Recognizing, reproducing and resisting West as method discourse: An analysis of senior secondary Asia-related history curriculum enactment

Abstract

Across the world, history curriculum is often criticized for being ethnocentric or for privileging a nation’s preferred historical narratives through which it imagines itself and the world. It is also a site through which ethnocentric narratives can be resisted. Within these debates there tends to be little consideration of the influences on the curricular decision-making of the teachers who actually enact curriculum. After decades of critique of Asia education policy in Australia, assumptions are still made about the so-called Eurocentric ways teachers engage with Asia-related history curriculum. The research reported on in this article seeks to establish a more complex understanding of these curricular practices in order to make visible the dynamics that shape the discursive construction of “Asia” and the “West” in the context of senior secondary history in Victoria, Australia. This discourse analysis of interviews with Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) History teachers demonstrates the potential of Chen’s (2010) Asia as method as an innovative conceptual framework for analyzing how the West as method discourse gets recognized, reproduced and resisted in this context. It argues critical self-reflexivity is crucial for understanding the impact imperial thinking continues to have on subjectivity formation and for multiplying the reference points through which Asia, self and other are imagined by curriculum.

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This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Rebecca Cairns

Rebecca Cairns is a lecturer in the School of Education at Deakin University. Her research spans curriculum inquiry, history education and studies of Asia. It examines how constructions of race, culture, nation and subjectivity are shaped by the curriculum policy processes of the past and present. Her current project explores Asia as a curriculum discourse in national and international contexts.