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Significant collaborations with research partners in China are seen in many Western countries. With increasing US-China geopolitical tensions, governments, research institutions, and individuals in established scientific systems are increasingly required to address a proliferating array of risks and challenges associated with collaboration with China. Academic researchers are only beginning to describe how countries are responding to the ongoing need for global scientific collaboration amidst intensifying geopolitical competition. Several studies have examined the securitization of scientific connections with China in the USA, while others have documented developments in nations such as Australia, the UK, and Sweden. However, there is limited comparative research on approaches to international science amid geopolitical tensions. This paper bridges the gap, illuminating the key dimensions of variation in country-level responses by comparing the cases of Sweden and Australia. The questions we ask are as follows: Who responds to the challenges? By what means? And to what ends are responses directed? Swedish government have been largely passive, but Swedish funding agencies have developed "responsible internationalisation" guidelines that aim to induce proactive reflection by institutions and individual researchers. Australia's approach, by contrast, has centred on legislation, the exercise of ministerial powers, along with sector-wide enactment of expanded due diligence protocols. The comparison highlights key differences in the actors, methods and goals of responses to the intensifying geopolitics of scientific collaboration.

Governance and regulation of the use of live animals in research and teaching is examined in Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, China, Japan and India. A comparison of the systems in different countries will enable the determination of best practice and fit-forpurpose regulation. The most comprehensive government regulation of animal welfare in institutions covers a broad range of animals and institutions are required to have an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, whose membership is specified in guidelines or regulations. The work of the Committees is rigorously overseen by government and facilities that use live animals are audited externally. All countries examined have legislation governing the use of live animals in research, although only Australia and Malaysia have a fully equivalent mandated oversight of teaching. Teaching that uses live animals is partly covered in the Philippines, Japan, Singapore and Thailand This paper thus aims to review the regulation of animal use in different Asian jurisdictions in order to determine best practices that are appropriate to those settings. The most comprehensive oversight is provided in Australia and Malaysia that essentially use the same regulatory framework.

Learning standards have become a prominent feature for schools and school systems worldwide. Our paper describes the development of recent English teaching standards in California, China, and Mexico, as well as analyzing them for their theoretical orientations. We begin with an overview and critique of the standards movement. Our analysis of the standards in California, China, and Mexico reveals a substantial shift from a grammatical accuracy focused approach towards a communicative approach to language instruction. While this turn may be welcomed by professional educators, there are practical policy questions to be answered. We end our paper by noting additional challenges to implementing the new standards. Our general assessment is that the authors of the standards firmly believe that the new guidelines will improve instruction.

The calibration of test materials generally involves the interaction between empirical analysis and expert judgement. This paper explores the extent to which scale familiarity might affect expert judgement as a component of test validation in the calibration process. It forms part of a larger study that investigates the alignment of the LanguageCert suite of tests, Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), the China Standards of English (CSE) and China's College English Test (CET). In the larger study, Year 1 students at a prestigious university in China were administered two tests--one with items based on China's College English Test (CET), and the other a CEFR-aligned test developed by LanguageCert--the LanguageCert Test of English (LTE). Comparable sections of the CET and the LTE involved sets of discrete items targeting lexico-grammatical competence. In order to ascertain whether expert judges were equally comfortable placing test items on either scale (CET or CEFR), a group of professors from the university in China who set the CET-based test, were asked to expert judge the CET items against the nine CSE levels with which they were very familiar. They were then asked to judge the LTE items against the six CEFR levels, with which they were less familiar. Both sets of expert ratings and the test taker responses on both tests were then calibrated within a single frame of reference and located on the LanguageCert scale. In the analysis of the expert ratings, the CSE-familiar raters exhibited higher levels of agreement with the empirically-derived score levels for the CET items than they did with the equivalent LTE items. This supports the proposition that expert judgement may be used in the calibration process where the experts in question have a strong knowledge of both the test material and the standards against which the test material is to be judged.

