Problematizing “epistemicide” in transnational curriculum knowledge production: China’s suyang curriculum reform as an example

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• Globalizing discourses
• epistemicide
• modernity-coloniality episteme
• suyang curriculum reform
• cognitive justice
• Itinerary Curriculum Theory

Notes

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The notion of Core Socialist Values designates a set of virtues officially released in 2014 as China’s latest national code of ethical conduct, crystallizing the varied ethical codes promoted by the different post-1949 administrations. The Core Socialist Values are summarized in 24 Chinese terms (a total of 24 characters): prosperity (fu qiang), democracy (min zhu), civility (wen ming), harmony (he xie), freedom (zi you), equality (ping deng), justice (gong zheng), rule of law (fa zhi), patriotism (ai guo), devotion to job (jing ye), integrity (cheng xin), friendship (you shan). Law (2016) provides a more detailed unpacking of the varied ethical codes promoted by China’s different administrations.

2 OECD’s (2005) competency is defined as “more than just knowledge and skills [which also] involves the ability to meet complex demands, by drawing on and mobilizing psychosocial resources (including skills and attitudes) in a particular context” (p. 4). The American Partnership for 21^st Century Skills (2011) focuses on “the knowledge, skills and expertise students should master to succeed in work and life in the 21^st century” (p. 2).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Weili Zhao

Weili Zhao obtained her Ph.D. in 2015 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is the recipient of the 2019 Early Career Outstanding Research Award, American Educational Research Association (AERA), Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and Education SIG. With intellectual training in both discourse analysis and curriculum studies, she is interested in unpacking China’s current educational thinking and practices at the nexus, and as the (dis)assemblage, of tradition and modernity, East and West. Specifically, her research explicates the historical-cultural-philosophical insights of Chinese knowledge, curriculum, and educational thinking, say, Yijing, Daoist, and Confucian wisdom, to hopefully dialogue with, for mutual informing and clarifications, the latest intellectual linguistic-body-cultural-study turns in the Western scholarship. Furthermore, she explores the possible challenges, new openings, as well as intervention strategies, of embodying and translating the above theoretical thinking into classroom practices in Hong Kong and Mainland China to enhance teaching and learning efficacy. She has published her monograph, China’s Education, Curriculum Knowledge and Cultural Inscriptions: Dancing with The Wind (2019) with Routledge, and 12 articles over the past four years in the SSCI journals of Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, Studies in Philosophy and Education, Educational Philosophy and Theory, and Journal of Curriculum Studies. She is co-editing a special issue on learning, unlearning and study for Studies in Philosophy and Education (with Derek Ford and Tyson Lewis), a special issue on epistemic translation in translational curriculum studies for Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education (with Thomas Popkewitz and Tero Autio), a book series on Postqualitative, New Materialist and Critical Posthumanist Research (under contract with Routledge, with Karin Murris, Carol Taylor, Candace Kuby, David Cole, and Fikile Nxumalo), a book, Historicizing Curriculum Knowledge Translation on a Global Landscape (Routledge, under contract, with Thomas Popkewitz and Tero Autio), and writing her second monograph, Edusemiotics, (New) Materialism, and (Body) Governance: Flashpoints in 21st-Century Education in China and Beyond (Routledge, under contract).