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This paper narrates the concept of Sustainable Peace Leadership and examines how three prominent Peace Activists from South and Southeast Asia measure up to the concept. The article will consider the works and ideas of Mohandas K. Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi), Lhamo Thondup (The 14th Dalai Lama), and Nguyen Xuan Bao (Thich Nhat Hanh). Mahatma Gandhi was instrumental in achieving Indian independence from the British Empire. The Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people and has managed a difficult relationship with the Chinese government following the occupation of Tibet. Thich Nhat Hanh was a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, peace activist and is known as the 'father of mindfulness'. The paper identified several characteristics of Peace Leaders. These include being a charismatic leader who motivates their followers to achieve their goals in a non-violent and inclusive manner. Peace leaders meditate and spend time developing inner peace which then leads to outer peace. The paper also asserts that peace leaders are capable of recognizing the humanity in their opponents and seek a mutually beneficial solution. The three chosen individuals are all recognised as being charismatic leaders who were prominent peace leaders. All were deeply spiritual and practiced meditation and other inner work on a regular basis. They stressed the humanity in their opponents, based on their religious beliefs and the concepts of non-duality and interdependence.

This article uses curriculum-making frameworks to analyse and reconstruct the Chinese curriculum-making model and unpack the dynamics, complexity and constraints of China's curriculum reform since the early 1990s. It argues that curriculum reform is China's main human capital development strategy for coping with the challenges of the 21st century, and that the state plays an important role in the reform of curriculum-making mechanisms and in the social distribution of knowledge, skills and dispositions through curriculum making. Data are drawn from a discourse analysis of public texts, such as official documents and curriculum standards. This study has four major findings. First, China uses curriculum reform as a key strategy to counter manpower-related global challenges and to empower the country in the 21st century. Second, to this end, China has re-oriented its curriculum making from a state-dominated model to one that is state-led, expert-assisted and evidence-based. Third, China's new curriculum reflects the increasing tension between globalization and nationalism; while preparing its students to compete globally, China also urges them to identify with and take pride in the nation's achievements and culture. Fourth, Chinese curriculum reform for the 21st century may not unfold as the state expects, as it is constrained by curricular and extra-curricular factors.

China is an important player in global university ranking exercise. Nevertheless, existing studies have not adequately explored how the legitimacy of adopting university ranking outcomes has been chronologically established on Chinese soil. This paper attempts to fill this knowledge gap drawing on interviews with 37 stakeholders between 2003-2021 and an analysis of 2086 articles and reports published between 1984-2022 concerning university rankings. It first analyses the process of institutionalization of adopting university ranking outcomes in China, and discusses how the policy initiatives such as the '985 Project' in 1998 and the 'Double First-Class' Project in 2016 intertwined with university rankings over the time and provide opportunities for establishing such legitimacy. Secondly, it analyses the mechanisms through which university ranking outcomes gain legitimacy, and suggests that interactions among the stakeholders are one of the key mechanisms, whereby the central government plays a pivotal role in legitimizing adoption of international university ranking results. Furthermore, we argue that the universities have responded actively to adopting the ranking outcomes and use them as strategic tools to achieve their own goals. As such, this paper sheds a new light on the impact of university rankings in China and beyond.

Christian higher education (CHE) had been totally disappeared from the China mainland since the 1950s, and related studies only revived in the past 40 years since Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening up policy in 1978. The present paper is an attempt to report what had happened in the past 40 years, and to illustrate some significant contributions the resurgence of the study of CHE had made to the academia in the development of higher education in China. New forms of representation of CHE are found and new approaches to the study of CHE are also explored. [This paper was presented at the 2018 International Chinese Sociological Association (ICSA) Asian Conference Forty Years of China's Reform and Social Change, organized by the Center for Applied Social and Economic Research at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology on December 19-20, 2018.]

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to summarize and reflect Chinese theoretical research on moral education in the context of globalization and value pluralism since 2000 and to propose possible directions for the future research. Design/Approach/Methods: The research methods in this article are primarily literature review. Those papers which met the following criteria were selected and included in this review: (1) Papers published from 2000 to 2014 were included if they were cited by at least one other published article and (2) papers published from 2015 to 2017 were included if they were presented in a core research journal. Based on that, speculative thinking and critical thinking are also embodied in this research. Findings: Based on the features of "a man of virtue," the article identifies the four dimensions that have influenced Chinese thinking about moral education: (1) Kantian and Enlightenment philosophy, (2) emotion and life experience, (3) social rights, and (4) the culture-value dimension. The four dimensions of moral education theory are related and complement, rather than contradict, each other. The author argues that the research scopes underlying current moral education theories are fairly narrow. A more comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach is needed to improve theoretical research and to enhance the effectiveness of moral education practice in schools and universities. Originality/Value: The article provides a latest overview and critical insights to consolidate the foundation of moral education in an era of societal transformation by comparing moral education research between China and the West and proposing realizing a deep integration between theory and practice.

