School Reform and Democracy in East Asia

This book discusses how East Asia has introduced school and curricular reform to reflect democratic citizenship and globalized skills, knowledge, dispositions, and competencies in the 21st century. It also focuses on the tendencies and reasons students from Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore receive the highest scores in international students’ assessment such as PISA and TIMSS; yet their curiosity and motivation for learning are the lowest internationally. Moreover, Indonesian and Vietnamese students are likely to receive the lowest testing scores, yet their motivation for learning is quite high. It is worth investigating high academic achievement in East Asia in light of the trend towards democratization. The authors consider controversial issues such as whether the goals of democratic education should be the attainment of high academic scores, consideration of whether to implement competency-based curriculums or meritocratic systems of academic competition, and the provision of equal opportunities in the community of learning. The book illuminates each country’s struggle to realise school reform on the basis of its social and cultural settings, and looks at what connects East Asia’s past, present, and future.

"This book provides readers with a clear and interesting introduction about how school reforms take place in Asian countries including Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam. This book is a significant reference for scholars who are interested in the fields of comparative and international education, school reform and democracy."Rayu Hung, National Chiayi University, Taiwan

Masamichi Ueno is Professor of Education at Sophia University, Japan, Visiting Professor at Shandong Normal University and Northwest University, China, and President of the Institute of East Asian Education.