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Against the backdrop of high-quality development of the national economy, the development of each city is also facing transformation and upgrading. Cities need high-quality development, and high-quality talents are the key. The problem of attracting high-quality talents in domestic small and medium-sized cities in high-quality development needs to be solved urgently. This paper takes Huai'an, a third-tier city in China, as an example, to understand the intentions and confusions of college students when they seek employment. The qualitative approach of semi-structured interviews is employed. The study finds that in small and medium-sized cities, factors hindering college students from staying in local cities for employment include that the intensity of the government in publicizing high-quality development has not reached to most college students, the guide courses in colleges and universities meet difficulties in the process of delivery, and college students' own career planning are not guided well. In response to the above problems, this paper puts forward suggestions such as strengthening the positive interaction between schools and college students, enhancing the publicity of high-quality urban development among college students, and closely integrating college students' career guidance courses with local development. Quality development attracts more high-quality talents.

Purpose: This article presents a definition and rationale for evidence-based reform in education, and a discussion of the current state of evidence-based research, focusing on China, the U.S., and the UK. Design/Approach/Methods: The article contrasts the state of educational research in the U.S., the UK, and China, world leaders in evidence-based reform. Findings: The article suggests ways in which Chinese, U.S., UK, and other scholars might improve the worldwide quality of evidence-based reform in education. One indicator of this partnership is an agreement among the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Nanjing Normal University, and Johns Hopkins University to work together on Chinese and English versions of the website Best Evidence in Brief and a collaboration between Johns Hopkins and the "ECNU Review of Education" at East China Normal University. Originality/Value: This article is the first to compare developments in evidence-based reform in education in China with parallel developments in the U.S. and UK Building understanding of current evidence-based policies should help all countries learn how evidence can play a greater role in education policy and benefit many students.

This article examines the intents and effects of China's national policies to promote a synergistic approach to university-industry collaborative education. These policies set out to reduce the academia-industry disconnection for engineering education. Based on document analysis and interviews with various types of stakeholders, the study reveals that China has strived for a synergistic approach to education by strengthening the main-actor role of enterprises, framing a policy support system, incorporating external stakeholders in universities' governance structures, and building a coordinated framework for a synergistic approach to education. These policies have enhanced enterprises' motivation to participate in university education, deepened enterprises' engagement with engineering education at course level, and created an educational innovation ecosystem. Some challenges remain such as the mismatch between course update and technological development, the mismatch between costs and return for faculty members, and difficulty in assessment of outcomes. Overwhelmingly, China has tried exploring a model conducive to the improvement of higher education quality, and the overlapping triple helix model, compared with the statist or laissez-faire patterns, has a more robust effect in galvanizing stakeholders towards their collective goal in the Chinese context.

This study examines how Chinese postgraduate students' personal worldviews are separately and collectively shaped by the interplay of neoliberalism, Confucianism and patriotism. The findings reveal that neoliberalism contributes to Chinese postgraduates' enterprising self by shaping their subjectivity in pursuing personal goals, influencing their thinking with the market logics of efficiency, effectiveness and ­quantifiable outcomes, and leaving them with a predisposition toward deregulation. Confucianism prompts the postgraduates to self-strengthen at the individual level and guides them with interaction norms at the interpersonal level. Patriotism underpins the postgraduates' psychological and emotional power based on strengthened memories of historical events and pride in national achievements, thereby generating a deep-seated collective identity. Counteracting and consolidating forces are identified based on the interplay of the three "isms," resulting in the Chinese postgraduates' partial individualization. The partial individualization reflected in today's Chinese postgraduates features a consistent rather than divisible dual-self.

