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In July 2021 the Chinese Government unexpectedly released what has become known colloquially as the 'Double-Reduction' policy. The policy decreed the reduction of homework pressure on students and greater control of private tutorial companies. In this paper, we set out to understand why the Chinese central government launched the 'Double-Reduction' policy in mid−2021 by using narratives to analyse the three most circulated explanations for the policy and its timing. We use data from a range of formal and informal policy texts. The three narratives, including one policy narrative dominant in the official discourse and two alternative ones, constructed the causal stories about the policy's rationale from multiple perspectives. The combination of multiple perspectives and a narrative approach helps reveal the policy event's complexity and lays a foundation for researchers interested in tracking the development trajectory of this new policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Comparative Education is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Discussions of involution – a culture of overwork in China – have grown especially rife on the Chinese Internet, reinforced by a dismal outlook on employment. Translated from an academic term 'involution,' 'neijuan' references a contemporary structure of alienation experienced primarily by college students: a sense of being entrapped in a society without opportunities, yet having to endure an endless series of stressful competitions to carve a respectable life. Drawing from fieldwork and interviews, this paper examines the culture of involution through self-study rooms, places where people pay to study. Rapidly expanding in number since 2019, self-study rooms have become a popular tool used by youths to cope with involution. Modulating attentional capacities through design, these rooms assure users that they could study better, and excel in competitive exams and certification processes to find progression in life trajectories. However, in doing so, self-study rooms also normalize an alienated learning and work culture in China, framing the attentional discomfort of forced learning as gain, and the privacy of self-study rooms as forms of individualistic therapy. Users learn not only to push their bodies within these rooms, they also use it to weep privately, expelling pressures to return to 'gainful' behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the causal effect of education on mental health by using the exogenous variation in years of schooling arising from the compulsory schooling law implemented in China during the 1980s and 1990s. Using data from China Family Panel Studies, the paper finds evidence for significant protective effects of educational attainment on mental health. The results show that one extra year of schooling improves the mental health scale by 0.14 standard deviations. Furthermore, the mechanism analysis shows that education positively affects self-assessed income and social status and improves individuals' cognitive ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparing China's 2006 and 2015 Africa policies, this article reveals how China's political discourse has become more confident, practical, and depoliticised. In particular, this paper shows how education is allocated, promised, and embedded in China's 'shared' agenda, which is centred on development co-operation and mutual learning. It then reflects on the extent to which China may move towards traditional donors. This paper concludes that, despite fragmented convergences in the discourse and an increased recognition of a Chinese model, China maintains its distinctive role and position in the post-2015 era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite translanguaging pedagogy gaining increasing popularity among researchers, studies on students' perceptions and experiences of translanguaging pedagogy in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) settings in China remain limited. This mixed methods research bridges this gap by shareing the findings of both questionnaires (1008) and follow-up interviews (34) from students enrolled on an EAP course at a Chinese university. Drawing on the concepts of translanguaging and co-learning, the paper reveals that the different translanguaging practices used by the teachers and students (as reported by students) in the EAP classroom helped to enhance student understanding and learning, classroom communication and motivation for learning. However, potential drawbacks are also noted, e.g. in how translanguaging is not conducive for creating a pure English learning environment and can reinforce some students' over-reliance on Chinese. The findings yield important implications for more careful and intentional pedagogical translanguaging design in EAP curriculum planning in China and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calls for complementing, modifying and 'decolonising' the conceptualisation and implementation of Diversity Education (e.g. multicultural, intercultural, and/or social justice education) are currently being heard in the 'West'. This paper explores some of the characteristics and benefits of Chinese Minzu Education as a potential addition to the field. Our starting point is that Chinese education is often misrepresented and that knowledge about diversity in China (which includes, amongst others, minority groups and Han people), and especially about how people are educated for and through it, is scarce and negatively evaluated in the 'West'. Taking a university specialising in Minzu studies as a case study (which should not be generalized to other Minzu institutions), we problematise formal and informal aspects of Minzu education that could be inspiring to, e.g. interculturalists and multiculturalists in 'Western' education. Fieldwork notes, student interviews about Minzu education and models of Minzu Diversity Learning co-constructed by Minzu students, illustrate the characteristics of Minzu education in higher education. The paper ends on a call for exploring other 'unknown' perspectives on diversity in education emerging from the so-called peripheries of the 'West'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper theorises how politics, economy and migrant population policies influence educational policy, utilising Bourdieusian theoretical