| Edward Anthony Vickers | Last modified date：2021.07.09 |
Professor /
International and Comparative Education
Department of Education
Faculty of Human-Environment Studies
Department of Education
Faculty of Human-Environment Studies
Graduate School
Undergraduate School
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Homepage
https://kyushu-u.pure.elsevier.com/en/persons/edward-vickers
Reseacher Profiling Tool Kyushu University Pure
Phone
092-802-5194
Academic Degree
PhD
Country of degree conferring institution (Overseas)
No
Field of Specialization
Education, History
ORCID(Open Researcher and Contributor ID)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5061-6204
Total Priod of education and research career in the foreign country
40years00months
Outline Activities
I research the history and politics of education in contemporary Asia, with a particular focus on Chinese societies (the People's Republic of China, Taiwan and Hong Kong). I am co-author of the definitive study, Education and Society in Post-Mao China (2017), which critically assesses the development of China’s education system since the 1970s. I am particularly interested in education's role as part of the apparatus of political control in China, across Asia and beyond. My early research was concerned with the politics of history as a school subject in Hong Kong (In Search of An Identity, 2003). This work analysed tensions inherent in Hong Kong’s post-1997 project of ‘national education’ - tensions that have subsequently contributed to the recent protests and subsequent restrictions on civil liberties. I also published the first major comparative study of history education across East Asia, an issue of crucial importance in regional politics. My research extends to museums, cultural policy and identity in Taiwan, and my recent work includes a pathbreaking collaborative study of war-related heritage across East Asia, Remembering Asia’s World War Two (2019). I have helped coordinate two major reports for UNESCO: Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century (2017), and the 'International Scientific and Evidence-based Educational Assessment' (due to be completed in 2021). I am founding Director of the Kyushu University Taiwan Studies Program, Secretary-General of the Comparative Education Society of Asia, and joint editor of the East Asian Journal of Popular Culture.
PROPSPECTIVE POSTGRADATE STUDENTS PLEASE NOTE: I ONLY RESPOND TO ENQUIRY EMAILS THAT SHOW THAT THE SENDER HAS (1) READ MY HOMEPAGE AND UNDERSTANDS MY EXPERTISE AND INTERESTS, AND (2) HAS THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT HE/SHE WANTS TO RESEARCH. YOU DON'T HAVE TO SEND ME A FULL RESEARCH PROPOSAL, BUT YOU MUST SHOW THAT YOU HAVE BEGUN TO THINK ABOUT YOUR OWN RESEARCH INTERESTS - AND ABOUT WHY YOU THINK THAT I WOULD MAKE AN APPROPRIATE SUPERVISOR. I AM ALSO MORE LIKELY TO RESPOND IF YOU WRITE TO ME IN ENGLISH.
PROPSPECTIVE POSTGRADATE STUDENTS PLEASE NOTE: I ONLY RESPOND TO ENQUIRY EMAILS THAT SHOW THAT THE SENDER HAS (1) READ MY HOMEPAGE AND UNDERSTANDS MY EXPERTISE AND INTERESTS, AND (2) HAS THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT HE/SHE WANTS TO RESEARCH. YOU DON'T HAVE TO SEND ME A FULL RESEARCH PROPOSAL, BUT YOU MUST SHOW THAT YOU HAVE BEGUN TO THINK ABOUT YOUR OWN RESEARCH INTERESTS - AND ABOUT WHY YOU THINK THAT I WOULD MAKE AN APPROPRIATE SUPERVISOR. I AM ALSO MORE LIKELY TO RESPOND IF YOU WRITE TO ME IN ENGLISH.
Research
Research Interests
- The comparative study of the relationship between education and political socialisation in Asian societies - with particular reference to history and civics.
keyword : Asia, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, identity, history
2000.10～2012.10.
- Chinese claims to both ‘minority’ regions (e.g. Xinjiang and Tibet), and peripheral ‘Han’ regions (Hong
Kong, Taiwan) are hotly contested – leading to efforts to bolster legitimacy through state propaganda and
schooling. Control of the historical account is crucial here, but we do not understand (a) the consistency of
narratives relating to ‘minorities’ and peripheral ‘Han’ populations; (b) how recent changes to both have
been influenced by political shifts under Xi Jinping; or (c) their implications for China’s stability. This is
the contribution of the research proposed here. It builds on work that the PI – a leading expert on education and
identity politics in Chinese societies – has been conducting for many years. The analysis focuses on the portrayal
of ‘minorities,’ and of Hong Kong and Taiwan, in Chinese History textbooks and in relevant historical museums.