Design guidelines for traditional cultural artefacts play an important role in Culturally Inspired Design (CID) activities and design education. In this paper, a comparative study was performed to assess the impact of present-day design guidelines for traditional Chinese cultural artefacts on novice designers in a CID process. In all, 42 novice designers enrolled in a cultural product design course participated in this study, under two different design conditions: an unaided condition and a guideline-aided condition. Each condition includes three stages: identification stage, translation stage and implementation stage. In the unaided condition, each participant was asked to finish an investigative report on traditional cultural artefacts without any guidance and then carry out a detailed cultural product design. These results were then compared with those of the participants in the guideline-aided condition, who received a design guideline for traditional cultural artefacts. The results were assessed by expert raters against six design metrics: breadth, depth, quantity, variety, novelty and quality. They revealed that the design guideline for traditional cultural artefacts in a CID process promoted the analysis of cultural features and increased the novelty and quality of design outcomes but resulted in decreased variety. We propose that the design guideline for traditional cultural artefacts may be useful as part of the design process and as a pedagogical tool in cultural creative design, but the best moment at which to introduce the design guideline should be further examined.

Context: International comparative research on Vocational Education and Training (VET) is gaining importance, as global cooperation and mutual learning in VET grows. However, it is characterized by a high degree of complexity, due on one hand, to the heterogeneity of the VET sector, and on the other hand to the unique challenges of international comparisons. In addition, comparative research projects are increasingly conducted in the form of cross-border collaborations, which have their own particular organizational and methodological considerations, opportunities, and challenges. This paper presents an example of a cooperative research process, aimed at investigating the complex phenomenon of the competence-based approach in Russian and Chinese VET. In providing an example of developing an instrument for curriculum analysis and comparison, we discuss and reflect on the methodological and organizational peculiarities and challenges of the research process conducted collaboratively by an international team. Method: The instrument for analysis and comparison of curricular documents, was developed in an iterative multi-stage process, combining deductive and inductive steps. The embeddedness of the elements of a competence-based approach in curricular documents is investigated, using qualitative content analysis. To develop a coding frame, we started with a comprehensive partially systematic literature review of international, Russian and Chinese discourses on competence-based curricula. The frame was built on the selected model of competence-based education, and on accumulated results of the literature analysis of national discourses. Furthermore, during the first coding process, an iterative adaptation of the developed instrument took place. Results: The result of this process was the development of an analysis instrument which, on the one hand, is well-adapted to each national context and, on the other hand, allows a comparison of results along the same dimensions of analysis, in our case, elements of the competence-based approach in curriculum. Conclusion: Developing an analysis framework for a cross-cultural comparative investigation of such a diffuse and heterogeneous construct as the competence-based approach, can pose a methodological challenge for an international team of researchers. However, an effective application of own team resources such as proficiency in different languages, insider and outsider perspectives, along with continuous intensive communication and a flexible, iterative research process, allows development of a well-adapted analysis instrument for international comparison.

This paper responds to Bailey and Cooker's (2019) paper entitled 'Exploring Teacher Identity in International Schools: Key Concepts for Research' in which the authors offer a typology of international school teachers based on interviews with non-qualified teachers. This paper builds upon the typology of international school teachers by offering a framework for researching international school teacher identity. The framework is illustrated by interview data with an expatriate teacher in a Chinese Internationalised School, both of which remain under-researched. Chinese Internationalised Schools typically cater to local middle-class elites and offer some form of international curricula, such as the "International Baccalaureate Diploma," alongside study of the Chinese national curriculum. Rather than utilising a priori teacher types derived from existing typologies, the framework utilises teachers' lived experiences to inductively construct a 'snap-shot' of their teacher identity. Drawing upon postmodern approaches to teacher identity, identity is conceptualised as an ongoing dialogic process. Interview data with an international school teacher called Tyron (a pseudonym) is utilised in order to take the reader through how the framework is intended to be put into practice. The framework is an alternative approach to researching international school teachers that guides researchers away from labelling teachers by observation and instead looks at what they do and their histories. Moreover, this approach involves both the researcher and the teacher, and not, as is typically the case, only the researcher. [For "Exploring Teacher Identity in International Schools: Key Concepts for Research," see EJ1224966.]

