Toward a Postcolonial Comparative and International Education

Abstract

This article, which serves to introduce the special issue on "Contesting Coloniality: Rethinking Knowledge Production and Circulation in Comparative and International Education," brings to the fore the rarely acknowledged colonial entanglements of knowledge in the field of comparative and international education (CIE). We begin by showing how colonial logics underpin the scholarship of one of the field's founding figures, Isaac L. Kandel. These logics gained legitimacy through the Cold War geopolitical contexts in which the field was established and have shaped subsequent approaches including the much-debated world-culture approach to globalization in education. The article then reviews decolonial, postcolonial, and southern theory scholarship as an intellectual resource upon which CIE scholars and practitioners can draw to tackle these active colonial legacies. We situate the contribution of this special issue within this larger intellectual movement and call for a major collective rethinking of the way CIE knowledge is produced and circulated on a global scale. A Moment of Deep Reflection We have put together this special issue to initiate dialogue about the active colonial legacies within the field of comparative and international education (CIE), and to show ways of working beyond them. 1 Readers might wonder how CIE, which celebrates and tries to understand the diversity of education around the world, can continue to be influenced by colonial histories and Eurocentrism. In this extended introduction, we explain why coloniality remains a significant challenge to the field and how articles in this collection engage with this challenge. We hope readers will join us in a major rethinking of the norms and knowledge about difference, comparison, and research that have been inherited from the field's history. The authors would like to thank Jun and Minako Yamashita who are at Teachers College, Columbia University, for their generous assistance in accessing Kandel's old writings and Jeremy Rappleye for his kind assistance and encouragement. 1 Our discussion focuses on the English-language CIE, with an acknowledgment that the critiques of the field developed herein might not be applicable to non-English-speaking and non-Western CIE societies around the world.

Comparative Education and Empires

“…There are some stabilities, in addition to the irritation of Afghans after four wars with the 'English'; though that is an insult, en passant, to the Northern Irish, the Scots and the Welsh, some of whom were excellent imperialists (Allen, 2001 (Takayama, Sriprakash & Connell, 2016). There are other ironic stabilities close to home too: comparative education, an academic subject traditionally linked to the training of teachers and to MA and PhD programmes and academic qualifications, is changing yet again.…”

A Decolonial Moment in Science Education: Using a Socioscientific Issue to Explore the Coloniality of Power

“…Similarly, Zembylas (2017) argues the need for decolonial strategies and pedagogical/curricular possibilities to bring a more multiperspectival and pluriversal understanding of human experience. While there is now a small but growing literature exploring decolonialism and decolonial education (see DesRoches, 2016;Gorski, 2008;Takayama, Sriprakash, & Connell, 2017), Daza and Tuck (2014) remind us "de/colonizing, (post)(anti)colonial and Indigenous studies, theories, and issues were not part of mainstream education until very recently". Instead they were seen as "subfields of critical, antioppressive, ethnic, and multicultural education -which were also kept to the outskirts of mainstream/Whitestream conversations about education" (p. 307).…”

Comparison as translation: Internationalisation in the International Baccalaureate and Taiwanese schooling

“…And together with constructing and imagining a homogeneous cultural group, it may reinforce the cultural colonisation against minorities. Sriprakash, and Connell (2017) unveil the entanglements of modernity and coloniality in knowledge production in the field of comparative education. Takayama et al (2017) contend that part of development of comparative education is inextricably linked to Cold War geopolitics.…”

“…Sriprakash, and Connell (2017) unveil the entanglements of modernity and coloniality in knowledge production in the field of comparative education. Takayama et al (2017) contend that part of development of comparative education is inextricably linked to Cold War geopolitics. The uneven power relationships, such as between the researcher and the 23 Han-Chinese people acts as the settler, are the majority of population, seek to be independent from the suzerain, and intent on the genocide of the indigenous people.…”

“…The designation of "post" here is rather a reflection of the power relationship and its implication in the globalising world. A postcolonial perspective would benefit our understanding of the comparative education (Takayama et al, 2017) and our knowledge of globalisation (K.-H. Chen, 2010). As the world-culture oriented comparative research can be a disguised neo-imperialism which derives from an unreflective globalisation.…”