Transnational Education and Curriculum Studies

International Perspectives

John Chi-Kin Lee, Noel Gough, John Chi-Kin Lee, Noel Gough

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351061605
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Pedagogía
• Categoría: Currículos educativos

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.

Part 1

Introduction and overview

1 Introduction

Transnational and international perspectives in curriculum studies, schooling, and higher education

John Chi-Kin Lee and Noel Gough

Background and rationale for this volume

Recent years have seen ever-increasing attention to international and transnational aspects of school and higher education curricula, and the research approaches and perspectives through which they are studied (e.g., Gough, 2007, 2009, 2014, Gough and Sellers, 2016; Lee, 2010; Ropo and Autio, 2009). The emergence of this trend is related to intensifying globalisation, which results in different types of cross-border movements of people, resources, ideas and images (An, 2009).

However, before we attempt to situate the localities of this book in the broader landscape of curriculum studies internationally, and to assist readers in recognising where we are situated and why we are collaborating in editing this volume, John Chi-Kin Lee, as initiator of this project, would like to introduce Noel Gough, a scholar and friend with whom he began a paper-based (i.e. pre-email) correspondence at least 20 years ago, when John was working on his PhD thesis on environmental education in Hong Kong primary schools, and sought Noel’s publications and advice. John and Noel have shared interests in environmental education and curriculum studies, but differ in their geopolitical locations and philosophical positions on curriculum theorising and research methodologies. Noel is a science and environmental educator based in Australia and is a critical and poststructuralist curriculum scholar influenced especially by Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical concepts and positions. To illustrate Noel’s idiosyncratic positioning, John draws attention to a statement that often prefaces Noel’s conference papers: “Quote at the risk of knowing that I change my mind frequently” (see, e.g., Gough, 2007). Noel is critical of “methodological borrowing” (such as social researchers borrowing the idea of “triangulation” from navigation and surveying to justify “mixed methods” research designs (see Gough, 2012)) and is also suspicious of adapting medical scientific models of “evidence-based” research in conducting educational inquiry (Gough, 2012; see also Gough, Bazzul and Kayumova, 2015).

John Lee, based in China’s Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, is influenced by William Schubert’s (1986) scholarship, as he acknowledges in his Chinese language book (Lee and Wong, 1996), Curriculum: Paradigms, perspectives and design, which draws inspiration from Schubert’s (1986) Curriculum: Perspective, paradigm and possibility, and also pays tribute to Ralph Tyler (1949), Joseph Schwab (1969) and Paulo Freire (1972). Schubert (2010 p. 51) sees John’s publications as belonging with the practical/deliberative movements in the literature of curriculum inquiry, together with other Chinese scholars such as Ding Gang and Ye Lan of East China Normal University, and Chen Xiangming of Peking University. John’s research publications reflect his use of both quantitative and qualitative methods and he is particularly concerned with the multiple contexts and perspectives of any curriculum and teaching issue that constitutes an object of educational inquiry. His interest in comparative perspectives of education has led to a number of his works on Asian schooling and education among other themes (Kennedy and Lee, 2008, 2018; Lee and Kennedy, 2017; Lee and Caldwell, 2011; Lee and Day, 2016).

This book exemplifies transnational education inquiry insofar as it is co-edited by two scholars who represent different locations, philosophical positions and paradigms, and varied experiences in their journeys as curriculum scholars, but who nevertheless share an interest in the implications of transnational education for curriculum inquiry and the contemporary world. Likewise, the book’s chapters are contributed by scholars based in Australia, Brazil, China (including Hong Kong), Japan, Kazakhstan, Singapore, South Korea, United Kingdom, United States, and Vietnam, many of whom have extensive international/transnational research and work experiences.

Transnational (higher) education and international education

As Francois, (2016, p. 3) observes, in simple etymological terms, the word “transnational” implies actions, practices, or contacts that extend or go beyond national boundaries. Used in a combination with other concepts, the term transnational will still imply the idea of transactions across national borders, but will also hold specific contextual meaning. In that context, the Asia-Pacific European Cooperation (APEC) defines transnational education as

all types and modes of delivery of higher education study programs, or sets of courses of study, or educational services (including those of distance education) in which the learners are located in a country different from the one where the awarding institution is based. Such programs may belong to the education system of a State different from the State in which it operates, or may operate independently of any national education system.

(APEC, 2013)

Francois (2016, p. 6) further asserts that “transnational education is based on a philosophy inspired by the practices of transnational corporations that constantly seek to expand their markets by reaching customers across national borders. In that context, transnational education programs and activities enable market-oriented colleges and universities, mostly in Western countries, to generate extra income that can help them face the challenges of budget cuts”. Phan (2017, p. 7) argues that transnational higher education in many parts of the world, including Asian universities that recruit international academics and their curricula, include “English-medium programs and courses offered by local institutions, though their students are not earning degrees and/or qualifications from any overseas universities” because these programmes are “inherently mobile and transnational in ideas, structures, contents, and medium of instruction”.

Francois (2016, p. 12, his italics) offers a typology with four categories for analyzing transnational and international education:

• Transnational education refers to educational scholarship and practices between, across, and beyond the boundaries of two or more nations or countries;
• Global education involves educational scholarship and practices for all nations or countries in the globe, within the context of the globalisation phenomenon;
• International education is about educational scholarship and practices between two countries within the pre-existing system of nation-states and international relations;
• Comparative-international is about the comparison of scholarship and practices between two or more nations or countries.

