Highlighted Session: Rethinking Education with A Reflexive ‘Double-Negation’ of Western-centrism and Nationalism: China and Beyond

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Proposal

Session Abstract
By specifically focusing on Chinese education policy and practice, this proposed panel responds to the provoking CIES 2024 call, particularly the sub-theme of “Theories, Methodologies and Protest”. Echoing the emerging decolonizing work in the comparative and international education field (e.g., Silova et al., 2020; Takayama et al., 2017), we provide contextual insights into how non-Western experiences can be valorized as diverse theoretical and conceptual sources in education research and practice. The papers in this panel join the larger effort in CIE field to shift from Western universality to global pluriversality in knowledge production (e.g., Chen, 2010; Mignolo, 2011; Reiter, 2018). Particularly, we aim to approach this decolonial exploration through reflexive discussion beyond Western-centrism and nationalism.

More concretely, through a collection of research papers in the Chinese schooling and higher education settings, we seek to contribute to the international endeavors that challenge the persistent hegemony of the West as the powerhouse of theories and concepts, whilst our challenge is conducted in a critical manner that alerts to the danger of falling into the advocacy of China’s superior uniqueness or epistemological nationalism. This awareness renders a ‘double-negation’ in our reflexive approach to unpacking the complexity of co-existing epistemologies in non-hierarchical space and revealing the diversity of Chinese contemporary education. Drawing upon the research trajectories proposed by Mignolo in his seminal book The Darker Side of Western Modernity (2011), this panel takes Chinese education as an illustrative example and demonstrates how to decolonialize education research in and about non-Western societies without falling into the trap of superficial de-Westernization or China-centrism.

The ontological and epistemic shift, as we highly value, would lead to an embrace of ‘a plurality of knowledge’ (Trahar et al., 2020), opening spaces for multiple ways of understanding the world, society, education, and being (Mignolo, 2007). Hence, it is important to adopt a more nuanced and critical approach to explore education policy and practice in non-Western countries. This means acknowledging the complexities and diversities of Chinese history, culture, and society, avoiding simplistic or one-dimensional narratives, extending our ‘geographic imagination’ (Ball, 2016), and engaging with a range of perspectives and experiences both within and outside of China. Moreover, there is a need to recognize the potential biases and assumptions that may underlie a China-centric approach and strive to overcome them through open dialogue and respectful critique. This renders that reimagining Chinese education should not only draw upon Chinese traditions and philosophies, but also learn from ecology of knowledges and plural ontologies. By doing so, we may develop an interpretive frame of multiple references that attends to the confusion, struggles, predicaments, negotiations, mediation, and resistance that are deeply and constantly experienced by Chinese (as well as other non-Western) policy actors, scholars, practitioners, students, and parents as they navigate in a rapidly changing world with conflicting ideologies (You and Yang, 2023).

Employing a reflexive approach of critiquing both western-centrism and nationalism, this proposed panel invites authors from Australia, China, UK, and USA to examine and reimagine contemporary Chinese educational policy, practice, leadership, governance. They have profound understanding of Chinese educational contexts as well as research expertise in comparative and international education. The five papers cover a wide range of research topics, including exploring organizational cultures in contemporary Chinese universities and cultural dynamics of compliance and contestation; analyzing song (recitation) in traditional Chinese education as meaningful learning; reviewing challenges and opportunities for reshaping international research on Chinese rural education; examining system, organization, state-university relationships and governance in Chinese universities; and investigating early career academics’ protests to the ‘publish or perish’ system. This collection of papers challenges the assumptions embedded in epistemological and methodological nationalism and aims to achieve a new geographic imagination that accounts for the increasingly interrelated spaces and actors between the global and local as well as between the South and the North. Our concerted endeavors to enrich the sophisticated and contextualized understandings of global pluriversality will also provide insights into the ecology of knowledge.

Session Structure
The panel session will begin with a brief introduction (5 minute) of the Chinese social and educational context followed by the sequential presentation of the five papers (12 minutes each), 10 minutes of discussant comments, and 15 minutes of discussion with audience.

Sub Unit

• East Asia SIG

Organizer

• Min Yu, Wayne State University

Chair

• Ting Wang, University of Canberra

Individual Presentations

• Organizational culture in contemporary Chinese universities: Cultural dynamics of compliance and contestation - Ting Wang, University of Canberra

• Chinese ‘rote-learning’ as meaningful learning: a neglected legacy for song (recitation) in traditional Chinese education - Yun You, East China Normal University; Lin Li, East China Normal University

• Challenges and Opportunities for Decolonializing Global Knowledge-Production: A Reflexive Review of 45 Years of International Research on Chinese Rural Education - Xin Xiang, Beijing Normal University; Min Yu, Wayne State University; Jingjing Lou, Beloit College; Jun Teng