This talk is organized around three major themes that emerged from a study of 8 nations — Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden in the Nordic group and Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan in East Asia. The first theme is the importance of the relationship between teachers and the nation state in defining national educational policy and the functions of the public school system.  The second is that globalization itself is neither static nor a linear process.  The impact of globalization varies over time and across place, and globalization theories must account for a world cultural dynamic that is not generated solely by transnational organizations but is increasingly elaborated and altered within national cultural contexts.  Third, we propose a reconceptualization of how regional networks or regional effects interact with world culture dynamics in order to fully understand how globalization effects on nation states within distinct regions of the world.