The Shanghai Municipal Education Commission convened an important conference in early 2010. A major focus of the conference was the apparent failure of the New Curriculum Reform to take root in schools. One of the conclusions presented at the conference was that school principals were responsible for the gap between the intent and effect of the…

This paper examines a group of Chinese educational leaders' leadership practice changes after undertaking a leadership development course offered by an Australian university in China. It presents their self-reported changes in leadership practice profiles and features selected vignettes. The study was primarily qualitative and interpretative,…

Word problems play a crucial role in mathematics education. However, the authenticity of word problems is quite controversial. In terms of the necessity of realistic considerations to be taken into account in the solution process, word problems have been classified into two categories: standard word problems (S-items) and problematic word problems…

Citizenship is a complex and multidimensional concept. There has been a tendency to compare traditions of citizenship in the West with those in the East, captured by a stereotype that depicts the West as individualistic and the East as collectivist. The purpose of this study is to investigate what kind of citizenship is exhibited by Chinese…

The past two decades have witnessed the great developments in principal training in China. Research on principal training in China is increasing in quantity and quality with its expanding practice. The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyze the changing landscape of scholarship on principal training in China by examining the quantity of…

The authors, one from China and one from the United States, present a theoretical framework for understanding the discursive fields of citizenship education as composed, in large part, of the discourses of nationalism, globalization, and cosmopolitanism. The framework is illustrated by examples from citizenship education in China and the United…

This paper addresses the issue of students' employment expectations, considered a key factor in alleviating graduate unemployment in China. This empirical investigation surveyed students at two higher education institutions in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, to analyze how expectations were changing. The results contrasted with earlier studies that…

As presented in documentary form, the discourse of the last one hundred years of modern Chinese education is very different from its written counterpart. Documentary discourse provides a perspective on education as realized and understood through the lens. On screen, evolving thoughts on Chinese education have been reconstructed. This article…

Chinese college graduates have faced increasing labor market competition since the expansion of tertiary education. Given rigid market demand, graduates with realistic earnings expectations may experience a more efficient job search. Using the 2008 MYCOS College Graduate Employment Survey, this study finds that a 1000 yuan reduction in a…

This paper explores new patterns of learning across cultures in higher education through a case study of a cohort of international graduate students at a university in Chinese mainland. North University (NU) has hosted international students in its Chinese language and culture programs for decades. However, between 2008 and 2010, a new Master's…

The brain-drain caused by imbalanced economic development has produced a lack of qualified teachers in rural China. Short-term volunteer teaching has emerged as a response. Despite the popularity of such programs, little systematic data have been gathered regarding their strengths and weaknesses. A short-term volunteer teaching program was…

The development of higher vocational education in China embodies a global trend of vocationalism that values skills and skilled workers, which is opposite, in some ways, to the Confucian tradition in Chinese education that values theoretical knowledge related to good governance. As the cultural trend supporting the development of higher vocational…

Access to higher education in China has opened up significantly in the move towards a mass higher education system. However, aggregate growth does not necessarily imply fair or reasonable distribution of opportunity. In fact, the expansion of higher education has a rather more complex influence on opportunity when admissions statistics are viewed…

This study was designed to investigate the nature of activities in an immersion English class and a non-immersion English class in the mainland of China, and to find out the differences between these two types of class through data gained from observation and interviews. Spoken discourse analysis was used to analyze the data, where Engestrom's…

Along with the "massification" of higher education in China since the late 1990s, the issue of quality and excellence appeared at the top of China's higher education agenda. Since faculty evaluation of teaching is one of the major approaches adopted by China's higher education sector to pursue quality and excellence, it is valuable to examine the…