Asian Education Podcast

Quantitative ethnography and educational research In this episode, concluding our mini-series introducing special issues of the Journal of International Cooperation in Education, Edward Vickers talks to Belle Dang, Andy Nguyen and Eric Hamilton about their work on quantitative ethnography. They begin by explaining what quantitative ethnography (QE) is, and why they see it as especially useful for...

The Learning Crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa This episode continues our mini-series showcasing recent special issues of the Journal of International Cooperation in Education. This time, the focus falls on a 2025 special issue, "Addressing the 'learning crisis' in sub-Saharan Africa: Critical factors and potential solutions", edited by Nozomi Sakata and Moses Oketch. Nozomi Sakata and Hannah...

JICE special issue on 'The Politics of Post-Crisis Challenges in Education' Spotlight on Education and Youth Activism in the Philippines Continuing our mini-series introducing the Journal of International Cooperation in Education , this episode focuses on a recent special issue on the theme of 'The Politics of Post-Crisis Challenges Confronting Education', edited by Latika Gupta and Edward Vickers...

Introducing the Journal of International Cooperation in Education In this episode, the first of a 'mini-series' on the Journal of International Cooperation in Education (JICE), Edward Vickers talks to Tatsuya Kusakabe and Sakata Nozomi, the journal's editors. In three subsequent episodes, Ed will introduce themes discussed in recent special issues of JICE. First, however, this conversation with Pr...

Series 6, Episode 2 Catherine Aymé on teaching French in Central Asia In this episode of the Asian Education Podcast, we are joined by Catherine Aymé, who is a teacher and researcher at Sorbonne University Paris Nord in Information and Communication Science. Her doctoral research explores some of the intercultural tensions between France and Uzbekistan, focusing on ‘French as a second language’ ed...

Introducing the Little Red Podcast. Sample episode: Education Nation - China's Exam Fetish China’s college exam, the gaokao, is fetishized as the ultimate test, yet a lesser-known story is how it entrenches regional education discrimination. Its role at social engineering is also clear, with AI suddenly becoming the sixth most popular major in China, on command from above. This month, the Little R...

Introduction to Education and Development in Contemporary Asia (bonus series): Access to the whole series is password-protected. For details on terms of access, write to: edvickers08@gmail.com In a new initiative, the Asian Education Podcast is releasing an MA module on 'Education and Development in Contemporary Asia'. Designed for hybrid delivery, this provides a historical overview of education’...

NOTE: This is a bonus series designed for teaching postgraduate courses on Education and Development in Contemporary Asia. This episode (comprising previously published episodes of the Asian Education Podcast) is fully accessible. For details on terms of access to the whole series write to: edvickers08@gmail.com Assessment, educational competitiveness and ‘shadow education’ This session examines t...

NOTE: This is a bonus series designed for teaching postgraduate courses on Education and Development in Contemporary Asia. This episode (comprising previously published episodes of the Asian Education Podcast) is fully accessible. For details on terms of access to the whole series write to: edvickers08@gmail.com Session Two: Education in Postcolonial South Asia - nation-building, inequality and ec...

Asian (Re)Education on Film, Episode 14 The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci, UK/Italy/France/China, 1987) For the last episode in this series, I’ll be discussing The Last Emperor, which was actually the first feature film about China that I ever saw, shortly after it came out in 1987. Unlike the other films I’ve been discussing, this is a Hollywood blockbuster with a Western director, Bernardo B...

Asian Education on Film, Episode 13 Red Beard (赤ひげ) (Kurosawa Akira / 黒澤明, Japan, 1965) From a contemporary Japanese primary school, the setting for the film Monster, in this episode we move back in time to mid-19th century Japan and a very different educational context. Red Beard, by the great director Kurosawa Akira, portrays a public clinic in a city in late Edo-era Japan (that is, around...

Asian Education on Film, Episode Twelve Monster (怪物) (Kore-eda Hirokazu, Japan, 2023) The Taiwanese film I discussed last time, After School, offered a slightly corny treatment of themes of adolescent sexuality, transgression of gender norms, and so-called ‘boys love’. The 2023 Japanese film, Monster (or 怪物 / Kaibutsu), directed by Kore-eda Hirokazu (是枝 裕和), touches on somewhat similar the...

Asian Education on Film, Episode Eleven After School (成功補習班) (Blue Lan / Lan Cheng-lung, Taiwan, 2023) The supplementary tutoring industry, or ‘cram schooling’, is a phenomenon we’ve already touched on in Episode 8 on the Indian film Aarakshan. There, the cram school chain the ‘KK Institute’ stood for all that was rotten in the Indian system: for rampant profiteering, for the antithesis of ge...