Francois (2016, pp. 12–13) adds that

transnational education carries aspects of education related to comparative (comparison of 2 nations or more), international (scholarship and practices between 2 nations), and global (scholarship and practices for all nations), as well as facets not captured by the aforementioned: Patterns across and beyond a single nation or country.

He also argues that “transnational higher education programs can exist through multiple perspectives, which can be philosophical, pedagogical, and delivery mode oriented”.

In terms of philosophical perspectives, Phan (2017, p. 3) observes that “‘de-westernisation’ and ‘de-imperialisation’ scholarship… tends to fixate its criticisms of Eurocentrism and Euro-ethnocentrism” and suggests that we should be cautious not to “generalise anything claimed to be ‘non-West’ in a positive, special, and sympathetic light”. Nevertheless, poststructuralist and postcolonialist perspectives provide numerous theoretical insights on how to move away from the technical, instrumental paradigm of schooling and education and address issues of equity, equality, power and marginalisation of geographical coverage in curriculum studies. Pedagogical perspectives constitute another framework for analysis, addressing issues of transcultural and intercultural learning, global awareness and competence as well as modes of delivery and interactions.

From an economic perspective, there are many benefits arising from transnational higher education such as capacity building, reducing brain drain and enhancing innovation (Hussain, 2007, p. 164). Typically, transnational work can be understood as acting across national borders with the intent of having a more general impact. This is distinguished from international collaboration (actions taken by conventional nation-states) and supranational work (efforts from broader global institutions and NGOs e.g., the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, UNESCO, OECD, etc.). The involvement of transnational institutions such as the World Bank and IMF in educational policy-making has tended to support policies derived from human capital and neoliberal perspectives and may result in a “largely asymmetric, non-democratic and opaque procedures of decision-making” (Moutsios, 2009, p. 478). Moreover, curriculum studies tend to be under-theorised in higher education. Transnationality emphasises the importance of localised context and democratic involvement. It is also a response to the discourses of standardisation and homogenisation of curriculum thinking which are characteristic of many modern nation-states.

Towards transnational curriculum inquiry

In 2004, the International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (IAACS) launched an online journal Transnational Curriculum Inquiry, in which the founding Editor, Noel Gough (2004, p. 1), “explores some theoretical and practical possibilities for building new transnational and transcultural solidarities in postcolonial curriculum inquiry” (see also Chapter 2 in this volume). Gough (2004, p. 4, his italics) focuses on “opportunities for reconceptualising curriculum work that can be generated by considering how we should respond to, and progressively consolidate, the formation of new publics– democratic, multicultural, and transnational citizenries”. Lee (2010, p. 500) cites Gough as arguing that the “internationalisation of curriculum inquiry should facilitate the performance of local knowledge traditions and ways of knowing in curriculum inquiry rather than emphasising the translation of local representations of curriculum inquiry into universalised discourses and practices”. Although Gough refers to this approach to a transnational reconceptualisation of curriculum studies as postcolonialist, Kennedy (2010, p. 899) argues that in the broadest theoretical sense, it could be understood as postmodernist or poststructuralist with links to literary and cultural studies.

Although transnational higher education has for the most part been initiated by institutions in Western, so-called “developed” nations, some majority-world¹ countries are developing transnational capacities (Dunn and Wallace, 2008). The United States is (not surprisingly) the largest exporter but Australia, New Zealand and Canada have higher proportions of international students in their universities than the US. China has become one of the largest importers of transnational higher education since the mid-1990s. In Hong Kong, a significant proportion of students are enrolled in transnational education programmes (Ziguras and McBurnie, 2008). In this book, we offer diverse perspectives on discourses of curriculum studies from schooling and higher education contributed by scholars from both within and outside the majority world. We also examine transnational border crossings involving national governments and policy measures, and the promises, challenges and failings of those formal relationships.

Despite the expansion of transnational education in terms of scale and frequency of interactions among people from different countries, curriculum programmes in schools and universities are to some extent still under the yoke of technical and behaviouristic approaches to curriculum. For example, Luke (2002, p. 49) laments that curriculum scholarship in Australia has witnessed “an impasse in theory, policy formation and classroom work that is leading to passivity, paralysis and acquiescence to a neo-Tylerian curriculum agenda”.

With the international visibility of assessment of student learning results such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), many Western countries come to study educational and curricular systems in Asian countries such as Singapore, China and South Korea lured by what Carson (2009, p. 152) calls “the false promise of one best curriculum”. Such comparative studies, while they are worthwhile scholarly pursuits, need to be interpreted cautiously because simplistic attempts to transplant policies and practices of what works best in one cultural and national setting to another may be problematic (Kennedy, 2010). On the other hand, there has been wide dissemination and local adoption of globally ubiquitous concepts such as student-cantered instruction and co-operative learning. However, educators in many different countries tend to agree or disagree with the same sets of concepts and issues.

Towards pluralistic, dynamic, multicultural and dialogic local/global curricular responses to globalisation

Despite the influence of globalisation, Smith (2003) points out that there are counter-examples in nations outside the Anglo-American terrain, such as Sweden and Germany. Also, Carson (2009, p. 148) draws attention to Asian countries “with strong Confucian traditions that have remained economically competitive while continuing to support public institutions and maintaining strong social charters”. The “Internationalizing Curriculum” section of the Sage Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction (Connelly, He and Phillion, 2008), identifies emerging themes in contemporary curriculum studies such as eco-justice pedagogy, addressing environmental degradation, and the revival of non-Western ...