It will greatly enhance our understanding of the politics of schooling and state propaganda, of the
dynamics of Chinese nationalism, and what this means for stability around China’s periphery. - Kyushu and Taiwan enjoy thriving cultural and commercial ties, but educational links (at university level) have been limited - until now. In 2017, Kyushu University, with support from the Ministry of Education of the ROC (Taiwan), established a new Taiwan Studies Program. This aims to promote interest in and understanding of Taiwan amongst students and scholars in Western Japan, and to strengthen ties between Japanese researchers, their Taiwanese counterparts, and the Taiwan Studies community worldwide. It also promotes Taiwan-related research, particularly in the area of identity politics and Taiwanese culture.
- UNESCO MGIEP officially launched the new publication Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century: The State of Education for Peace, Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship in Asia on 2 November 2017 in Paris at the UNESCO General Conference. This report involved more than 60 researchers from 22 countries in Asia and is based on the content analysis of key education policy and curricular documents from these countries and an extensive review of literature on Asian schooling. It seeks to develop benchmarks against which future progress can be assessed. It also argues forcefully that conceptions of the fundamental purposes of schooling need to be configured, if the ideals of SDG 4.7 to which the global community has subscribed are actually to be realized.
Books
| 1. | Mark Frost, Daniel Schumacher and Edward Vickers (eds), Remembering Asia's World War Two, London and New York, Published by Routledge, 2019.04, [URL], Over the past four decades, East and Southeast Asia have seen a proliferation of heritage sites and remembrance practices which commemorate the region’s bloody conflicts of the period 1931–45. Remembering Asia’s World War Two examines the origins, dynamics, and repercussions of this regional war “memory boom”. The book analyzes the politics of war commemoration in contemporary East and Southeast Asia. Featuring contributions from leading international scholars, the chapters span China, Japan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Singapore, covering topics such as the commemoration of the Japanese military’s “comfort women” system, forms of "dark tourism" or commemorative pilgrimages (e.g. veterans’ tours to wartime battlefields), and the establishment and evolution of various war-related heritage sites and museums. Case studies reveal the distinctive trajectories of new and newly discovered forms of remembrance within and across national boundaries. They highlight the growing influence of non-state actors over representations of conflict and occupation, as well as the increasingly interconnected and transnational character of memory-making. Taken together, the studies collected here demonstrate that across much of Asia the public commemoration of the wars of 1931–45 has begun to shift from portraying them as a series of national conflicts with distinctive local meanings to commemorating the conflict as a common pan-Asian, or even global, experience. Focusing on non-textual vehicles for public commemoration and considering both the local and international dimensions of war commemoration within, Remembering Asia’s World War Two will be a crucial reference for students and scholars of History, Memory Studies, and Heritage Studies, as well as all those interested in the history, politics, and culture of contemporary Asia.. |
| 2. | Yoko Mochizuki, Krishna Kumar, Edward Vickers, Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century: The State of Education for Peace, Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship in Asia, 2017.11, UNESCO MGIEP officially launched the new publication 'Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century: The State of Education for Peace, Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship in Asia' on 2 November 2017 in Paris at the UNESCO General Conference. This report involved more than 60 researchers from 22 countries in Asia and is based on the content analysis of key education policy and curricular documents from these countries and an extensive review of literature on Asian schooling. It seeks to develop benchmarks against which future progress can be assessed. It also argues forcefully that conceptions of the fundamental purposes of schooling need to be configured, if the ideals of SDG 4.7 to which the global community has subscribed are actually to be realized.. |