resources to analyse the Chinese context. It develops the work of Lingard and Rawolle on cross-field effects and produces an updated three-step analytical framework. Taking the policy issue of the schooling of internal migrant children as an example, it analyses how a range of fields – political, economic and public policy – ‘export’ their logics of practice into the educational policy field (as a sub-field of the public policy field) and consolidate the changes. The cross-field effects shape the state school enrolment policy and the relative positions of agents and the relative value of their capital in the educational policy field. This paper demonstrates the analytical capacity of Bourdieusian theoretical resources for policy analysis in the Chinese context, by illustrating how the inequalities experienced by migrant families have been intensified in education by cross-field effects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Journal of Small Business & Entrepreneurship is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of China Journal of Social Work is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Education to improve knowledge of animal welfare is not a universal component of training for zoo staff, and little is reported about the perspectives of zoo staff on the need for such education. This paper reports results from structured telephone interviews of a diverse sample of eight Chinese and eight European zoo staff about aspects of zoological animal welfare, education and zoological practices. These qualitative data were thematically analyzed and key themes generated. Similar themes emerged across regions: Zoo staff consider professional attributes including motivation and enthusiasm to be important alongside formal training, zoo staff value learning opportunities but don't always feel supported, and contextual information including wild animal ecology was considered important content in zoo animal welfare education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With its shift to a market economy gathering speed from the 1990s, the Chinese Government embarked on an agenda that brought neoliberal forces into almost all sectors including education. The policies underpinned China’s spectacular economic growth, but in education have had consequences that arguably are problematic. Drawing on a mixed-methods study in Shanghai, this paper examines ‘micro-neoliberalism’ in China’s education system, i.e. privatization and marketization at the individual, family, and institutional levels, with focus on blurring boundaries between public schooling and private supplementary tutoring. Some dimensions of these processes resulted from deliberate macro-level policies to decentralize control of schooling, raise performance, and empower private education. Other dimensions arose from the market behavior of individuals, families, and institutions that countered government efforts to steer parental choice of schools and to reduce disparities between schools. Education policies are enacted not only in schools but also in the shadow sector which is commonly overlooked. This paper focuses on Shanghai but has implications for other parts of China; and since shadow education is expanding as a global phenomenon, it also has relevance to many other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper addresses the so-called paradox of immigrant optimism, which accounts for the higher educational expectations of immigrant-origin children, compared to non-immigrants in destination countries, conditional on social background and school attainment. We are interested in clarifying whether the mechanisms behind this optimism are related to migrant selectivity or family migration experience. To do this we use data from the China Education Panel Study, a representative survey of junior high school students in China. We use a two-pronged analytical strategy. Firstly, we look at whether having experienced family migration (within China) is associated with higher educational expectations. Secondly, we take a step back and explore whether adolescents who wish to migrate themselves when they grow up report higher educational expectations. Our findings confirm that adolescents who wish to migrate themselves when adults are already more optimistic even before any intentions of moving come to fruition. This we take as an indirect proof of selectivity. In contrast, we find no effect of family migration on expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploiting the Compulsory Schooling Law reform in China, this paper investigates the causal impact of education on the likelihood of women experiencing domestic violence from their spouse. The local average treatment effects (LATE) obtained through the instrument variables approach indicate that one additional year of schooling lowers women's likelihood of experiencing physical and sexual abuse from their spouse by 7.1 and 3.4 percentage points, respectively. Further, we find that the causal impacts of education are more pronounced in the subsample of women who are less educated, women in rural areas, and women in regions with relatively lower human capital endowment prior to the reform. Additionally, we explore various channels and find that change in attitudes towards gender roles may be an important channel explaining the impact of increased female education on lowering domestic violence. We also address the possible bias caused by migration of individuals, and our results remain robust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The arena of 'English-Speaking International Schooling' continues to grow, reaching almost 12,000 schools in 2020. The growing teaching arena attracts 30,000 new entrants each year and continues to be dominated by British-trained teachers. Little is actually known about the motives or subsequent experiences of this body. However, the narrative about this 'brain-drain' tends to be negative and condescending, referring to teachers 'fleeing' Britain and 'escaping' neoliberal performativity and accountability, and finding 'refuge' overseas. The reality is that many may enter an equally difficult, insecure, and precarious environment. This paper explores the emergent terrain and shows how it has changed over time, revealing the reality of teaching in a new arena of profit-driven activity in mainland China, aimed mainly at local Chinese parents. A resultant new