Imagining East Asian education otherwise: Neither caricature, nor scandalization

Abstract

East Asia is on the rise once again as a source of educational inspiration. After the last three rounds of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) where East Asian countries and cities - namely Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Macao, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taiwan - dominated the PISA top rankings, considerable media and scholarly attention has been given to their success stories. Many prominent political figures in Australia, England, and the United States, just to name a few countries, have referenced to East Asian educational success as part of their rhetoric for education reform (Sellar & Lingard, 2013; Waldow, Takayama, & Sung, 2014; You & Morris, 2015). Underpinning this reaction is the implicit sense of threat that the rise of East Asia poses both economically and politically and the view of education achievement as a reliable indicator of the region's ascendance (Rizvi, 2016; Takayama, 2016). The three books under review are published at this current moment of the Anglo-American anxiety and infatuation with East Asian education success. Along with many other books on East Asian education published around the same time (e.g., Hsieh, 2013), they are likely to be read by wider audience beyond the closed circle of education policy scholarship.