Educational Research for the Dialectic Process ofGlobalization and Localization
Shen-Keng Yang, Ph. D.
Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Lisbon, 11-14 September 2002
Ⅰ. Introduction
Antæus, a huge giant in Greek mythology, is son of Poseidōn and Gēē (the Earth). He grew stronger every time he touched his mother Earth. He forced all strangers to wrestle with him, and killed them when conquered, till Heracles, on his journey to fetch the apples of the Hesperides, lifted him off the ground, and held him aloft till he had killed him.
Metaphorically, this mythos implies that any human practical activities would exhaust their vitality when uprooted from their social and cultural milieu. Education is according to Imm. Kant (1803) the most fundamental category of human being. Educational activities should be rooted in their indigenous culture to sustain their continuous vigor and thus facilitate human development. Educational knowledge created by educational research to regulate educational activities should accordingly also be based on indigenous ways of knowing.
However, accompanying the strong belief in eternal progress since the Enlightenment, scientific knowledge was supposed to give humanity the power to master his own destiny in this life and (if there were any) the life to come. The eternal happiness of humanity was supposed to depend on the continuous development of scientific knowledge. Nurturing in the ideal of human perfectibility through thorough scientific study, many Enlightenment educationists maintained that educational research should adopt scientific methods analogously to those used in natural sciences. Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849), e.g., claimed: "Observation and experience, which has so much advanced our knowledge in physics, may, perhaps, with equal success, be applied to the science of education"(cit. in L. Rössner, 1984: 135). Ernst Christian Trapp (1745-1818), the first Chair of educational science in Germany, attempted to use experimental methods to establish objective educational science (E. Chr. Trapp, 1780). Marc-Antoine Jullian de Paris (1775-1848), generally considered the father of comparative education, using comparative anatomy as paradigm, claimed that the ultimate aim of comparative studies of education in different countries was "to deduce true principles and determine rules so that education be transformation into almost positive science." All their efforts aimed to the creation of an exact and precise educational science that, analogously to natural science, could offer universally valid educational knowledge.
The creation of objective educational science has been deemed as embodied in the "modernity project" of western world. As the process of modernization reached its zenith during the last few decades, the whole world was virtually constructed as an electronic, universal, timeless and technical global system. Western technocratic rationality has brought the supreme domination of the principle of cultural and social construction, such as rationality, order, efficiency and unity, to the global scale. Educational research based on western rationalistic logic has been conducive to making the educational practice in the world more and more uniform. In other words, education is becoming more and more globalized.
Simultaneous with globalizingtendencies in education, strong localizing forces are promoting revitalization of local cultures. The so-called scientific research derived from western experience has been criticized as implicated in the worst excesses of colonialism neglecting the local needs. Indigenous forms of knowledge are taken into serious account in educational practice.
However, globalization and localization are not completely contradictory processes. They are actually complementary ones. According to Giddens, globalization is really about the transformation of time and space and increasingly engages not only large-scale systems but also local bodies and individuals. Accordingly, the local is integrally tied to the global, and the global to the local.
From educational perspective, problems are arising: what forms of educational knowledge can contribute to the harmonization of globalization and localization? What kinds of educational research can produce such forms of knowledge? This paper attempts to address itself to the issues of educational studies confronting the challenges of dialectic process of globalization and localization.
Ⅱ. Janus-faced Educational Research in Historical
Transformation
In the "Über Pädagogik", Imm. Kant (1803:447) claimed," The mechanism of educational art must be transformed into science, otherwise it would never become a continuous and coherent effort from generations to generations, and a generation might pull down what their predecessors had built." As an heir of the Enlightenment, Kant attempted to establish an exact educational science to regulate educational practice. From anthropological perspective, human being possesses teleological characters, "in so far as he is capable of perfecting himself according to the ends that he himself adopts." There are many embryos in human nature. It is the matter of education to develop proportionedly human natural predispositions and thus make man develop from his potential and achieve his own ends(Kant, 1803:445). The educational theory-building by Kant swings, as J. L. Blaß(1978:12) correctly observes, between two ideals of knowledge, that is, between exact natural science on the one hand and hermeneutic human science on the other.
