In this introduction we describe the purpose and structure of the Canada–China Reciprocal Learning in Teacher Education and School Education Partnership Grant Project sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada (SSHRC) in 2013?2020, and describe the project’s practice-based methodology along with a discussion of selected preliminary results. The papers presented in this special issue of Frontiers of Education in China animate our discussion by bringing forward important school-based activities and results. The heart of this work is the collaborative activity and voices of Chinese and Canadian educators. We illustrate our concept of reciprocal learning and how we apply this concept in our Partnership Grant Project. We believe that we have heavily benefited from the productive work and impact that has been made in the field of comparative education and we have put our emphasis on Reciprocal Learning as Collaborative Partnership throughout our project.
This paper reports the impact of a new Canada and China school network on its participating teachers in the context of the Canada?China Partnership Grant Project. Eight schools formed four pairs of sister schools, and teachers in these schools created collaborations embedded in their practices. The data include interviews of teachers and principals in both countries and records of teachers’ cross-cultural collaborations. Informed by the literature on teacher learning and professional learning communities, this paper shows benefits of international teacher communities. Also, it explores a new approach to research that features spatiality considerations reflecting a new trend in the comparative education literature. Focusing on teacher knowledge and practice, it shows reciprocal effects of collaboration in the international school network. Finally, this paper links the research results to the literature in a way that highlights the potential of international teacher professional learning communities and contributions of this kind of practice and research.
In this paper, I demonstrate a way of conducting narrative inquiry that is oriented towards understanding and improving teachers’ experiences in a particular Toronto–Shanghai/West–East Sister School reciprocal learning partnership. I show how this narrative inquiry process is informed by a Deweyan way of thinking about experience and is enriched by the Confucian idea of being a good guest. I illustrate how this inquiry process involves teachers and researchers as collaborative and reciprocal learners on the Dao of further personal and professional growth and learning. I suggest that conducting narrative inquiry in a Canada–China interschool setting could give rise to West–East reciprocal learning communities that have the potential of bridging the cultural and historical narratives that underlie Chinese and North American education. It could also create the harmonious and democratic educational conditions for fostering global citizens as learners in our 21st century.
This paper presents the case of one Sister School in the Canada–China Reciprocal Learning Project based on a belief that practice has significant value for the development of teachers’ intercultural awareness and schools’ intercultural communication experience. This paper focuses on one Shanghai school’s reciprocal learning experience, highlighting the content of intercultural communication, the areas of collaboration, the characteristics of collaboration, and the attitudes towards collaboration in the intercultural context. Against the backdrop of New Basic Education reform in China, I try to depict how a Sister School partnership guided by the principle of reciprocal learning motivates Chinese and Canadian teachers to work together across cultural differences in order to learn and develop in terms of theory and practice. I also discuss difficulties and challenges that have occurred in the process of intercultural communication. In the process, reciprocal learning is re-conceptualized and relived as part of our research endeavor.
Reciprocal Learning: One Teacher’s Narrative
World-Class Universities (WCUs) are nationally embedded comprehensive higher education institutions (HEIs) that are closely engaged in the global knowledge system. The article reviews the conditions of possibility and evolution of WCUs. Three interpretations are used to explain worldwide higher education: neoliberal theory, institutional theory, and critical political economy, which give greater recognition than the other theories to the role of the state and variations between states. World higher education is evolving under conditions of globalization, organizational modernization (the New Public Management), and in some countries, marketization. These larger conditions have become manifest in higher education in three widespread tendencies: massification, the WCU movement, and organizational expansion. The last includes the strengthening of the role of the large multi-disciplinary multi-purpose HEIs (“multiversities”), in the form of both research-intensive WCUs with significant global presence, and other HEIs. The role of binary sector and specialist HEIs has declined. Elite WCUs gain status and strategic advantage in both quantity and quality: through growth and the expansion of scope, and through selectivity and research concentration. The balance between quantity and quality is now resolved at larger average size and broader scope than before. The final section of the article reviews WCUs in China and considers whether they might constitute a distinctive university model.
The present study adopts a mixed method design to investigate the effect of seven classroom assessment (CA) features on student self-regulated learning (SRL) and further explored factors that influenced the effect. Twelve teachers and their students (valid data points tallying 630) from three Chinese high schools participated in the study. Structural equational modelling results showed that the CA features had varied impacts. Specifically, self-assessment most effectively enhanced SRL, followed by teacher instruction and structured guidance, then teacher feedback; assessment task and student choice had mixed impacts. Peer-assessment and CA environment reduced SRL. Five influencing factors were revealed through both teacher and student interviews, namely, student engagement with the assessment task, student dependence on authority, prospective gains in the gaokao, intractable motivation and learning approach, and student-teacher relationship. The research has practical implications for SRL promotion.