Asia Pacific Journal of Education

ISSN: 0218-8791 (Print) 1742-6855 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cape20

Comparative education in Asia: inaugurating theAPJE-CESA affiliation
Edward Vickers
To cite this article: Edward Vickers (2017) Comparative education in Asia: inaugurating
the APJE-CESA affiliation, Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 37:3, 279-282, DOI:
10.1080/02188791.2017.1341107
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2017.1341107

Published online: 06 Sep 2017.

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Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 2017VOL. 37, NO. 3, 279–282
https://doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2017.1341107

FOCUS ISSUE EDITORIAL

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Comparative education in Asia: inaugurating the APJE-CESA
affiliation
This special issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Education (APJE) inaugurates its formal affiliation with theComparative Education Society of Asia (CESA). This initiative is motivated by our shared desire to promotestronger “Asian” voices in the field of academic educational research, thereby helping to address a persistent East-West imbalance in the global academic debate that extends well beyond the field of Education.
This imbalance is not necessarily, as some have appeared to suggest, the outcome of any conscious“hegemonic project” on the part of Western scholars, some of whom are among its most prominent
critics (see Lim & Apple, 2016). But it does underline the continuing need for a stronger platform within
Asia for communication amongst educational scholars and dissemination of their research. Moreover,redressing the East-West balance in this way is something from which all educational researchers –“Western” or “Asian” – ultimately stand to benefit.
This vision of strengthening “Asian” voices in the field of educational research crucially informed
the establishment of the CESA over 25 years ago (in 1991), and was also reflected in the slightly later(1995) decision to give the former Singapore Journal of Education a wider remit as the APJE. From its
founding, the CESA has always seen as one of its central tasks outreach to communities of scholars inAsian societies where Comparative Education as a field is less developed. It has aimed to draw scholars
in regions too frequently consigned to the periphery of international debate into fuller engagementwith the wider community of academic educationalists throughout Asia and worldwide. This aim isclearly congruent with the APJE’s role as one of the leading Asia-based education journals publishedin English. Recognizing our common goals, the Boards of the APJE and CESA have concluded that wecan pursue them more effectively together.
In concrete terms, this collaboration will take two forms. Firstly, starting with the CESA’s next biennial conference (in Siem Riep, Cambodia, in May 2018), the APJE and CESA will organize an intensive
pre-conference writing workshop for a small group of scholars, with the aim of coaching them throughsome of the key steps involved in preparing a paper for publication in English in a peer-reviewed journal.
The model for this will be the excellent writers’ workshops organized by Compare, with the supportof the British Association of International and Comparative Education (one such workshop was run inconjunction with the CESA’s 2016 conference in Manila).
Secondly, each biennial conference of the CESA will henceforth be linked to a special issue of theAPJE. The process of compiling this special issue will begin before the conference, on a theme related tothat of the conference but more tightly focused. It is expected that most, if not all, of the papers featured
in these special issues will be based on presentations delivered at the CESA conference; indeed, theconference itself will constitute a crucial opportunity for authors to receive feedback on early drafts of
their papers. The pre-conference writers’ workshop will also provide some authors with the opportunity
to receive more systematic advice on submitting papers for publication in the APJE special issue, or in
regular issues of this or other international, peer-reviewed journals.
This inaugural special issue features several papers presented at the CESA’s latest conference inManila, in January 2016. It is less tightly themed than future special issues will be, since the process ofcompiling it followed the decision taken at that conference (by the CESA Board) to propose a tie-up© 2017 National Institute of Education, Singapore