| 3. | Edward Vickers, Zeng Xiaodong, Education and Society in Post-Mao China, London and New York: Routledge, 2017.05, [URL], The post-Mao period has witnessed rapid social and economic transformation in all walks of Chinese life – much of it fuelled by, or reflected in, changes to the country’s education system. This book analyses the development of that system since the abandonment of radical Maoism and the inauguration of ‘Reform and Opening’ in the late 1970s. The principal focus is on formal education in schools and conventional institutions of tertiary education, but there is also some discussion of preschools, vocational training, and learning in non-formal contexts. The book begins with a discussion of the historical and comparative context for evaluating China’s educational ‘achievements’, followed by an extensive discussion of the key transitions in education policymaking during the ‘Reform and Opening’ period. This informs the subsequent examination of changes affecting the different phases of education from preschool to tertiary level. There are also chapters dealing specifically with the financing and administration of schooling, curriculum development, the public examinations system, the teaching profession, the phenomenon of marketisation, and the ‘international dimension’ of Chinese education. The book concludes with an assessment of the social consequences of educational change in the post-Mao era and a critical discussion of the recent fashion in certain Western countries for hailing China as an educational model. The analysis is supported by a wealth of sources – primary and secondary, textual and statistical – and is informed by both authors’ wide-ranging experience of Chinese education.. |
| 4. | Edward Vickers, Krishna Kumar, Constructing Modern Asian Citizenship, London and New York, 2015.01, In many non-Western contexts, modernization has tended to be equated with Westernization, and hence with an abandonment of authentic indigenous identities and values. This is evident in the recent history of many Asian societies, where efforts to modernize – spurred on by the spectre of foreign domination – have often been accompanied by determined attempts to stamp national variants of modernity with the brand of local authenticity: ‘Asian values’, ‘Chinese characteristics’, a Japanese cultural ‘essence’ and so forth. Highlighting (or exaggerating) associations between the more unsettling consequences of modernization and alien influence has thus formed part of a strategy whereby elites in many Asian societies have sought to construct new forms of legitimacy for old patterns of dominance over the masses. The apparatus of modern systems of mass education, often inherited from colonial rulers, has been just one instrument in such campaigns of state legitimation. This book presents analyses of a range of contemporary projects of citizenship formation across Asia in order to identify those issues and concerns most central to Asian debates over the construction of modern identities. Its main focus is on schooling, but also examines other vehicles for citizenship-formation, such as museums and the internet; the role of religion (in particular Islam) in debates over citizenship and identity in certain Asian societies; and the relationship between state-centred identity discourses and the experience of increasingly ‘globalized’ elites.. |
| 5. | Edward Vickers, Paul Morris, Naoko Shimazu, Imagining Japan in Post-war East Asia: identity politics, schooling and popular culture, London: Routledge, 2013.12, Imagining Japan in Postwar East Asia analyses the portrayal of Japan in the societies of East and Southeast Asia, and asks how and why this has changed in recent decades, and what these changing images of Japan reveal about the ways in which these societies construct their own identities. It examines the role played by an imagined ‘Japan’ in the construction of national selves across the East Asian region, as mediated through a broad range of media ranging from school curricula and textbooks to film, television, literature and comics. Commencing with an extensive thematic and comparative overview chapter, the volume also includes contributions focusing specifically on Chinese societies (the mainland PRC, Hong Kong and Taiwan), Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. These studies show how changes in the representation of Japan have been related to political, social and cultural shifts within the societies of East Asia – and in particular to the ways in which these societies have imagined or constructed their own identities. In the decades since her defeat in the Second World War, Japan has continued to loom large in the national imagination of many of her East Asian neighbours. While for many, Japan still conjures up images of rampant military brutality, at different times and in different communities, alternative images of the Japanese ‘Other’ have vied for predominance – in ways that remain poorly understood, not least within Japan itself. Bringing together contributors working in the fields of education, anthropology, history, sociology, political science and media studies, this interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to all students and scholars concerned with issues of identity, politics and culture in the societies of East Asia, and to those seeking a deeper understanding of Japan's fraught relations with its regional neighbours.. |
