Negotiating the imagined community in national curriculum: the Taiwanese case

Authors

Keywords:

national curriculum, democracy, imagined community

Abstract

Due to its historical and geopolitical contestations, Taiwan is a country whose people possess divergent imaginations of the national community. Such a condition has been described as institutional liminality, which captures Taiwan’s status as not a complete nation state nor a non-nation state; not China nor non-China. Under such a condition, people recognize themselves either as Taiwanese, Chinese, or both. Through utilizing the concept of imagination, especially Anderson’s notion of “imagined communities” and Harvey’s interpretation of “geographical imagination,” this paper investigates the representation of imagined communities embedded in various revisions and makings of the national curriculum in Taiwan. A specific focus is put onto the revision of the national historical curriculum at the senior high school level and the resistance to it during 2014–2016. It is argued that through organizing protests and boycotts against the revision, students are no longer simply pure receivers of official knowledge, they actively express their imagination of the national community and participate in the negotiation of official knowledge, which gives the national curriculum a more democratic base.

Author Biography

  • Yu-Chih Li, National University of Tainan
    Yu-Chih Li is an assistant professor at the National University of Tainan, Taiwan. She received a PhD degree in Education from University of Queensland, Australia. Her PhD dissertation “Comparison as translation: Internationalisation in the International Baccalaureate and Taiwanese schooling“ won N.V. Varghese Prize for Comparative Education 2017. She is interested in education policy, comparative education, and international schools.

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Published

2019-04-03

Issue

Section

Vol 18 (1) Riddle Special Edition