Professor Xiaoman Zhu is the theoretical initiator and the promoter of contemporary emotional education in China. Since the 1980s and 1990s, she has led the research on China's emotional education and has put forward many pioneering insights, forming a rich and systematic emotional education theory. She has been involved in guiding several experimental schools and research bases for a long time committed to the proper combination of emotional education theory and school education. She infiltrated it into moral education, teacher education, textbooks, courses, etc., and her theory has been widely recognized. This paper evaluates the source, theoretical basis, and practice of Xiaoman Zhu's emotional education as a whole, intending to construct a theoretical cognitive framework to describe Xiaoman Zhu's educational thought and theory in a more comprehensive manner.

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.

Interpretive frameworks may be helpful to understand narratives, yet they also risk displacing unique information of the research context. In this paper, we argue that such is the case in narrative inquiry studies of English language teaching set in the Asian context, perhaps due to the pressure to use familiar interpretive frameworks that are sanctioned by scholars. Through meta-ethnography, we examined recent narrative inquiry studies set in Asia. It was observed that the research findings do not offer any critical insights about the context of the study; instead, they add to the prevalence of broad constructs of English language education, such as the components of identity. For future narrative inquiry research, we recommend researchers to consider utilizing local meanings pertinent to the study context as an analytical lens, as a means to Asianize the field.

Task-based language teaching on the purpose of enhancing students' communicative skills and involving them actively in the authentic context has long been highlighted in recent years in tertiary English language teaching. This paper proposes a framework of task-based teaching approach and language assessment in intensive reading class based on the researcher's own teaching practice to explore positive impacts on students' competences. This is done in the context of both oral presentation and written reports of first undergraduate English major students. The research method consists of semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire with 18 questions pointing to different aspects in the learning and teaching processes, aiming to explore what impacts it has on students' competence in both second language acquisition and at cognitive level. In this empirical study, all the findings indicate that TBLT applied in Chinese English teaching class is very effective and beneficial for the enhancement of Chinese English learners.

Based on the concept of user education, this paper discusses the necessity of user education in library under the circumstance of network, describes the contents and forms of user education and puts forward the problems that should be paid attention to during education. [This paper was supported by scientific research project of Qufu Normal University.]

Purpose: This paper explores education group school principal's influence on professional learning community (PLC) development in China. Design/methodology/approach: Qualitative comparative case studies were conducted. Findings: The findings show that principals indicated principal-level factors were their major concerns regarding PLC cultural condition design, school needs were the major concerns in PLCs' relational and structural design, and educational-group factors impacted principals' extension of PLCs' structural conditions. Originality/value: This article concludes by presenting a "three-context" framework for understanding education group principal's influence on PLCs in China.

This paper reviews the impact of the rewards and recognition scheme on curriculum reform in higher vocational education (HVE) in China. In this scheme, teachers and students can win rewards and obtain recognition through curriculum competitions and student skill competitions conducted by the government. It has been used to encourage and to support colleges and teachers to implement HVE curriculum reform. The qualitative research project into HVE curriculum reform reported here identified both the facilitative and inhibitory effects of the scheme on curriculum reform. Discipline heads' perspectives of these influences were investigated through in-depth interviews. The scheme was seen as motivating just a slight majority of discipline heads to implement curriculum reform and as providing financial support in doing so. The discipline heads, though, also indicated that they were discouraged by the scheme's misleading guidelines, its inappropriate evaluations of their efforts and its contribution to funding inequalities.

English teaching reform is critical for the cultivation of skilled talents and the development of national economy. The paper attempts to analyze the guidance principles of English teaching reform in the higher vocational colleges underlying "The Basic Requirements of English Curriculum Teaching in Higher Vocational Colleges", promulgated by Ministry of Education of China in 2000. Specifically, the principles should be characterized by modularization, individualization, collaboration, and hypertextualization.

This paper argues that the current approach to educational quality formation in transnational higher education promotes educational imperialism, and that guidelines and practices should be altered to embrace context-sensitive measures of quality. The claims are sustained by findings from a study that investigated how academics understood and pursued educational quality in an Australian university programme delivered in partnership with a Chinese university in China. A key finding was that a home programme functioned as the single reference point for quality in the programme delivered in China. Quality in the China programme was sought through the imposition of practices and philosophies associated with the home programme, which required the suppression of local educational traditions. The paper points out that reliance on a home programme as the single measure of quality is encouraged by governing UNESCO/OECD guidelines on quality in cross-border provision.

