Political ideology and Taiwanese school curricula

Taiwanese textbooks play a central role in Taiwanese education. In the wake of the political reform and social protest movements of the 1970s and 1980s that prompted Taiwanese educational reform, critics have charged that traditional curricula tend to reinforce the dominant national Chinese cultural identity. The purpose of this article is to review recent research on the complex ideological processes in Taiwan’s school curriculum. The article begins with an overview of the political and social impact on social studies curricula in Taiwan from 1949 to the present, followed by a theoretical discussion of the interrelationship between school curriculum and political ideology using an analysis of Taiwanese textbooks as evidence. The article then suggests a number of classroom practices and methodologies for elementary and secondary school teachers in social studies classes.     

闽都文化与台湾儒学的发展

在明末以前,中华传统儒学一直未能在台湾地区形成影响。到了清代,台湾隶属于福建,闽都福州由于其特殊的政治、经济、文化地位,对台湾儒学的传承与发展产生了广泛而深入的影响。闽都文化对台湾儒学发展的影响,主要通过台湾的官学、书院、社会教育三方面得以表现。     

两岸基础教育师资队伍建设的比较研究

两岸基础教育师资队伍建设因为体制不同在教师社会地位、教师职前培养、教师甄选程序、教师职后教育等方面存在一些差异,又因为文化同源等原因存在下列共性因素:提升教师队伍的整体素质;推进教师在职进修终身化;创建网络化教师培训平台;重视教师教育一体化建设和实施多元化师资培育政策。两岸基础教育师资队伍建设今后要注意适当控制招生规模、合作培养综合型教师、适当延长实习时间、尽量减轻教师负担和设法提高教育质量等问题。     

两岸基础教育师资队伍建设的比较

两岸基础教育师资队伍建设因为体制不同在教师社会地位、教师职前培养、教师甄选程序、教师职后教育等方面存在一些差异,又因为文化同源等原因存在下列共性因素：提升教师队伍的整体素质;推进教师在职进修终身化;创建网络化教师培训平台;重视教师教育一体化建设和实施多元化师资培育政策。因此,两岸基础教育师资队伍建设今后要注意适当控制招生规模、合作培养综合型教师、适当延长实习时间、尽量减轻教师负担和设法提高教育质量等问题。     

Action Research,the State and Legitimation in Brunei Darussalam

The introduction of postgraduate programmes at the Institute of Education, Universiti Brunei Darussalam indicates that educational research will play a central role in teacher education. While there is widespread agreement on the appropriateness of action research, little consideration has been given to the degree to which it is compatible with cultural and political expectations of the teacher's role. This paper argues that rather than improve educational practice as envisioned by constructivists, action research may be used by the state to legitimize existing educational policies. Since schools are a major socialization agency in this small, Malay-Islamic state, it will be difficult for teachers to modify their traditional teaching and problem-solving strategies, let alone question educational policies. The paper suggests that when interpreted within a broader political framework, action research is likely to be appropriated by the state to delimit research and legitimize existing policies and social arrangements of the school, thereby strengthening the status quo.     

Moving with modernisation and civilisation: Taiwanese nativist education in the early 1930s

This study examines localisation endeavours in contemporary Taiwan to explore the history of the Taiwanese localisation movement as a way of reimagining meanings of Taiwaneseness constructed under different historical circumstances. It focuses on the xiāngtǔ (nativist) literature movement in colonial Taiwan in the early 1930s that was initiated by Taiwanese intellectuals to create real Taiwanese literature on Taiwan and for the Taiwanese masses. Besides being a social education initiative to improve Taiwanese mass literacy, the xiāngtǔ literature movement was a localisation effort to reform Taiwanese language and preserve Taiwanese culture under Japanese occupation. The reform discourse made a turn towards specifically Taiwanese linguistic and cultural traditions, instead of pursuing modern Japanese and Chinese language and culture, which were the then available cultural impulses in colonial Taiwan. Local Taiwanese language and folk culture were essential curricular materials in the social education agenda that created particular meanings of Taiwaneseness for colonial Taiwan.     

A Study of Elementary and Secondary Teacher Knowledge and Attitudes Toward Aging and the Implementation of Aging Education in Taiwan

This study surveys elementary and secondary teachers in Taiwan and compares the findings with other studies conducted in America and Japan. The objective is to explore differences among teachers in Taiwan, Japan, and the United States in terms of their knowledge of, and attitudes toward, aging and the implementation of aging education in schools. Multistage sampling was adopted, with a total of 1038 Taiwanese elementary and secondary teachers sampled. It was found that while knowledge of aging among Taiwanese teachers appears lower in comparison with American teachers, their attitudes toward aging are largely consistent with their American counterparts. In addition, Taiwanese teachers seem to offer just as little aging education in schools as their American and Japanese counterparts. Lastly, Taiwanese teacher attitudes toward aging, rather than their knowledge of aging, correlate closely to their provision of aging education in schools. Educational authorities should, therefore, offer teachers pre- and in-service education on aging or gerontology so as to equip them with the right knowledge on, and positive attitudes toward, aging. By so doing, teachers will be more likely to teach the subject of aging in schools.     

