Education Reform in China


Book Description

Over the past decade there has been radical reform at all levels of China’s education system as it attempts to meet changing economic and social needs and aspirations. Changes have been made to pedagogy and teacher professional learning and also to the curriculum - both at the basic education level, from kindergarten to year 12, and at the higher education level. This book focuses on reform at the early childhood, primary and secondary levels, and is the companion book to China’s Higher Education Reform and Internationalisation, which covers reform at the higher education level. Education Reform in China outlines the systematic transformation that has occurred of school curriculum goals, structure and content, teaching and learning approaches, and assessment and administrative structures, including the increasing devolvement of control from the centre to provincial, district and school levels. As well as illustrating the changes that are occurring within classrooms, it demonstrates the continuity of cultural and educational ideas and values in the midst of these changes, showing that reform does not just involve the adoption of foreign ideas, but builds on and even resurrects traditional Chinese educational values. Importantly, it considers how exchanges of people and ideas can contribute to new ways of working between Western and Chinese educational systems.




Autobiography and Teacher Development in China


Book Description

This is the first investigation of the roles of autobiography in teacher education to be informed by concepts and examples from China, Europe, and North and South America. Unique and timely, this volume addresses multiple movements of teacher education reform worldwide.




Empowered Educators in China


Book Description

BEST PRACTICES FROM CHINA'S HIGH-PERFORMING SCHOOL SYSTEM Empowered Educators in China is one volume in a series that explores how high-performing educational systems from around the world achieve strong results. The anchor book, Empowered Educators: How High-Performing Systems Shape Teaching Quality Around the World, is written by Linda Darling-Hammond and colleagues, with contributions from the author of this volume. Empowered Educators in China describes the nation's policy reforms that built the modern Chinese educational system and the educational practices that are considered typical in China. The book spotlights Shanghai's system which is distinctive and superior. Shanghai offers a clear illustration of an educational system that continually invests in educating a diverse student population and, by measures of international comparison tests, is achieving outstanding results. Many factors contribute to the Shanghai system's ongoing success, including the students' motivation toward strong performance, the parental support for education that is culturally ingrained throughout the country, the focus that teachers place on high expectations for students, and the individual tutoring they provide. The author argues that these factors are only a partial explanation of Shanghai's success and then closely describes educational policies that support teachers' preparation, hiring, ongoing development, and opportunities for awards and leadership. These policies are based on the assumption that teachers are key to the nation's future and must be appropriately supported in order to contribute to student performance and achievement, an assumption that is also explicitly stated within Chinese law. This volume offers specific descriptions of how these national policies are translated, adapted, and enacted in Shanghai.




No School Left Behind


Book Description

Based on the fieldwork carried out at two elementary schools, Merits School and Pioneer School, in northeastern China, the monograph details how local schools enacted the New Mathematics Curriculum Reform that was launched in early 2000. The trajectory of the reform implementation at each school was plotted out. Both schools resorted to a long-standing quality control mechanism, i.e., teaching norms, to operationalize the reform ideas. The mechanism functioned by placing teachers under measurable supervision and evaluation aligned with the reform. The schools responded to the reform following school people’s raising practical concerns, as well as the established school culture. Merits School arrived at a "two-faced strategy" to cope with the reform. Pioneer School managed to maintain a balance between promoting reform pedagogy and maintaining good test rankings. Both schools marginally involved parents in the implementation of the reform. This study suggests that to achieve success, reformers need to place equal emphasis on the transformation of teachers as well as local policymakers. This book enriches the existing literature on the implementation of mathematics curriculum reform at the school level and brings insights into the schools’ implementation decisions, which will appeal to policymakers, curriculum researchers and administrators.