Kindergarten has the potential to influence children's food choices and habits at an early age and prevent nutrition-related diseases later in life. This paper comparatively analyzed the goals and requirements for kindergarten food and meal policies and guidelines in Norway and China based on the author's self-constructed 'NES' analytical framework, including nutritional, educational, and social aspects. The findings suggest that while Norway and China both acknowledge the importance of nutritional importance of food and meals in kindergartens, Norway has paid significant attention to the social aspects of meals. There were also a number of differences between Norway and China in terms of specific educational goals related to food and meals. This analysis aimed to inform future policy direction across the fields of public health and educational policy and practice in Norway, China, and beyond.

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 an analytical framework of the configuration of the action space in the governance structure of Chinese universities from the perspectives of formal and informal structures and gives concrete explanations of the factors in the analytical framework based on data from interviews with party committee general secretaries and presidents of 16 Chinese universities. The study found that informal relationships play an important role in governing Chinese universities and are an important aspect in creating the diverse state and action space configuration of university governance. This partially reflects the loose coupling properties of this system. [Translation by Jeff Keller.]

This paper discusses the promotion of critical thinking through an interdisciplinary curriculum design using multidisciplinary faculty as well as details the implementation of an experiential short-term study abroad program in China. To achieve this educational goal of critical thinking, along with meeting the requirements specific to each course, the program was built on a framework using two interrelated approaches--theme-based interdisciplinary curriculum and cultural immersion. The theme-based interdisciplinary curriculum was constructed on three principles (the ability to pose great questions that encompassed drawing knowledge and skills from each discipline, acquiring global awareness, and developing glocal awareness). Cultural immersion was accomplished through carefully selected site visits, activities, and assignments. Students' experiences, reflections, and applications were assessed through formative and summative evaluation.

How can the education of teacher-researchers from China be framed in ways so that they might make Chinese learnable for primary and secondary school learners for whom English is their everyday language of instruction and communication. The concept "making Chinese learnable" and the characters of the language learners are explained in the introduction to the paper. The review of an extensive range of literature focuses on the challenges facing Chinese language education. This review of literature from China, the UK, the USA, and Australia leads to a focus on the need for improved teacher education in this field. We explain the theoretic-pedagogical framework for the education of Chinese language teacher-researchers from China. The "case" employed to develop this account an Australia-China partnership called the Research Oriented, School/Industry Engaged Teacher-Researcher Education (ROSETE) Program. Key aspects relating to the educational research process employed in this study are explained. The description of the ROSETE Program introduces the key ideas of "cross-sociolinguistic similarities" and "recurring everyday sociolinguistic activities." The Ningbo Volunteers, as teacher-researcher candidates use these ideas to investigate efficient ways of making Chinese learnable for learners in Australian schools for whom English is their everyday language of instruction and communication. Through exploring these issues this paper addresses an important and under researched area. It provides inspiration for further teaching and research.

This paper investigates the place of pedagogy in language-in-education policy through an analysis of how the macro-level of government policy interacts with the micro-level of local educational practice. It argues that pedagogy is typically considered a micro-level activity and policy frequently devolves decision-making about pedagogy to micro-level agents. For this reason, pedagogy is often invisible in policy texts. Pedagogy becomes a concern for macro-level policy when micro-level practice is constructed as being a problem and policy seeks to intervene to reform practice. However, whether pedagogy is explicitly discussed in policy, it remains nonetheless relevant for policy implementation and ultimately for the success of policy change. The silence about pedagogy in policy texts may render invisible the capacity for pedagogical change at the micro-level and the capabilities and resources needed to effect change. The paper will examine these issues through an investigation of a series of language policy contexts in which pedagogy is either an explicit concern or it remains implicit.

Formative assessment is increasingly being implemented through policy initiatives in Chinese educational contexts. As an approach to assessment, formative assessment derives many of its key principles from Western contexts, notably through the work of scholars in the UK, the USA and Australia. The question for this paper is the ways that formative assessment has been interpreted in the teaching of College English in Chinese Higher Education. The paper reports on a research study that utilised a sociocultural perspective on learning and assessment to analyse how two Chinese universities -- an urban-based Key University and a regional-based Non-Key University -- interpreted and enacted a China Ministry of Education policy on formative assessment in College English teaching. Of particular interest for the research were the ways in which the sociocultural conditions of the Chinese context mediated understanding of Western principles and led to their adaptation. The findings from the two universities identified some consistency in localised interpretations of formative assessment which included emphases on process and student participation. The differences related to the specific sociocultural conditions contextualising each university including geographical location, socioeconomic status, and teacher and student roles, expectations and beliefs about English. The findings illustrate the sociocultural tensions in interpreting, adapting and enacting formative assessment in Chinese College English classes and the consequent challenges to and questions about retaining the spirit of formative assessment as it was originally conceptualised.