The UNESCO‐UNEP Programme in Environmental Education

A shortage of qualified science teachers has been recognized as a serious problem in the field of education in many countries. Taiwan, however, has successfully recruited graduate-level science students into teaching through newly established teacher education programs at universities in recent years. This study seeks to examine why such students are motivated for entry into teaching. In-depth interviews of 33 graduate science students from one teacher education program and a survey of 101 students from nine teacher education programs at universities in Taiwan were conducted. Results show that these students were attracted to teaching by an early exposure to science teaching in informal settings and their perceptions of handsome material rewards, favorable working conditions, and relatively high social status of teaching. The cultural roots of these factors are discussed; implications and limitations of the results are suggested.     

Language Policy and Group Identification in Taiwan

Taiwan is a multicultural and multilingual society. Generally speaking, Taiwanese residents fall into one of four ethnic groups. Each ethnic group has a different cultural context and a preferred language. Therefore, one's use of language may reveal his/her identification with an ethnic group, and language policy implementation may imply the power of a certain subculture. Owing to this condition, there have been controversies related to language policy in Taiwanese history. Taiwan has been governed by several regimes, and each regime implemented different language policies. These policies reflected the changes in group identification of Taiwanese people, and also indicated how the government rulers use language policy as a means to shape people's national identity. Even today, several language policy controversies, which imply the conflicts between different ethnic groups in Taiwan, still remain unresolved. In summary, Taiwan can be used as an example to illustrate the relationship between language and identity.     

American Indian and Taiwan Aboriginal education: Indigenous identity and career aspirations

This article investigates the interactions between identity and career aspirations among Taiwanese Aborigines and American Indians. While many similarities exist between the two indigenous groups, several differences remain as well. In comparing the identity issue between these two groups, this study shows that American Indians generally live in a more multicultural society than Taiwanese Aborigines. American Indian students do not experience the same degree of stereotype or racial discrimination from their teachers and peers as experienced by Taiwanese Aborigines. However, affirmative action policies are more favorable in Taiwan than they are in the United States. Drawing from a critical standpoint theory, we argue that families, tribes, and communities should play a more prominent role in the education of indigenous peoples.     

Taiwanese higher education in a cultural perspective: a preliminary study of two premier universities

ABSTRACT

Imposing the policy lessons from higher-performing countries may involve the complex interplays of socio-cultural and institutional contexts. This article attempts to observe Taiwan’s progress in higher education from an explicit cultural perspective. It locates Taiwan among the rising group of higher education systems in East Asia. The study interrogates a wide-held understanding of higher education development and critically reflects on the “high performances” at systemic and institutional levels. It re-examines a capacity of the Western-influenced system in preserving indigenous cultural traditions while pursuing the quest for world-class status. Adopting a case study research, data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews with executives and academics at two premier universities in Taiwan. The findings have shown that, due to fundamental differences, integrating traditional values with imported Western-structured institutions remains an arduous task for Taiwanese higher education. This study critiques conventional presumptions concerning the primacy of an Anglo-Saxon model in Taiwan and offers insights into the society’s efforts to bring back its own cultural values.     

Education Reform in Taiwan: A search for a 'national' identity through democratisation and Taiwanisation

Recent studies on globalisation and the literature of democratisation of society and education cannot explain the complicated interplay between democratisation, localisation and the pursuit of 'national' identity in both education and the broader society of Taiwan between the late 1980s and 2000. The paper argues that these three processes are indivisible in Taiwan. They involve not only the reallocation of power between the state, society and education, but also the redefinition of the territorial and social components of Taiwanese 'national' identity in relation to the Chinese mainland. In particular, social pressure groups, teachers and parents are empowered in policymaking processes at various levels, whilst the power of school principals and education officials to respond to these pressure groups is limited. The role of the school curriculum is now reversed from suppressing to promoting ethnic cultures and identities as points of a new collective identity: 'Taiwan people' with Taiwan as their ultimate homeland.     

