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Chinese sayings within the context of transnational education have not been extensively explored within higher education. In this qualitative study, which utilized semi-structured interviews, data were collected from 24 participants to explore their transnational study experience. Chinese sayings, framed within a rich Confucian history, provide a culturally appropriate way for participants to understand their transnational learning experience. By using Chinese sayings and metaphors, the participants found meaning in their transnational education experience for personal growth and to strengthen their communities. The article provides a discussion of implications for higher education contexts and recommendations.

Chinese has a rich and diverse vocabulary of terms, especially verbs, expressing power relationships. This paper selected 25 power relationship terms from the Chinese Proficiency Scale for International Chinese Education, and used a true-false format to test the differences in acquisition between international students from Confucian cultural circles and those from non-Confucian cultural circles. The study found that: (1) The acquisition levels of both groups are generally behind that of ordinary vocabulary; (2) There is a significant difference in the acquisition levels between the two groups, with the former performing better than the latter; and (3) There is a significant difference in the acquisition of these terms in administrative and family settings between the two groups, with the former performing better than the latter, but there is no significant difference in the acquisition of terms in other settings such as education. In response to these findings, the paper used interview data to provide mutual confirmation, and applied theories related to learning input, language transfer, and cultural circles to analyze and interpret the results. Finally, the paper made targeted suggestions for the teaching of power relationship terms.

While enjoying the respect and prestige in some countries, in others, despite being a significant educational sector, vocational education continues to suffer from low status and negative societal sentiments. Vocational education in China has been positioned at the bottom of the educational hierarchy, absorbing the 'left-over' students with 'less good' academic records. Addressing the research gap concerning the limited philosophical discourses about the academic/vocational divide from non-Western traditions, this paper seeks to explore the philosophical and historical heritage of the academic/vocational divide and how Confucianism may contribute to this divide and shaped the hierarchy of work in China. The Confucian literati, as 'the privileged other', determined the social rank of 'those who labour with their strength' and 'those who labour with their minds' through the Imperial Examination System. By using institutional logics theory, the paper explores how the legacy of these views may have negatively impacted on the standing of occupations and vocational education in contemporary Chinese society and argues that an alternative philosophical orientation is needed to counter the long-standing consequences for vocational education.

This paper examines the relationship between the concepts of humility and competition in Confucianism and Daoism, and discusses their relevance to contemporary education. It argues that while both philosophical traditions value humility and caution against excessive competition, they do not outrightly reject competition; instead, they advocate for a harmonious balance between humility and competition through yielding (rang) and showing reverence (gong) or acting through non-action (wei-wu-wei) to resolve conflicts and promote healthy competition. The insights gleaned from this exploration carry significant implications for the moral development and mental well-being of students, particularly in the context of high-stakes testing cultures in China and other countries. They also offer valuable support in nurturing students' qualities such as openness to learning, humble leadership, and appreciation of diversity and multiculturalism essential for success in a diverse and interconnected world.

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.

Informed by emergent learning theories and multiple evidenced benefits, cooperative learning has developed into a widely accepted organization mode of class in the Western context. For the same reason, cooperative learning is transferred, during the past decade, into classrooms of Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC) contexts. Concerns, however, are raised regarding the effectiveness of the transfer, for contextual factors have long been acknowledged as a powerful barrier to borrowed initiatives, especially those that are not compatible with the deep-rooted cultural values in the situated contexts. This paper is built on Thanh-Pham's (2014) review of literature, which is on the impact of cooperative learning on the CHC students' learning achievements and conducted during 1990 to 2006. This paper has expanded Thanh-Pham (2014) with a similar review on available literatures, which were published from 2007 up to 2016. This review of 39 publications shows up noticeable changes regarding the impact of cooperative learning in the CHC contexts. Specifically, the positive findings have risen from 47.2% to 86.9%, whereas negative and null change studies fall considerably. Influencing factors are analyzed via SPSS22.0 Software and verified with exemplars. Reasons for these changes point to the changing context and adaptive agency.

