校庆报告 | Chinese intellectual resources for global education research

Over the past two decades, the research capacity of Chinese universities has grown exponentially: world-leading academic publications, cultivation of world-leading researchers, and the development of several world-class universities. However, this growth has not yet led to significant social and cultural impacts at a global level. This lack of impact is particularly true in the field of educational research, traditionally one of the most important areas of Chinese social and cultural life. In this context, this talk explores potential ways to share more Chinese intellectual resources (中国思想资源) with the global education research community. As an illustrative example, it focuses on fundamental concepts in educational research such as “objective/subjective” (客观—主观) “subject/object” (主体—客体), and “subjectivity/objectivity “ (客观性—主观性), underscoring that Chinese scholarship can add new understandings to these fundamental terms that are not captured in English (or other Western languages). In the next step, this deep philosophical and linguistic discussion is applied to contemporary global policy: the OECD’s Well-Being 2030 Agenda. Through this double move of (i) critically digging deeper into history and tradition, and (ii) carefully comparing/contrasting it with Western modernity, the global potential of Chinese intellectual resources becomes visible.