Against the backdrop of teaching being downplayed in higher education, this study unravels how the university faculty members' implementation of teaching excellence is influenced by the interplay of objective structural conditionings and subjective internal deliberations, drawing upon Margaret Archer's social realist framework and her distinction between human reflexive modalities. By exploring 21 faculty members from three Chinese universities with different structural constraints and enablements, the study shows that dual modalities are manifest in all faculty members, among which meta-reflexivity applies to everyone. However, autonomous reflexivity and communicative reflexivity play more dominant roles in generating purposeful actions under the same structure. Furthermore, some structural forces are non-negotiable constraints, and people having the same reflexivity modality may act differently under different structural conditionings. The study calls for universities to cater to both structural arrangements and reflexive deliberations to transform constraints into enablements for teaching excellence.

This article reports on a study that analysed multiple logics behind the development of doctoral education in China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand. The analysis focused on the development over the past two decades and general measures to ensure quality. Research materials analysed in this article consisted of semi-structured interviews with insiders in the doctoral education system in each of the five countries. The findings reveal that the growth of the doctoral education sector in China follows "state logic," "profession logic" and "corporation logic." Doctoral education in Japan shows "state logic," "profession logic" and "market logic." "State logic," "market logic" and "corporation logic" are manifested in South Korea's doctoral education sector, whereas "state logic" and "profession logic" are prominent in Singapore. Doctoral education in Thailand mostly follows "state logic" and "market logic." Establishing and completing the external and internal quality mechanisms, tightening quality inspection procedures and raising requirements for students are common measures put in place for quality assurance throughout East and Southeast Asia.

This article reports on a study in which the legitimisation of shared governance in the Chinese higher education sector was investigated. Norman Fairclough's three-level discourse analysis was used for analysing documents and interviews. The research materials consist of thirteen Chinese university statutes and qualitative semi-structured interviews with 22 university administrators, faculty members, students and social representatives. The research focused on how university statute texts articulate shared governance, and how shared governance is practically implemented. Study findings demonstrate that Chinese university statute discourses officially legitimise shared governance in various manifestations, by replacing the term "management" with the term "governance" in statute texts, explicitly using democracy-related phrases, especially establishing a "joint meeting mechanism" at both institutional and departmental levels, and by using the wording "multiple-stakeholder participation" in university affairs. In practice, shared governance is a recognised ideal of governance structures to embrace among all different stakeholders. Chinese universities have, more than ever before, taken up shared governance practices. Yet, the degree of participation, or "sharing," in policy implementation in general, remains to be further improved compared with the ideal state stipulated in discourses. Findings identify tokenism as a feature of policy implementation. Insufficient administrative professionalism is identified as a catalyst for such tokenism--a reason for why shared governance efforts remain incomplete thus far.

This paper examines the "imaginaries" taking place in New Engineering Education (NEE). The NEE is the most recent reform of the engineering education sector in China and is used to interrogate the more encompassing backdrop of the country's national imaginary, the "Chinese Dream." Further, this paper analyzes three important policy documents that constitute the blueprint of the NEE. Drawing on Charles Taylor's concept of the "social imaginary" and using critical discourse analysis, a close analysis of the discursive construction of the technological and national elements in the policy texts is carried out. This combinatory theoretical and analytical framework is used to examine how a normative vision and ideology of the development of engineering education is constructed as taking a "new" direction. In undertaking this policy analysis, this paper demonstrates how a rising power is revolutionizing its engineering education as a resource, coupled with the ideological "social (national) imagination" of the Chinese Dream, to extend its power and geopolitical positioning in a competitive and globalized economy.

Against the backdrop of prevalent student attrition in engineering education, this study draws upon Margaret Archer's social realistic theory and offers a close-up analysis of how structural and cultural factors interplay to affect Chinese university engineering faculty members' perceptions of and agency in practicing 'scholarly teaching'. Incorporating Chinese socio-cultural contexts and the distinctive requirements of engineering education, this study investigates how structural and cultural facilitating factors are overwhelmed by more powerful inhibiting factors in shaping Chinese engineering faculty members' implementation of scholarly teaching. This article argues that such predominance of inhibiting factors results from the stronger role of communicative reflexivity in influencing faculty members' agency than autonomous reflexivity and meta-reflexivity.