narrative is proposed, based upon positive notions of 'resistance' and 'self-care', which helps to explain why the exodus tends (at present) to be largely one-way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the frequent interaction between China and the world, glocalisation, the combination of globalisation and localisation, is an unavoidable trend. This paper argues that the association of local situation with global awareness is one of the ways to assimilate English for daily use in Chinese context. The fundamental idea is that the use of activities and materials with both local and global situations can bring more awareness and interest within learners than materials that merely reflect unfamiliar global context because the latter is beyond learners' experience. The initial sections of this paper uses qualitative data derived from purposive sampling to explain the notion of glocal English and reasons of its importance. The final part analyses sample learning materials and provides implication for textbook development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent education reform in China reflects the global trend of education policy borrowing from Anglophone countries such as the USA. The reform in China essentially advocates shifting from knowledge reproduction and didacticism to knowledge construction by students through a learner-centredness approach. Aware of the trend of borrowing policy from ‘Western’ countries, some educators in China use the proverb ‘the West wind has overpowered the East wind’ to describe this phenomenon. This paper examines the cultural factors that influence education policy borrowing in China by drawing upon Johnson’s metaphors of the ‘politics of selling’ and the ‘politics of gelling’. This paper argues that there exist fundamental cultural differences between Western and Chinese perspectives on the nature and transmission of knowledge that make education policy transfer in China challenging. This paper further proposes that China borrow education policy judiciously by integrating foreign and indigenous sources of knowledge, teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this paper is to explore Appadurai's ideas of global cultural flows in the context of the internationalization of higher education in China. Studies on the internationalization of higher education have increased with the expansion of international activities on university campuses; however, more theoretical analysis in the field is necessary, especially in less studied and rapidly developing countries such as China. Appadurai's theorization may provide new insights into the field because of its background in the changes transforming international student flows: intensified migration and mass mediation. The research data of the paper consist of previous literature and statistical data. The paper focuses first on analysing the general ideas of Appadurai's model and second on one of the scapes of the model, the ideoscape. The paper suggests that Appadurai's ideas of global cultural flows, when expanded through further research and theorization, provide a heuristic framework for analysing the internationalization of higher education in China. The continuing significance of the nation state and the locality of international actions characterize the internationalization of higher education. Furthermore, the ideoscape of the internationalization of higher education has widened because the volume and the range of activities at universities have expanded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As in other parts of the world, private tutoring has expanded significantly in Mainland China during the past decade. This has been driven by factors including dramatic economic growth, high-stakes examinations, and the traditions of a Confucian culture at the macro-level, and school leadership and family incomes, at the micro-level. This paper examines the demand for private supplementary tutoring in Chongqing, China. It is based on a mixed-methods study of tutoring received by Grade 9 students. Based on an overview of the demand for shadow education by the sampled students and the driving factors at multiple levels, this paper investigates the role of teachers' power in shaping the demand. It draws on the data obtained from interviews and case studies, applying the theory of power bases to map the power relations among various stakeholders in both mainstream and shadow education systems. The study reveals that nearly half of Grade 9 students receive private tutoring, with mainstream teachers as the most popular category of tutors. While some dimensions of this extra work for teachers may be laudable, other aspects could be described as forms of corruption. This highlights the need to examine the power of teachers. The paper contributes to research in a wider context by refining understanding of the nature of shadow education from a Chinese perspective. It addresses the gap in empirical research on Chinese teachers' involvement in shadow education through the lens of power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Su zhieducation has been adopted in schools in China to correct the overemphasis on test scores and to promote whole-person development. Althoughsu zhireform is not based on a capability approach, using such an approach helps to reveal the internal contradiction of the policy framework. A comprehensive analysis of the policy demonstrates that China'ssu zhipolicy is Janus-faced, as it merely pays “lip-service” to capability development while establishing several road-blocks to prevent Chinese schools from embracing a holistic approach to education. In doing this the paper contributes to the literature on the capability approach by summarizing a tentative list of irreducible core capabilities in the Chinese context. Given the lack of research on China as a case, the discussion on the capabilities derived fromsu zhieducation policy provides a reference point for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Publications by teachers reporting results or case studies of school-based teacher inquiry activities benchmark their professional development by indicating they have a ‘stance of inquiry’. Such papers also disseminate valuable knowledge to the education community for sharing. Essay or case writing has always been a part of school-based teacher learning in China. The small-scale qualitative