Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

This article provides an overview of the politics of education as they affect regions and communities on the periphery of the People’s Republic of China. Drawing on the articles in this special issue of Comparative Education, it analyses tensions related to the attempted imposition of Bejing’s homogenising and totalising vision of Chineseness across Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and amongst the mainland’s migrant underclass. Also considered here are the politics of comparative educational scholarship, as they relate to a widespread failure to engage critically with the diversity and complexity of Chinese societies. Attributable largely to the West’s own ‘culture wars’, this failure betrays much-touted ethical commitments to social justice and anti-‘hegemonic’ resistance. It is thus a central purpose of this essay – and special issue – to urge educational scholars to interrogate the politics of oppression and injustice in China and elsewhere ‘beyond the Western horizon’.

DOI： https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2023.2299907

Other Link： https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03050068.2023.2299907

Repository Public URL： https://hdl.handle.net/2324/7164788

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Whilst Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 has influenced education in various ways, major reforms perceived as promoting mainland control have been resisted. For two decades, Hong Kong’s educational autonomy under the ‘one country, two systems’ formula was thus largely maintained. This changed radically with the response to the protests of 2019–2020, culminating in the introduction of a National Security Law. This has drastically constrained Hong Kong’s civil society, enhanced central government control of education and accelerated efforts to reeducate Hongkongers as loyal PRC citizens. We trace how this transformation has been enacted and justified, and reflect on its consequences. We analyse the current situation through the lenses of ‘internal colonialism’ and securitisation, which have characterised governance of China’s restive periphery under Xi Jinping. We argue that analytical perspectives in Comparative Education, relating to postcolonialism/decolonisation and globalisation, obstruct or distort understanding of Hong Kong’s present predicament.

DOI： https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2022.2046878

Repository Public URL： https://hdl.handle.net/2324/7164786

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

While ‘national education’ has regularly been invoked by post-1997 Hong Kong administrations, its pursuit has acquired new force and urgency since the introduction in 2020 of a National Security Law. Investigating the role of schooling in this reinvigorated project of thought reform, this article asks how far recent initiatives have merely amplified official identity discourse or marked a qualitative change. It does so primarily by analysing the official curriculum and textbooks for Citizenship and Social Development (CSD), introduced in 2022 to replace Liberal Studies, a subject widely blamed by nationalists for fomenting sedition. Following a comparative overview of the new and old curricula, there is a discussion of changes to the textbook treatment of: the historical framing of identity; the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ model; culture’s significance for Hong Kong’s place in China; and civil, legal and constitutional rights and duties. The analysis concludes with reflections on what these changes imply both for China’s efforts to re-educate its unruly Hong Kong subjects, and for scholarly efforts to understand and explain such processes.

DOI： https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2023.2212351

Other Link： https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03050068.2023.2212351

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

The problems China’s rural-born migrants face in accessing urban public services, including education, are widely known. This article analyses how official discourse attributes migrant children’s vulnerability to their ‘problematic family background’ while exhorting them to show ‘gratitude’ to a benevolent state. Combining documentary analysis and insights from fieldwork, we examine how ‘gratitude education’ seeks to inculcate notions of a moral hierarchy in which migrants are subordinate or inferior. We further investigate parental beliefs and practices with respect to gratitude, and family participation in related educational activities. The findings indicate that such activities constitute just one aspect of a broader strategy that extends to initiatives focused on governance and philanthropy. Programmes of gratitude education are one tactic for concealing the deficiencies in government action on rural migrants’ behalf. By associating entitlement to public goods with individual or familial propriety, they aim to legitimate the institutional barriers that ensure migrants’ enduring marginalisation.

