In China, the eighth round of national curriculum reform (NCR) is the most serious, systematic, and ambitious attempt to transform the basic education curriculum system since 1949. Through a review of the contexts, processes and outcomes of the implementation of the NCR from 2001–2011, this paper provides a further discussion on three pairs of apparently conflicting aspects: policy borrowing or policy learning; revolution or evolution; success or failure. It enriches our understanding of the implementation of large-scale reform in a non-western context like China in the following ways: Firstly, the NCR is China’s reaction against as well as response to the requirements of the current era of globalization; secondly, the debates and setbacks during the implementation of the NCR are not necessarily destructive, and a more integrative view should be adopted by the NCR on the balance between tradition and innovation, between localized concerns and global perspectives; thirdly, it is not wise to make a rash judgment on the reform outcomes of the NCR, especially the invisible and profound cultural changes. All those who are concerned about the evaluation of the NCR may need to rethink and clarify their views and positions on the purpose of education.
Outcome-oriented evaluation of school effectiveness is often based on student test scores in certain critical examinations. This study provides another method of evaluation—value-added—which is based on student achievement progress. This paper introduces the method of estimating the value-added score of schools in multi-level models. Based on longitudinal student achievement data, two measures of school effectiveness in one local education authority in China are compared. It is found that the between-school difference in both test-score and value-added is large comparable with that of Western countries. The results of the two measures of school effectiveness are highly different. The value-added measures lack consistency across different subject areas within schools while the test score measures are highly correlated between subjects. Teachers show their preference for value-added measures over test-score measures of education quality. It is suggested that value-added measures of school effectiveness should be used as a complement to rather than a substitute for test-score measures. The shortcomings of value-added approach are also discussed.
This study examines the trends in the Mincerian rates of return (MRRs) to education in urban China between 1989 and 2009 using two sources of data: the China Urban Household Survey and the China Health and Nutrition Survey, and attempts to explain the underlying causes of the trends. The authors find that while the rates of return to education had been rising steadily since 1992 in urban China, a trend consistent with earlier studies, they have stagnated and even shown a statistically insignificant and very small decline between 2004 and 2009. Using the conceptual framework of supply, demand and institution in labor economics, the authors show evidence that the rapid rise in MRRs since 1992 has been driven by the strong relative demand for skills and productivity unleashed by the market-oriented economic reforms of the late 1980s and 1990s when relative supply of skilled labor was by and large stable. However, the “great leap forward” in senior secondary and tertiary education since the late 1990s produced huge numbers of graduates by the mid-2000s, outpacing the growth of relative demand for skilled labor due to the economy’s overdependence on low value-added industries such as manufacturing and construction. The apparent slowdown in the deepening of marketization since the mid-2000s may have also contributed to the stagnation or slight decline in the returns to education in urban China.
With China’s growing significance in the global economy ever more evident, studies in recent years have highlighted multiple aspects of China’s “Globalization” (or global connections) that predate the contemporary period. This article focuses on educational reform in the late Qing and early Republic as a way of illuminating a significant aspect of China’s Globalization during this period. In particular, the article highlights the role of an emerging Chinese educational “lobby” that was involved in administration, teaching, and textbook compilation; furthermore, this lobby pioneered the introduction of new ideas, concepts, and innovative practice from abroad in the specialized journals on education—the first of their kind in China—which they edited and contributed to. More significantly, contributors to these journals engaged with and discussed educational issues and problems that were simultaneously being debated in the West. In the process Chinese educators and officials were able to draw upon, either to valorize or critique, a wide spectrum of contemporary foreign educational debate and practice in their prognosis of domestic education and its future. The picture that emerges of Chinese education during this period is one in which Chinese educators perceived themselves very much as active participants in a global educational community.
The cognitive interview method was applied to evaluate survey questions translated and adapted from a US-based college student survey instrument. This paper draws data from cognitive interviews with 45 undergraduate students in China and explores the different meanings they attribute to the term “college teacher.” Students understood college teacher as course instructor, academic advisor, class headteacher and counselor, student organization supervisor, and student service personnel. Students developed the understanding through a socialization process of student-teacher interaction. This paper also discusses the importance of using cognitive interviewing to improve questionnaire design, implications for research on student-teacher relationships, and suggestions on fostering student-teacher interaction in Chinese higher education institutions.
This article explores the real life experience of international students’ and the importance of study abroad for their personal and professional development. The empirical data drawn upon for this article came from the author’s master’s research, with field research conducted in the 2010/2011 academic year. It begins with the study focus and research objectives and reviews the relevant theoretical literature and the methodology adopted in the research. In the third section, data from interviews with 16 international students in Capital University (pseudonym, China) and Romance University (pseudonym, France) are analyzed following in chronological order the experiences of their sojourn in their host country. The final section of the article sums up the results of the research and points out the complexity of the question of international student mobility and different perspectives that can be adopted in seeking to understand and interpret this phenomenon.