As James L. Paul & Kofi Marbo(2001:527) maintain, one of the fundamental issues facing researchers is the challenge of understanding the nature of professional knowledge guiding practice. Is educational knowledge comparable with the knowledge of natural sciences or does its subject matter, including reflection and language, require a different conception of science? For the Enlightenment educationists, as it is indicated earlier in this paper, the methodology developed in natural sciences is applicable to the study of social and educational events. Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-51) in his 《L’Homme machine》（1747）attempted to explain all human faculties, intellectual and spiritual as well as physical, by the organization of matter, and thus to dispense with the need for any type of soul. The mechanism of education is according to La Mettrie（1996:13）very simple:“It all comes down to sounds, or words, which are transmitted from one person’s mouth, through another’s ear and into his brain, which receives at the same time through his eyes the shape of bodies, for which the words are the arbitrary signs.” Experience and observation alone should guide the exploration into the labyrinth of man(ibid:4). The methods and language in educational science in La Mettrie’s argument should be analogous to those in natural sciences.
Succeeding the Enlightenment methodological universalism, Trapp attempted to establish exact and rigorous educational science using experimental method. For Trapp, education is the modification of humanity with a view to promoting individual happiness and social welfare (E. Chr. Trapp, 1780: §75). In order to achieve these educational objectives, it is important to understand deeply the development of human nature and the regularities of social process, in which education is going on. In comparison to the forecast of climate change of four seasons, the development of human nature can be,according to Trapp, also predicated when adopting development laws derived from observation and experiment. Trapp went further to systematize the observed laws as a natural science.
The establishment of rational educational science constitutes a chain of western modernization. (Shen-Keng Yang, 1998:198-201) Modernization denotes, as R Hollinger (1994:1) maintains, the process of social transformation from traditional or premodern societies to modern ones. Thus, transformation is characterized as more rationalized and more secularized in social process. Consequently, demands for a more scientific approach to things were gradually transferred to all walks of life. For the predication and understanding of social and cultural transformation, there arose the needs of scientific studies of social events analogically to the studies of natural phenomena. Criticizing the backward state of the (psychological) sciences, J. S. Mill (1843: 852) proposed that this backwardness " can only be remedied by applying to them the methods of physical science, duly extended and generalized. The study of social phenomena is likewise subject to fixed laws." However, J. S. Mill admitted: "There is, indeed no hope that these laws, though our knowledge of them were as certain and as complete as it is in astronomy, would enable us to predict the history of society, like that celestial appearances, for thousands years to come." (ibid., 877) However, the difference of certainty is according to Mill not in the laws themselves, but nature in the data to which these laws are to be applied. In short, it is not so easy to reduce the complex causes to simplified laws in social science as in astronomy.
J. S. Mill's scientific program can be thought to be one of the evidence of the universalism stage of sociology in Albrow's (1990:6-8) analysis of development of social science. Universalism is referred by Albrow as "the classical phase of sociology when the aspiration prevailed to provide a science of, and for, humanity based on timeless principles and verified laws." The universalism of sociology had, as R. Robertson (1992:16) correctly remarks, roots in strands of the Enlightenment which stressed such ideas as humanity, fraternity and, indeed, universalism.
Universalism was also prevailed in the early development of educational science. Influenced by the philanthropistic ideal and the Enlightenment science, Kant and Trapp attempted to build rigorous educational science to help fully develop human inner gift and thus promote universal happiness.