study reported here examines the impact of producing publications on the professional development of teachers within the context of educational reform. Findings show that producing publications contributes to teacher development in three ways. First, an expanded knowledge base gives the teachers new understandings of student-based learning. Second, teachers obtain insight into their practices by making their tacit knowledge explicit. Third, teachers have a sense of achievement by theorising personal experience. Publications serve as ‘boundary objects’ which can potentially help teachers achieve and develop their professionalism by disseminating individual knowledge into the public knowledge domain with transformative learning. Such developments, however, normally tend to focus on expanding local pedagogical practice. More emphasis on the notion of ‘teachers as researchers’ through critical reflection may help teachers perform as transformative intellectuals whilst searching for ways to retain teachers’ voices in their written publications. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As cross-country comparisons of education systems have become increasingly important for policy-making, different structural arrangements have attracted attention in the pursuit of equity and excellence. One area of interest has been instructional time in formal schooling. Missing in such comparisons is the role instruction outside of formal/compulsory schooling. Supplementary education in its many forms has a long history, global reach, and is increasingly attracting scholarly attention. Asia is a notable location and particularly China, where there has been rapid expansion, intensification, and visibility. In this paper, we mobilise Eacott's relational approach to argue that supplementary education, at least in the highly competitive urban centres, is no longer supplementary and that orthodox approaches to understanding it based on a perceived separation from compulsory education cannot adequately describe the contemporary condition. Our argument is that orthodox approaches conceive of the problem of supplementary education as one of access. We seek to unsettle orthodoxy by re-casting supplementary education as not supplementary at all and instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the growing status of English as the language of international communication, English immersion programs have been on the rise in China and the rest of the world. Though there has been much discussion on the theoretical and practical characteristics and features of immersion, current models are not adequate for explaining the language-driven English immersion programs in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context such as China. Drawing on interviews, observations and documentary data and test scores gathered during a longitudinal study of a public-funded foreign languages school in China, this paper reports on a Sino-Canadian collaborative educational program and concludes that in addition to exhibiting most of the core features of immersion programs suggested by Swain and Johnson (1997), the program revealed several noteworthy emerging characteristics. The study argues for the importance of re-contextualizing Swain and Johnson's model of immersion to address the local social, cultural and educational contexts as more and more schools are adopting this model of language-driven bilingual education in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The education of poor and disadvantaged populations has been a long-standing challenge for education systems in both developed and developing countries. Drawing on data from two randomised controlled trials involving two cohorts of grade 3 students in poor rural minority schools in China’s Qinghai province, this paper explores the effects of computer-assisted learning (CAL) on student academic and non-academic outcomes for underserved student populations, and how interactions between the CAL programme and existing classroom resources affect the programme effectiveness. Results show that CAL could have significant beneficial effects on both student academic and non-academic outcomes. However, when the scope of the programme expanded to include a second subject (in this case, math – which was added on top of the Mandarin subject matter that was the focus of the first phase of the programme), some schools had to use regular school hours for CAL sessions. As a result, the phase II programme did not generate any (statistically) significant improvement over the first phase. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on semi-structured interviews with Tibetan teachers in Qinghai Province in Northwest China, this article explores how the teachers, who hold subject positions as pedagogical professionals and local intellectual elites, understand the value and implications of education for Tibetan people, and how they navigate their profession in the local education system. Findings show that the teachers demonstrate strong professional commitments towards the development of Tibetan society, which embodies an entanglement of knowledge and skills acquisition, Tibetan cultural and language preservation, and selective transformation of value and behaviourial orientations among students as well as parents. Firstly, the teachers are committed to students’ acquisition of school knowledge and skills which they believe would lead to better socio-economic outcomes for individuals and their families. Secondly, the teachers, especially the Tibetan language teachers, elaborated on the importance of education and their professional roles in transmitting Tibetan culture and language. Finally, the teachers attempt to make students motivated and competent to cope with rising educational and social competition, and make parents more supportive of and involved in school education. These findings show that the Tibetan teachers play crucial roles in the socio-economic and cultural transformations and development of Tibetan society in China, and shed light on their active engagement with modernisation discourses and projects. The paper also contributes to domestic and international scholarly discussions on teachers’ work and professional roles, education for ethnic minorities, education in developing contexts, and ethnic minorities’ engagement with modernisation (or similar processes such as globalisation). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the present situation of Tibetology in contemporary China and shows the achievements and latest developments of Tibetology in contemporary China. It highlights the characteristics of Tibetology in contemporary China, based on analyzing the main fields of Tibetology. Furthermore, this paper assesses the dynamics and excellent features of Tibetology in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, reports have emerged that China operates "political re-education" camps of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. China justified them as a sort of vocational training program to assist Uyghurs in participating in the Chinese economy. In actuality, they are brutal incarceration camps; these forms of 'education' can qualify as torture that perhaps 1.5 million adults have been subjected to, and have led to detaining children of people incarcerated in state-run boarding schools. It is necessary to interrogate the underlying factors that have enabled the Chinese government to open and operate these camps under the guise of education. This paper first examines the impact of the current geopolitical interests of China's Belt & Road Initiative and the historical backgrounds of Xinjiang and the Re-Education through Labour program. It then explains the methods of 'education' taking place within the camps and interrogates China's justifications for building them. This education issue is more about inhibiting Uyghur power than China's claim that the camps are meant to empower Uyghurs to participate in the Chinese labour force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to learn from international experiences in order to facilitating China’s ongoing regional university transformation with an ultimate goal to enhance the role of university in regional economic development and innovation. In so doing, this paper compares major models of universities of applied sciences (UAS) around the world from the perspective of the Triple Helix Model with an emphasis on the nature of university-industry relation implied by each model, and then exploring their relevance for China’s UASs transformation. It is concluded that the Finnish model is the most relevant to China. By comparing the Finnish and Chinese practices, a number of recommendations are solicited to Chinese policy-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There used to be talk about pleasure being silenced in public health and international development discourses on sexuality, and the damage this silence caused. The exclusion of pleasure continues in some domains, for example, mainstream sexuality education programmes in schools in China and the USA. However, despite considerable challenges to talking about sex and pleasure in institutional research and educational environments, there are a number of initiatives that are starting to do so. Furthermore, normative frames are being developed to justify and shape the new discourses on young people’s pleasure. This paper compares two interventions which create norms of pleasure in relation to young people’s sexuality: an international research project in Shanghai, which draws on conceptual framings developed in the USA; and a sexuality education workshop series developed by a non-governmental organisation in Shenyang, North East China, which adopts a frame of ‘self-identification’ from the Chinese LGBT movement. It identifies the opportunities and constraints created by the normative frames these interventions generate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

UNESCO's relatively high prestige across East Asia has spurred intensifying efforts by governments to use its imprimatur to legitimate official narratives of the past and visions of the future. This article focuses on China's use of UNESCO as an arena for competitive national 'branding' in the education field, especially relating to STEM and AI. We analyse the Chinese state's engagement with UNESCO's education work in the context of shifts in budgetary and political influence within the organisation, and of a growing 'securitisation' of education within China itself. We show how Chinese engagement with UNESCO's educational agenda reflects both domestic political considerations and the 'major country diplomacy' of Xi Jinping, as manifested in the 'Belt and Road Initiative' and intensifying strategic competition with the USA. We conclude by discussing the implications of rising Chinese influence within the organisation for UNESCO's capacity for articulating a coherent and consistently humanistic vision for education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implementation of minority language education policies is always socially, economically, and politically embedded. This paper focuses on the implementation of Tibetan language education policies in a secondary school dominated by students who are officially categorized as Tibetan, to investigate the nuances of individual practices as they are situated in particular institutional and social contexts. Adopting ethnography of language policy as the guiding theoretical and methodological framework, a two-month fieldwork was carried out with data collected from multiple sources. The analysis highlights social actors' different forms of positioning regarding the unique institutional space of Tibetan language education, and pries open a local market wherein Tibetan language education has obtained a high pragmatic value for students' pursuit of academic advancement and upward social mobility. However, it also points to dilemmas facing social actors as the pragmatic value could not directly translate into higher symbolic power for the Tibetan language. (148 words) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an introduction to a special collection of five articles showcasing the work of rising scholars in the geography and anthropology of Tibetan regions in China (Eveline Washul, Andrew Grant, Tsering Bum, Huatse Gyal and Duojie Zhaxi, published in Critical Asian Studies 50: 4 and Critical Asian Studies 51: 1). It contextualizes the authors' contributions in the recent promotion of planned urbanization in Tibetan regions as the key to achieving the "Chinese Dream" under President Xi Jinping. The paper calls attention to these authors' focus on Tibetan experiences of new urbanization policies and practices, as well as their less-appreciated entanglement