Abstract:

The “Chineseness” of educational knowledge pertains to the localized construction of the “knowledge-society” structure. Grounded in the social constructivist nature of knowledge, Chinese educational knowledge is profoundly shaped by the interplay of institutional culture, social demands, and educational practices. The knowledge production of education has undergone successive paradigm shifts: from introduction and dependence, through paradigm transformation and reflective reconstruction, to independent construction. It has exhibited distinct “inward-looking” and “outward-oriented” features across dimensions such as subject, approach, tools and outcomes, while its inherent “Chineseness” has evolved along a continuum from germination and formation to conscious development. Against the backdrop of Chinese-style modernization, the process of educational knowledge production embodies a meaning framework centered on China as the subject. With its unique social context, Chinese-style modernization continuously shapes the independent knowledge production of education. It establishes the value coordinate of “ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign” at the epistemological level, furnishes an empirical foundation at the practical level, and advocates the research stance of “taking China as the methodology” at the methodological level. This paper selects three classic cases to explore, from a bottom-up perspective, the dynamic mechanism of knowledge production based on “taking China as the methodology”—approaching it from the angles of “ancient and modern”, “Chinese and foreign”, and the growth of local theories respectively. Ultimately, it puts forward pathways for the independent knowledge production of Chinese education oriented towards Chinese-style modernization.

Key words: educational knowledge, Chineseness, independent knowledge production of Chinese education, Chinese-style modernization, knowledge-society