AACSB adopted new and revised standards in 2020 that require business schools to demonstrate positive societal impact through internal and external activities. While many schools are already engaged in such activities, there seems to be no agreed-upon conceptualization or measurement of societal impact. This paper aims to help business schools organize, measure, and demonstrate their efforts to create positive societal impact and thus meet the updated AACSB standards. By using data from semi-structured interviews, this paper identifies different dimensions of positive societal impact and offers enablers and barriers in business school efforts to create such societal impact.

Adapting the basic tenets of Marxism to outstanding traditional Chinese culture is a major issue in the current and future development of Marxism in China. This paper attempts to sort out the historical relationship of 'contradiction' and 'adaptation' between Marxism and traditional Chinese culture in the process of development. It summarizes the basic ideas that have been developed in the academic community concerning the 'two aspects' involved with adapting Marxism to the Chinese context and the typical achievements represented by Mao Zedong Thought. The paper also proposes that the challenge of adapting the basic tenets of Marxism and outstanding traditional Chinese culture should continue to focus on comprehensive innovation as the basic principle, prioritize cultural identity as the crucial direction for further progress, and take daily life as the central field of exploration.

Growing literatures highlight global shifts in education brought by spreading neoliberal values and marketisation. Parallel literatures address parenting styles. Parents, these literatures observe, are increasingly made responsible and/or voluntarily take responsibility for educational inputs alongside mainstream schooling. Much parental investment is in the so-called shadow education sector of private supplementary tutoring. Examining Chinese patterns, this paper notes longstanding high enrolment rates in both academic and non-academic supplementary education prior to government restrictions that brought a sharp marketplace jolt. The paper then employs parental interview data to show the rationales for such investment despite efforts by the Chinese authorities to retain schooling as a fully-sufficient form of education. The strengthened government policy altered the picture, but it seems likely that in the competitive society many parents will still secure supplementary support to manage what they feel to be a precarious environment.

The changing context and increasing professionalization in higher education have ushered in challenges for liberal arts education worldwide. Situated this discourse in the context of Chinese universities, this paper explores (1) Why do we need a liberal arts education that has been accused of being elitist in the twenty first century? (2) Should an effective or ideal liberal arts education evolve with time and context? If yes, what needs to be taken into account to conceptualize a twenty first century model of liberal arts education? (3) How is a twenty first century liberal arts education defined and featured at Chinese universities and elsewhere? Drawing on an analytical framework constructed with the German concept of "Bildung" and the Confucian perspective on knowledge, this paper contends that a twenty first century liberal arts education for universities in China and elsewhere needs to absorb meta changes and movements in society at home and around the world, while ideally rooted in a knowledge tradition respectively. Specifically, it should comprise three essential pillars: humanism education, cognitive education, and global education.

As Paulo Freire's education theory for social change and emancipation is being continually studied and disseminated in East Asia, it has faced skepticism as some educators are unfamiliar with its critical pedagogy or education for freedom concepts. In light of this, scholars have attempted to compare Freirean philosophies with concepts in Chinese philosophy of education as a way of bridging East and West. Diverging from previous studies that use popular Chinese philosophies (such as Confucianism) to connect with Freirean theory, this paper introduces an understudied but compatible Chinese philosophical thought, Mohism, for comparison with Freirean theory. Mohism is a political philosophy for the working class that expanded into grassroots movements for people's welfare in ancient China. The Mohist bottom-up approach echoes the grassroots emancipatory pedagogy that underlies Freirean philosophy. A comparative analysis of education concepts in both philosophies reveals that despite differences in the educational content of Freirean theory and Mohism, there are similarities in their conceptualization of education for anti-oppression and praxis for social change. Implications for utilizing Mohist philosophy to contemplate Freirean philosophy within the East Asian educational context are also explored. Ultimately this paper revives educational concepts of Mohism that aligns with Freirean philosophy to a broader audience of scholars and educators.

In the context of China's social transformation and educational reform, addressing the problems of fragmented and ineffective learning in traditional teaching modes and enhancing students' academic levels and developing their comprehensive abilities through structured classroom learning have become critical issues in educational reform. The holistic module learning model emerges in this context as the times dictate. It promotes the development of a systematic and holistic view of knowledge for all subjects by teachers and students. Students use major concepts to connect disparate knowledge, skills, and methods in order to develop a persistent and transferable understanding of knowledge and cognitive and noncognitive abilities. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a conceptual analysis of holistic module learning and to discuss its characteristics. The implementation strategies for this model are discussed, as well as the model's significance.

This paper reports a phenomenographic study exploring diverse understandings and experiences of teacher leadership among 12 members of the International Study of Teacher Leadership research team comprised of 20 academics located in 10 countries. Mind mapping and semi-structured, online interviews were used to explore the ways that the participants related with the phenomenon of interest: 'teacher leadership'. Phenomenographic analysis of interview artefacts revealed nine qualitatively different conceptions of teacher leadership in the study's outcome space across three broad domains: A: The school, school community and formal education system; B: The teacher leader's professional self; C: The broader historical, socio-political and global contexts of teacher leadership. In addition to providing a 'touchstone' for the team's ongoing research, these findings serve as an experiential framework for thinking about teacher leadership, potentially encouraging more inclusive, more complete and richer understandings of the phenomenon.