with shifting education priorities. Providing brief summaries of each author's case study and arguments, it points to the ways in which all five articles address the relationship between space and subjectivity, as well as the issue of constrained agency (versus simple notions of "choice"), in statist urbanization processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently China has been undergoing an unprecedented urbanisation process which has resulted in millions of rural families living in urban areas. As part of a study of Chinese migrant children's educational experiences, surveys and interviews were conducted with primary school teachers in a metropolitan city in East China. The objectives of this study were to describe teachers’ perceptions of migrant children's education in both migrant schools and in public schools, and to investigate differences in their beliefs between school types. Results found that urban teachers’ perceptions of educational inclusion of migrant students were slightly negative in general. However, teachers in public schools showed significantly more positive attitudes to inclusion of migrant students than migrant school teachers. In the light of these findings, the paper concludes with implications for practice and policy for education of migrant children in China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although engineering education has played important roles in China’s growing power and influence on the world stage, engineering education policy since the Reform and Opening-up in the late 1970s has not been well documented in current English-language scholarship. Informed by historical and sociological studies of education, engineering and engineering education, this paper attempts to address this scholarly gap by relating contemporary Chinese engineering education policy-making to its broader historical, cultural and ideological contexts. Based on analysis of policy documents and reports released by the Chinese government and engineering schools, and drawing on prior scholarship of Chinese (engineering) education policy, this paper employs the concept of ‘past/forward’ as an analytic lens to interpret and understand four major areas of engineering education policy change in contemporary China: institutional reform, disciplines and majors, training objectives, and curriculum reform. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Classroom experience is shaped by a number of factors. In this paper, we report a classroom observation study in China, illustrating regional variation in students' classroom learning experiences. Through comparing and contrasting observed classroom practices in three different regions in China (Chongqing, Hong Kong and Shanghai), the paper provides an analysis of the variation in classroom learning experiences of primary school students in China. Our empirical classroom observation data illustrates some key differences in the pedagogy, the use of classroom activities, and the implementation of the curriculum between individual schools. More substantial differences in classroom practices are found when comparing schools from different regions than those within a given city, leading us to conclude that regional impacts on student experience appear to be more important than within-city factors such as the location of a school or its level of facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of gender on the employment of men in early childhood education and care (ECEC) centres through the voices of male and female early childhood teachers (ECTs) working in China. Gender imbalance in the ECEC workforce is a global phenomenon, and there has been little research about it in countries such as China. This study was based on online interviews with 16 ECTs from three major cities in China. Findings indicated that ECTs’ perceptions conformed largely with traditional gender stereotypes in Chinese culture. Western expectations that men’s participation in ECEC could challenge traditional gender stereotypes and promote gender diversity were not reflected in either Chinese academic literature reviewed or the participants’ views captured in this research. The appreciation of masculinity in Chinese culture and implied disadvantages are considered within a global context of empowering women and girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past one and a half decades, Chinese cities have witnessed an influx of college-educated rural migrants. Until now, there has been little systematic research on the working and living conditions of this growing population. The objective of this paper is to empirically examine similarities and differences in living conditions between college-educated rural migrants, non-college-educated rural migrants, and local urban workers. The data are from the 2010 National Health and Family Planning Commission Survey of China’s migrant population. Our study has produced several findings. First, the monthly income of college-educated rural migrants is significantly higher than that of non-college-educated rural migrants and is similar to that of college-educated local urban workers. However, less-educated rural migrants earn more than local urban workers with similar levels of education. Second, while college-educated rural migrants work fewer hours than non-college-educated rural migrants, they work longer hours than their local urban counterparts. Third, local urban workers receive greater social benefits than college-educated rural migrants, whose benefits are better than those of non-college-educated rural migrants. Overall, while college-educated rural migrants enjoy more favourable working and living conditions than non-college-educated rural migrants, they remain disadvantaged when compared to urban workers with a similar level of education. These findings highlight the insurmountable institutionalised exclusion and discrimination that imposes significant barriers on rural-origin people to reap the benefits of higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to understand the Learning in Regular Classrooms (LRC) initiative for inclusive education in China. First, the paper reviews the policy, legislation, and practice in relation to the LRC. It then goes on to explore the specific social–political context of the LRC, and compares the Chinese LRC with the Western approaches to inclusion and integration. The authors then discuss