Success for All (SFA) is a comprehensive whole-school approach designed to help high-poverty elementary schools increase the reading success of their students. It is designed to ensure success in grades K-2 and then build on this success in later grades. SFA combines instruction emphasizing phonics and cooperative learning, one-to-small group tutoring for students who need it in the primary grades, frequent assessment and regrouping, parent involvement, distributed leadership, and extensive training and coaching. Over a 33-year period, SFA has been extensively evaluated, mostly by researchers unconnected to the program. This quantitative synthesis reviews the findings of these evaluations. Seventeen US studies meeting rigorous inclusion standards had a mean effect size of +0.24 (p < 0.05) on independent measures. Effects were largest for low achievers (ES= +0.54, p < 0.01). Although outcomes vary across studies, mean impacts support the effectiveness of Success for All for the reading success of disadvantaged students.

Several major reform areas attempted by 'New Engineering Education' (NEE), China's most recent engineering education reform initiative at university level, are examined for their direct and indirect impact on Chinese STEM-major students' satisfaction with their programs in this study. With data collected from a sample of 619 Chinese undergraduate students, the measurement and structural models both display good model fits. The structural results indicate that "course satisfaction" fully mediates the impact of "classroom instruction method" on "program satisfaction," while partially mediates the impact of "support from faculty members" and "alternative assessment methods" on "program satisfaction." The impact of "resource and service" on "program satisfaction," however, is direct without any mediating effect in between. Multigroup analyses show that the impact of "alternative assessment methods" on "course satisfaction" is significantly stronger for first-tier university students than for non-first-tier university students. Furthermore, there is stronger impact of "resource and service" on "program satisfaction" for junior and senior students than for freshmen and sophomores. Practical implications are discussed.

This paper investigates the power landscapes within Chinese universities, against the larger backdrop of China's attempt to build modern university governance systems for developing world-class universities. Drawing upon Fairclough's three-dimensional conceptions of discourse and informed by Pierre Bourdieu's key conceptual notions of field and capital, the paper provides a critical discourse analysis of statutes of 10 top Chinese universities in terms of their texts, discursive practices and social practices and thus analyses existing power relations. The statute texts construct a hierarchical field of power by wording the 'core' stakeholder Party Committee as the leadership, using content sequence as a measure of power ranking, and including only limited stakeholders in the joint governance mechanism. Regarding discursive practices, faculty members' participation in the formulation and distribution of university statutes is insufficient. The social practices identify with statute texts in terms of power relationships between Party Committee members, administrators and academics.

This study reports the development and validation of an instrument, "Undergraduate STEM Educational Process Questionnaire" (USEPQ) to assess the learning experiences of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics)-major undergraduates from the perspective of a conceptualized comprehensive STEM educational process framework that consists of key essentials such as course learning and instruction, educational environment, assessment methods, and unique STEM attributes. Exploration Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis performed on independent samples indicate that the finalized 9-factor, 41-item USEPQ possesses a stable factor structure and sound psychometric properties. The factors of the validated scale are "Classroom Instruction of Courses," "Support from Faculty Members," "Alternative Assessment Methods," "Cooperative Learning," "Resources and Service," "Academic Competition," "Cross-discipline Features of Program Courses," "Connectedness of Program Courses," and "Examination Difficulty."