State policies regarding the internationalization of higher education (IHE) in China have undergone significant shifts between 1949 and 2019. This paper advances the proposition that these shifts in policies pertaining to IHE can be understood as part of a process of ongoing Chinese state formation in relation to national and global developments and does so by examining the history of IHE policy and policy changes between 1949 and 2019 to demonstrate this possibility. We consider three specific periods to make this case, including: (1) the period of Marxist-Leninist socialist nationalism, patriotism and proletarian internationalism and the early engagements of IHE (1949-1976); (2) neoliberal globalization and opening-up: a return to the international stage and further IHE (1977-2002); and finally (3) state developmentalism and the era of globally engaged higher education (HE) (2003-2019). In conclusion, the current implications of a neoliberal (capitalist) globalization are discussed in terms of real and potential implications for Chinese state formation, Chinese HE and society. The paper aims to investigate the historical underpinnings and formation of international HE in China and contribute to the significant gap in our current literature regarding IHE in China as a socio-historical phenomenon. It not only offers a detailed documentation of how policy on IHE has evolved and shifted in the context of significant changes in political and economic directions in China but also teases out influences of national concerns such as ideological and cultural considerations as well as neoliberal globalization.

This paper proposes "perceptual multilingualism" as a research interest within the broader folk linguistic enterprise. By drawing on the geolinguistic mapping tasks popular in perceptual dialectology -- whereby participants are asked to draw and depict dialectal diversity in a given region -- we show that perceptual multilingualism can elicit knowledge and reasoning in the community about linguistic diversity more broadly. To do this, we analysed and discussed 41 perceptual multilingualism maps produced by high school students in Hong Kong about societal multilingualism across the Hong Kong region. On the one hand, the maps allowed us to quantify which languages manifest in the youths' metalinguistic awareness and where. On the other hand, we positioned the maps as discourses to be compared and analysed through a critical social theoretical lens. Doing so revealed implicit and contested power relations as they manifested in epistemic claims in dialectic relation to broader sociopolitical narratives in Hong Kong. This included Hong Kong's contentious transition to governance by Beijing and the marginalisation of the blue-collar workforce. Beyond the empirical metalinguistic data, our paper shows that perceptual multilingualism can contribute to critical sociolinguistics by helping to reveal power relations, hegemonies and ideologies, and resistance.

China has undergone unprecedented changes since the Reform and Opening-up policy in 1978. Policy experimentation (PE) has been key in generating and catalysing reforms in the process. This study proposes a conceptual framework to describe the different pathways of PE-enabled reforms. Comparing two empirically informed case studies, this study demonstrates the functions of this policy tool plays within China's higher education policy-making and development: generative, rhetorical and regulatory. The paper argues that PE can be a genuinely productive mechanism for producing, identifying and negotiating new policy options while allowing the government to supervise and regulate institutional reform behaviours. However, under certain conditions, it assumes more of a symbolic role allowing the government to acquire or consolidate reform legitimacy without engaging substantial innovation. By highlighting those key roles of PE, this paper provides a distinctive perspective for understanding the policy-making and reform process in China's higher education development.

Purpose: Some studies have claimed that Chinese thinker Hu Shi (or Hu Shih) received and responded to John Dewey's educational ideas only at a theoretical level and did little for education at a practical level. This paper reexamines Hu's reception of Dewey's ideas with a focus on how he used those ideas to solve China's educational and social problems during the late 1910s and 1920s. Design/methodology/approach: This paper draws upon what Schriewer (2012) has called "theories of reception." Rather than focusing on the international dissemination of ideas and knowledge, this approach emphasizes the reception of foreign ideas from the perspective and needs of the receiver, interpreter and/or reader who apprehends such ideas within a particular socio-cultural context. Findings: This paper finds that Hu not only received -- and examined -- Dewey's educational ideas in a systematic way, but also used them pragmatically to reform China's systems of education as part of the New Culture Movement after 1919. Originality/value: This research offers a new understanding of Hu's reception of Dewey's educational ideas. It shows that Hu was not merely a "thinker" in the field of education but also a "doer" who sought to apply Dewey's ideas in practice. This new view allows us to reevaluate Hu's role in the modernization of Chinese education.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how "Si-shu," a traditional form of local, private education grounded in classical instruction, responded to the rapid modernization of education during the late Qing dynasty and early Republic of China and to explain why these schools, once extraordinarily adaptable, finally disappeared. Design/methodology/approach: The authors have examined both primary and secondary sources, including government reports, education yearbooks, professional annals, public archives, and published research to analyze the social, political and institutional changes that reshaped "Si-shu" in the context of China's late-19th- and early-20th-century educational modernization. Findings: "Si-shu" went through four stages of institutional change during the last century. First, they faced increased competition from new-style (westernized) schools during the late Qing dynasty. Second, they engaged in a process of intense self-reform, particularly after the Xinhai Revolution of 1911. Third, they were marginalized by the new educational systems of the Republic of China, especially the "Renxu School System" of 1922 and the "Wuchen School System" of 1928. Finally, after the foundation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, they were considered remnants of feudal culture and forcibly replaced by modern schools. Originality/value: This paper brings hitherto unexplored Chinese sources to an English-speaking audience in an effort to shed new light on the history of traditional Chinese education. The fate of "Si-shu" was part of the larger modernization of Chinese education -- a development that had both advantages and disadvantages.