| 6. | Edward Vickers, Marie Lall, Education as a Political Tool in Asia, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK, 2009.09, This book offers a fresh and comparative approach to analyzing the uses of education and the effects of its politicization on Asian societies in the era of globalisation. Education has been used as a political tool throughout the ages and across the whole world to define national identity and underpin the political rationale of regimes. In the contemporary world Asian societies manifest this phenomenon in a variety of ways, ranging from tensions over religious versus secular definitions of national identity in India and Pakistan, to various blends of ethno-culturally primordialist and 'multicultural' nationalism in China, Japan, Singapore and Vietnam. In Asia, modern education systems have their origins in processes of state formation aimed either at bolstering 'self-strengthening' resistance to the encroachments of Western and/or Asian imperialism, or at furthering projects of post-colonial nation-building. State elites have sought to popularise powerful visions of nationhood, to equip these visions with a historical 'back-story', and to endow them with the maximum sentimental charge. This book explores these developments in various national contexts, emphasising that education is seen by nations across Asia, as elsewhere, as far more than simply a tool for economic development, and that issues of national identity and the tolerance - or lack of it - of ethnic, cultural or religious diversity can be at least as important as issues of literacy and access. Interdisciplinary and unique in its analysis, this book will be of interest to scholars of political science, research in education and Asian Studies..  |
| 7. | Edward Vickers, Alisa Jones, History Education and National Identity in East Asia, New York and London, 2005.09, This original collection offers the first significant comparative study of the politics of history curricula across East Asia. Vickers and Jones examine the relationship of history education to changing official visions of the past in a context of political transformation, giving special consideration to the rise of communism, decolonization, and the Cold War divisions of China and Korea. Chapters by a range of international scholars deal with history education in Japan, the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and the two Koreas. They focus on the content of official syllabi and textbooks, and on the influences shaping government policy regarding the teaching of history. Highlighting the tension between the traditional nation-building priorities of history education and the emerging cross-regional concern with the promotion of 'skills', this important book shows how the school subject of History has been a major site for the construction and contestation of definitions of national and regional identity.. |
| 8. | Edward Vickers, In Search of An Identity: The Politics of History as a School Subject in Hong Kong, 1960s-2005, Hong Kong, 2005.09, In most societies, the school subject of History reflects and reinforces a sense of collective identity. However, in Hong Kong this has emphatically not been the case. Official and popular ambivalence towards 'the nation' in the shape of the People's Republic of China, and the sensitivity of Hong Kong's own political and cultural status, have meant that the question of local identity has until recently been largely sidestepped in school curricula and textbooks. In this study, Edward Vickers sets out to reexamine some of the myths concerning colonialism and schooling under the British, while showing how in postcolonial Hong Kong these myths have been deployed to legitimize a programme of nationalistic reeducation. In the Afterword to this 2005 edition, he emphasizes that it is Hong Kong's fundamentally undemocratic political context that has thwarted and continues to thwart efforts to make history education a vehicle for fostering a liberal, democratic sense of regional and national citizenship.. |
Papers
| 1. | Edward Vickers, Paul Morris, Schooling, Politics and the Construction of Identity in Hong Kong: the “Moral and National Education” Crisis in Historical Context, Comparative Education, 51, 3, 305-326, 2015.06, Since Hong Kong's retrocession, the government has endeavoured to strengthen local citizens' identification with the People's Republic of China – a project that acquired new impetus with the 2010 decision to introduce ‘Moral and National Education’ (MNE) as a compulsory school subject. In the face of strong local opposition, this policy was withdrawn in 2012, and implementation of MNE made optional. This article seeks to elucidate the background to the MNE controversy of 2012 by locating the emergence of a distinctive Hong Kong identity in its historical context, and analysing successive official attempts (before and after the 1997 retrocession) to use schooling for purposes of political socialisation. We argue that the school curriculum has projected and reflected a dual sense of identity: a ‘Chineseness’ located mainly in ethno-cultural qualities, and a ‘Hongkongeseness’ rooted in civic attributes. While reinforced by schooling, local civic consciousness has been intimately related to a tradition of public activism strongly evident since the 1970s, and further strengthened post-1997.. |
| 2. | Edward Vickers, Yang Biao, Shanghai's History Curriculum Reforms and Shifting Textbook Portrayals of Japan, French Centre for Research on Contemporary China, 2013/4, 33-43, 2013.12, [URL], This article examines the coverage of Japan in Shanghai's senior high history textbooks since the early 1990s – a period when the city's status as China's“showpiece for the global era”has been widely touted. Uniquely among cities on the Chinese mainland, Shanghai has throughout this period enjoyed the right to publish and prescribe its own textbooks for use in local schools (a right extended to most other regions only since the early 2000s). The portrayal of Japan in local texts thus offers a window onto the way in which a self-avowedly “global” Chinese metropolis has balanced an outward-looking and internationalist vision with the requirement for history to serve patriotic education. It also sheds light on the meaning and extent of local curricular “autonomy” in contemporary China.. |