Although much has been discussed about the use of reading aloud (RA) outside China, it has been one of the least investigated learning/teaching behaviours in ELT in China. The paper reports the results of a series of semi-structured interviews, in which learners and teachers were invited to identify the reasons and problems in the use of RA in their learning and teaching practice. The identified reasons and problems are considered in the discourse of linguistic, cultural-historical and educational contexts in China. The study reveals that the use of RA in ELT in China is not congruent with the recent development trend of research on RA in the literature. The paper argues that foreign language policy and practice decisions in China should be more guided and informed by robust research results than cultural conservatism encouraged by increasingly inflated national pride.

In contrast to the continued decline of liberal arts education in the US, there has been a revived interest in liberal arts education in Asian countries in recent years. Grounded in a comprehensive understanding of the central tenets of liberal arts education in the West, this paper looks into the struggles Asian countries face in their exploration of liberal arts education and provides a direction for Asian countries in their efforts to practice liberal arts education. This paper establishes the deep connections between humanistic approaches of the Confucian tradition and liberal arts education by pointing to a common ground for the education of humanity. Ultimately, the purpose of liberal arts education, in the East as well as in the West, should be the liberation of human beings from the constraints of ignorance, prejudice and traditional customs and through the cultivation of a cosmopolitan morality that emphasizes unity, solidarity and the fusion of humankind. Chinese universities should contemplate the purpose and value of higher education in the 21st century and tap into the rich resources of Confucianism in order to give its liberal arts education a "soul."

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.

This article seeks to clarify the purpose of high-stakes exam and its relationship with teaching and learning by elucidating the educational thought of the eminent neo-Confucian thinker Zhu Xi. The paper contends that Zhu Xi views standardised testing as an essential means to evaluate the learning outcomes, honour exemplary scholars and select suitable persons for official positions. But he rejects exam-centred teaching and learning that promote rote-memorisation and neglect self-cultivation and self-transformation. The paper further delineates Zhu Xi's broad-based and integrated educational programme that is aimed at learning for the sake of one's self through experiential learning, personal inquiry and mindful reading. The essay concludes by highlighting the contemporary implications of Zhu Xi's ideas: they inform the ongoing debates on the usefulness and impacts of high-stakes exam by situating standardised testing within a larger educational agenda that is geared towards self-improvement and personal transformation.

As an imprint of Confucian culture, China's education intersects state governance in making and governing educational subjects as 'talent', an official translation of the Chinese term 'rencai' (literally, human-talent). Whereas the English word 'talent' itself denotes '[people with] natural aptitude or skill', 'talent' is currently mobilized in China not only as a globalized discourse that speaks to the most aspired educational subjects for the 21st century but also as a re-invoked cultural notion that relates to Confucian wisdom. Drawing upon Foucault's biopower hypothesis and Confucian thought, this paper leverages upon China's unique manipulation of 'talent' as certain skills and human subjects, both cultivable through education, to problematize China's talent making and governing in two dimensions. First, it unpacks the various technologies of power entangled in China's talent making and governing within its 'state governance' paradigm. Second, it unpacks Confucian thought as an archaeological prototype for China's present talent appeal, meanwhile explicating their divergences in defining 'human', 'talent', and the human-talent interpellation. In so doing, this paper makes two arguments. First, the linguistic notion of 'talent' functions as a Foucauldian apparatus of biopower, making (up) new kinds of people and normalizing a certain population as the objective/object of China's state governance. Second, CPC's re-invocation of Confucian talent discourses is more of a rhetorical strategy than an authentic cultural renaissance gesture.

There is increasing evidence of the fusion of Western and Eastern early childhood philosophies and programmes within China. Although research has paid attention to this change, less attention has been directed to how culturally different beliefs and practices are experienced by children and teachers. This paper reports on a study of play-based practices in the context of the "Guidelines for Early Childhood Education (Trial Version)" in mainland China. Sixteen teachers from 6 rural preschools in Shaanxi province were interviewed about their play and learning practices and 205 children were observed participating in these teachers' play-based programmes. Thirty hours of digital video observations, 989 photos, 252 children's drawings, and 20 h of focus group interviews were gathered and analysed. The study found that whilst teachers struggled against the effect of Western individualist maturational views of play, the children demonstrated high levels of self-regulation in group oriented play. In the context of Confucian values, new forms of expressions of play were found suggesting new directions for early childhood education.

