Session Information
99 ERC SES 03 M, Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Paper Session
Contribution
This paper uses China’s education policy to explore the concept of temporality which is a relatively new and under-theorized conception in the field of education policy (Lingard, 2021). Drawing upon historical sociology, this paper aims to contribute to the field by investigating the temporal construct of China’s policy discourse on ‘education modernization’. Temporality highlights the messy entanglement of times which enables policy analysts to reflect on the main theme of this conference “how the past endeavor, current realities, and future hopes” are intertwined together, exerting a profound impact on education policymaking. Temporality provides a critical approach to deconstructing the problem, context, and history that are assumed and constructed by a policy. Regarding the temporal dimension, “education modernization”, a dominant discourse in China's education policy landscape, is an intriguing combination of discourse to examine. The strategic vision plan titled: China Education Modernization 2035 puts “education modernization” as the key word for China’s future education, while the discourse has a strong link with the historical memory of twentieth-century China, embracing the struggles associated with resisting colonialism and building an independent modern nation-state. Modernization thus becomes a temporal discourse where multiple temporalities are conflated; the past and the future of the nation converge in this discourse at present. This temporal dimension of the education modernization policy discourse underscores a need to go back to the history of China’s education modernization to find some answers to the following questions: What are the assumptions and presuppositions of this temporal construct, the ‘modernization’ discourse? What are the relationships between the history and the present that are mobilized by this discourse? This paper critically examines the history of rural education modernization to shed light on the current education modernization policy, identifying two temporal threads: the rural as a problem and the rural as a modernization plan. It reveals how the discourse acts as a governing technique that mobilizes history to construct a mission for the nation, thereby providing historical legitimacy for the party-state and its policy. However, the government is trapped in the underlying homogenous narrative of modernization because the hegemonic thinking of modernization marginalizes potential empowering voices, such as those of the rural. The case of China demonstrates how the past and ongoing agenda of modernization, and the deep-rooted belief in it, has a profound and enduring impact on education policy. It showcases how modernization constitutes and constructs a sophisticated temporal construct that underpins education policy. The process of unpacking history to analyze current policy highlights an innovative dimension (temporality) and method (historical sociology) for education policy analysis. The findings illustrate not only how the current unequal situation of the marginalized voices is normalized by the modernization agenda, but also how the current marginalized voices, such as the rural, can be an empowering force that enables an empowering lens in the metro-centric world.
Method
The paper adopted historical sociology as the method. A historical sociology approach emphasizes the ‘social embeddedness’ of education (Seddon et al., 2017); that is, a certain form of education can be unfolded as a particular historical formation of social practices, concepts, and inquiry (Seddon et al., 2017). The formulation of educational discourse is basically anchored by a certain way of understanding society and the world (McLeod, 2017). Disentangling the historical ‘embeddedness’ of education is to reveal how history constitutes the anchoring framework of today’s policy agenda in order to push the constraining boundaries or reframe the path of inquiry. Four educational reforms in four historical periods were selected for analysis as all are included in the contemporary narrative of education modernization. These educational reforms assisted in identifying all key milestones recognized by Chinese rural education research; they will be discussed chronologically, although this is not a historical review. The objective of case selection is to contrast four distinct historical configurations: China in imperial, republican, revolutionary, and reform time. The questions that guide the history analysis are: how are ‘modern’ and ‘tradition’ perceived in these education reforms? How is ‘rural’ positioned in these reforms? The education reform periods include (a) the 1900s, the establishment of the modern education system, imperial China, the Qing dynasty; (b) the 1930s, the rural construction movement, Republican China, the Kuo Ming Tang (KMT) government; (c) the 1960s, revolution PRC, the CCP government; (d) the 2000s, reform PRC, the CCP government.
Expected Outcomes
The paper firstly illuminates how history is bound up in the policy discourse thereby cloaking the differences of different regimes in the past and constructing a unified destiny of the nation for the future. By allying with another powerful discourse, the great rejuvenation of China’s nation, modernization discourse can mobilize the historical memory of colonial history. The vision for future education is thus discursively associated with the colonial past through the same mission, that of modernization, which constructs a destiny for the nation, making advances to avoid colonization and humiliation (Meinhof, 2017). It is because of the humiliation, crisis, and threats in the pre-modern past that the future of modernization assumed in the policy is desirable. From this, China’s case demonstrates how education policy is underpinned by a particular temporal construct. Policy is built upon certain historical and cultural assumptions and temporal arrangements, which highlights an innovative dimension for policy analysis. This analysis has significant implications on how the rural is perceived in education policy, joining the current discussion about rurality and policy (Cruickshank et al., 2009; Beach & Öhrn 2023). By examining the history, there are two temporal threads throughout the four reforms: the rural as a problem and the rural as a modernization plan. Particularly, there is a strong link between national identity and rurality thus the rural is positioned as a valuable resource that has been integrated into modernization plan to counter colonial power in history. This tread enables us to reflect on the seemingly contrasting relation between rurality and modernity especially metro-centricity has been a global phenomenon found in different countries and regions (Beach et al, 2019; Corbett, 2010; Roberts & Cuervo, 2015; Gristy et al., 2020). China’s case offers an empowering lens to see rural education in this modern and metro-centric world.
References
Beach, D. & Öhrn, E (2023) The community function of schools in rural areas: Normalising dominant cultural relations through the curriculum silencing local knowledge, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2023.2298466 Beach, D., Johansson, M., Öhrn, E., Rönnlund, M., & Per-Åke, R. (2019). Rurality and education relations: Metro-centricity and local values in rural communities and rural schools. European Educational Research Journal, 18(1), 19-33. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474904118780420 Corbett, M. (2010). Standardized individuality: Cosmopolitanism and educational decision‐making in an Atlantic Canadian rural community. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 40(2), 223–237. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057920903546088 Cruickshank, J., Lysgård, H.K. and Magnussen, M.-L. (2009), The logic of the construction of rural politcs: political discourse on rurality on Norway. Geografiska Annaler Series B, Human Geography, 91: 73-89. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0467.2009.00307.x Gristy, C., Hargreaves, L., & Kučerová, S. R. (2020). Educational research and schooling in rural Europe: An engagement with changing patterns of education, space and place. IAP. McLeod, J. (2017). Marking time, making methods: Temporality and untimely dilemmas in the sociology of youth and educational change. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 38(1), 13–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2016.1254541 Meinhof, M. (2017). Colonial temporality and Chinese national modernization discourses. InterDisciplines. Journal of History and Sociology, 8(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.4119/indi-1037 Roberts, P., & Cuervo, H. (2015). What next for rural education research? Australian and International Journal of Rural Education, 1–8. Seddon, T., Julie, M., & Noah, S. (2017). Reclaiming comparative historical sociologies of education. In World Yearbook of Education 2018. Routledge.
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