The ‘new Orientalism’: education policy borrowing and representations of East Asia

ABSTRACT

This article explores the discourses concerning, and actors promoting, the recent ‘rise’ of East Asia in the global trend of education policy borrowing. It focuses on the ways in which English policymakers and media have represented the ‘success’ of East Asian education systems in international large-scale tests. Taking the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and McKinsey as two illustrative examples, it also investigates how transnational policy actors have shaped the global knowledge production of East Asian education. This article argues that England – and more broadly Anglo-American societies – has represented high-performing East Asian societies as both an inspiration for education reforms and a threat to the domestic economy. The dominant ways of perceiving, representing and referencing East Asian education and the embedded East–West power relation are largely framed in a manner that continues the legacy of Orientalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Orientalism
• education policy borrowing
• England
• East Asia
• transnational policy actors

Acknowledgements

For valuable comments on previous drafts of this article, I would like to thank Euan Auld, Paul Morris, Jeremy Rappleye, Keita Takayama, Will Essilfie and two anonymous reviewers. Any omissions or errors are my responsibility alone.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The research curiosity partly derives from the reflection of my positionality – I am a Chinese-English bilingual who studied in both Mainland China and England. The experiences of living in both societies and, more importantly, conducting comparative education research based on the academic understanding of their cultures and politics enable me to be more sensitive about how they perceive each other and develop nuanced understandings of what are embedded in their mutual perceptions. Moreover, scholars from East Asia, including myself, have been increasingly invited to talk/write about specific lessons derived from their systems. Nevertheless, I have encountered what Takayama (2011) describes as ‘the predicaments of “particularity” and “universality”’ – articulating particular East Asian cases through applying theoretical frameworks and tools rooted in Western contexts. Although this is not a self-reflexive article, it draws from my life and work experiences.

2. While this article focuses on Orientalism, it is noteworthy that Occidentalism reveals similar stereotypical ways of representing the West, associated with celebration or hatred, within the East (Chen 1995; Bonnett 2004; Buruma and Margalit 2004). Meanwhile, the terminological use of ‘East’ and ‘West’ in this article may render a paradoxical impression of reinforcing the dichotomy between them. Thus, it is necessary to emphasise at the very beginning that I take the stance that the so-called ‘East’ and ‘West’ are intrinsic-flawed products of geopolitics. Possible ways of going beyond that include illustrating the diversity and concreteness of various education systems (as shown in my previous articles, You and Morris 2016; You 2017) and investigating whose ideas of categorising and defining them (as I aim to do in this article).

3. For example, Biggs and Watkins (1996) develop a concept of ‘the paradox of Chinese learner’ and argue that Chinese memorisation often involves high cognitive processes that lead to pupils’ high performance in ‘deep learning’ tests. Komatsu and Rappleye (2017b) provide an alternative theory of learning growing out of Asian experience, which elaborates pupils’ trust in, and obedience to, teachers’ guidance, even if not immediately understood, in the continual process of changing their horizon of knowing.

4. There are five reports under the series name of Drivers of Student Performance, focusing on insights from different regions – Asia, Europe, North America, Latin America and Middle East and North Africa. Nevertheless, the features of high performers presented in all five reports are not essentially varied.

5. The webpage of McKinsey’s education sector: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/social-sector/how-we-help-clients/education.

6. This sub-section illustrates the most prominent and common strategies adopted by the OECD and McKinsey. This does not mean that these two actors are completely identical in representing East Asian education. However, rather than identifying the differences between them, central to this article is articulating the shared Orientalist logic embedded in their representations.

7. The then US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, commissioned the OECD to produce a report about the best performing school systems. The findings of the report were collected in this book.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Peak Discipline Construction Project of Education at East China Normal University.