This paper investigates the strategies of governance in the language policy "Chanting the Chinese Classics" (CCC) as deployed by State authorities, schools, and local communities. It highlights the strategy of 'viewing' as a nexus between language policy processes and traditional Chinese governing philosophy. To examine the connections between macro-level language policy and local educational and communicative processes, an ethnography of language policy was conducted at a weekend community school. We argue that language policy governance in Chinese language policy implementation mirrors Confucian philosophy. To further this strategy, State authorities organize nationally televised events at which school children compete in chanting competitions, which serve as exemplars for educators, parents, and students, who are encouraged to memorize vast quantities of classic Chinese literature. Results reveal that the appropriation of the CCC policy by teachers and parents encourages self-government and aligns with language policy ideology. While the CCC policy effectively encourages thousands of children to memorize Chinese Classics, it simultaneously promotes cultural confidence and nationalism.

This article deals with the reality and complexity of emergent translanguaging in foreign language classrooms. The influx of international learners of Chinese has resulted in linguistically diverse classrooms, posing huge challenges to the monolingual teaching approach that prevails in most Chinese language classrooms. This paper explores what students and teachers think and do about translanguaging practices in beginners' classes in China's universities. A questionnaire survey of 201 students showed that over half of the sample population was inclined to a multilingual form of instruction, where they could draw on their linguistic resources for meaning negotiation. Results from semi-structured interviews with teachers revealed ambivalent attitudes towards classroom language choice. While some teachers found it difficult to accommodate multilingualism, others embraced this idea and have developed a translanguaging pedagogy. Lastly, classroom observation demonstrated translanguaging as a co-constructed dialogic approach, initiated by both teachers and students to keep the class communicative within the Confucius learning culture. This paper ends by offering suggestions for foreign language teachers to renew their knowledge on language learning as well as develop transformative student-teacher relationships in order to facilitate more creative pedagogy in foreign language education.

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.

In international educational studies, cultural context matters and demands increased attention by educational researchers worldwide. Along with a globalized discourse, how to map historical-cultural understandings of teaching and learning without getting bogged down in modern Westernized epistemology has become a paradigmatic dilemma. This paper argues a Heideggerian-Foucauldian language perspective can provide a way to address this dilemma. As an example, the paper demonstrates how their language perspective has enabled the author to "encounter" a 'wind-education' discourse in China's current schooling, and to explore, as the originary (re)source of the whole Confucian educational culture, Confucius' 'wind-pedagogy' as expressed in "Yijing". This unique historical-cultural 'wind-education' discourse is salient, yet goes unnoticed, in China's current schooling largely due to a planetary signifier-signified style of reasoning. This paper sheds new light on educational literature on Confucian educational thinking and provides an alternative paradigm to the (cross-)cultural studies of education in China and beyond.

The paper begins with a brief vignette of Angkor Wat in Cambodia as a great center of learning, and then highlights the traditions of Indian monastic institutions which had deeply influenced its development. It then turns the main features of the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, showing how they created a space for women's scholarship to flourish. The next section focuses on the development of shuyuan or academies in China that arose out of the patterns of Buddhist monasteries, demonstrating another aspect of their progressive influence. Throughout the paper comparisons are made with the European university tradition, and the conclusion considers the gifts these learning traditions could bring to the global research university.

Ecological sustainability can be considered the primary goal of higher education development, as it provides an ontological way to think about what it means for higher education's long-term development. Given the widespread concern of ecological sustainability, it's urgent to interpret and deconstruct ecological sustainability in Chinese higher education from indigenous and original perspectives. By drawing on the wisdom from Chinese ancient education philosophy which provides unique enlightenment for ecological sustainability, this paper discusses the harmonization of ecological sustainability and higher education development. In the light of the connotation of contemporary ecological sustainability and the new development of Chinese higher education, the paper also constructs a dynamic model of ecologically sustainable development in Chinese higher education. The aim is to initiate more philosophical dialogues between ancient and modern education, and to provide a new way of conceptualizing Chinese ancient education philosophy in the postmodern times.

This Forum article addresses some of the issues raised in the article by Ying-Syuan Huang and Anila Asghar's paper entitled: "Science education reform in Confucian learning cultures: teachers' perspectives on policy and practice in Taiwan." An attempt is made to highlight the need for a more nuanced approach in considering the Confucian education tradition and its compatibility with education reforms. In particular, the article discusses issues concerning the historical development of the Confucian education tradition, challenges in reform implementation that are in reality tradition-independent, as well as opportunities and points of convergence that the Confucian education tradition presents that can in fact be favorable to implementation of reform-based pedagogies. [For "Science Education Reform in Confucian Learning Cultures: Teachers' Perspectives on Policy and Practice in Taiwan," see EJ1173394.]

