Doing Educational Research by Taking Seriously Chen's Account of “Asia as Method”: In a Korean Case of Modern Schooling

Abstract

This paper aims to exemplify how Chen's idea of “Asia as method” can be employed in a case study on Korean experiences of modern schooling. It does so by focusing on the author's personal experiences of modern schooling as both a student and a teacher in modern Korea. In this description, the author makes two seemingly contradictory moves: a move toward decolonialization by keeping a critical distance from her own native culture and a move toward deimperialization by keeping her distance from the West. This shows the challenges and tensions in the Korean experience of modern schooling as a student or teacher dealing with different moral languages such as Confucian and rationalist or rationalist and post-rationalist. This experimental work suggests the possibility of forming a uniquely East Asian subjectivity while showing how educational research in East Asia can be performative in the sense that it changes the way East Asians understand themselves and the world around them.