East meets West: cultural negotiations between parents and staff at a Taiwanese elite school

Abstract

ABSTRACT We take a necessary de-imperialist approach to studying how ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ values are negotiated in an elite school in Taiwan. By drawing on the ‘Asia as method’ framework, we examine how cultural tensions are identified and moved towards a negotiated resolution between parents and school staff. As parents and school work to develop an educational offer that meets both sets of needs, and seek to create a framework in which to facilitate trusting relationships, they must do so by bridging their different cultural traditions and focusing on a shared mission. Despite some successes in the processes of translation engaged in, cultural tensions remain, especially around planned futures for the male and female students. This paper contributes to the nascent field of elite education in the Global South, and considers how elite subjects are being produced in a third space – that is neither traditionally Western nor Eastern.