Asia As Method In Education Studies

Unlearning and re-inventing the theoretical frameworks of Intercultural and Asian Studies is central to this book as it is to Chen Kuan-Hsing’s evocative Asia as Method; this book’s inspirational source. Chen insists that studies of Asia move beyond their paralysing fixation on the West as either a positive or negative referent and that they develop their own standpoints, reference points and research agendas. Asia as Method in Education Studies, is therefore, a provocative and suggestive exploration of educational ideas imported from the West. Chen’s challenge provokes the writers in this collection to consider the implications of colonial and imperialist forces for education systems, policies and practices as well as for educational research itself. The writers offer examples of what it means to rethink and re-examine education in Asia beyond both the Western imperialist eye and the post-colonial ‘politics of resentment’. Asia as Method in Education Studies combines the diverse research of scholars from various countries of Asia as they consider, for example: Struggles to Construct New Research Imaginations in Response to Chen’s Challenges East-West Dialogue: Three Cases in Chinese Educational Research "Asia as [a] method" of Complexity and Dialogue Generalizing the Self? Asianizing Perspectives on International Education and the Formation of Self Against Asia-centric Methods: Australia-China Theoretic-linguistic Knowledge Co-production Highly anticipated for its novel contemporary perspectives, this book offers researchers specialising in educational studies and policy-making fresh practices of thought.

Centering his analysis in the dynamic forces of modern East Asian history, Kuan-Hsing Chen recasts cultural studies as a politically urgent global endeavor. He argues that the intellectual and subjective work of decolonization begun across East Asia after the Second World War was stalled by the cold war. At the same time, the work of deimperialization became impossible to imagine in imperial centers such as Japan and the United States. Chen contends that it is now necessary to resume those tasks, and that decolonization, deimperialization, and an intellectual undoing of the cold war must proceed simultaneously. Combining postcolonial studies, globalization studies, and the emerging field of “Asian studies in Asia,” he insists that those on both sides of the imperial divide must assess the conduct, motives, and consequences of imperial histories. Chen is one of the most important intellectuals working in East Asia today; his writing has been influential in Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and mainland China for the past fifteen years. As a founding member of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society and its journal, he has helped to initiate change in the dynamics and intellectual orientation of the region, building a network that has facilitated inter-Asian connections. Asia as Method encapsulates Chen’s vision and activities within the increasingly “inter-referencing” East Asian intellectual community and charts necessary new directions for cultural studies.

The Springer International Handbook of Educational Development in Asia Pacific breaks new ground with a comprehensive, fine-grained and diverse perspective on research and education development throughout the Asia Pacific region. In 13 sections and 127 chapters, the Handbook delves into a wide spectrum of contemporary topics including educational equity and quality, language education, learning and human development, workplace learning, teacher education and professionalization, higher education organisations, citizenship and moral education, and high performing education systems. The Handbook is grounded in specific Asia Pacific contexts and scholarly traditions, using unique country-specific narratives, for example, Vietnam and Melanesia, and socio-cultural investigations through lenses such as language identity or colonisation, while offering parallel academic discourse and analyses framed by broader policy commentary from around the world.

In recent years, there has been increasing attention placed on international and transnational aspects of school and higher education curricula, and the different research approaches and lenses through which these issues are studied. This edited volume explores diverse perspectives and discourses of curriculum studies contributed by scholars both within and outside the "majority world". In addition, it tackles both transnational cross-border endeavours involving national governments and policy measures, and the promises, challenges and failings of those formal relationships. The book consists of three sections. The first section provides an introduction and overviews of transnational education in connection with curriculum studies, schooling and higher education. The second section deals with transnational and international perspectives on curriculum studies, schooling and education. The final, third section highlights transnational and international perspectives on higher education. This timely volume tackles the questions often posed by curriculum scholars and educational researchers around the possibility of a transnational approach to curriculum studies and how (and if) a common set of means can transcend national boundaries and sensitivities. It looks at the common issues and problems across nations that international and transnational curriculum and educational research work could address. This volume will appeal to researchers and policy makers interested in transnational education and curriculum studies.

This open access handbook brings together the latest research from a wide range of internationally influential scholars to analyze educational policy research from international, historical and interdisciplinary perspectives. By effectively breaking through the boundaries between countries and disciplines, it presents new theories, techniques and methods for contemporary education policy, and illustrates the educational policies and educational reform practices that various countries have introduced to meet the challenges of continuous change. Based on an analysis of the nature of education policy and education reform, this volume focuses on education reform and the concept of education quality. Adopting a historical and comparative perspective, it examines the dialectical relationship between education policy and education reform in various countries, assesses theoretical and practical issues in the process of moving from regulation to multiple governance in contemporary education administration, and explores the impact of globalization on national education reform and the interdependence between countries. In addition, it presents studies addressing educational policy research methodology from multiple perspectives. Highlighting the changes in national education macro policies, this volume comprehensively reveals the complex relationship between contemporary education reform and social change, and explores the links between contemporary social, political and economic systems and educational policy research and practice, offering a holistic portrait of macro trends in contemporary education reform.

Asia is changing. Socio-political shifts in the world economy, technological advances of monumental scales, movements of people and ideas, alongside ongoing post-colonization projects across the region have created an emerging Asia – one confident and assertive of its place in the contemporary geopolitical sphere. As political and economic powers reassert Asian sovereignty in opposition to perceived Northern dominance, and dramatic and rapid development in the region shift the relationship between the centre and the periphery, new renderings and imaginations of hierarchies of identity and power come to the fore. This changing environment leads to emerging challenges for anthropologists working in the region: both those who have been working there for years, and new scholars entering the field. This volume considers these changes, and the implications of this on our practice. By focusing on Asia as a site of enquiry, the contributors to this book discuss tensions and opportunities arising in their ethnographic fieldwork in light of a changing Asia. Drawing on personal reflections on Asia’s global positioning in this contemporary moment, the contributors consider how fieldwork is being negotiated within the changing dynamics of anthropology in the region. This book then, is a discussion on the shifting landscape of field sites and the resultant emerging research methodologies, and is aimed at those who are already deeply immersed in fieldwork as well as those who are seeking ways to undertake it.

Critical Studies of Education in Asia features analyses that take seriously the complex postcolonial, historical, and cultural consciousnesses felt across societies in Asia, and that bring these to bear on the changing terrain of knowledge, subjectivities, and power relations constructed both within schools and across the public sphere. In documenting the multiple sites of conflict and contestation both between and within states in Asia and a host of pedagogic agents – ministries of education, state boards and agencies, schools, teachers and teacher unions, university departments of education, local interest groups, the media, international standards agencies, and global educational reform discourses – the chapters in this volume illuminate the struggles over knowledge, education, and the work of schools. Faced with emergent global and local forces that are determined to challenge ‘official’ knowledge and to offer alternative understandings of education and society in Asia, this volume offers critical insights for academic researchers, policy- makers, and graduate students seeking to understand the tensions and possibilities of educational change in the region. This book was originally published as a special issue of Curriculum Inquiry.

This book discusses higher education research as a field of study in Asia. It traces the evolution of research in the field of higher education in several Asian countries, and shares ideas about the evolving higher education research communities in Asia. It also identifies common and dissimilar challenges across national communities, providing researchers and policymakers essential new insights into the relevance of a greater regional articulation of national higher education research communities, and their further integration into and contribution to the international higher education research community as a whole.