East Asian Pedagogies: Education as Formation and Transformation Across Cultures and Borders

This book opens up philosophical spaces for comparative discussions of education across ‘East and West’. It develops an intercultural dialogue by exploring the Anglo-American traditions of educational trans-/formation and European constructions of Bildung, alongside East Asian traditions of trans-/formation and development. Comparatively little research has been done in this area, and many questions concerning the commensurability of North American, European and East Asian pedagogies remain. Despite this dearth of theoretical research, there is ample evidence of continued interest in (self-)formation through various East Asian practices, from martial arts to health and spiritual practices (e.g. Aikido, Tai Chi, Yoga, mindfulness etc.), suggesting that these ‘traditional’ practices and pedagogical relations have something important to offer, despite their marginal standing in educational discourse. This book will appeal to all researchers and students of comparative education studies with an interest in issues of interpretation and translation between different traditions and cultures.