The role of education-focused university-industry collaboration (UIC) in facilitating higher education quality has been increasingly documented by empirical studies in the last decade, and yet existing systematic reviews of UIC are all focused on other non-education related aspects of collaboration, such as joint research, technology transfer, knowledge block building, or patent issues. This systematic review fills such a research gap by synthesising extant research on educational collaboration between the industry sector and higher education sector. Following the PRISMA guidelines, the authors searched literature across multiple databases and screened publications according to the following eligibility criteria: (1) publications should be peer-reviewed journal articles; (2) the publications should involve educational collaboration between the two sectors; (3) the content should provide information on at least one of the four major aspects, namely, the manifestations of industry's involvement, the manifestations of higher education's involvement, critical determinants of successful education-focused UICs, and the challenges or barriers to the implementation. Finally, a total of 65 qualified publications from 25 countries are included, from which seven types of industrial engagement, five types of universities' engagement, five critical determinants, and four challenges to the implementation across the globe are synthesised. The findings and implications for practice and future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the self-reflection of 22 undergraduate students at a renowned Chinese university regarding their journey towards obtaining a bachelor's degree, this study reveals the discrepancy between the idealistic functions and missions of higher education as perceived by students and their actual implementations in the real world. It further explores the multifaceted logics exerted by the higher education environment on students during their educational journey. Data analysis shows that contemporary global neoliberalism, alongside traditional Chinese cultural ideologies such as Confucianism and Daoism, significantly impacts the educational philosophies of university students to varying extents. These diverse ideologies drive students to demonstrate varied learning states and behaviors, showcasing the complex interplay of global and local forces in shaping student experiences in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since becoming a formal signatory of the Washington Accord in 2016, China has outlined an initiative 'New Engineering Education' (NEE) to reform its engineering education at university level. This paper elaborates upon the NEE initiative by presenting analysis of its domestic and international context, the goals of the initiative, how the initiative draws upon international standards, major actions under the initiative, and the challenges remaining for NEE to achieve its goals. The paper argues that China views international practices and standards of engineering education in developed nations as highlands to imitate and surpass, and the NEE goals embody an ambitious systematic rather than partial reform of the sector. China has pushed forward the NEE reform with measures such as formulating National Standards for dozens of categories of engineering programs, commissioning 600+ research projects on NEE development, establishing new engineering programs and interdisciplinary courses, strengthening university-partnership, updating accreditation for engineering programs, and improving both external and internal quality assurance mechanism. The sector, however, still faces challenges in achieving systematic quality upgrade due to hindering factors like enlarged uneven resource allocation, downplayed teaching activities and the difficulties in reforming the curricula system. Expected changes are also discussed.

