Alternative Perspective: Educational Research in China and Chinese Community in Australia

It is a common phenomenon that most researchers outside the Western culture usually utilize western concepts and theories to interpret the socio-political issues in local contexts. In the context of globalization, scholars have found that more and more issues cannot be well explained by western academic paradigm. The values of multi cultures have been re-examined and re-respected worldwide. More and more scholars are paying attention to the traditional cultures and local wisdoms to explore the process of knowledge production. Transcultural studies have become one of the hot areas in social science research. Chen (2010) believes critical studies of experiences in Asia might be able to offer a new view of global history. He suggests using 'Asia as method' to rethink the process of knowledge production in social culture research. In this paper, the conception of Asia as method‖ has been developed in the beginning. Then this paper goes deep into the practical operational level to show the explanatory power of Asia as method through three different research cases in the field of education. The paper concludes that although Asia study has a long history in the research of social culture, it is still a new terrain in the research of education, which needs more and more educational researchers involvement in the discussion on this issue.