The alchemy of educational reform discourses in contemporary Taiwan: translation processes, limits, and the political

Abstract

Contemporary educational reform discourses in Taiwan call for the modernization of education to meet the needs of society of the 21^st century. The principles and rules of ‘reason’ that historically order educational discourses can’t be taken for granted. This article uses Popkewitz’s notion of alchemy to think about the principles. The notions of democracy and globalization provide the analytic ‘tools’ to consider the processes of translation from political programs to educational reform discourses. It is argued that ironically the translation models of educational reform require a particular epistemological structuring of agency, but while recognizing how it does not produce harmony of what is being told in political programs. Three ways of thinking about the alchemy of political in educational reform discourses are offered. It then turns to the delineation of the changing role of teachers, students, and the textbooks that mapped the ‘modern’ child in educational reform discourses. The apparent paradox that evidences the limits of current discourses about democracy and globalization, then, has a critical reflection.

Keywords:

• Educational reform discourses
• globalization
• democracy

Reviewing Editor:

• Arif H. Kabir, School of Education, Deakin University School of Education, Australia

SUBJECTS:

• Teachers & Teacher Education
• Theory of Education
• Curriculum Studies
• Education Policy & Politics
• Education Studies
• Higher Education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The analyses of the three dimensions of the roles of the teachers, the students, and the textbooks are based on my PhD findings (see Lin, 2018).

2 Derrida uses the notion of ‘aporia’ to describe a state of puzzlement, an undecidable moment.

“The nonpassage, the impasse or aporia, stems from the fact that there is no limit. There is not yet or no longer a border to cross, no opposition between two sides: the limit is too porous,permeable and indeterminate” (Derrida, 1993, p. 20).

3 Based on the Fa tong Constitution drafted in 1947, the KMT declared itself the sole legitimate government of China while treating the CCP as a rebel group. Taiwan was thus viewed as a province of China and as a temporary site of the ROC state apparatus for the mission of mainland recovery given that the civil war had not been terminated. In addition, elections for the National Assembly, the Legislative Yuan and the Control Yuan were suspended under the framework of Fa tong (see Chen, 2003).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yu-Chen Lin

Yu-Chen Lin works as a postdoctoral researcher at National Taitung University, Taiwan. His current research interests focus on how developmentalist visions took hold that have centrally shaped our modern views of children in educational discourses.