Asian Education on Film, Episode Ten Lunana - A Yak in the Classroom (Pawo Choyning Dorji, Bhutan, 2019) From bustling New York, the setting of the film I discussed last time, English Vinglish, we move to the Himalayas for a story about what is portrayed as ‘the most remote school in the world’. Lunana - A Yak in the Classroom is set in Bhutan, the Buddhist kingdom nestled between Northeast India...

Asian Education on Film - Episode 9 English Vinglish, Gauri Shinde (India, 2012) The previous two films in this series dealt with educational inequality in India (Aarakshan) and the (sporting) legacy of British imperialism on the subcontinent (Lagaan). In different ways, both also highlighted India’s diversity and the challenges of forging a cohesive national identity there. One feature of contemp...

Asian Education on Film, Episode Eight Aarakshan: India vs. India (Prakash Jha, India, 2011) India’s immense diversity was given a positive spin (no pun intended) in the cricketing film we looked at last time, Lagaan. But that romantic fantasy only scratched the surface of the explosively controversial issue of caste. Lagaan, as you may remember, features a spin bowler with a crippled arm who is i...

Asian Education on Film, Episode Seven Lagaan - Once Upon a Time in India (Ashutosh Gowariker, India, 2001) In the previous episode, I discussed the baseball film Kano, based on the real story of a 1930s Taiwanese high school baseball team. That film reflects a fashionable nostalgia for Japanese colonial rule that helps reinforce the image of Taiwan today as a multicultural Asian society. This tim...

Kano (Umin Boya (馬志翔), Taiwan, 2014) (Released in Japan as 「KANO 1931海の向こうの甲子園」) Sport is an aspect of education that seldom receives the attention it deserves, whether from policymakers, academics, or many teachers and parents. However, historically team sports have played a vital role in the socialisation of students, especially of boys. This is partly a matter of health and physic...

Asian Education on Film Episode Five Ilo Ilo (爹妈不在家) (Anthony Chen, Singapore, 2011) In the previous two episodes of this series, I’ve discussed films dealing with aspects of Asian women’s experience of education and its effect on broadening the opportunities available to women. In the previous episode, on Ann Hui’s Song of the Exile, we saw this illustrated in the story of a complicated moth...

Asian Education on Film, Episode Four Song of the Exile (客途秋恨) (Ann Hui, Hong Kong / Taiwan, 1990) The story of Song of the Exile revolves around the relationship between a young Hong Kong-born woman, Hueyin (or Hiuyan in Cantonese) (曉恩), and her Japanese-born mother, Aiko. Their estrangement and eventual reconciliation forms the core narrative thread. While education is a marginal theme, id...

Twenty-four Eyes (二十四の瞳) Kinoshita Keisuke (1954) This film tells the story of Ōishi Hisako, a young schoolteacher assigned to teach at a primary school on the island of Shodoshima, in Japan’s inland sea. Although it’s not far from the city of Hiroshima - perhaps close enough for the residents to have seen the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb in August 1945 - Shodoshima is a rural backwater....

**Asian Education on Film Episode Two - King of the Children (孩子王) (Chen Kaige, China, 1987) ** In this second episode of the series Asian Education on Film, Edward Vickers discusses Chen Kaige’s 1987 film King of the Children, based on a short novella of the same name by Ah Cheng. A classic of filmmaking by one of China’s leading so-called ‘Fifth Generation’ directors, King of the Children dea...

In this season of the Asian Education Podcast, Edward Vickers introduces films that deal with themes related to education or the experience of youth in Asian societies. In the first episode, Edward discusses Aparajito, by the famous Bengali director, Satyajit Ray (1921-1992), the central film in Ray’s Apu Trilogy. This film portrays the boyhood of Apu, a child from an impoverished Bengali family o...

In this episode of the Asian Education Podcast, we are joined by Andy Smart, who is an education and publishing consultant with a background in teaching and educational and children's publishing - with multinational publishers as well as his own children's publishing company. Since 2000 he has worked in several countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, on textbook policy, English and Arabic-m...

In this episode, we travel to the western end of ‘Asia’ (as conventionally defined) to discuss the internationalisation of higher education in the politically troubled context of Israel / Palestine. Our guest on this occasion is Dr. Annette Bamberger of Bar Ilan University in Israel. Annette has conducted comparative analysis of higher education internationalisation in many societies, but in this...