Education, as one of the forms of human capital investment, especially in developing countries, is considered an important way for families to get rid of generational poverty. The contradictory "poverty caused by education" is an education problem in the new era. It is a social phenomenon in which family members (children) receive education and cause family economic poverty. Based on the connotation of "poverty caused by education," this paper analyzed its formation mechanism from the three levels of society, family, and school and tried to give some suggestions to reduce the risk of "poverty caused by education effectively."

Since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, there have been various discussions concerning educational equity in the different stages of education development. This paper focuses on the history and current situation of educational equity research in China. It examines the changes in the discourse on Chinese educational equity research in the Mao and post Mao era. In effect, academic research on educational equity was almost not-existent in the Mao era. At that time, the practice of educational equity was government-led and deeply affected by political ideology. In the post-Mao era, especially since the 1990s, research into educational equity has rapidly developed. Western academic discourses were considered and adapted to the context of China. This paper argues that the dominant discourse of Chinese educational equity research has changed as China's historical, economic and political contexts changed.

This paper attempts to compare interactions between social changes and the integration of nationalism and multiculturalism in the context of music education by focusing on the ways in which the governmental politics of mainland China and the United States have managed nationalism and diversity in school music education. This paper also explores the ways in which music education, in response to different sociopolitical contexts, relates to the teaching of both musical and non-musical meanings in the dual context of nationalism and multiculturalism, and discusses some of the challenges facing music education in music classrooms today in these two nations. This paper argues that the interplay of tensions in the current wave of nationalism and multiculturalism seen in both mainland China and the United States show the enduring nature of state ideologies in a dynamic, contentious process of social construction.

This paper examines the challenges and possibilities facing democratic citizenship education in China. It starts by taking on the increasing political repression under Xi's regime and how it is marginalizing or silencing democratic discourses. Then it examines the rising economically-driven populist nationalism in China, and how it complicates the democratic pursuit. Next, the paper looks into the dominant Chinese cultural tradition, Confucianism, its antidemocratic tendencies and alliance with authoritarian forces. The paper concludes with a discussion of potential ways to combat the roadblocks and resistances to democratization. It emphasizes a more nuanced understanding of both China's historical trajectories and present aspirations, seeking possibilities for democratic breakthrough. It also proposes educational and curricular reform, deconstructing official moral education and introducing cultivation in civic virtues, for example, to promote democratic citizenship.

In recent years, alternative teacher preparation programmes are globally emerging to address teacher quality in 'hard-to-staff' schools. These programmes commonly attract graduates from prestigious universities to teach in disadvantaged schools for two years. One programme of this kind in China is the 'Exceptional Graduates as Rural Teachers' (EGRT). In this paper, we repurpose Bourdieu's sociology to understand the power shift and social change through EGRT fellows' position-(re)takings in subjective and objective crisis during their EGRT service term. Interviews with 16 EGRT participants reveal two themes: (1) In the initial stage of EGRT service, contemptuous habitus navigated EGRT fellows to a position of assumed privilege and misrecognised the arbitrary value of educational capital; (2) Over the EGRT service term, position-retaking gradually came to the fore. EGRT fellows learned to recognise a range of rural teachers' attributes termed as 'localised pedagogical capital'. We conclude the paper with some recommendations for EGRT to transform both EGRT fellows and local teachers into reflexive sociological workers. These recommendations have important implications for a long overdue response to the urban-oriented rural education.

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) have been recognized as a promising infrastructure for teacher professional development and student achievement. There has been increasing research interest in PLCs outside mainstream Western contexts. Based on literature and documentary analysis, this paper outlines the historical development of PLCs in mainland China over the past seven decades. It further analyses the continuities and changes in the development of PLCs in mainland China since its establishment. The main changes identified include increased administrative duties, a shift in the orientation of collective work, and increased integration with other professional development efforts, though PLCs in China remain a top-down teacher collaboration strategy for their professional development. Lessons from the development experiences of China highlighted in this paper enrich the global discussion of PLC implementation for promoting teacher professional development across different educational systems.