the challenges posed by the attempt to further promote the LRC or inclusive education in the collectivist culture and socialist political context of modern China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many countries expect e-government to increase the efficiency of public administration and revitalize government-citizen interaction. This paper reviews the existing research on e-government and expands it with a detailed examination of China, where e-government development is considered an important component of the national informatization strategy. To assess the status and driving factors of deployment, a detailed inventory of the e-government capacities of all Chinese provinces was created, allowing a more nuanced assessment than earlier studies. Although the data reveal that information delivery and basic interactional and communicative features dominate, the study also finds a range of advanced transactional and participatory services offered. Furthermore, despite strong guidance by the central government, distinct regional disparities are visible; these can be explained by differences in government spending on science and technology, economic resources, education, and urbanization rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many ways, China's education system is quite different from systems of education in the West. Rich descriptions of school transformation, however, have revealed that the factors that fuelled transformation in schools in China are also evident in schools in Australia, England, Finland, Wales and the United States. This paper draws on an international project that examined how secondary schools from six countries achieved success by developing and drawing on their resources, referred to as four forms of capital: financial, intellectual, social and spiritual. It describes how five secondary schools in Chongqing, Western China, viewed each form of capital and how the four forms of capital were strengthened and aligned through outstanding governance to support the success of all students. The case is made that, although some aspects of the forms of capital found in schools in China may be viewed differently, the approaches adopted by these schools share a number of common elements with approaches to school transformation identified in Western schools. It is argued that these common elements from a range of international settings constitute a rich evidence base for understanding school transformation and for new insights in governance and leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper first provides an overview of the topics featured in China's Educational Journal in the period 1909-1948, in order to sketch briefly the history of that country's pattern of selection from among various modes of foreign educational thought. It becomes clear that, in each case, China absorbed from outside only those ideas that could fit with its own traditional forms of educational thinking, and that for this reason it tended to oscillate between turning toward the outside world for new ideas and drawing back into itself to reflect on its own educational culture, policies and institutions. The paper then interprets this dynamic in terms of Niklas Luhmann's theory of self-reference. In Luhmann's social systems theory, any system defines, identifies or constitutes itself at each (in this case historical) moment in relation to another system by absorbing from that other system only what it perceives as being compatible with its own inner organisation, or (as Luhmann puts it) by always absorbing the difference between what already lies within it (e.g. traditional Chinese culture, values and ideas) and what lies outside it (e.g. the culture, values and ideas of the West, with which China found itself already inevitably interconnected). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The education and care of children during their first years has long been a topic of debate for policy-makers and researchers. In recent years, neurological and longitudinal research has highlighted the impact the education and care environment can have on the long-term cognitive, social and emotional development of young children. China's policy-makers have acknowledged the implications this research has for China's capacity to develop an innovative economy and harmonious society. This acknowledgement is now beginning to be reflected in policies and practices designed to shape the state's investment in early years human development. In this paper, we discuss the importance of care and education in the early years and the need for parents to be able to make informed childcare choices. Information from the research literature is supported by a survey conducted across a number of cities in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper explores issues of the educational marginality of migrant children in urban settings in two cities in China. The numbers of urban migrants exceed 100 million and are growing as China modernizes. This is creating tensions between residents and recent arrivals who lack residential registration and access to public services. As a result, migrant children often attend informal, private and usually unregulated schools of low quality organized by their communities. These tend to reinforce social stratification and reproduce marginality across the generations. The paper argues that state failure to provide basic education risks a growing divide between urban residents and recent migrants that has social consequences that must be addressed to remove discriminatory practices and resolve potential conflicts between hosts and migrant communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a set of household survey data, this paper is among the first to analyze vulnerability in rural China. In particular, cohort analysis is introduced to explore the relationship between vulnerability and diversification and the education–vulnerability nexus. Empirical results indicate that, contrary to earlier findings, diversification into non-agriculture activities is found to exert little effects on vulnerability, and that education is an important determinant of vulnerability in rural China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs cointegration and error-correction modelling to test the causal relationship between real income, real investment and tertiary education using data for the People’s