ERIC Number: EJ985613
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012-Dec
Pages: 30
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0362-6784
EISSN: N/A
Governing "Suzhi" and Curriculum Reform in Rural Ethnic China: Viewpoints from the Miao and Dong Communities in Qiandongnan
Wu, Jinting
Curriculum Inquiry, v42 n5 p652-681 Dec 2012
This article examines the uptake of "suzhi"--roughly glossed as "quality"--in China's recent curriculum reform called "suzhi jiaoyu" (Education for Quality) in the rural ethnic context of Qiandongnan. It engages with three layers of analysis. First is a brief etymological overview of "suzhi" to map out its cultural politics in contemporary China. Agamben's theorization of People/people is invoked to elucidate how the keyword embeds the differentiation of bodies and the fabrication of the "others" through a civilizing mission. Second, the article surveys the genealogy of "suzhi" ideas-practices as the historical project of making the ideal personhood. It examines how "suzhi's" entanglement in Chinese historiography constitutes the moving target for the formation of educational subjects. Third, the article draws from my ethnographic research in southwest China to investigate "suzhi's" enactment in compulsory schooling and current curriculum reform. It provides nuanced empirical accounts to illuminate how "suzhi"/quality is understood, contested, and reappropriated in everyday pedagogical practices; how the bifurcated front- and backstage maneuvering in two village schools trouble the salvationary overtone of the "suzhi"-oriented curriculum reform. The lens of performativity is harnessed to move beyond the "loose coupling" theory and suggest undecidable interstices in the production of pedagogical subjectivity. Furthermore, this section explores how "suzhi jiaoyu" sits in a jarring relationship with indigenous cosmology to produce epistemic dissonance and disenchantment towards schooling. The article concludes with a call for provincializing the "universal" notion of quality and for a productive in thinking about the limit-points of schooling. (Contains 30 notes.)
Descriptors: Teaching Methods, Curriculum Development, Ethnography, Foreign Countries, Educational Change, Creative Development, Historiography, Rural Areas, Change Strategies, Educational Quality, Ethnic Groups, Cultural Context, Politics of Education, Intellectual History, Educational Practices, Educational Development, Educational Policy
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: China
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A