To explore the potential applications of synchronous technology to enrich student learning, faculty members from an American regional state university and a Chinese regional university collaborated to find appropriate ways to integrate synchronous technology (e.g., Adobe Connect) into an educational technology program in the American university and in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) program in China. The paper reports the collaborative efforts in a project (from Fall 2010 to Spring 2012) using Adobe Connect to enrich student learning at both sites. The report includes the project overview, project implementation and its evaluation framework. Finally, the paper offers practical suggestions for using synchronous technologies such as Adobe Connect for instruction when implementing such an international project in two different countries.

Presents guidelines on election-related activities regarding the 2004 Legislative Council Election in Hong Kong, China. Information on polling and counting arrangements; Process of counting geographical constituencies votes; Grounds for lodging an election petition.

In her position article, Lee (2019) compellingly argues for focused written corrective feedback (FWCF) and offers clear guidelines for teachers to shift their feedback approach. As English language teaching practitioners in Chinese universities, we share Lee's view against any unthinking adherence to comprehensive written corrective feedback (CWCF) and advocate principled feedback practice. Our response begins by presenting the common ground between Lee's and our stance, followed by problematizing her 'less-is-more' argument. Finally, following Lee's guidelines, we propose a few context-specific suggestions to help university teachers in mainland China and other contexts better implement FWCF. [For "Teacher Written Corrective Feedback: Less Is More," see EJ1231498.]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the beliefs of undergraduate business students studying in Canada and partners in China about the quality of the program; what they consider effective signals of quality; and their willingness to pay to improve the quality. Design/methodology/approach: A survey was designed and distributed to 481 students in the transnational program during the 2009 and 2011 academic years. Statistical tests were conducted to examine mean differences in the perception of quality, different signals of quality and willingness to pay to improve quality. Findings: The findings of the study indicate that Canadian University and Chinese partner students, mostly in their final years of study, have similar beliefs about the quality of the program. They consider the program as good quality but not top rated. Chinese partners' students in their earlier years of study have a lower perception of quality but this gets better as they progress through the program. Students perceive high quality reputation and professional accreditation as equally important in terms of signalling quality. Finally, many students are willing to pay more to improve the quality of the program. Research limitations/implications: Some limitations of the study include convenience sample selection and size, translation of survey, the framing of the survey questions and controlling for factors such as grade point average, gender and other factors. Practical implications: The paper provides important information to monitor quality and to place a value on pursuing accreditation and tuition fee increases. Originality/value: Students' perception of quality has remained under-examined in the literature. The research establishes a framework which can lead to future explorations. (Contains 1 figure, 3 tables and 7 notes.)

The reviews of papers for refereed journals are rarely a source of exhilaration, only occasionally a pleasure and frequently dispiriting. Using peer reviews of research containing Chinese concepts, this paper explores different ways of thinking about knowledge, its evaluation and transfer. Bourdieu's concepts of fields of power, position taking, positioning and honour provide a framework whereby peer reviews are positioned as integral to scholarly argumentation. They are used to test efforts to connect Chinese ideas into the global dynamics of research-based knowledge, and to teach early career researchers about how to engage in academic disputation. (Contains 2 tables.)

This paper presents a method to design high-quality 3D equipment for virtual laboratories. A virtual control laboratory is designed on large-scale educational purpose with merits of saving expenses for universities and can provide more opportunities for students. The proposed laboratory with more than 30 virtual instruments aims at offering students a convenient experiment as well as an extensible framework for experiments in a collaborative way. Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulations with realistic 3D animations can be an efficient and safe way for verification of control algorithms. Advanced 3D technologies are adopted to achieve convincing performance. In addition, accurate mechanical movements are designed for virtual devices using real-time data from hardware-based simulations. Many virtual devices were created using this method and tested through experiments to show the efficacy. This method is also suitable for other virtual applications. The system has been applied to a creative automatic control experiment course in the Harbin Institute of Technology. The assessment and student surveys show that the system is effective in student's learning.

