Transnational Psychology: A Case Study of South East Asia
9.4 Critical Questions and Future Directions
The data outlined above illustrates how psychology education and knowledge are historically and currently exported and imported in transnational domains. Psychol- ogy originated in Europe and the USA, and the development of psychology as a science and discipline is based upon these western developments (which were based on exchanges of scholars and ideas). However, Psychology has a shorter history in Australia and South East Asia. Its development in the region is built upon prior developments of psychology in the west. In other words: the psychology brought to the South East Asian region is western psychology.
Psychology in Australia and South East Asia has been based upon a one-way
‘flow of knowledge’ from north to south, from west to east [42]: South East Asian academics who studied abroad brought western psychological knowledge back to their home countries. Today, we are seeing the beginnings of exchanges taking place within South East Asian countries—in local-foreign collaborations and in the im- portation of foreign campuses, including a strong presence of Australian campuses and joint degree programs. This situation opens up the question of whether these transnational collaborations in psychology contribute to knowledge sharing, or to the continued imposition of western psychology in South East Asia.
The many APAC accredited programs in Singapore may point out that a bi- directional flow of knowledge has yet to be attained. The strict standardisation of curricula from Australia to Asia also indicates a unidirectional flow of knowledge.
The diversity of the education provider landscape created through transnational education has not yet opened up a bi-lateral or multi- lateral flow or exchange of knowledge, however, the very complexity of this landscape suggests the potential for this opening.
The assumption in psychology is that it is a ‘global curricula’. This is particularly apparent in clinical psychology, where it is assumed (and taught) that its knowledge and norms for behaviour are applicable in all countries. Given clinical psychology’s reliance on the diagnostic manual, DSM—already substantially criticised for being based upon western knowledge and for medicalising behaviour [43]—this opens up critical questioning of the sociocultural consequences of the import-export of transnational psychology education for South East Asian countries. This calls for an urgent need for further study.
Specifically, these conclusions point to the need for a postcolonial perspective on transnational education in which the negotiations of local and foreign geopolitical
78 L. Geerlings et al.
and anthropological influences in education in South East Asian countries are illumi- nated. Such interdisciplinary inquiry may provide insights into how we ensure that psychology programs are contributing to enhancing academic excellence, promoting social justice and creating responsiveness toward societal mental health needs.
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