Slogan has a sound mass base in China for thousands of years, functioning as guidelines for civic practice. Even today, Chinese slogans are often employed by the government to promote policies and socio-cultural values. This paper, adopting an ecolinguistic approach, explores the development of Chinese slogans during the four economic stages since the foundation of PRC (People's Republic of China) to find out how slogans influence the relationship between men, and man and the ecosystem. It is discovered that Chinese slogans in the recent decades have experienced great changes in terms of discourse type, the beneficial degree of discourse and the ecosophy they carry. They changed gradually from destructive discourse to harmonious discourse and they reflect the transition of Chinese ecological philosophy--from 'anthropocentrism', 'growthism', and 'classism' to 'harmonism'. It is hoped that this study can shed light on the eco-discourse analysis to policy language and will bring insight into its future creation.

This paper examines China's civic education discourses from a historical and cross-cultural perspective. It unpacks "observation" as a political--cultural--spatial pedagogy, underpinning Confucius' educational envisioning, Mao's domination in the Cultural Revolution Movement, and Xi's "China/ese Dream" propaganda. Drawing upon Foucault's provocation of the Western "gaze," this paper historicizes Confucius, Mao, and Xi's discourses to explicate a Chinese "observation" diagram. With Confucius, observation works as an onto-hermeneutic principle, grounding China's cosmology and sovereign-subject governance. With Mao, "observation" becomes a panoramic domination-surveillance mechanism, which, coupled with a Confucian punitive shame, empowers the proletarian mass in excluding-purging the bourgeois as class enemies. With Xi, "observation" turns into a symbolic governing technology of self, subjecting its citizenry to re-branded Confucian values toward realizing a participatory China/ese Dream. In so doing, this paper shows the parallels and contradistinctions between the Chinese "observation" and the Western gaze in historically and structurally ordering knowledge production and social-educational governance.

International student education in China has been continuously changing in response to the rapid social transition since the People's Republic of China was established in 1949. Adopting a historical perspective, this scholarly paper begins with an analysis of characteristics of international student education in China in terms of rationales, role of government, and international students. Several challenges are then identified and this paper concludes with observations on future trends of international student education development, with a special focus on the implications of "the Belt and Road." This paper contributes to a better understanding of China's role as an emerging host nation of international students.

Public engagement is recognised as having an increasingly important role in the changing landscape of higher education in the United Kingdom (UK), and is promoted as a 'pathway to impact' by many higher education funding bodies. However, there is limited evidence to support the outreach and impact gained by higher education institutes that undertake international public engagement activities. Similarly, little is known about higher education staff and student's experiences of participating in such public engagement activities. This study focusses on a Global Festival of Learning (GFoL) in delivering public engagement on an international stage through an integrated approach involving the fusion of education, research, and professional practice, and the perceived impact on staff and students. This paper proposes an adaptive model for public engagement founded on five strategic public engagement areas that can be transferred to other higher education institutes with an interest in developing their international outreach and impact.

Social support not only plays an important role in the physical and mental health of the elderly people but also constitutes an essential resource for healthy ageing. With the rapid economic and social development during the last 40 years in China, the acceleration of urbanisation, and the disintegration of traditional extended families, the social support that Chinese older adults receive may be declining, leading to deterioration in quality of life for the rapidly ageing population. Cross-temporal meta-analysis was employed to investigate changes in older Chinese adults' social support from 1994 to 2018. One hundred and thirty-six studies (N = 82,722; age ≥ 60) that used the social support rating scale (SSRS) were analysed. Additionally, social support scores were correlated with social indicators to explore the relationship between social support and the environment of social development. Results show that social support scores decreased by 5.09 and 0.73 standard deviations over the past 24 years. Correlation with social indicators suggests that a decrease in social connectedness and an increase in economic imbalance may be responsible for the reduction in social support., (© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

A revival of Confucianism in post-Mao China helped the government legitimate its power in the face of a new socio-political and economic situation. This paper specifically explores the role of Confucian self-cultivation in China's governance. Drawing on Beetham's theory of legitimation of power and Weber's tri-typology of authority, we argue that self-cultivation, appealing to ingrained cultural values and traditions, fulfils the criteria of legitimation of power through two principles, namely, differentiation and community interest. In the context of "suzhi" education (education for quality) and China's national university entrance exam ("gaokao"), we interrogate tensions and paradoxes between the need for a presentation of modern and liberal authority and the CCP's one-party rule. The paper illustrates the complexity of China's authoritarianism and the intricacies and intrinsic relevance of self-cultivation in current practice.

Education policy has been undergoing great transformation in China since the initiation of economic reforms and the open-door policy in the late 1970s. These market-oriented reforms and the pursuit of rapid economic growth in a globalized economy have significantly impacted China's education policy and development. In line with the development of the market-oriented economy and its increasing integration with the global market, a more pragmatic perception of education has gradually taken shape in the post-Mao era, resulting in the decentralization and marketization of education in China. This article aims to examine the development of Chinese education policy in the context of decentralization and marketization since the start of the economic reforms. It will firstly make a brief contrast between the education policies before and after the economic reforms. Then, the decentralization and marketization in the field of education since the initiation of the economic reforms will be examined. What follows is an assessment of the impacts that marketization and decentralization had on education policy. This paper argues that the weakening role of the state in education provision and the disparity between rural and urban areas are key issues facing China's education policy following the economic reforms and the open-door policy. It concludes by suggesting that equal and balanced development in education in China entails bringing the state back into the education sector. (Contains 6 tables.)

