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This article studies the dilemma between professionalization and professionalism in the development of teaching into a bureaucratic organization in Hong Kong. Professionalization and bureaucratization are simultaneous processes. Teaching as an occupation has grown from a state of idiosyncrasy to a profession with defined boundaries. However, achieving system efficiency and technical rationality, both features of bureaucracy, could undermine or suppress teachers' individual autonomy. Thus, bureaucratization supports professionalization by raising the status of teaching, but undermines professionalism by constraining teachers' autonomy. The article examines the changing pattern of stratification and how it shaped the relationship between the professionalization, bureaucratization and professionalism of teaching in Hong Kong. It argues that teaching cannot be a true profession without realizing professionalism, and that teacher education has a central role in the drive towards it. (Contains 8 notes.)

The last three decades has witnessed a burgeoning comparative education as a field of study in Asia. In China comparative education has taken a phenomenal course from a small and relatively low-key field in search of an identity in the late 1970s to a vibrant one today with a sizable group of scholars across the country, seeking to integrate Western knowledge to the Chinese knowledge system for advancement and enhancement of Chinese education. In this paper we analyze the features of foreign knowledge adaptation in China and the strategies adopted to turn it from submissive transfer to integrated knowledge, which would then be presented as autonomous Chinese knowledge to the world for interaction on an equal footing with the countries of origin of the knowledge in a diverse, global world. The process involves socio-cultural adaptation and a change in ownership of knowledge. We conducted a two-tier investigation. First, we studied the development and nature of comparative education in China. Second, we conducted a bibliometric analysis of the entries in the last nine years (2001-2009) of "Comparative Education Review" ("Bijiao jiaoyu yanjiu"), which is the most prominent journal in the field in China, to chart the evolving nature of the field. We then discuss the discourse on the issues and directions in the field, which signifies an attempt to move away from knowledge transfer to knowledge interaction in the development of comparative education in China. In this study, we have found that comparative education is China-centric in the way that it is regarded a a means of knowing what happens in "foreign countries". However, the process has become almost exclusively a "look West" approach, especially looking towards the United States in its comparisons. Yet this approach is far from uncontested and there are strenuous efforts made by Chinese scholars to reconstruct comparative education with Chinese characteristics, at least moving comparative studies from knowledge transfer to knowledge interaction for the benefit of the development of education in China. The review of this development is therefore itself a case study of the process of adaptation of foreign knowledge to a particular cultural context interplayed with transplantation, indigenization and integration. (Contains 6 tables and 2 notes.)

International comparisons in educational achievement and economic performance have spurred studies on the East Asian learner. In this context the cultural perspective on the Chinese learner has gained currency. This paper examines how the interaction of cultural, social and structural forces shape the changing patterns of diversity among Chinese learners. I will argue that the cultural explanation is powerful as an inter-cultural typology, where the salient features of a culture are highlighted for comparison at the system level. However, it becomes limited as one's attention shifts to daily practice, where sharp individual differences present a major challenge to teachers. It is necessary to study the Chinese learner also as an intra-cultural typology. A probe into possible causes of individual differences in the changing social reality supports a social explanation to complement the cultural one. Educational policy initiatives, notably mass education, reduction of streaming and additional support for students from deprived backgrounds, attempt to narrow the gap through more equitable structures. The tension between cultural and planned structural factors on one hand and social factors on the other thus exerts competing influence on Chinese learners, resulting in increasing diversity in the new social reality in the Chinese classroom.

Provides background on decision making in curriculum planning and examines attempts to reform teacher education curricula in China that seek to (1) reformulate a proper balance between academic and professional knowledge and (2) respond to new market demands. (CMK)