安迪·哈格里夫斯的教师观与教学观

安迪.哈格里夫斯在教师教学理论中提出了著名的"情绪地理"理论,其包括政治距离、专业距离、道德距离、物理距离和社会文化距离五个层面。并指出管理者在教育变革和教育政策的制定时要充分考虑教师的情绪因素,学校领导在学校组织文化建设中要考虑教师的情感需要,教师在课堂教学中更要利用情绪实践活动来加强与学生的情感交流,在工作中要与同事、领导、学生家长建立起合意的情感联系。     

Occupational Prestige and Professional Image of Teachers in Taiwan: A Comparison of Three Surveys

In the past four decades Taiwan was marked not only by rapid economic growth, but also by wide-ranging social, political, and cultural changes. In this fast-paced period, occupational division of work has become narrower and some functions of the family have gradually been taken over by the school. The function of the school has thus expanded. Generally, in traditional society, the school teacher's role was primarily that of guardian of cultural assets and disseminator of existing knowledge. In modem-day society, when values are becoming increasingly pluralistic, the school teacher is no longer facing a static and homogeneous state, but a swiftly changing and highly heterogeneous social environment. In this environment, the spread of knowledge is so fast that educational reform and change have become inevitable. The role of the school teacher has fundamentally changedno longer are they mere disseminators of traditional culture or existing knowledge, but communicators of social, economic, and cultural development. The work of the teacher not only affects educational function and achievement but, through molding the very values of students, is changing and consolidating social values and accelerating the speed of social progress. Based on this premise, this article studies the occupational prestige and professional image of teachers in Taiwan from the perspective of the teacher's changing role. On the one hand, through a collection of data, it provides concrete reference material for policymaking pertaining to the professional status of teachers of higher education, and, on the other, it makes a comparison with findings in our previous two surveys (1971 and 1979) to illustrate changes in the teacher's occupational prestige and professional image, thus providing reference material for raising the level of teachers and improving teacher education in the future.     

Fashioning curriculum reform as identity politics—Taiwan's dilemma of curriculum reform in new millennium

This paper explores indigenization and globalization, the double issue of curriculum and identity as a dialectical contradiction that characterizes the ambivalence of “Taiwanese identity.” “Taiwanese identity” is treated as a social, political, and cultural construct rather than a fixed term in an essentialist sense. Curriculum, as culture's medium of social identity construction, represents a struggle over who constructs whose identity and what is constructed. Therefore, when curriculum reform is called for, it is also a time when a society transitioning and redrawing its socio-political and cultural boundaries to resolve internal social conflicts and identity anxiety. Curriculum reform, in this paper, is analyzed not only as a question of shifting explicit ideas of educational practice but also a question of shifting configurations in power relations that signify a politics of identity.The historical context that brought about the question of identity in Taiwan is introduced first. The second section discusses how emerging curricula were politically, socially, and culturally implicated in the process of constructing a Taiwan-centric identity. The third section analyzes the political, social, cultural, and educational implications of new curricula on the formation of a Taiwan-centric identity. Finally, the paper discusses the effect of globalization on the practice of new curricula and points out an ambivalence of local–global identity construction and the conflicting roles of education, especially curriculum, in this ambivalence.     

野火再燃与台湾文化迷思

21世纪初台湾面临着全球化和本土化问题的双重夹击,因此龙应台在《中国时报》发表一系列文章,内容关涉国际化VS本土化、中国文化VS台湾文化等问题,触及现代化与传统文化的紧张、国家认同与文化认同的竞合,以及价值失落与人心迷惘等台湾知识阶层与广大民众在思想认同上存在的文化迷思。因其击中台湾文化结构性问题的湖心,从而引发了台湾公共领域的一场文化大论争,被称之为“野火再燃”。这一文化现象反映了台湾社会发展的一个侧面,呈现了台湾知识分子的公共关怀及其在社会发展变革中的努力和推动作用。     

对高校思想政治教育队伍的反思

新时期,重新审视学生思想政治工作在学生工作中的地位和作用,树立学生工作的新理念,在新形势下突出思想政治教育队伍的重要性,做好高校学生思想政治教育工作,显得尤为重要。首先,＂两课＂教师要有明确的政治性、重视研究性、注重教育实效性;其次,辅导员要向职业化、专业化、专家化方面发展;再次,＂两课＂教师和辅导员要有机结合。     

Taiwan Elementary Teachers’ Views of Science Teaching Self-Efficacy and Outcome Expectations

This paper presents the results of a case study involving 282 Taiwanese elementary science teachers at the elementary level. These teachers provided responses to the science efficacy instrument (STEBI-A) and also provided personal data regarding how their years of general (YTE) and science (YTS) teaching experience may have influenced student achievement in science. Researchers used two multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to investigate the interaction and influence of YTE and YTS upon the personal science teaching efficacy (PSTE) and science teaching outcome expectations (STOE) of these teachers. The results advocate the position that the years of general teaching experience of elementary science teachers in Taiwan have a significantly greater impact upon their personal science teaching efficacy and science teaching outcome expectations than years of teaching science. This evidence calls into question whether Bandura and Tschannen-Moran’s view of teacher efficacy as both context and subject matter specific at the elementary level can be applied to Taiwan elementary teachers who teach science. The results of this study should benefit educators and policy-makers with respect to future elementary teacher education throughout Taiwan and other developing nations. An erratum to this article can be found at