Strongly inspired by the advancement of anatomy through utilizing comparative method, Marc-Antoine Jullien de Paris (1817), generally considered the father of comparative education, proceeded to perfect educational science with new means. As Jullien (1817:39) claimed: "Researches on comparative anatomy have advanced the science of anatomy. In the same way, the researchers on comparative education must furnish new means of perfecting the science of education." The perfection of educational science had in Jullien's thought an amelioristic intention of reforming education with sound objective judgment so as to reach the lofty moral, religious and civilizational ideal as inspired in the solemn charter of the Holy Allience (Jullien, 1817:34).
The universalizing methodology in educational research inspired by the progress of natural sciences reached its highest point during the turn of 20th century. As G. de Landsheere (1999:17) observers, in the second part of the nineteenth century developments in natural science began to influence education and psychology. Darwin, Bernard, Galton, Helmholtz were prominent figures who linked research on humans with physics, biology, zoology and geography. Under their direct or indirect influence, experimental psychology, experiment pedagogy and mental test began to flourish around the 1900. The year 1879 saw two important events of the development of scientific educational studies, i.e. the publication of Bain's 《Education as a Science》and the foundation of the first laboratory of experimental psychology by Wundt in Leipzrig.
Wundt's laboratory had a considerable impact on the scientific study of education on both sides of the Atlantic. His ideas of experimental methods had been rapidly disseminated in many countries, including U.S.A., France, Russia, even Chile and Japan. Specifically in Germany, the term "Die experimentelle Pädagogik" was coined by Meumann, Wundt's former student, who emphasized both the strict and quantitative side of laboratory in the educational research. With the redefinition of education as a science based on purely empirical research, Meumann attempted further to establish educational studies as an independent academic discipline in universities.
The merely extrinsic accommodation of the method of the human sciences to the procedure of the natural sciences was refuted by W. Dilthey, a contemporary German philosopher of Meumann. For Dilthey the natural sciences have as their objects facts which enter into consciousness as if from outside, and are given as phenomena and individuals. In contrast, the objects of human sciences originally enter consciousness from inside, as reality and as living relations. Thus in natural sciences a causal connection as added to the given through the construction of hypothesis. In the human sciences, the experienced connectedness of psychological life is the firm foundation on which we understand human life, history and all the depths and principles of mankind (W. Dilthey, 1894, 1314-1376). Accordingly, the possibility of the science of pedagogy (die Wissenschaft der Pädagogik) can only begin with the description of education in its relation to children.
Based on Dilthey’s work, E. Spranger maintained: ”Education is a cultural process rooted in the context of all mental life …. pedagogics is consequently a science which is interwoven with all other cultural areas in its historical, descriptive and normative components.” (Spranger, 1913:479. cit. in P. Drewek, 2000: 279). Just as Albrow (1990:6) characterized the stage of national sociologies as “the period of the foundation of sociology on a professional basis in the academies of the western world …very often professional contacts (become) confined by national boundaries and the intellectual products similarly (took) on striking characteristics of national culture, so can one feature the similar development in educational studies. The humanistic pedagigics, prevalent in German Weimar period, claimed the educational studies and practical activities should be based on cultural-historical tradition. In the U. S. A., the progressive movement, partly inspired by J. Dewey, absorbed European influence, but in a “melting pot” way in the development of characteristic American culture. It rejected thus a strictly quantitative experimental approach to educational phenomena. In Sweden, G Myrdal questioned also the detached observation in social research. He claimed that the social research could not be free from his or her values and political convictions. Educational researchers themselves are part of social process which they set out to investigate. They participate in the process of social and political identity-formation. The language and methods used in educational research are different from those in natural sciences.
The paradoxes of methodology in educational research have been intensified since the rise of nation-state and scientific world-view of logical positivism. In order to strengthen the national competitiveness, the state had to establish strict scientific educational research to offer effective policy for educating competent citizens. This resulted also in the progress of educational science. The Vienna Circle logical positivism in 1920s and 1930s facilitated the formation of physical reductionism in scientific study. Universally valid method of theoretical construction imitating natural science had been dominant in educational research in 1950s-1970s. However, since the intention of scientific study was to strengthen national competitiveness, the intervention of state apparatus into the process of educational research was thus inevitable. The "aloofness" of the researchers in terms of dependence on interest groups and politics with shared social values is therefore unimaginable in educational research.
