Yulia Nesterova

The paper aims to understand, challenge and deconstruct what the local means for the development of indigenous education in Taiwan. More precisely, it will question the idea of the ‘local’ in this context, as indigenous people do not necessarily all hold similar views about local indigeneity and its place in educational development in Taiwan. As research shows, indigenous people’s views are influenced by intersecting factors, such as class, gender, rural or urban location, education, and profession. While some indigenous people may identify ‘local’ as the identity and interests of their indigenous community, or as their family, others may seek allegiance, construction of identity, and learning with and from the transnational indigenous movement.

The paper starts with a philosophical overview of what is local and what is indigenous. It then analyzes the Taiwan case, from the historical context of indigenous people to contemporary views and perspectives on indigeneity, indigenous development and education. Indigenous perspectives on development and education are presented based on primary research conducted with indigenous people in eastern and western parts of Taiwan, including data from in-depth interviews, informal discussions, and observations. The paper concludes by considering the implications of these understandings for Taiwan’s development and education, and for what is meant by the local indigenous and its influence on education in this case.

Racial and ethnic minorities experience misrecognition, prejudice
and discimination in Hong Kong. In response to these challenges,
multicultural education there aims to enable young people to
recognize diversity in a more tolerant, open-minded way. Educators
have been encouraged to not rely only on textbooks, but to include
news and digital media in such teaching. This paper examines online
media representations of diversity in Hong Kong in the context of
multicultural education, focusing on Apple Daily (AD), a popular
liberal Hong Kong news source. We analyze how AD represents
ethnic minorities, contributing to the construction of a particular
multicultural environment and identity among Hong Kong people.
Despite its multicultural orientation, AD remains problematic as a
learning tool. In relation we recommend that more alternative digital
media be used to learn about diversity in Hong Kong. We give as
an example the use of student self-authored digital texts during the
Hong Kong Umbrella Movement, which enabled ethnic minorities to
engage in performative citizenship. We identify a focus on multiple,
self-authored perspectives as part of critical media literacy, which we
regard as essential for young people to better understand diversity,
in contrast to straightforward reliance on multicultural news sources.

This paper seeks to elaborate an alternative, empowering model of service learning for GCE that helps students relate to one another in more just ways. Our model emphasizes the student/global citizen as an autonomous, political subject, shifting concern from the ‘affective-moral’ to the ‘social-political’, drawing on ideas of justice propagated by John Rawls. Three principles we use to reframe GCE are (1) minimization of self-interest from moral choices, (2) respect for diversity of views, legitimate conflict of interests, and right to decide, and (3) recognition of others as autonomous. Such a model can frame South-North and South-South transfer as alternatives to North-South models, and can be useful for enhancing service learning dimensions of national-level citizenship. The paper begins with an analysis of service learning for GCE and some of the opportunities and challenges found in commonly used North-South transfer models. After that, it discusses Rawls’s ideas of justice and fair terms of cooperation for cross-cultural communication, and maps three principles for an alternative model for GCE. Each principle has educational implications, though each also poses new pedagogical challenges. The paper concludes with reflections on the kind of global citizen constructed and the implications of our model for students, their view of the world, and actions for social justice.

According to a United Nations report (2004), educational institutions have curriculum and teaching methods that are culturally inappropriate for Indigenous children and aim to assimilate them instead of promoting their cultures and languages. Such a process leads to language and culture loss, and alienation from both the mainstream and home societies and discourses. The teachers who work with Indigenous children are often representatives of the dominant group whose knowledge, culture, and language dominate the classroom. Not to contribute further to the estrangement of Indigenous communities, teaching and learning must be re-thought and re-shaped to include Indigenous cultures and knowledges so that education becomes relevant to Indigenous lives and sustainable for their communities.
How can we prepare teachers for re-constructing such environments and developing and maintaining just classrooms in which no child is made to feel his/her knowledge, culture, language, and contribution are irrelevant and inferior? How can teachers of a dominant group learn to relate to Indigenous children whose cultural differences are immense, and whose relations with that group have historically been of an unequal and unfair nature? How can teachers contribute to revitalization of Indigenous cultures and their further development?
The entry aims to discuss a possible strategy that has a potential to help institutions educate future and current teachers. Drawing on Indigenous and Postcolonial theories and methodologies that are used for research with culturally different others, it is suggested how they can be used as a framework that help teachers who educate Indigenous children. Such a framework will address power relations that affect what and whose knowledge and values students learn and how the process is carried out; and negate harmful effects of interaction among groups of different socio-cultural backgrounds.