DOI： https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2023.2296191

Other Link： https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03050068.2023.2296191

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

This article analyses the implications of recent policy changes for the portrayal of minority nationalities in the latest China’s history textbooks published around 2017. We argue that ideological responses to the fierce ethnic clashes of the late 2000s and the leadership transition since 2012 have generated increasingly contradictory official discourses on the relationship between Chinese identity and cultural diversity, which are manifested in the textbooks. On the one hand, policies and textbooks still appear to endorse a multi-minzu, inclusive understanding of nationhood and Chinese history. On the other hand, an increasing emphasis on nationalist discourses celebrating the Han culture and achievements reinforces assimilationist narratives based on a monolithic and homogenising vision of Chinese nationhood. We argue that such tensions reflect conflicts over contradictory understandings of Chineseness that have intensified since 2008–2009, and that the increasing marginalisation in textbooks of non-Han groups may contribute to further exacerbating problems in the handling of inter-minzu relations.

DOI： https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2023.2213139

Other Link： https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03050068.2023.2213139

Language：English   Book type：General book, introductory book for general audience

DOI： DOI:10.56383/DYNT7243

Other Link： https://mgiep.unesco.org/iseeareport

Responsible for pages：Published by Routledge   Language：English   Book type：Scholarly book

Other Link： https://www.routledge.com/Remembering-Asias-World-War-Two-1st-Edition/Frost-Schumacher-Vickers/p/book/9780367111328

Language：English   Book type：Scholarly book

Language：English   Book type：Scholarly book

Other Link： https://www.routledge.com/Education-and-Society-in-Post-Mao-China/Vickers-Zeng/p/book/9780415597395

Language：English   Book type：General book, introductory book for general audience

Event date： 2019.6

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Country：Cambodia  

Event date： 2019.6

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：San Francisco   Country：United States  

In 2015, 193 Member States of the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its accompanying set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Education for peace, sustainable development and global citizenship is enshrined in SDG Target 4.7, which focuses on equipping learners with “knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development”. While SDG 4.7 has been characterized by UNESCO as an important target pertinent to “the social, humanistic and moral purposes of education” (UNESCO, 2016, p.288), discussions surrounding its monitoring and implementation have been limited to technical issues such as the lack of baselines, and have largely avoided raising critical questions about fundamental challenges to promoting peace and sustainability through education.

In this panel, we will argue that central to these challenges is the fact that, today, UNESCO finds itself compelled to pursue its humanistic agenda in the context of an increasingly influential movement for the ‘global governance’ of education, promoted by the OECD and World Bank. This subjects policymaking in education, as in other areas, to what Muller calls ‘the tyranny of metrics’ (2018), whereby ‘accountability’ demands assessment of ‘performance’ by reference to measurable, quantitative benchmarks. As Muller and others observe (see, for example, Morris, 2016; Wolf, 2002), this approach tends to skew the emphasis in policymaking and curriculum development towards ‘skills’ that are readily measurable and comparable. It is also informed by a largely economistic approach to the goals of education, prioritising its role in ‘human capital’ generation, on the questionable assumption that measurable ‘performance’ in ‘key skills’ translates into enhanced economic growth (Komatsu and Rappleye, 2017).

Here we will examine to what extent continuing efforts to pursue UNESCO’s longstanding humanistic goals, now repackaged as SDG 4.7, are conditioned by this global drive towards quantifiability, economistic instrumentalism and ‘skills’. We do this by focusing on the work of UNESCO-MGIEP (the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development), UNESCO’s first ‘Category 1’ Research Institute in the Asia-Pacific region, and the only one focusing on ‘education for peace and sustainable development’ (i.e. the themes encompassed by SDG 4.7). Although MGIEP has a global mandate and is an integral part of UNESCO, its evolution since its inception in 2012 cannot be properly understood without taking into consideration its base in India.

The first paper, by Edward Vickers, will provide an overview of the development of MGIEP itself, analysing the evolution of its mission and agenda, and the factors that have influenced this. It will explain how MGIEP’s agenda has been shaped by a combination of macro-institutional factors (involving both UNESCO’s position in relation to other multilateral organizations, and MGIEP’s positioning vis-a-vis other UNESCO entities); the national context, involving the state of educational debate within India (and the enormous stake national and multinational ‘ed-tech’ companies have in penetrating the Indian market); and micro-level intra-organisational factors.