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.

Based on data from China's A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2017, this paper examines the influence of the contemporary values of Confucianism, namely benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and fidelity on the effectiveness of internal control. It indicates a significant positive correlation between the contemporary values of Confucianism and the effectiveness of internal control. Furthermore, this positive influence is noticeable in family-owned businesses but is unobserved in foreign-invested enterprises in China. In addition, the contemporary values of Confucianism enhance internal control quality through two pathways: promotion incentives and corporate reputation. In regions with lower degrees of openness, lower levels of rule of law and slower marketization, or in companies facing operational crises, the contemporary values of Confucianism have a more pronounced effect on enhancing the effectiveness of internal control. The contemporary values of Confucianism have strengthened the ability of internal control to decrease agency costs and mitigate the negative influence of internal control on risk-taking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Confucius has been eminent throughout histories in terms of his profound educational concepts. In this paper the author attempts to investigate the contributions Confucius had made in promoting the popularization of education at that time. The ultimate goal of this paper is to demonstrate the realistic significance of Confucius' educational concept, namely, "education should be done without the difference between the rich and the poor, or the noble and the mean". (Contains 2 footnotes.)

This paper examines the utility of Campbell's narrative construction of 'the hero's journey' as a conceptual apparatus to understand how international students from Confucian heritage cultures navigate their experiences in Western schooling systems like Australia. The hero's journey framework was used to investigate the commonalities and differences in international students' beliefs and behaviours, which led to the development of three different students 'hero' models: the self-determined hero, the hesitant hero, and the wounded hero. These models were used to represent the students' beliefs, behaviours and perceptions of support and to describe the experiences and motivations of students in different contexts during their secondary schooling in Australia. The hero's journey provides a potentially useful framework from which to engage schools, systems, and policymakers in productive dialogue regarding the support and engagement of international students.

To achieve a successful policy transfer from one country to another, knowledge is required about the framework conditions of the country to which the policy is transferred. An important framework condition to consider is cultural context. Therefore, this paper uses a combination of cultural definitions which consider culture as a driver for both the interpretation of its members and for the communicative and interactive behaviour within a community. This contribution presents a cultural concept to inform policy transfer from a European context to China. Chinese philosophical approaches such as Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism, as well as the political history of China, are used to identify individual perspectives within a community that depends, among others. A pilot study for testing the peer review process in vocational education and training will also help build a better understanding of how adjustments, transfer errors and side effects can be culturally explained.

Italy, a country with a great cultural tradition and a founding member of the European Union (EU), since 2004 very actively contributes to the cultural cooperation activities of EU with non European countries. This paper is a detailed review of the status of those activities, which can be subdivided into joint "Master Mundus" Actions and bilateral teaching and research cooperation agreements established between Italian and Chinese higher education institutions. The University of Padova (UP) has been adopted as a relevant a case study, with teaching and research cooperations spanning from the "S&T" to "Medicine," "Law" and "Humanities." The results obtained so far are promising.

In 2001, China's moral education curriculum reform called for a "returning to life" as a radical shift from its previous empty sermonic pedagogy, hoping to cultivate its twenty-first century children into ethical humans. Accordingly, a notion of "human ecology" appeared in the post-2001 textbook design, which became "co-being with" in the latest 2016 textbook redesign. This paper picks up this "co-being with" as a philosophical, ethical, and ecological notion and scrutinizes its relevance to the discursive construction of China's moral child in two steps. First, it draws upon Heidegger's thinking and the Chinese Daoist ecological understanding to explicate the philosophical significance of this "co-being with" for moral education. Second, it unpacks the discursive embodiments of this ethical-ecological "co-being" with in connection with the construction of moral subjects in the post-2001 and 2016 textbooks. Through rigorous textual analysis, this paper finds that the post-2001 textbook discourses embody an instrumental trope and a subject vs object binary style of reasoning, which possibly makes egoistic rather than ethical children. The 2016 textbook discourses, especially those on the theme of "co-being with," however, constrain the above instrumentality and envision cultivating ethical children. This paper argues this theorized "co-being with" provides some implications for moral education in China and the world, meanwhile raising some pedagogical challenges as well.

