Education from an “Asian” Perspective

Abstract

As research interest in Asia continues to grow, how should Japanese sociology of education confront education in Asia? Japanese sociology of education, which has developed through comparisons with Europe and the United States, is now at a point where it needs to rethink its own issues and position in relation to Asia. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the contributed papers and to suggest possibilities for looking at education from an Asian perspective.

The issues that emerged were as follows.

The first is the distance between research objects and researchers. The heterogeneity that emerges when comparing Europe and the US tends to be more visible, due to differences in historical contexts, social values and norms, whereas in Asia, where there is a high degree of similarity, heterogeneity may be less visible. In understanding such subtle dissimilarities, it will be important for each researcher to be aware of their “position” in terms of how they set up the “similarity”.

The second is the distance from Western theories. Many theories are derived from Western reality, and we must be careful not to internalize Western theories without being aware of them. To understand the realities of Asian societies from different perspectives, it is crucial for us to be more aware of Western theories.