The policy and practice of school education in mainland China have changed in response to the political and economic reformations and opening-up of the late 1970s. This paper argues that, despite the introduction and emphasis on popular culture in some areas of school education, traditional Chinese culture and values continue to consolidate the authority of the State. The paper first establishes a framework for the analysis of popular culture in education. Secondly, it enquires into the policy of incorporating popular culture in education and educational reform, in accordance with current social changes in China. Thirdly, the paper analyses three pairs of social and political relationships that shape education and cultural identity in the school curriculum: (a) between collectivist Communist education and individualist popular culture; (b) between the education of Chinese traditions and virtues on the one hand, and popular culture on the other; and (c) between schools' and teachers' attitudes toward popular culture, and students' reactions to classroom learning. The paper concludes with a discussion of the contentious political issues surrounding the integration of popular culture in education.

This article examines the comprehensive and participatory component of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's (SCO) approach to the fight against the "Three Evil Forces" within the theoretical framework of smart counterterrorism. After analyzing the problematic definitions of the concepts of terrorism and extremism, the authors choose to focus on the non-coercive preventive pillar of the SCO's counterterrorism strategy through the prism of youth education. The emphasis is placed on the strikingly similar practices of SCO Member States in this field, whereby state and non-state actors foster partnerships to conduct cultural activities promoting the same values of patriotism, civic identity, interethnic and interfaith dialogue as a counter-ideology to the dissemination of radical ideas among the youth. The experience of SCO Member States in implementing inclusive counterterrorism programs serves as a basis for the evolution of SCO's soft diplomacy, which has very recently entered a new phase in its development, following the first SCO Youth Assembly and Uzbekistan's decision to support the SCO Youth Council. In this paper, the youth is analyzed as the primary target and actor of the SCO's preventive counterterrorism efforts.

This paper examines whether Hong Kong teachers and students perceived Liberal Studies and its ongoing curriculum review as politically driven during and after the Umbrella Movement, a large-scale civil disobedience campaign that took place in September 2014. The findings presented herein show that both groups disagreed with the claim that Liberal Studies was used as a political instrument to instigate students' participation in the protest movement. Moreover, they also reveal that teachers have maintained their neutrality towards controversial issues related to politics during Liberal Studies lessons. Whilst the participating teachers and students considered the government's proposed reform of Liberal Studies to be politically motivated, they held differing attitudes towards the addition of more China-related elements to the subject. On the basis of these results, this paper analyses the potential role of Liberal Studies in the democratisation of local society. It also provides an indication of the curriculum's dynamic nature, explanation of students' resistance to the review policy and suggestions for the subject's future development.

This paper analyzes dialogues between insurance sales agents and their clients in transformational rural China from the perspective of interactive frames, footings and discourse identities. Through the analysis of three types of talk, namely, friendship talk, institutional talk and task-oriented talk, the ambiguous and conflicting identities that both agents and clients adopt in the conversations are captured and described. It then describes and analyzes the dynamics of the mobilization and strategic management of relative identities that both parties assume and employ in order to resolve conflicts, justify oneself and resume control. The analysis further probes into the transforming nature of the modern Chinese rural society, where old and traditional value systems have, to a large extent, been shattered, while new value systems are yet to be established.

Recent research has focused either on the internationalisation of China's higher education (HE) as soft power, or on soft power with 'Chinese characteristics'. There is a paucity of research combining these two foci. This paper fills this gap by: (i) unravelling the meanings and features of the 'Chinese characteristics' embodied in the policies of President Xi Jinping's new regime that seeks to rejuvenate the 'civilisational state' through internationalising HE as soft power; (ii) analysing the implications and complications therein; and (iii) exploring the predicaments and paradoxes as China seeks to construct a Sino-centric world order alongside, if not atop, the Westphalian system. It demonstrates how the internationalisation of HE as soft power with 'Chinese characteristics': finds its legitimacy in a historico-cultural narrative; rides on the tide of the current global norms/practices; builds on national agenda/priorities; and is running into conflict with the West which is pursuing its own similar interests.

