Abstract
This thesis focuses on examining why Taiwan Education Reform since 1994 was failed to gain wide-ranging and in-depth effect. More than half of students, parents, and teachers in Taiwan once recognized Education Reform as failed. Why? Is it really failed? There were lots of commentaries but none of them were of wider vision: the Institutional change perspective. This thesis use Culture Evolution Theory in Austrian School of economics to try to give an explanation. We extend the Institutional change theory from economic market to education market: Education Competitive Platform. Then we selected five representative samples, The Forrest School, The Seedling Experimental School, The ARCO School, The Ci-Xin Waldorf School, The Humanity Primary and Junior High School, to examine if the Education Competitive Platform is well-developed. We first examine the entrepreneurship, teaching method, advertisement and people’s reaction to these innovation schools. Then we track the entrepreneurial creating process, which can be divided into three steps: proposing alertness, executing alertness and propagating achievements. Result shows that educational entrepreneurs succeeded in proposing alertness, lifted the ban on establishment of private schools and started up their ideal school. While they face insufficient operation fund, difficulties in finding school land and teacher, and coherence problem of entrepreneurs. These difficulties results in limitation of the school scale and inadequate incentives for public and private sector imitation. Educational entrepreneurs still create positive effects, such as changes of education law, public sector, schools and Taiwan people. Though Taiwan Education Reform temporarily failed to form wide-ranging and in-depth change to education culture, the dynamic entrepreneurial changing process is not going to an end. Let’s wait what the Taiwan education entrepreneurs will achieve after another 20 years.