Navigating Educational Change in China

Navigating Educational Change in China
Author: Fang Wang
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2017-08-04
Genre: Education
ISBN: 3319636154

This book is a reflection on the complexity of educational change in China through the lens of a senior academic who has occupied many diverse roles in the academe, from political worker to dean of faculty. It narrates his journey through different layers of historical, societal, and institutional transformation while trying to make sense of his own life and work. In this book, the professor is situated at the intersection of history, culture, and society where the search for personal identity becomes a lifelong project. Landmarks in his intellectual journey are used to elucidate the effects of early influences, significant others, challenges and opportunities, human agency, and professional capital. His story illustrates the vicissitudes of a long career that combines scholarship and administration, and offers lessons for survival, advancement, and leadership in the fluid environment of Chinese higher education institutions.

Handbook of Education Policy Studies

Handbook of Education Policy Studies
Author: Guorui Fan
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2020-06-02
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9811383472

This open access handbook brings together the latest research from a wide range of internationally influential scholars to analyze educational policy research from international, historical and interdisciplinary perspectives. By effectively breaking through the boundaries between countries and disciplines, it presents new theories, techniques and methods for contemporary education policy, and illustrates the educational policies and educational reform practices that various countries have introduced to meet the challenges of continuous change. Based on an analysis of the nature of education policy and education reform, this volume focuses on education reform and the concept of education quality. Adopting a historical and comparative perspective, it examines the dialectical relationship between education policy and education reform in various countries, assesses theoretical and practical issues in the process of moving from regulation to multiple governance in contemporary education administration, and explores the impact of globalization on national education reform and the interdependence between countries. In addition, it presents studies addressing educational policy research methodology from multiple perspectives. Highlighting the changes in national education macro policies, this volume comprehensively reveals the complex relationship between contemporary education reform and social change, and explores the links between contemporary social, political and economic systems and educational policy research and practice, offering a holistic portrait of macro trends in contemporary education reform.

Higher Education, Meritocracy and Inequality in China

Higher Education, Meritocracy and Inequality in China
Author: Ye Liu
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2016-10-08
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9811015880

This book investigates the changing opportunities in higher education for different social groups during China’s transition from the socialist regime to a market economy. The first part of the book provides a historical and comparative analysis of the development of the idea of meritocracy, since its early origins in China, and in more recent western thought. The second part then explores higher education reforms in China, the part played by supposedly meritocratic forms of selection, and the implications of these for social mobility. Based on original empirical data, Ye Liu sheds light on the socio-economic, gender and geographical inequalities behind the meritocratic façade of the Gaokao (高考). Liu argues that the Chinese philosophical belief in education-based meritocracy had a modern makeover in the Gaokao, and that this ideology induces working-class and rural students to believe in upward social mobility through higher education. When the Gaokao broke the promise of status improvement for rural students, they turned to the Chinese Communist Party and sought political connections by actively applying for its membership. This book reveals a bleak picture of visible and invisible inequality in terms of access to and participation in higher education in contemporary China. Written in an accessible style, it offers a valuable resource for researchers and non-specialist readers alike.

Ambitious and Anxious

Ambitious and Anxious
Author: Yingyi Ma
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2020-02-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0231545568

Winner, 2021 Best Book Award, Comparative and International Education Society Higher Education Special Interest Group Winner, 2021 Best Book Award, Comparative and International Education Society Study Abroad and International Studies Special Interest Group Honorable Mention, 2021 Pierre Bourdieu Award for the Best Book in Sociology of Education, Section on the Sociology of Education, American Sociological Association Over the past decade, a wave of Chinese international undergraduate students—mostly self-funded—has swept across American higher education. From 2005 to 2015, undergraduate enrollment from China rose from under 10,000 to over 135,000. This privileged yet diverse group of young people from a changing China must navigate the complications and confusions of their formative years while bridging the two most powerful countries in the world. How do these students come to study in the United States? What does this experience mean to them? What does American higher education need to know and do in order to continue attracting these students and to provide sufficient support for them? In Ambitious and Anxious, the sociologist Yingyi Ma offers a multifaceted analysis of this new wave of Chinese students based on research in both Chinese high schools and American higher-education institutions. Ma argues that these students’ experiences embody the duality of ambition and anxiety that arises from transformative social changes in China. These students and their families have the ambition to navigate two very different educational systems and societies. Yet the intricacy and pressure of these systems generate a great deal of anxiety, from applying to colleges before arriving, to studying and socializing on campus, and to looking ahead upon graduation. Ambitious and Anxious also considers policy implications for American colleges and universities, including recruitment, student experiences, faculty support, and career services.

Higher Education in the Era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Higher Education in the Era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Author: Nancy W. Gleason
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2018-06-21
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9811301948

This open access collection examines how higher education responds to the demands of the automation economy and the fourth industrial revolution. Considering significant trends in how people are learning, coupled with the ways in which different higher education institutions and education stakeholders are implementing adaptations, it looks at new programs and technological advances that are changing how and why we teach and learn. The book addresses trends in liberal arts integration of STEM innovations, the changing role of libraries in the digital age, global trends in youth mobility, and the development of lifelong learning programs. This is coupled with case study assessments of the various ways China, Singapore, South Africa and Costa Rica are preparing their populations for significant shifts in labour market demands – shifts that are already underway. Offering examples of new frameworks in which collaboration between government, industry, and higher education institutions can prevent lagging behind in this fast changing environment, this book is a key read for anyone wanting to understand how the world should respond to the radical technological shifts underway on the frontline of higher education.

