Western Perspectives on Chinese Higher Education
A Model for Cross-cultural Inquiry
Description:... Drawing on the two theories' strengths while avoiding their weaknesses, the book proposes realist constructivism as a general epistemic model for one area of inquiry - cross-cultural studies, defined as studies involving scholars from one society or culture studying another. The model has a descriptive and a normative dimension. Descriptively, realist constructivism maintains that a scholarly study of another society does reveal and is constrained by the studied society's social reality while being thoroughly shaped by factors involving the scholar and his society, whereas normatively it urges that a cross-cultural study should reveal and be constrained by the studied society's relevant social reality while being thoroughly shaped by a host of factors involving the scholar and his society.
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