Republic of China over the period 1952–1999. To proxy tertiary education we use higher education enrolments and higher education graduates in alternative empirical specifications. One of the paper’s main findings is that real income, real investment and tertiary education are cointegrated when real investment is the dependent variable, but are not cointegrated when either tertiary education or real income is the dependent variable. We also extend the in-sample analysis to examine the decomposition of variance and impulse response functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many Chinese universities (there are over 1,080) have various forms of alliances with foreign universities to undertake the development and delivery of courses in China, participate in exchange activities, collaborate in research projects and engage in consulting programs. It is now quite common for these alliances to offer complete undergraduate and postgraduate foreign sourced degree programs in China. A key issue facing these alliances is how to fund them. This paper identifies a range of funding sources, options and strategies undertaken by Sino-foreign university alliances. These include accessing funds from Chinese State and private companies, charging higher than average fees for courses and associated programs, undertaking research and exchange programs to generate income, delivering courses and programs in a range of locations in China, offering a core range of subjects in a variety of modes to meet the needs of a number of client groups, and focussing on the development and delivery of world class educational programs capable to capturing the elite end of the Chinese education market. A key conclusion is that alliances tended to make use of a (sometimes complex) variety of options and approaches and that no one option was able to completely fund an alliance program. Some of the problems and issues faced by alliance respondents are also discussed, and these included the complexity of developing and maintaining connections and relationships with a variety of funding bodies in China, the difficulty of balancing the various needs and sensitivities of these bodies (some of whom were in competition), the lack of information on a range of possible funding agencies and bodies in China, and the difficulty of balancing the delivery of a world class educational program (which could be very expensive) with the amount of income usually generated from these activities in China. The research notes that if alliances adopt a range of funding approaches and strategies it is possible to adequately fund a range of activities including a high quality degree and/or postgraduate program in China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper examines the complex interrelationship between economic growth and the urban–rural income inequality in China by estimating a simultaneous equation system. This study uses a panel data-set that covers 29 provinces from 1988 to 2007, and compares the earlier period with the later period. It finds a robust and positive impact of the rural surplus labor on urban–rural inequality, which is consistent with Lewis’ dual economy theory. Economic growth is found to aggravate the urban–rural inequality in the earlier period, but there is no hard evidence in the later period. This implies that China has not yet, or at least by 2007, entered the second stage of the Kuznets curve. We also find no robust evidence on the impact of the inequality on growth in either period, but find robust evidence on the impact of both foreign direct investment and exports on the increasing inequality during the earlier period, whereas no significant impact in the later period is found. Finally, the spread of education reduced the inequality in the earlier period, but no such impact is robust in the later period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study conducts a social semiotic analysis of six sex education picture books for preschool children in the People’s Republic of China. Following van Leeuwen’s framework for analysing the discursive construction of social actors, this paper examines two types of social actors directly associated with the education of human sexuality: the physical body of human beings and the institutional, disciplinary body of the family. The analysis of the linguistic and visual representations of the two types of social actors reveals a significant compromise of biosexuality to the complicated psychosexual and sociosexual concerns in the People’s Republic of China. The introduction of biological knowledge about human reproduction is conducted in such a manner that aims to instil the appropriate moral values and behaviours that are regarded as the norm in contemporary Chinese culture as well as ensuring the sound physical and psychological development of young children. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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This special issue examines the educational challenges faced by marginalized groups in China, exploring the interplay between socioeconomic factors, policy environments, and individual agency. The articles address issues related to rural migrancy and education, focusing on understudied regions, ethnicities, and gender dynamics. Between 2010 and 2020, about 74 percent of the rural population migrated for work and schooling. Biases against rural culture as "low-quality" and the significant rural-urban educational gap continue to perpetuate rural disadvantage. Three articles highlight the interplay between individual behaviors, family/community influences, and reinterpretation of educational mandates. Three studies reveal how the proactive efforts of parents and youth maximize educational opportunities despite structural barriers. Two studies provide insights into the education of two ethnic minorities in large territories along China's northern and western borders. The issue contextualizes these studies within China's economic transition, national policies, and population trends. With the declining urban birth rate, urban jobs in middle to high-tech sectors will increasingly rely on rural migrant youth. However, the third generation of migrant youth may still be underprepared for a more demanding labor market, as the rapid shift to a middle-class -consumer economy outpaces educational improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]