the process and the resources affecting the diffusion of school as learning community in Taiwan are analyzed via spatial analysis and event history analysis. The result shows that (1) there exist differences in terms of time and models among different counties, (2) neighborhood effect exists in the diffusion of activities for school as learning community, (3) internal factors included subsidy dependence, teacher-student ratio, the higher education students population ratio, and the impact of the hours of teacher training courses in the previous semester. Recommendations for central government and local educationauthorities are provided based on findings.