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with the APJE. Nonetheless, it does highlight some of the ways in which the APJE-CESA collaboration
has the potential to help contribute to the more forceful and effective articulation of Asian perspectives
in educational research.
This mission, and its promise of enriching educational research globally, is most explicitly addressedin the article by Maria Manzon, in which she surveys the state of Comparative Education as a fieldwithin Asia. The theme of the CESA’s Manila conference was “diversity in education”, and in this paper– based on her keynote address – Manzon presents a vision of educational research that embraces
Asia’s diversity while contributing to a more “multipolar” academic conversation worldwide. Far fromportraying scholarship within the (rather nebulous) borders of “Asia” as underpinned by some totalizing
vision of “Asianness”, Manzon is at pains to emphasize the enormous variety that characterizes Asian
approaches to education.
While noting that such variety is a potential source of strength for comparative scholarship, in her
conclusion Manzon challenges scholars more fully to address the many dimensions of diversity acrossAsia, and to do so in a spirit of (constructive) criticism. For example, she alludes to the recent fashionin the West for viewing some Asian societies – especially in East and Southeast Asia – as models ofeducational success. But those of us who not only research societies such as Korea, Japan, Hong Kong,or Shanghai, but also live there and send our children to school there, are conscious of the very significant costs incurred by many systems that score well in the Organization for Economic Cooperation andDevelopment’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests (on Japan, seeArai, 2016). At the same time, even while naïve (or duplicitous) Western policymakers hail the vaunted
educational success of certain Asian societies, across Asia itself the tendency to look to the West or to“developed” East Asia for models of “best practice” or “what works” remains entrenched.
All too often, public debate over the cross-national transfer of educational policies or practices –whether intra-Asian or East-West – reflects an extremely narrow vision of education’s social purpose;a narrowness that the recent fashion for quantitative cross-national comparison only exacerbates.
Manzon notes the peculiarly strong influence of “methodological nationalism” on much Asian educational research (something also reinforced by international league tables of educational outcomes), but
in fact nationalism tout court has strongly coloured views of education’s fundamental aims. In countries
that have experienced colonialism (of either Western or home-grown Asian varieties), or pursued modernization in its shadow, maximizing “human resources” and fostering unquestioning patriotism haveoften been the supreme imperatives of education policy.
In advocating a broader conceptualization of education’s nature and aims, Manzon calls for comparativists to reconnect with Asia’s indigenous ethical traditions, specifically alluding to notions of“holism”, “collectivism”, “spirituality” and the importance of raising awareness of “value systems otherthan [those of ] Confucian-heritage cultures”. However, across much of Asia, in so far as ideas of ethicalindigeneity enter into educational debate, they do so as a dead legacy selectively deployed for thelegitimation of state goals, rather than as living traditions, openly debated, reflecting and informing
contemporary societal challenges. A Darwinian vision of inter-state relations is frequently invoked tojustify subordinating individual or communal goals to promoting national strength or competitiveness – despite the dubiousness of the evidence linking schooling (beyond a certain basic level) to theenhancement of economic productivity (Komatsu & Rappleye, 2017; Wolf, 2002). Social Darwinism withAsian characteristics distorts domestic educational priorities, exacerbating competitive intensity rightdown through the schooling system, and thereby squeezing out space for consideration of broader
conceptions of learning and its intrinsic benefits (on the case of China see Vickers & Zeng, 2017, especially the concluding chapter).
Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the phenomenon of “shadow education”. Studies of thisphenomenon constitute an excellent example of how Asia-based educational research can enrich thefield worldwide. Shadow education has become particularly widespread in the prosperous regions ofEast Asia, but is now also spreading to poorer, less “developed” societies such as Bangladesh (see Bray& Lykins, 2012). Amongst the features associated with the intense competitiveness that underpin thisphenomenon are ultra-meritocratic ideologies, profoundly instrumentalist visions of the purposes ofDownloaded by [124.101.110.246] at 20:43 18 September 2017

ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF EDUCATION﻿ 281

education, and minimal public welfare provision. In societies where state-provided safety nets are minimal or non-existent; possession of a college degree has become an indispensable to secure, high-status
professions; and the branding-for-life of teenagers according to performance in crucial public examinations is institutionalized, total commitment to examination success comes to be seen as crucial todetermining not just the fate of the individual student, but of his entire family. As the papers here by
Yamato and Zhang, and Mahmud and Bray demonstrate, these conditions have often fostered a sort ofmass hysteria around private tutorial schooling – albeit involving quite rational calculations at the levelof individuals and families. This craze both feeds off and accentuates an ethos of extreme, pseudo-meritocratic competition. The results of this vicious cycle include a corruption of formal schooling, and acramping of young lives. Given the factors causing this phenomenon, we have to ask how far it may
spread, and whether Asian experiences with “shadow education” prefigure what neoliberal ideologues
have in store for much of the rest of the world.
But the capacity of social scientists – educationalists included – to explain the present, let alone
predict the future, depends very much upon their grasp of the past. Understanding how to deal withthe problems thrown up by the “shadow education” craze requires an appreciation of why it has arisen
in particular societies, and of how it relates to their broader political, cultural, and socio-economicconditions. Put simply, it requires historical analysis – something too often neglected in mainstream
educational research. This neglect is perhaps especially serious in many Asian societies where educational research has typically been conceived merely as an exercise in seeking technical improvementsto existing systems, rather than asking how and why those systems have evolved, whose interests
they serve, and what it means to talk of “improvement” in any given social, cultural, or political context.
These are the kinds of questions addressed in Maca’s ongoing project on education and the historyof labour migration in the Philippines. This highlights the intersection, in that archipelago’s educationalpast, of colonialism, nationalism, and (more recently) neoliberal globalization. Maca analyses how theearly twentieth-century American pursuit of an English language-based “civilizing mission”, combinedwith the collaborative foundations of colonial rule, buttressed the social dominance of establishedelites while creating the foundations for future growth in overseas labour migration. When this later
took off during the Marcos dictatorship, it acted as a “safety valve”, helping to deflect popular demand
for thoroughgoing social or political reform. As Maca has argued elsewhere (Maca & Morris, 2012),
economic, social, and political dysfunction in the modern Philippines can be related to a failure on thepart of the state to construct or articulate a coherent, unifying narrative of national identity. Indeed, thevery absence of nationalism, manifested in the ease with which Filipinos adapt to life in other societies
around the world, has come to be hailed as a defining characteristic of “Filipino-ness”. If the history of asociety like Japan demonstrates the power of a combination of strong-state nationalism and state-leddevelopmentalism, as well as the dangers inherent in this formula (not least for international peace), thePhilippines arguably constitutes the reverse case. Maca thus shows how addressing present-day educational challenges requires understanding how political, cultural, and economic factors have shaped
Asian societies and their education systems. He also illustrates how, in the Philippines, as across Asia,
the legacies of colonialism and of anti- or post-colonial developmental statism (or its absence) continue
to cast a long shadow.
Some may detect such a shadow in the contours of this special issue itself: published in English in
one former colonial entrepot (Singapore), consisting largely of work by contributors based in another(Hong Kong), and edited by a British scholar working in that other great instigator of Asian colonialism:
Japan. Looked at another way, however, this issue is reflective of the diversity of Asian voices – Chinese,Japanese, Bangladeshi, Filipino – and exemplifies how established institutions, whatever their origins,
can and should reach out to embrace and foster that diversity. The CESA itself – with its origins in Japan,
but now headed by a Chinese President – represents one attempt to transcend the legacy of Asia’sdifficult and divided past. Now working together, the CESA and the APJE aspire to promote in the fieldof educational research, and ultimately through education itself, a diverse, open and internationalist
vision rooted in the experiences of all Asian societies.

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References

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Arai, A. G. (2016). The strange child: Education and the psychology of patriotism in recessionary Japan. Redwood, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Bray, M., & Lykins, C. (2012). Shadow education: Private supplementary tutoring and its implications for policy makers in Asia.
Manila: Asian Development Bank.
Komatsu, H., & Rappleye, J. (2017). A new global policy regime founded on inaccurate statistics? Hanushek, Woessman,PISA and economic growth. Comparative Education, 53, 166–191.
Lim, L., & Apple, M. (Eds.). (2016). The strong state and curriculum reform: Assessing the politics and possibilities of educationalchange in Asia. London and New York: Routledge.
Maca, M., & Morris, P. (2012). The Philippines, the East Asian “developmental states” and education: a comparative analysisof why the Philippines failed to develop. Compare: A Journal of Comparative Education, 42, 461–484.
Vickers, E., & Zeng, X. (2017). Education and society in Post-Mao China. London and New York: Routledge.
Wolf, A. (2002). Does education matter? London: Penguin.

Edward Vickers
Kyushu University
vickers.edward.645@m.kyushu-u.ac.jp