The State-level New Area is an emerging type of regional space produced by the national strategy of Regional Coordinated Development in China. It is not a fixed material entity nested in the practice of spatial production, but contains multiple scales of dynamic changes. Therefore, from the multi-dimensional connotations of scale, this paper discusses the internal logic and institutional shaping of political construction of scale. It is suggested that the State-level New Area has the geographic scale characteristics of vast and cross-regional area, the administrative scale characteristics of testability and recursion, and the power scale characteristics of flexibility and flattening. Finally, this paper highlighted that the 'rigid' political scale represented by the State-level New Area can directly promote the rise of city-regions, and can establish a new type of 'central-local' governance relationship. Thus, it is of great significance for China's social and economic transformation and regional governance innovation to make good use of the 'rigid' scale tool of the State-level New Area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the changing presentation of teachers in the post-Mao era. The image of teachers was almost sacred in traditional Confucian society until Mao Zedong launched China's Cultural Revolution in 1966, when children were encouraged to use the pretext of class struggle to critique and even to attack their teachers. As such, restoring the high status of teachers in children's literature became the first step in fighting against Maoist radicalism after his death in 1976. Since then, the internal logic of the development of literature has been shaped by the social movement of Openness and Reform and nurtured by a return of realist aesthetics. Meanwhile, Chinese society has also been changing rapidly, and so has the portrayal of teachers in stories for the young, which has become more diversified. Analysis of these changing images offers us an insight into China's education system, as well as the use of Chinese children's literature as a didactic tool for moral education.

This case study investigates how a cohort of Myanmar ethnic minority students' language ideologies shape their Putonghua learning and educational trajectories at government schools and Chinese supplementary schools in the borderland next to China. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and from the participants' autobiographies on their language learning experiences. The findings indicate that Myanmar ethnic minority students are often linguistically and culturally excluded in government schools because of their lack of proficiency in the Burmese language. Yet having access to Putonghua and other Chinese-related resources provides them with an agentive strategy and capital to reposition themselves from being a disadvantaged ethnic minority group in a peripheral region to moving towards full inclusion and empowerment as part of China. The paper highlights the multiplicity and contested nature of language ideologies that mediate between learners' language practices and social structures during socio-economic transformations. It also sheds light on Myanmar's language policy-making and the expansion of China's soft power through the increasing capital of Putonghua in the borderland of neighbouring countries.

This paper investigates the transformation in the Zhou dynasty China (1046-256 BC) of the concept of education in relation to the process of social selection, which concerns the distribution both of knowledge and of social ranks. An approach in terms of historical semantics, mainly influenced by Luhmannian sociological theory with some reference to Koselleck, will place the focus on social change and the changing meaning of concepts. The analysed sources include archaeological evidence and passages from traditional classics. The paper will show how the semantics of education were closely tied to the changing principles of social selection and the changing Chinese cultural concept of "Tian" (Heaven).

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.

The issue of education and democracy has become more and more important in China. This paper firstly explains the theory of democracy in Chinese classrooms, and then focuses on the Chinese banzhuren who is responsible for classrooming, an important educational area equal to instruction. We illustrate how Chinese students achieve development through classrooming, and show the activities, relationships and self-awareness from the perspective of developing the individual and community democratically. Finally, this paper discusses a new direction of democracy in Chinese classrooms in the global context, with the view of making education and society better.

The primary goal of this paper is to examine what makes Chinese college students dissatisfied with entrance opportunities for higher education. Based on the author's survey data, we test two parameters which could be a potential cause of this dissatisfaction: 1) distributive inequality, which emphasizes the individual's dissatisfaction caused by unequal quota distribution; and 2) relative deprivation, which emphasizes the individual's dissatisfaction caused by social comparison relative to a reference group. Results show that relative deprivation has a significant effect on individual's dissatisfaction compared to unequal quota distribution. As a conclusion, college students' dissatisfaction was caused by the fact that they realized they could not get a fair distribution comparison to their reference groups. Individual subjective valuation gradually becomes an important standard of judging educational inequality, that makes educational inequality more complex to be resolved. Considering the ingrained household registration system and admission policy, we propose that individual's relative deprivation will probably persist or even worsen during the period of social transition.

School history textbooks have typically served to reinforce a sense of national identity and national belonging, often through constructing or reinforcing a distinction between the national "self" and foreign "others". What have often been overlooked in history textbook researches is how ethnic minorities have been portrayed to incorporate them into a multi-ethnic vision of nationality. This paper investigates this issue through comparing the portrayal of minority ethnic groups in two successive editions of China's most widely used secondary-level history textbooks, published in the 1990s and 2000s. We analyse these changes in the context of broader political and ideological shifts, while also considering the agency of the key editors involved in producing these texts. We find that, rather than exhibiting a steady progression towards greater inclusivity and a more "multi-ethnic" vision of Chineseness, these editions evince a movement away from the latter and back towards a more Han-centric narrative of the national past. We argue that, while shifts in the editorial personnel involved may have contributed to this, a more fundamental factor is the shifting emphasis in ideological or "thought" education in the post-1989 period away from orthodox socialism and towards an increasingly strident and ethnocentric form of patriotism.

