Construction of China’s Indigenous Iconic Concepts in Education: A Case Study of Life-Practice Educology

Abstract

Indigenous iconic concepts are the basis of building China’s independent knowledge system in education, which is characterized by indigeneity, originality, iconicity, historicity, and systematicity. Life-Practice Educology is an emerging educational school in contemporary China, and it is an attempt to rebuild contemporary education. In the course of its development, it has formed two iconic concepts and their conceptual clusters, namely “life-practice” and “life consciousness,” which systematically answer such fundamental questions as “what is education?” “what is the necessity and basis of education?” “what is the internal logic and structure of education, and how can these be uncovered?” Moreover, this school responds to the major theoretical questions, including “what is educology?” “what constitutes the independence, uniqueness, and scientificity of educology, and what are their justifications?” By in-depth analysis of the two major indigenous iconic concepts of “life-practice” and “life consciousness” and the generation process of their concept clusters, we can find the basic path of indigenous iconic concept construction in Chinese education. This path involves endowing old concepts with new connotations in the critical reflection of education theory and practice, constructing new concepts with theoretical thinking in the interactive generation of theory and practice, and following the historical logic and temporal logic of the development and evolution of the disciplinary theory system.

Keywords

Chinese education / indigenous iconic concepts / Life-Practice Educology / life-practice / life consciousness

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

Higher Education Press