This paper provides an ethnographic understanding of harmony as language policy in China, grounded in a historical analysis of "harmony" ([character omitted] "he") as a distinct traditional Chinese (Confucian) ideal that gradually finds its new expressions through the policy of Harmonious Society ([characters omitted] "hexie shehui") in contemporary China. The paper focuses on language practices surrounding "harmony" emerging from the Internet, a discursive space and site that is both highly diverse and heavily contested with respect to policing processes, and notably so in the context of the PRC for its stringent measurement of censorship and sensitization of language use. It is shown that although the state is arguably the strongest stakeholder in implementing the policy of harmony, the actual processes of harmonization online develop in detailed, multidirectional and unpredictable rather than abstract, linear or monofocal ways. The paper offers a descriptive analysis of the field of Internet memes that critique and subvert the policies of harmonization. This includes new meanings for words (e.g. "harmony" as euphemism for censorship) and puns around the acoustic image of "hexie" and other censorable words, resulting in the circulation and bricolage of myths and songs revolving around "river crab" ("hexie") and "grass mud horse" ("caonima") as placeholders of dissent, which feed back into offline popular (and critical) culture. The paper concludes with a discussion of the politics of harmony, pointing at the increasingly polycentric realities clashing with the modernist monocentric ideal of the state project of harmony, and with arguments for an ethnographically based understanding and inspection of language policy as an instrument for shaping sociolinguistic life.

The paper draws on findings from a case study which explored factors influencing students' decision-making of postgraduate (PG) education at G University in China. Both questionnaires and follow-up interviews were used for data collection. This paper reports the main reasons for students' choices of subject and institution for PG education, and the influences of families and teachers, and of "guanxi" in their decision-making. The findings show that both families and teachers play important roles in shaping students' decision-making about PG education. It provides insights into students' decision-making about higher education embedded in the Chinese culture of Confucianism.

Insider-researchers are said to enjoy many advantages during the interview process that help them to access the innermost thoughts of participants. As a Chinese doctoral student interviewing other Chinese doctoral students, I assumed I was an insider. However, my experiences proved otherwise, as I oscillated between insider and outsider positions. At the core of the matter was the question of a common Chinese identity, which has been complicated by centuries of diaspora. In trying to reconcile the confusion, a Middle Way approach to integrating opposites proved useful, by acknowledging that while indigenous differences exist, there are also common humanistic elements within all cultures. Based on narrative reflections from the doctoral study's interviews and research diary, the paper critically reflects on moments of cultural proximity and cultural distance during the interview process. The paper problematizes the insider/outsider dichotomy and proposes relationalism in its place. The paper concludes that a respect for face and harmony were crucial in closing cultural distance with Chinese international students, as these resulted in trust and rapport building during interviews. It is hoped that this paper will serve as a cultural bridge to engender an understanding of interviewing across a pan-Chinese sample.

This theoretical paper begins with a reflection on the dominant conceptions of "high ability", based on psychometrics, and examines claims that the ethos of a particular cultural heritage is essential to what "high ability" signifies. The article semantically distinguishes "giftedness" from "ability", using research on "Confucian heritage culture" with its "thick" and "thin" dimensions. "Giftedness" here means an inherited quality or endowment. "Ability", on the other hand, signifies an active process open to nurture through education and--what could account for the main contribution of this paper--the role played by an "epistemology of heart-mind" in Confucian heritage. The article argues that this epistemology of heart-mind constitutes a generational collective programming of mind. Such a definition could lead to a sociocultural conception of intelligence and giftedness open to development, adding a new perspective to the conceptualisation of giftedness and high ability.

