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China's heated education policy climate in 2010 indicated an increasing national concern for improving educational quality and educational quality assessment. Despite glowing portraits of Chinese education painted by international observers, the Chinese public has expressed consistent dissatisfaction with educational quality. The inter-related research projects described in this article were launched with a desire to deepen comparative discussion of educational quality and to respond to China's drive to improve and assess educational quality across all levels of schooling. This paper will introduce how educational quality is framed in key policy reform documents shaping Chinese education over the next decade. This will provide the backdrop for findings from two research projects that represent an effort to re-focus quality and quality assessment debates on high school and college students and their educational experiences. Derived and adapted from over a decade of robust research on student engagement in the U.S., the research projects include surveys on student engagement, a key factor in effective educational practice largely missing from Chinese quality assessment frameworks and toolkits. (Contains 11 notes and 1 figure.)

Teaching and learning in higher education can integrate and accomplish student developmental goals in addition to promoting student learning of subject matter knowledge and transferrable skills. Drawn from the theoretical concept of self-authorship, the Learning Partnerships Model was implemented in teaching a graduate-level course on social research methodology. This paper describes the conceptualization and implementation of the developmentally attuned course, and reports a qualitative study that examined student development as its result. Qualitative data were collected from five cohorts of course participants, in the forms of reflective essays, student interviews, and the instructor's teaching journal. Seven themes were identified that reflected student development throughout the course. The seven themes fall into three dimensions of epistemological, intrapersonal, and interpersonal development that are interconnected, and the epistemological dimension stands out as a strong partner among the three. These findings may help university faculty understand and integrate student development into their teaching practices.

This mixed methods study investigates learning outcomes resulting from college attendance in the Chinese mainland. Data for this study is derived from undergraduate survey responses at 21 universities and interviews with 64 seniors at five universities. Factor analysis reduced learning outcome items to two factors, and 19 categories of learning outcomes were distilled from interview data. These categories were then reduced to four domains: knowledge, skills, intrapersonal awareness, and interpersonal competence. Compared with literature generated in the West, intercultural competency as well as quantitative and computer literacy are missing in the Chinese higher education context. Student learning is an integrated whole and takes place in diverse settings in and outside the classroom.

Teaching and learning in higher education can integrate and accomplish student developmental goals in addition to promoting student learning of subject matter knowledge and transferrable skills. Drawn from the theoretical concept of self-authorship, the Learning Partnerships Model was implemented in teaching a graduate-level course on social research methodology. This paper describes the conceptualization and implementation of the developmentally attuned course, and reports a qualitative study that examined student development as its result. Qualitative data were collected from five cohorts of course participants, in the forms of reflective essays, student interviews, and the instructor’s teaching journal. Seven themes were identified that reflected student development throughout the course. The seven themes fall into three dimensions of epistemological, intrapersonal, and interpersonal development that are interconnected, and the epistemological dimension stands out as a strong partner among the three. These findings may help university faculty understand and integrate student development into their teaching practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]