By extracting information from various original materials and using geography departments, curricula, and faculty as indicators, this paper contributes to the discussion of the development of geography in higher education in China from 1904 to 1949. Four mutual connections are outlined. First, the development of geography in higher education is inextricably linked to social and political changes. Second, geography in higher education during the period concerned progressed in fits and starts, which affected its distribution. Third, geography departments were split into two categories according to the type of higher educational institution, which created differences in the tasks, curricula, and faculty of these departments. Fourth, faculty were trained in both domestic and foreign universities, and Western universities made an obvious contribution to the growth of qualified academic faculty. Simultaneously, universities where qualified academic faculty were trained were centralized both in domestic and foreign aspects. The special role of geographers returning from overseas study, the particularity of geography in higher education in China, and the connection between Chinese and foreign geography are also discussed in terms of geography departments, curricula, and faculty.

By far, literature regarding Chinese early childhood education and care (ECEC) has primarily focused on Youeryuan in urban settings. Youeryuan is the everyday Chinese term used for ECEC programs serving children ages three to six, which does include the U.S. version of the kindergarten year. This paper will refer to Youeryuan rather than the Western definitions of preschool or kindergarten so as to maintain authenticity. Furthermore, this paper will focus on the history and development of rural Youeryuan based on a qualitative study of the government-owned, privately operated Youeryuan that represent the current reform initiatives in early childhood in China. Through teacher and administrator interviews, onsite observations using ECERS-R, and school documents, the lead author immersed herself in rural Youeryuan as part of a larger ethnographic study in China in the midst of economic and educational transformations. The findings of this study revealed themes related to increased government investment, improved school policies, the lack of instructional materials, curriculum and instruction issues, local government support for professional development, administrative support for instruction, and the need for mentoring for teachers. (Contains 1 table.)

This paper tackles the issue of education as the process of person-making and attempts to redefine the ideal and unique Chinese person--the Chinese soul--based on a civilizational dialogue and synthesis that would transform modern education and enable education to play a central role in "redeeming modernity" and revitalizing Chinese civilization. The paper briefly analyzes the historical efforts, and failures, to reform the Chinese soul and argues that the 150-year effort to revitalize Chinese culture and transform the Chinese people by way of adopting certain aspects of Western civilization has mostly failed because a sufficiently coherent and meaningful synthesis of the two civilizations was lacking.

Following calls for further research in education inequality beyond input and output measures, especially with a qualitative approach, and building on the implications of capability deprivation on equality (Unterhalter, 2003a,b), we extend the findings of Sen's (1979, 1990, 1992, 2000) capability approach to higher education (HE). This article employs social exclusion theory as the analytical framework to examine educational inequalities in China posed by the HE admission system in Post-Mao era. This paper is driven by certain key motivations and makes a significant contribution to the extant literature. Firstly, the paper seeks to outline a usable definition of social exclusion in the context of HE enrolment. Following this, Sen's (1979, 1990, 1992, 2000) capability approach is adopted for the first time as a theoretical construct to examine the situation facing HE in China. Sen's approach facilitates an appraisal of the process of exclusion in HE enrolment. The importance of the capability approach is that it allows one to recognize different needs and choices confronting different social groups by distinguishing between different types of social exclusion in this area. Finally, this information is used to evaluate responses which are available to the existing issues within the current Chinese HE enrolment mechanism i.e. that the mechanism is fundamentally flawed and risks reducing, rather than enhancing, capability by excluding certain groups of students from fair competition in terms of access.

Teachers in China are regarded as vulnerable to sociopolitical changes. This paper, however, focuses on the resilience and innovativeness of state-selected expert teachers--the recipients of the Special Rank Teacher (SRT) award. This award was the product of a transitional period in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, and was an act of rehabilitation for the teaching profession. Using a biographical approach, this paper analyses how the intentions of the award were reflected in the choice of recipients. It contributes to a deeper understanding of teachers in China and the notion of teaching excellence that the state-recognised teachers exemplify. (Contains 2 tables and 66 footnotes.)

After Deng Xiaoping's 1978 reform and opening, foreigners had a chance to see adult education in China. As a result, many met Yao Zhongda, Chief of the Bureau of Workers' and Peasants Education. From 1921 onwards, adult education has been a vital corollary of Communist revolution. Although Yao's biography was extremely relevant to what foreigners saw, few knew much about their host. Yao made enthusiastic responses to Roby Kidd's efforts to "open" China to the Toronto-based International Council of Adult Education. By 2013, he was 88 years old. The primary purpose of this paper was to capture his biography and reflect on what it means for 21st century China. A secondary purpose was to alert Beijing scholars to the importance of this key actor in the colourful drama of globalization and adult education in China.

In order to analyze the impact of human capital theory on contemporary Chinese education, this paper first draws a conceptual outline of how this theory was introduced and interpreted to suit the Chinese quest for modernization. The study then adopts a comparative historical approach to the points of similarity between Neo-Confucian educational ideas and those of British humanism in an earlier transitional period that has some parallels. The aim of this comparison is to connect the ideas of Neo-Confucians and humanist educators to Ronald Dore's concept of the role of education and his insights on the diploma disease. Within this core framework, this paper exposes the problems that have come from a melding of the examination tradition and the notion of human capital. It suggests that a revival of another aspect of Chinese tradition--education for fostering one's humanity--may help balance contemporary Chinese education and restore it to health.