The tensions between methodological universalism and particularism have been brought to another higher point under the influences of postmodernism and information technology. As J. F. Lyotard (1984:3) claimed, the nature and status of knowledge is known as the postindustrial age and cultures enter what is known as the postmodernism, From epistemological perspective, postmodernism advocates three basic tenets:anti-foundationalism, anti-essentialism and anti-representalism. According to postmodernism there are no foundations to knowledge, no essential defining features for conceptualization, no such things as accurate representation. For methodology framed within these tenets, matters of truth and evidence, along with the fiction /non-fiction distinction. Research is no longer a quest for truth, nor an attempt to build up a warranted representation of the world. It becomes rather an exercise in story-telling, in producing a narrative, and in giving voices to different viewpoints.
Under the impact of information technology, the validity of knowledge statements depends mainly on the possibility of digitization of conception. Concerning the transformation of knowledge conception, J. F. Lyotard (1984:4) has put it as follows: "Knowledge can fit into the new channels, and become operational, only if learning is translated into quantities of information （i.e. computerized bite and bytes）. We can predict that anything in the constituted body of knowledge that is not translatable in this way will be abandoned…along with the hegemony of computers comes a certain logic, and therefore a certain set of prescription determining which statements are accepted as 'knowledge' statements". In the post-industrial computerized societies, knowledge for the sake of itself has been abandoned. Knowledge must be digitalized in order to be easily sold. Mercantile logic dominates the production and transmission of knowledge. As P Fitzsimons (2000) observes, "under condition of electronic technology, an almost instantaneous flow and exchange of information capital, and cultural communication now characterizes the global economy. The hyperrealities of the information flow have surpassed the power dynamics of nation-state jurisdiction by generating new structuring games, and alternative encoding diction, rooted in such flows." The whole world is organized electronically as an integrated globalized system. Against such a globalizing tendency, worries are arising: the national culture, where on traditional educational research, specifically by those humanists is based, seems to risk the dangers of melting into strong main stream western culture. Local culture will be waning gradually in the current of global homogenization. However, as Fitzsimons (2000) correctly remarks, globalization is not merely another transcendent ideal. Instead, it is a set of identifiable practices that also produce dialectic and difference: the more intensive the flow of globalization , the more intense are the surges of dialectic and difference. Before proceeding to the discussion of educational research under such dialectic tensions, it is necessary to give an account of the conception of the relationship of globalization and localization.
Ⅲ. The Nature of Globalization: Homogenization vs. Variation
Globalization is a complex concept often with different meaning by different communications from varieties of perspectives. The experiences of the globalization are according to P Porter & L. Vidovich (2000) not all the same for all the people. Despite of the differences, a most generally agreed concept of globalization refers to the compression of time/space, the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole as well as the growing global interdependency between nations, agencies organizations, individuals and so on. (Z. Bauman, 1998:2; R. Robertson,1992:8; P. Fetzisimons,2000:505; R. Dale & S. L. Robertson,2002:11; H. Daun,2002:4)
Though the focus of the discussion of globalization is on relatively recent times, the concept and action referred as globalization have long history. Early in the fourth century B. C., Greek Stoicism advocated a one-world citizen identity. For the Stoics every man is naturally a social being, and to live in society is dictate of reason. Reason is also the common essential nature of all man: hence there is but one Law for all man and one Fatherland. R. Robertson (1992:58) traces the early stage of globalization to early fifteenth century when national communities began to grow and the concept of individual and of ideas of humanity. From economics perspectives, I. Wallerstein (1974) also maintained thatformation of world economy system began in Medieval Age. A. Macewan (2001:2) marks the invasion of the Western Hemisphere by European powers and their extension of ocean trade as the beginning of modern globalization.