NotesFAQContact Us
Collection
Advanced
Search Tips
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
ERIC Number: EJ1261617
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020
Pages: 21
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0362-6784
EISSN: N/A
Problematizing "Epistemicide" in Transnational Curriculum Knowledge Production: China's "Suyang" Curriculum Reform as an Example
Zhao, Weili
Curriculum Inquiry, v50 n2 p105-125 2020
Epistemicide happens when globalizing West-centric discourses and practices dominate non-Western societies, suppressing and killing the latter's cultural systems of knowledge production. Though scholars worldwide are starting to recognize this fact, China is still forcefully transplanting Western policies and practices in the name of "going global," and of catching up with, and even surpassing, the West. One example is China's ongoing suyang curriculum reform. This reform is largely modelled upon the OECD's and USA's competencies-skills frameworks, but the Chinese state claims that the "suyang" curriculum reform is more than a replica of the latter. Using the "suyang" example, this paper dissects epistemicide in China's curriculum knowledge production. Specifically, it analyses the inclusion of some spectres of the modernity-coloniality episteme in the "suyang" curriculum, including the signifier-signified meaning-making logic, the treatment of language as a representational system, the instrumentalization of language and culture as objects of knowledge, and a mind-body epistemological division. These epistemic spectres, I argue, have thwarted Chinese academics' and policymakers' efforts to re-invoke the cultural "suyang" discourses as anything but a linguistic trope. Recognizing this as a trope, however, helps to re-articulate the eclipsed "suyang" episteme which is related to holistic Chinese "body-thinking". This is a first step in countering the so-called darker side of the modernity-coloniality infused in Western knowledge, power, and being (mode of existence). As a decolonial gesture towards "cognitive justice," this case study aligns itself with Paraskeva's Itinerary Curriculum Theory (ICT). In addition, it provides an ontological language lens for China and other countries to (re)produce transnational curriculum knowledge beyond the enslavement of both relativist nationalism and Western modernity-coloniality.
Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: High Schools; Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: China
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A