Teacher Mediated Agency in Educational Reform in China


Book Description

This book examines teacher agency in implementing English as a Foreign Language (EFL) curriculum reform in the Chinese university context. It theorizes the concept of teacher agency from a sociocultural theory perspective and draws on a study conducted in a conservative and less developed area in China. The book uses Engeström's activity theory and Vygotsky's concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) to understand the nature and extent of teacher agency in adapting one’s teaching with respect to beliefs, knowledge and instructional practices. The study concludes that curriculum reform in China needs to shift from reliance on 'top-down' policies to 'bottom-up' implementation that mobilizes local understandings and practices. One of the implications of this study is that transformative teacher education programs aimed at developing teacher pedagogical agency require that teachers have ongoing opportunities to design, develop and evaluate curriculum-based mediational means.




Curriculum Reform in China


Book Description

Curriculum reform has played a central role in the educational changes in contemporary China. The government of the People's Republic of China, being at the centre of the centralized educational administration system, assumes the responsibility for designing and organizing the systemic reform initiatives. This is especially the case for what has been happening since the end of 1990s. At the turn of the new millennium, the Chinese government initiated the new round of national curriculum reform (NCR) for basic education which is also the eighth round of nation-wide curriculum reform since the founding of the Peoples' Republic of China. This book will give insightful information on the state of Educational programs in China's immediate future and written by many educators in China's learning system.




Understanding the Impact of INSET on Teacher Change in China


Book Description

This pivot considers the impact of INSET courses on EFL teachers practicing under the national curriculum reform in China. Providing context-specific findings on the policy and implementation of INSET as well as its impact on teacher education initiatives in both China and similar contexts, it explores the limitations of one off training events such as INSET and the inconsistency between teacher learning results and their classroom practices. The book argues that teachers, when returning to pre-INSET teaching, are influenced by their prior deeply-rooted beliefs largely considered more powerful than newly-learnt theories. Addressing the rarely discussed fact that the complex and dynamic characteristics of teacher learning change over time and support the construct of teacher learning as a social event rather than a one-off event, the book also offers practical solutions on how to improve teacher education and enhance the long-term INSET impact on teacher development, with the ambition of promoting education reform for both teachers and students alike.




Educational Policy Borrowing in China


Book Description

For over a decade, Mainland China has been embarking on an ambitious nation-wide education reform ('New Curriculum Reform') for its basic education. The reform reflects China’s propensity to borrow selected educational policies from elsewhere, particularly North America and Europe. Chinese scholars have used a local proverb "the West wind has overpowered the East wind" to describe this phenomenon of ‘looking West’. But what do we mean by educational policy borrowing from the West? What are the educational policies in China's new curriculum reform that are perceived to be borrowed from the West? To what extent have the borrowed educational policies in China's new curriculum reform been accepted, modified, and rejected by the various educational stakeholders? How does culture influence the various educational stakeholders in China in interpreting and mediating educational policy borrowing from the West? How do the findings of this study on China’s education reform inform and add to the existing theories on and approaches to on cross-cultural educational policy borrowing? This book answers the above questions by critically discussing China’s policy borrowing from the West through its current reform for primary and secondary education. It presents the latest in-depth research findings from a three-year empirical study (2013-2015) with school principals, teachers, students and other educational stakeholders across China. This study offers new insights into China’s educational policy borrowing from the West and international implications on cross-cultural educational transfer for academics, policymakers and educators.




The Work and Lives of Teachers in China


Book Description

By bringing together a distinguished group of scholars who have deep, extensive and complementary knowledge and expertise of the Chinese education system, The Work and Lives of Teachers in China engages in detailed discussions on contemporary issues about teachers and teaching in China. It locates teachers’ work and lives in a critical analysis of the political, socio-cultural, ideological and educational reform contexts, and through this, demonstrates how teachers in different professional life phases and in different schools are able to retain their vocational strength and commitment for learning and development. Using rich illustrations from real teachers in real primary and secondary schools, this book represents a collection of scholarly writings which build research and practice informed new knowledge about the nature of teachers’ work and lives in China. Through these comprehensive case studies, the book illustrates to policy makers, head teachers and training and development organisations the importance of sustaining teachers’ commitment and wellbeing in their efforts to improve quality and standards in today’s Chinese schools. The Work and Lives of Teachers in China provides valuable insight for policy makers, educators, researchers, teachers and students in education and beyond.