Purpose: The foundations of internally driven discipline are similar to self-directed learning (SDL). This study examines the effect of cultural orientation and SDL on the online performance of college students. It investigates how college students pursue SDL while maintaining a collectivist cultural orientation in their learning experience. It explains why students prefer SDL to learning constrained by an externally enforced discipline. Design/methodology/approach: The explanatory sequential mixed-method design uses a quantitative method, followed by qualitative enquiry. The research was conducted in an undergraduate non-credit online course in China. Findings: The findings show that cultural orientation has no impact on students' online performance, while SDL abilities are positively related to it. When fully mediated by SDL, a horizontal-collectivist culture has a positive effect on students' online performance. Research limitations/implications: Data were collected in a non-credit online college course, where the final assessment used a peer-rating approach and team members shared the same final score. This scoring method may not fully reflect each student's online performance. Practical implications: The findings suggest that, when considering cultural influence on student performance, researchers should consider learning contexts, including educational level and learning mode. This study validates that colleges should focus on ability and skill development that enhance internal motivation to improve students' online performance, rather than focussing on their beliefs. Originality/value: This paper introduces evidence to support the impact of culture on college students' online performance, showing that SDL abilities can drive performance.

The last decades have witnessed the flourishing of consultative democracy (xieshang minzhu, a concept similar to deliberative democracy) in China, with ambitions for implementing consultative politics and governance. In the West, mainstream deliberative democracy studies largely overlook the fact that deliberation is an elusive and polysemic notion, which develops into various practices in different social and cultural contexts. Therefore, a non-Western-centred approach needs to be adopted to further investigate deliberative experimentation in rural China. Based on the four months of fieldwork conducted in several villages in rural China, this paper argues that China's rural villages have inherited a strong Confucianism-based idea of deliberation and consultation. With case studies from the sociological–political perspective, this paper also aims to shed some new light on the compatibilities between modern democratic governance approaches and the informal, hierarchical and highly moralised forms of public order in the rural Chinese acquaintance society. Incorporating these empirical observations could bridge the gap between Western and Chinese perspectives on the theory and practice of deliberative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper identifies the educational and presentational functions of the Confucius Institute (MCI) at the Royal Danish Academy of Music (RDAM) as its core approaches which mostly influence Chinese cultural dissemination in its host country. The MCI's utilization of the two dissemination approaches aligns with the "receiver-centered" framework introduced by Jiang and Zhang (2009), providing three concurrent strategies--Localization, "Entertainalization" and Regulation (LER)--in order to enhance the dissemination of Chinese culture to the general public. Through detailed analysis of somewhat limited pre-existing research findings and literature, this article makes the claim that the MCI has achieved positive results in its two functional domains, meeting its overseas audience's needs at various levels whilst supporting Chinese cultural dissemination internationally. This article concludes on the prospect that more MCIs are expected to be established around the world in order to satisfy the growing needs of authentic studies in Chinese musical traditions without travelling to China, as well as to support Chinese cultural communication with the rest of the world.

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.

China's 2017 'classroom revolution' call intends to "transform" current teacher-centered pedagogies with brand-new philosophies and technologies. As a new entry point for classroom research, I problematize a naturalized (mis)belief--" teacher-centered (Confucian) didactic pedagogies are not conducive to critical thinking cultivation"--that has enthralled Chinese teachers in an epistemological-moral-pedagogical dilemma. My problematization, philosophically informed and practice-research grounded, unfolds in four steps. First, I explicate the presumed clash between the claimed Confucian pedagogies and critical thinking. Second, I historicize the Confucian pedagogical philosophy to implode the naturalized (mis)belief and some stereotypical (mis)understandings of Confucian teaching and learning, demonstrating instead an epistemological compatibility therebetween. Third, I unpack how my phenomenological case study discerns an unrecognized yet educative 'repair moment' in a Chinese math classroom, generating a possible re-conjoining between teachers' self-despised yet habitually implemented 'Confucian do-after-me pedagogy' and critical mathematical reasoning. Through observations and interviews, I illustrate how this 'repair moment' can become pedagogically significant, overturning teachers' naturalized (mis)belief, redeeming them from the moral-practical dilemma, and cultivating their critical pedagogical consciousness. Finally, I argue that this paper not only provides a philosophical-plus-empirical paradigm for teaching invention in China and beyond but also sheds new light on cross-cultural learning in transnational curriculum studies.

