Education Research in Asia As “Method”

Abstract

The rise of Asia has fueled great interest in the region across all fields of study, including Asian cultural studies, arts, and education. Yet Asian intellectual traditions are slow to gain traction in the academic world. Asian scholars continue to travel to Western nations to pursue doctoral studies and to learn from Western academics. While many Asian scholars research policies and practices in their own countries, they readily pick concepts and theories from Western literature as the theoretical frame to analyze data generated from their home countries in Asia. Such practice not only undermines the richness of the local context in Asia but also reinforces the universality of Western theories to explain observations beyond Western societies (Chua BH, Inter-Asia referencing and shifting frames of comparison. In The social sciences in the Asian century, ANU Press, 2015). Our research is influenced by the approach taken by Chen (Asia as method: toward deimperialization. Duke University Press, Durham, 2010), who argues for critical studies of Asia using “Asia as method” to rethink the process of knowledge production in sociocultural research. Based on a focus group interview of HDR education students (N = 6) in an Australian university, this chapter reports on benefits and difficulties of deploying Asia as Method in the students’ research projects. This chapter argues that Asia as Method provides a new research imagination for HDR students to bring Asian knowledge, traditions, wisdom, and values into Western-dominated intellectual discourse of educational research. This chapter further investigates the difficulties encountered by research participants and strategies they used when they applied Asia as Method in their research.