| 3. | Edward Vickers, Editorial: Chinese Visions of Japan - official narratives of a troubled relationship, The French Centre for Research on Contemporary China, 2013/4, 3-5, 2013.12, [URL]. |
| 4. | Edward Anthony Vickers, Transcending Victimhood: Japan in the public historical museums of Taiwan and the People's Republic of China, French Centre for Research on Contemporary China, 2013/4, 19-32, 2013.12, [URL], This article looks at how the major national (or pseudo-national) historical museums in China and Taiwan interpret and display very different “new rememberings” of Japan. The main focus is on the permanent exhibitions of the modern history wing of the National Museum of China (NMC; formerly the Museum of the Chinese Revolution), which finally reopened in 2011 after almost a decade of refurbishment, and of the National Museum of Taiwan History (NMTH), which opened in the same year. It discusses how museum portrayals of Japan reflect divergent public discourses on national identity. Through examining the relationship between museums and the apparatus of the Chinese state (ROC and PRC), the first section locates the NMC and NMTH in their bureaucratic and political contexts. A typology of approaches to the construction of national identity is then offered, considering the implications of different conceptions of identity for portrayals of Japan and its relationship with China or Taiwan. The remainder of the article looks in turn at the NMC and NMTH, outlining the history of each before examining how Japan is represented in their permanent exhibitions. It concludes by considering what can be learnt from this about the evolving relationship between official historical discourse and the broader political context on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.. |
| 5. | Edward Vickers, History, Identity and the Politics of Taiwan's Museums: reflections on the DPP-KMT transition No. 3, 92-106., China Perspectives, 3, 96-106, 2010.09, Museums in Taiwan—as elsewhere—have always been embroiled in politicised debates over collective identity, both reflecting and helping to shape the contours of identity discourse. During the four decades of the Martial Law era, the Kuomintang (KMT) regime used museums as vehicles for its campaigns to nurture patriotic citizens of a “Republic of China” encompassing the entire Chinese mainland. However, with the onset of democratisation from the late 1980s, museums increasingly reflected and reinforced a strengthening consensus over Taiwan’s historical and cultural distinctiveness, while also mirroring the considerable pluralism of popular identity consciousness. This trend was accentuated under the regime of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) after 2000, but 2008 witnessed the return to power of a KMT determined to establish warmer ties with China. This paper examines the extent to which the new regime’s more accommodative approach to China has extended into the realm of museums, while considering whether developments within the sector, and within broader Taiwanese society, mean that museums are no longer quite the pliable tools of official cultural policy that they once were.. |
Presentations
Educational
Educational Activities
I currently teach an undergraduate lecture course on Education, National Identity and Modern State Formation.
In addition, I take graduate and undergraduate seminar classes on:
- Education and Society in Contemporary China
- History Education in East Asia in Comparative Perspective
- Japan through East Asian Eyes - images of Japan in the construction of East Asian identities
- Amartya Sen's work on identity, education and 'development as freedom'
- Comparative Studies of Educational Cultures - Tobin et al.'s 'Preschool in Three Cultures' and Alexander's 'Culture and Pedagogy'
In addition, I take graduate and undergraduate seminar classes on:
- Education and Society in Contemporary China
- History Education in East Asia in Comparative Perspective
- Japan through East Asian Eyes - images of Japan in the construction of East Asian identities
- Amartya Sen's work on identity, education and 'development as freedom'
- Comparative Studies of Educational Cultures - Tobin et al.'s 'Preschool in Three Cultures' and Alexander's 'Culture and Pedagogy'
Social
Professional and Outreach Activities
On behalf of Kyushu University's Education Department, I successfully applied for conferral of a UNESCO Chair on Education for Peace, Social Justice and Global Citizenship. This was formally approved in June 2021. The UNESCO Chair involves a partnership with a number of partner universities and UNESCO Institutes, primarily in Asia and the Pacific. It will form an important platform for expanding and promoting our international activities in postgraduate teaching and research over the coming years.
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