In this article, we highlight three assumptions about culture that guide our research: (1) culture is lived but often implicitly; (2) philosophical origins illuminate cultural core values in the here and now; and (3) cultures differ. We focus on learning both in European-heritage and in Confucian-heritage cultures. To address the central question…

The purpose of this study is to examine the relevance between religion and happiness in the aspect of Korean higher education. To review this paper logically, three research questions are addressed. First, is religion able to provide happiness for people? Second, what is the relevance between religion and happiness in the aspect of Korean higher…

As a full-time foreign faculty member in the Chinese Normal university system for the past five years, I analyze the contested terrain of being a critical, Freirean educator/researcher as an insider and outsider of Chinese and Western academic systems and societies overall. This autobiographical analysis is within the contexts of China's academic…

Drawing on work in epistemology and the philosophy of science, this paper seeks to provide very general reasons for why a comparative perspective needs to be applied to the inferential procedures of research methodologies where these concern the issue of justifying knowledge claims. In particular, the paper explores the role of culture on a number…

This is a critical response to the papers by Shusterman, Sartwell, and Stroud. I claim that Shusterman has missed the inter-human moral aesthetics of Confucianism, that Sartwell has misunderstood Taoism's idea of "receptivity," confusing it with anarchist "passivity," and Stroud has not overcome the "Gita's" injunction to sacrifice the self,…

Little has been written on the impact of Far East civilization's thought and influence on leisure in China today. A discussion of Chinese history, outlined in three stages, clarifies the development of Chinese philosophy over the past 5,000 years. Chinese civilization and culture rest upon a philosophical basis shaped primarily by the principles…

This paper argues that the re-traditionalisation of 'wishing for dragon children' creates difficulties for China's current education reforms and informs the disquiet expressed by Chinese-Australians about Australian education. We develop this argument around three key propositions. First, we explore Confucianism and the civil service examination…