In recent years, there is a rising atmosphere of Koreanization of social science knowledge including educational theories. Focused on educational field, this paper aims to review the theoretical background of indigenization from the world perspective and to apply anthropological conception of knowledge to the discussion of transnational knowledge transfer and Koreanization of educational thoeries. About the transnational knowledge transfer, there are competing paradigms: development-convergent paradigm and dependence-liberation paradigm. The former assumes that there are superior knowledge and inferior knowledge. As the Western-developed countries have superior knowledge, the non-Western countries gain the more when they import more knowledge from the West. However, the latter assumes that all knowledge is ideologically bounded. So the latter argues that the more import, the more. dependence. The latter paradigm is gaining more attention and giving serious influence on the former paradigm. Between the competing paradigms, indigenization movement appears through the world, especially the third world. Indigenizatiori includes three aspects: structural indigenization, substantive indigenization, and theoretic indigenization, Indigenization movement occurs at the same time with the critical import of Western knowledge. However, as Berque argues, various assertions about transnational knowledge transfer and indigenization are too emotive, or too radical, or too unrealistic. Both paradigms we have seen before have shortcomings. We need to change our perspective on social science knowledge in general. The perspective this paper suggests is “social science knowledge as cultual forms.” The new perspective, knowledge seen as cultural forms, is useful for the discussion of indigenization and the uncritical knowledge import. First, this perspective gives us the theoretical base to look indigenous knowledge as knowledge on which indigenization should be based. Indigenous knowledge should be developed to meet the academic standard, and then, it can give bases on which the imported knowledge can be criticized. Second, western knowledge seen as cultural forms can be more readily criticized than Western knowledge seen as scientific knowledge. But criticism does not mean rejection. This paper suggests five ways for the critical import of Western knowledge: I) criticism on the imbedded values; 2) criticism on the context of the problem considered; 3) criticism on the explanatory scheme; 4) criticism on the context of theories society which is composed of supporting theories, opposing thoeries, and complementary thoeries; and 5) criticism on the interpretation. Finally, this paper suggests the dialectical synthesis of indigenous knowledge with the imported knowledge as the future direction of educational research.