ABSTRACT
This chapter explores whether or not and how education stakeholders in Bhutan addressed the tensions between traditional and modern knowledges and worldviews. The evident tensions that emerged across the educational sphere were deep seated and acutely experienced due to Bhutan's geographically and culturally isolated setting and its distinctive path toward modernisation. However, the narratives imply that the government should continue to expand its support for the vast traditional knowledges and ways of understanding the world if the continuity of the country's cultural heritage is to be maintained while education and society in Bhutan inevitably change. Supporting the development of more specialists in Bhutan's traditional epistemologies and learning systems would enable stronger traditional and local cultural components to be made part of the school curriculum and teacher education. Therefore, the interviews and classroom observations imply that including traditional epistemologies in the informal and formal curriculum may contribute to improving the quality of education in Bhutan.