MGIEP’s evolving agenda has recently led to a research focus on ‘social and emotional learning’ or SEL, and techniques for what amounts to behaviour modification informed by cognitive psychology or ‘learning science’ and neuroscience. Terms such as ‘social and emotional skills’, ‘pro-social behaviour’, ‘mindfulness’, ‘kindness’, ‘empathy- and compassion-building’ are coming to form a new lexicon framing debate over educational ‘transformation’ for the 21st century. The second paper, by Yoko Mochizuki, examines the rise of SEL as a new ‘zeitgeist’, analysing the recent fashion for foregrounding social and emotional skills—sometimes referred to as ‘non-cognitive’ (OECD) or ‘soft’ skills—and delineating some major implications of current efforts to mainstream SEL in schooling, particularly in the context of SDG4.7 implementation. While two MGIEP publications released in 2017 (Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century and Textbooks for Sustainable Development) focused largely on curricular and pedagogical issues relating to the promotion of civic values encapsulated in SDG 4.7 (including human rights, respect for cultural diversity and appreciation of culture’s contribution to sustainable development), this new work on ‘SEL’ aims to foster a capacity for ‘self-regulation’ on the part of individual learners, with little reference to the broader social or political context. The paper will argue that this marks a potentially significant departure from UNESCO’s traditional approach to education for sustainable development, peace, human rights, and global citizenship.

Finally, Lorna Down will analyse one example of a more conventional capacity-building initiative by MGIEP—a pilot project conducted in 2018 in the State of Sikkim, India, aimed at training textbook authors (including practising teachers) to ‘embed’ ideas relating to sustainable development in teaching materials designed for use in local classrooms. Sikkim became India’s first fully ‘organic’ state in 2016, and is committed to integrating SDGs in all sectors including education. The paper will consider the challenges involved in supporting these practitioners in their efforts to grasp relevant concepts and relate them meaningfully to the experiences of young children, while taking account of the practical and material constraints faced by teachers and schools.

The contributors to the panel will debate what the overarching focus of UNESCO-MGIEP on digital learning and neuroscience means for the various projects the institute pursues, and for the interpretation by UNESCO as a whole of SDG 4 (on ‘inclusive and equitable quality education’). They will seek to engage the audience for this panel in a discussion of the extent to which the trends affecting the work of MGIEP are also at work in the education policy arena in national contexts other than that of India (where MGIEP is located), and within UNESCO at large and other multilateral and civil society organisations. Amongst the questions they will pose are: To what extent is the pursuit of ‘learning science’, ‘evidence-based’ education policymaking and technology-based means for the enhancement of schooling effectiveness crowding out serious reflection on the fundamental purposes of education, and its social and political (as well as economic) functions? And to the extent that this is happening, should it worry us, and why?

Event date： 2021.3

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Country：United States  

This article examines the portrayal of the Nazi Holocaust in Chinese public culture today, focusing on the case of the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum (SJRM). It begins by critiquing the overarching official narrative of Chinese victimhood at the hands of foreign 'colonialists' and ‘imperialists’. It is argued that a more balanced understanding of the history and politics of race and colonialism in China is essential to an analysis of the Communist Party's efforts to project power and influence abroad, and reinforce its legitimacy at home. The case of the SJRM shows how these efforts extend to fierce competition with Japan for UNESCO recognition of war-related heritage, as each country seeks to trumpet its role in saving Jews from Nazi terror during World War Two. The paper analyses the representation of the history of the Jewish Refugee Zone in the SJRM, looking at how the exhibition there has evolved, and interpreting its emphases and omissions in the light of recent shifts in official historiography and heritage diplomacy. It concludes that the Chinese state's interest in the Holocaust as heritage has remained overwhelmingly instrumental, focused on enhancing Shanghai's civic profile, and burnishing China's international image.