Alumni can offer authentic perceptions of how university education is relevant to career requirements with direct educational experiences and frontline work experiences. This study captures the experiences of alumni in the engineering field to illuminate the multi-faceted distinctions between the higher education and employment systems. Based on semi-structured interviews and artefact collection, the findings reveal that the university system focuses more on fragmented and theoretical knowledge in course goals, using classical textbooks as the main means of instruction, while the workplace system emphasises the whole picture and application competence, using cutting-edge instruments and project-based approaches to enhance employees' abilities. Students at universities are less incentivised to work hard and collaborate with each other than employees at companies due to different incentive rules and different community milieu. The workplace system also has a better division of labour than universities in cultivating talents. Practical implications are discussed regarding aspects of higher education reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the components of Chinese college counsellors' mental models in their daily work based on a rich content analysis of the story accounts of 152 exemplary college counsellors over the past 8 years. On the basis of a rigid three‐step coding procedure, this study reveals that Chinese college counsellors' mental models generally comprise four common constituents, namely a love‐filled faith system, a rule‐based thinking system, a professionalism‐based knowledge system and action‐based performance. These components jointly illustrate the general landscape of Chinese college counsellors' internal well‐being and fill a research gap regarding the sparse attention given to counsellors in the global literature on faculty professionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the large-scale involvement of Chinese enterprises in teaching-focused university-industry collaboration (TFUIC), drawing upon the theoretical perspective of resource dependency. Based upon content analysis of Ministry of Education-selected exemplary cases and semi-structured interviews with corporate insiders, the study not only delineates multiple approaches companies take to boost higher education quality, but also unravel the role of economic resources, technological and professional resources in underpinning the implementation of TFUIC. Resources underpinning enterprises’ long-term incentives for participation and the primacy issue between the university sector and industry sector remain challenges to TFUIC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's 'Four New Project' initiative has been a major attempt to achieve quality revolution in higher education since 2017. Underpinning it are comprehensive strategies coordinating multiple stakeholders to span boundaries and develop a synergistic approach for collaborative education. This paper teases out China's national policies and measures to develop a leadership-oriented innovation ecosystem for higher education, drawing upon boundary-spanning perspectives of various practices in engineering education, medical education, agriculture education, and liberal arts education. It unravels how stakeholders with different interest pursuits have been coordinated to jointly fuel the reform to China's higher education talent cultivation patterns in response to the demands of Industry 4.0 and Biomedicine 3.0. The findings render visible the macro changes in higher education institutions across tiers, types and fields, and also unravel the project's robust effects on teaching and learning at micro level. Challenges are also discussed to shed light upon space of improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes how China has worked to develop and build a higher education innovation ecosystem in the past decade. Binding its analysis to three types of data, namely clusters of national policies issued by important Chinese government bodies, dozens of articles in an internal journal of the Ministry of Education, and various Chinese media accounts, the article unravels how resources are mobilized and the direction chartered for unprecedented engagement between different stakeholders for education purposes. The findings reveal that the establishment of a higher education innovation ecosystem derives from the need to improve the overall higher education quality in full swing and has been realized as a strategic consensus among the government, enterprises, higher education, and social forces. The ecosystem is underpinned by the assigning of different roles to different stakeholders based on collaboration and division of labor. At the same time, there is also substantive capital, resource mobility, and the infusion of industrial technological expertise underpinning such an innovation ecosystem that involves six categories of collaboration at macro and micro levels. The impact of the higher education innovation ecosystem thus far includes deepened and extensive participation in higher education quality improvement by multiple types of stakeholders and the same type of stakeholders across different tiers. Instructors' teaching and students' learning have experienced changes due to the ecosystem's impact at a micro level, and many institutions have increased shared governance practices to better cater to the synergy among different sides. At the same time, there is an unevenness in the innovation ecosystem in terms of participating higher education institutions and enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the policy intents regarding inclusive education in the Chinese basic education sector, prestigious school principals’ and teachers’ understanding of inclusion, and their current enactment of inclusion in delivering education. Through document analysis and semi-structured interviews, we find that inclusion in China can be understood in two broad categories. One concerns even development and equal access to educational opportunities between regions of different economic development, while the other concerns equal rights and educational opportunities between students with special educational needs and students in regular classrooms. In terms of enactment, the teachers and principals at the prestigious schools sampled focus on different issues to those highlighted in policy documents. Inclusion is often discussed in relation to competition, quality, and outcomes in the schools, rather than access to education and the learning process. When it comes to inclusion criteria, prestigious schools substantively exert their influence to exclude certain students, due to their self-image of excellence. However, based on the ideology of human capital theory, excellence and equity are not seen as incompatible goals in the Chinese educational system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the impact of Personal Learning Environments (PLE) on the development of self-regulated learning (SRL) skills among postgraduate learners in China. 213 participants, divided into an experimental group (n = 113) using a researcher-designed PLE platform and a control group (n = 100) employing face-to-face instruction, joined a course on International English Language Testing Systems (IELTS). A mixed-methods approach was adopted, utilizing the Online Self-Regulated Learning Questionnaire (OSLQ) to explore SRL experiences, and weekly goal-achievement reports. Results demonstrated improvement in SRL skills in both groups, with the experimental group exhibiting significantly greater gains. Quantitative and qualitative results revealed that participants excelled in goal fulfillment but struggled with time management, help-seeking and self-evaluation skills. The study confirmed the positive influence of the PLE on postgraduates' SRL skills, with implications for online learning design and the potential for PLEs to effectively promote SRL skills in online learning contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]