Little Soldiers

Little Soldiers
Author: Lenora Chu
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2017-09-19
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0062367870

New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice; Real Simple Best of the Month; Library Journal Editors’ Pick In the spirit of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Bringing up Bébé, and The Smartest Kids in the World, a hard-hitting exploration of China’s widely acclaimed yet insular education system that raises important questions for the future of American parenting and education When students in Shanghai rose to the top of international rankings in 2009, Americans feared that they were being "out-educated" by the rising super power. An American journalist of Chinese descent raising a young family in Shanghai, Lenora Chu noticed how well-behaved Chinese children were compared to her boisterous toddler. How did the Chinese create their academic super-achievers? Would their little boy benefit from Chinese school? Chu and her husband decided to enroll three-year-old Rainer in China’s state-run public school system. The results were positive—her son quickly settled down, became fluent in Mandarin, and enjoyed his friends—but she also began to notice troubling new behaviors. Wondering what was happening behind closed classroom doors, she embarked on an exploratory journey, interviewing Chinese parents, teachers, and education professors, and following students at all stages of their education. What she discovered is a military-like education system driven by high-stakes testing, with teachers posting rankings in public, using bribes to reward students who comply, and shaming to isolate those who do not. At the same time, she uncovered a years-long desire by government to alleviate its students’ crushing academic burden and make education friendlier for all. The more she learns, the more she wonders: Are Chinese children—and her son—paying too high a price for their obedience and the promise of future academic prowess? Is there a way to appropriate the excellence of the system but dispense with the bad? What, if anything, could Westerners learn from China’s education journey? Chu’s eye-opening investigation challenges our assumptions and asks us to consider the true value and purpose of education.

Bourdieu and Chinese Education

Bourdieu and Chinese Education
Author: Guanglun Michael Mu
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2018-10-26
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1351597795

This book uses Bourdieu’s sociological approach for research as a jumping-off point for framing our understandings and analyses of China and Chinese education. Three major themes—inequality, competition, and change—are explored across several theoretical and contextual bases. Bringing together top scholars in the field, the volume examines empirical studies that analyse social (im)mobility through education for students affected by the social divides of class, culture and rural/urban locations; teacher identity and the field of schooling in the current Chinese environment and going forward; and the university as an institution for the production of knowledge about education in the globalising academy. Offering insights into the historical and cultural context for China’s educational landscape, the contributions of this book revisit Bourdieusian concepts from a new empirical vantage point and bring together key studies that illuminate new pathways for the study of Chinese sociology of education.

Handbook of Education Policy Studies

Handbook of Education Policy Studies
Author: Guorui Fan
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2020-06-10
Genre: Education
ISBN: 981138343X

This open access handbook brings together the latest research from a wide range of internationally influential scholars to analyze educational policy research from international, historical and interdisciplinary perspectives. By effectively breaking through the boundaries between countries and disciplines, it presents new theories, techniques and methods for contemporary education policy, and illustrates the educational policies and educational reform practices that various countries have introduced to meet the challenges of continuous change. This volume focuses on policies and changes in schools and classrooms. The studies on school changes present the differences in the policies and challenges of K-12 schools and universities in different countries and regions, and in connection with the contradictions and conflicts between tradition and modernization, as well as the changing roles of various stakeholders, especially that of teachers. In terms of curriculum and instruction, many countries have undertaken experiments and introduced changes based on two major themes: “what to teach” and “how to teach”. International education assessments represented by PISA not only promote the improvement and extensive application of educational assessment and testing techniques, but have also had far-reaching impacts on education policies and education reforms in many countries. Focusing on the changes in educational policies at the micro level, this volume comprehensively reveals the complex interactions between school organizations, teachers, curricula, teaching and learning, evaluation and other elements within the education system, as well as the latest related reforms worldwide.

The Fruits of Opportunism

The Fruits of Opportunism
Author: Le Lin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2022-10-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226821501

An in-depth examination of the regulatory, entrepreneurial, and organizational factors contributing to the expansion and transformation of China’s supplemental education industry. Like many parents in the United States, parents in China, increasingly concerned with their children’s academic performance, are turning to for-profit tutoring businesses to help their children get ahead in school. China’s supplemental education industry is now the world’s largest and most vibrant for-profit education market, and we can see its influence on the US higher education system: more than 70% of Chinese students studying in American universities have taken test preparation classes for overseas standardized tests. The Fruits of Opportunism offers a much-needed thorough investigation into this industry. This book examines how opportunistic organizations thrived in an ambiguous policy environment and how they catalyzed organizational and institutional changes in this industry. A former insider in China’s Education Industry, sociologist Le Lin shows how and why this industry evolved to become a for-profit one dominated by private, formal, nationally operating, and globally financed corporations, despite restrictions the Chinese state placed on the industry. Looking closely at the opportunistic organizations that were founded by marginal entrepreneurs and quickly came to dominate the market, Lin finds that as their non-compliant practices spread across the industry, these opportunistic organizations pushed privatization and marketization from below. The case of China’s Education Industry laid out in The Fruits of Opportunism illustrates that while opportunism leaves destruction in its wake, it can also drive the formation and evolution of a market.

Minority Education in China

Minority Education in China
Author: James Leibold
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Total Pages: 427
Release: 2014-01-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9888208136

China has been ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse. This volume recasts the pedagogical and policy challenges of minority education in China in the light of the state's efforts to balance unity and diversity. It brings together leading experts including both critical voices writing from outside China and those working inside China's educational system. The essays explore different aspects of ethnic minority education in China: the challenges associated with bilingual and trilingual education in Xinjiang and Tibet; Han Chinese reactions to preferential minority education; the ro.