Event date： 2019.6

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Institute for the Study of Developing Societies (ISDS), New Delhi   Country：India  

This presentation discusses the propaganda uses of history to legitimise Chinese rule over 'minority' ethnic regions, looking particularly at the school curriculum, museums and exhibitions.

Event date： 2019.3 - 2015.3

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Country：United States  

Language：English   Publishing type：Article, review, commentary, editorial, etc. (scientific journal)  

Other Link： https://www.norrag.org/education-and-climate-change-is-blaming-western-modernity-the-answer-by-edward-vickers/

Language：English   Publishing type：Book review, literature introduction, etc.  

DOI： https://doi.org/10.18546/LRE.16.2.12

Other Link： https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/ioep/clre/2018/00000016/00000002/art00012?crawler=true&mimetype=application/pdf

Language：English   Publishing type：Book review, literature introduction, etc.  

DOI： https://doi.org/10.1086/692538

Language：English   Publishing type：Book review, literature introduction, etc.  

DOI： doi:10.1353/mni.2017.0020

Language：English   Publishing type：Article, review, commentary, editorial, etc. (scientific journal)  

Type：Competition, symposium, etc. 

Number of participants：250

Type：Peer review 

Number of peer-reviewed articles in foreign language journals：7

Type：Competition, symposium, etc. 

Number of participants：120

Type：Competition, symposium, etc. 

Number of participants：4

Type：Peer review 

Number of peer-reviewed articles in foreign language journals：13

Audience： General,　Scientific,　Company,　Civic organization,　Governmental agency

Type：Seminar, workshop

On December 15-16, 2018, the Kyushu University Taiwan Program hosted Katakura Yoshifumi, Katakura Mari, and Dr. John Chuan-Tiong Lim for the second annual 台湾事情 symposium. Mr. and Mrs. Katakura delivered lectures during the first day on the theme of ‘Taiwan’s history and diversity’. On the second day, Dr. Lim (of Academia Sinica) discussed identity issues in Okinawa, Taiwan and Hong Kong in comparative perspective. Over 100 people attended the symposium over the two days, including both Kyushu University students and members of the public. The symposium was generously supported by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (branch) in Fukuoka.

Audience： General,　Scientific,　Company,　Civic organization,　Governmental agency

Type：Lecture

In October 2017, the application to list the Voices of the Comfort Women archive on UNESCO’s ‘Memory of the World Register’ was rejected (or ‘postponed’). In this paper, I attempt to locate that decision in the context of other recent instances of ‘heritage diplomacy’ in East Asia, highlighting the tensions between nationalistic agendas and UNESCO’s universalist pretensions. I then discuss the nature and extent of similar tensions in the framing of the ‘comfort women’ issue, as manifested in ‘comfort women museums’ (institutions closely associated with the preparation of the 2016-17 ‘Memory of the World’ application). I focus especially on the case of China, where the Xi Jinping regime first sought to ‘weaponise’ this issue against Japan, only to pull back in 2018 as Sino-Japanese ties warmed. I conclude by asking how the story of the ‘comfort women’ might be reframed to
underline its global significance (or ‘outstanding universal value’), in a manner that makes it more difficult for Japanese nationalists to portray the campaign for recognition and commemoration as an 'anti-Japan' conspiracy.

Audience： Infants,　Schoolchildren,　Junior students,　High school students

Type：Other

A live interview for RTHK's Backchat programme on the commemoration of the Nanjing Massacre in Hong Kong's schools

Interviewed for NHK World's 'Asian View' programme, discussing the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party

A live interview for the 'Backchat' program about changes to the history curriculum for Hong Kong schools

Quoted in the 'Chaguan' column, in an article entitled 'Educational freedom is under assault in Hong Kong'. The article cited work by Vickers and Paul Morris (of the UCL-IOE) on the changing portrayal of Japan in Hong Kong's history textbooks.

Interview broadcast as part of the Program 'Lies My Teacher Told Me: Japan - Revising the Past'