Epistemicide happens when globalizing West-centric discourses and practices dominate non-Western societies, suppressing and killing the latter's cultural systems of knowledge production. Though scholars worldwide are starting to recognize this fact, China is still forcefully transplanting Western policies and practices in the name of "going global," and of catching up with, and even surpassing, the West. One example is China's ongoing suyang curriculum reform. This reform is largely modelled upon the OECD's and USA's competencies-skills frameworks, but the Chinese state claims that the "suyang" curriculum reform is more than a replica of the latter. Using the "suyang" example, this paper dissects epistemicide in China's curriculum knowledge production. Specifically, it analyses the inclusion of some spectres of the modernity-coloniality episteme in the "suyang" curriculum, including the signifier-signified meaning-making logic, the treatment of language as a representational system, the instrumentalization of language and culture as objects of knowledge, and a mind-body epistemological division. These epistemic spectres, I argue, have thwarted Chinese academics' and policymakers' efforts to re-invoke the cultural "suyang" discourses as anything but a linguistic trope. Recognizing this as a trope, however, helps to re-articulate the eclipsed "suyang" episteme which is related to holistic Chinese "body-thinking". This is a first step in countering the so-called darker side of the modernity-coloniality infused in Western knowledge, power, and being (mode of existence). As a decolonial gesture towards "cognitive justice," this case study aligns itself with Paraskeva's Itinerary Curriculum Theory (ICT). In addition, it provides an ontological language lens for China and other countries to (re)produce transnational curriculum knowledge beyond the enslavement of both relativist nationalism and Western modernity-coloniality.

This paper presents perceptions of China's Confucius Institute project held by different stakeholders in China and the USA. A number of studies have been published in each place since the first establishment of Confucius Institutes in 2004, but there has not been a comparative study to date. The study, which draws on media reports related to significant milestones in the development of Confucius Institutes, shows that, in the USA, the institutes are viewed with a considerable degree of ambivalence. They are attractive for universities seeking engagement with China, but also seen as a threat to academic freedom. Domestically, Confucius Institutes are perceived as a way to soften China's international image and to promote the Chinese language and culture, although some concerns have been raised about the cost and transparency of the initiative. The paper highlights the controversial aspects of the institutes and outlines some of the challenges facing China in making the strategy effective.

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).

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

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

In the West, criticism of Chinese censorship has long prompted extensive research and reporting on the scope, aims, and methods behind the elaborate apparatus. Beyond political motivations, Chinese censorship's stark contrast to the Western emphasis on free speech has also sparked inquiry into the cultural influences shaping the Chinese government's inclination towards stringent censorship. This paper examines the role of Confucianism in influencing Chinese censorship decisions, specifically within the realm of the Chinese Internet over the past decade. It argues that the Chinese government's commitment to creating the image of a harmonious Confucian society has driven an increase in media censorship to counter the perceived disruptive effects of the Internet. Three cases studies of internet censorship - relating to the feminist movement of the 2010s, criticism of health policies during the COVID pandemic, and criticism of economic policy during the economic slowdown of 2023-24-are analyzed to reveal the pervasiveness of Confucian theory in the rationale behind censorship. Though in no way does Confucianism fully explain the nature of the Chinese government and its proclivity for censorship, it continues to have a visible impact on the actions of the Chinese government, proving its enduring centrality in China's identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an ethnographic interpretation of education as a social technology of state sovereign power and governing in the borderlands of contemporary China. Illustrated with snapshots from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a Pumi (Premi) ethnic village located along China's south-western territorial margins, it is argued that the hierarchical structure of the education system, coupled with the arduous and yet "compulsory mobility" entailed in educational participation, powerfully shapes the social and political imaginaries of peripheral citizens. Education serves simultaneously as a "distance-demolishing technology" and a "hierarchy-establishing technology" that counters the "frictions of terrain" that traditionally presented a problem to the state for governing such geographically inaccessible borderlands.

Confucianism has had a profound influence on Chinese learners' academic achievements, moral education and education for citizenship. It is often suggested that the influence of Confucianism leads to educational success. Situating the Confucian ideology in a Western educational setting in so far as how those involved in teaching and learning according to Chinese Confucian-based education. This paper is based on a BBC documentary that leads me to reflect on Chinese education. The documentary sought to investigate what would occur when Western learners undertake Chinese Confucian-based learning. In this article, my personal reflections on the content and messages of the documentary are interwoven with reflections of the teachers and others involved in the documentary. I begin this auto-ethnographic account by reflecting on my cultural upbringing in China and the influence that Confucianism had on my own early learning experiences. Selected diary entries show my identities within a unique Confucian cultural framework.