This paper reports a study on developing an assessment inventory of Chinese learners' competencies as needed for the twenty-first century. In creating the instrument, three relevant twenty-first century competency frameworks were referenced: from the OECD, the European Council, and the USA. The preliminary version of this instrument, which consists of 55 items, was administered to 732 Shanghai students from three types of K-12 schools. To investigate the factors and the structure of the competencies that young Chinese learners' in the twenty-first century should possess, exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were employed. This resulted in a selection of 42 items in seven categories. These were conceptions of learning, competencies in ICT, problem solving, communication, critical thinking, cross-cultural communication, and advanced-level literacy. Based on these findings, the status of students' twenty-first century competencies in Shanghai, were investigated in relation to gender, region, and grade. The implications of the findings were discussed, such as balancing the learning resource and teacher deployment in differently developed regions, as well as guiding the implementation of a competency-based curriculum in China.

With special reference to the People's Republic of China (PRC), this paper examines relationships between law, education reform and social transformation that have been under-researched. The argument is that, despite national leaders' high expectations, the use of law to effect or consolidate educational reform in the PRC is affected by both legal and extra-legal factors such as politics, economics, and social norms and cultures. The paper first establishes a framework within which the PRC is analyzed. Secondly, the paper looks into the policy context in which the PRC adopts the strategy of using law to govern the nation and education, and examines the contrasting scenarios between promotion of governance of education with the law, and public defiance of education laws in the PRC. Thirdly, the paper analyzes the deep-seated problems behind the scenario in the wider social and political contexts that shape education and law, and examines the role of law in governance and social change.

This paper reviews the development of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in China. The historical context from 1900 is summarised, and then developments from the 1980s up to the present kindergarten expansion movement, starting in 2010, are covered in detail. The review shows that ECEC development in China has undergone great changes both in policy and practice. The clash between progressive ideas and existing kindergarten practices has been and remains a challenge. The "cultural appropriateness issue" is of concern, and there are strong voices for keeping valuable aspects of Chinese traditional culture. China has put great efforts recently into boosting kindergarten participation nationwide; yet, there have been and remain great social economic disparities at various levels. There is also growing concern that the programme quality cannot be maintained with the rapid kindergarten expansion process. Policy development for the childcare sector (0-3) in China is relatively thin compared to recent booms for kindergartens.

Chinese scholars have not yet achieved consensus on the specific theories that should be part of a Chinese HRD theory base. A review of the Chinese HRD literature has identified four theory domains frequently mentioned as a possible foundation for the discipline: management, economics, sociology, and psychology/learning. Considering Swanson and Holton's (2009) argument that theory is important for any emergent discipline, the purpose of this paper is to help ignite the discussion on a theoretical foundation by going beyond the level of domains and proposing an initial core of theories for HRD in China. The proposed theories were chosen because of their fit with the four theory domains, with Deng Xiaoping's guidelines for the development of the Chinese economy and its human resources, and with the Chinese cultural context.

Since China's implementation of the Confucius Institute (CI) project in 2004, most academic works have been written on its objectives, nature, features, development, problems and challenges, especially in terms of soft power projection. Though some of them could unravel the tensions and paradoxes in the CI project, there is a paucity of in-depth and focused analysis on the related issues with a more systematic framework. Utilising Tellis et al.'s tripartite taxonomy approach to power--resources, strategies and outcomes--and integrating it with Nye's tripartite approach to exercising power--coercion, inducement and attraction--this paper aims to fill this research gap. The findings can shed light on the tensions and paradoxes in China's development of soft power by providing a more systematic and integrated framework for analysing the dilemmas and predicaments in the exercise of its power strategies in the global age.

This paper argues for a flexible identity and citizenship framework to explore how return migrants, "haigui," have readapted and re-established themselves back into Shanghai society, and how they have used their talents, knowledge and "guanxi" networks to optimise their chances of success. It argues that these return migrants, as talent circulators in their circulatory migration process, have adopted a flexible identity and citizenship, to confront their conflicting emotions and negotiated sacrifices for the well-being of their individual self and family as they expand their socio-economic and territorial space.

Intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs), which provide step-by-step guidance to students in problem-solving activities, have been shown to enhance student learning in a range of domains. However, they tend to be pre-established and cannot supply the tutoring function immediately from the diverse mathematical questions. The MITSAS (multiagent intelligent tutoring system after school) is a web-based ITS in algebra and geometry with a natural language interface which is designed to extract the hint and summarization from the detailed solving answer automatically. In this paper, its Design principles and functionality is analysed firstly. Then, the framework including the natural language understanding agent, automatic modelling agent and automatic problem-solving agent are discussed in the following in order to support the real-time problems solution. Next, the methods for automatically extracting tutoring function such as hint and summarization is given based on the difficulty of knowledge components and the type of problem acquired from the detailed answer. Finally, the effectiveness of MITSAS at improving the Chinese Students' learning gain is shown by an experiment conducted in junior school.

With the acceleration of globalization, academic developers from institutions and countries with established educational development programs and networks are called upon increasingly to share their expertise and offer guidance to colleagues in emerging higher education contexts. Based on a higher education conference held in Beijing in 2009, this paper captures the learning as the Chinese host institutions and international exchange partners progressed toward a more developed understanding and application of elastic, post-colonial approaches to the interchange. It includes a set of recommendations and guidelines to assist future international exchanges, based on the insights gained throughout this rich experience. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)

Purpose: This article aims to analyze emergent learning practices for globalizing work through two research questions: "What are the conceptualizations of work represented by the Virtual Factory and how do they mediate globalizing work?" and "What is the potential of expansive learning efforts to expand conceptualizations towards the emergent learning practices of globalizing work?". Design/methodology/approach: Cultural-historical activity theory is applied, specifically the historical tool-mediated activity, concept formation and the zone of proximal development. A dynamic hierarchy of conceptualizations forms the framework for expansive learning efforts. Data were gathered by ethnographic and development interventionist methods from a distributed engineering design project. Findings: The paper finds that, historically, multi-layered conceptualizations of work face developmental challenges in globalizing work. Expansive learning efforts enhance the emergent learning practices when orienting global participants to motivating "why" and "where-to" conceptualizations. In order to turn emergent practices into sustainable learning practices, material representations need to be created to mediate the bottom-up and top-down conceptualizations at the interfaces of distributed work. Research limitations/implications: Emergent learning practices are studied longitudinally through concrete work in transformation. The learning approach emphasizes developmental interventions at global workplaces. Practical implications: Expansive learning efforts at different levels of conceptualization, may be supported by tools that mediate and sustain emergent learning practices. Social implications: Global workplace learning should be a concern of those involved with corporate social responsibility. Originality/value: Emergent learning practices offers a new approach for studies of globalizing work through its multi-layered conceptualizations of work. (Contains 3 figures and 4 tables.)

The aim of this paper is to build a capability-based framework, drawing upon the strengths of other approaches, which is applicable to the complexity of the urban-rural divide in education in China. It starts with a brief introduction to the capability approach. This is followed by a discussion of how the rights-based approach and resource-based approach can supplement the capability model; this framework is then employed to draw out new insights regarding the case of urban-rural inequality in China. It concludes by highlighting the contribution of this framework in terms of mapping out the interlocked processes that create the urban-rural divide in education by taking account of children growing up under the influence of a wider socio-economic context. In doing so, it sheds light on issues which tend to be otherwise overlooked. (Contains 1 note, 1 table, and 6 figures.)

The "National Medium- and Long-Term Educational Reform and Development Guideline (2010-20)" (hereafter abbreviated as the "Guideline"), formulated by the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and the State Council, posits the basic completion of the modernization of China's education and other development targets by 2020. As measures to guarantee the fulfillment of education's development targets, the "Guideline" proposes to increase expenditure in education, improve education funding mechanisms, strengthen management of education funds, and improve the student financial assistance system and other financial policies for education. This paper explains the main content of the financial policies for education in the "Guideline" and the considerations taken into account when drafting these policies, predicts the results of these policies, and puts forward suggestions for reform. (Contains 5 notes.)